[GTALUG] looking for a general purpose boot media to keep in case of distasters

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: joeDoe via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| Anything that you need that isn't on the live system can be easily installed
| if it's packaged for Debian. It's a full system, so you can also download
| and compile something that isn't packaged in Debian if you need to do so.

To install gparted on the currently running live Fedora system, I just
type this into a terminal window:
	sudo dnf install gparted

On debian and descendants, it should be (UNTESTED):
	sudo apt install gparted

- this requires internet connectivity.  I usually use a wired
  connection so that I don't have to bother with a WiFi password.

- You could supply the gparted RPM in another way (eg. on another stick)
  but you may find that there are dependencies on as-yet-uninstalled
  packages.  Starts to get to be work.

- the live system is generally way behind on current updates.  You
  probably don't want to waste your time applying them since they will
  be washed away once you shut down the live system

- if your live system and the system on the hard drive are very
  different, there is a slight chance that the file systems are
  slightly incompatible.  I hate worrying about that so I try to match
  the OSes.

================

I've previously said the following on this list; feel free to skip.

When I get a computer preloaded with Windows, I immediately shrink the 
main Windows partition 100G (used to be 64G but I recently bumped into 
Windows 11 Update failures at that size).

gparted is great but not perfect at resizing NTFS filesystems (the Windows
native file system).  After resizing an NTFS filesystem with gparted,
the first thing you should do is boot Windows.  Windows will then
complete or repair the resizing done by gparted.

Superstition: I have had cases where I didn't immediately boot into Windows after
a gparted resizing.  Sometime Windows won't boot after that.

Why use gparted instead of Windows' own resizing tool?  Because you
cannot reduce the size to less than 50% of the original size with the
Window tool.  Why? Because there is metadata smack in the middle of
the volume and it is marked unmovable.  gparted is willing to move it
anyway.