I have OpenSuse 15.3 installed on my laptop. When I try to use live openSuse 15.4, after shutdown and boot/reboot to installed 15.3, on my desktop’s plasmoids (analog watch and weather) disappears and wallpaper reset to default. Gkrellm is not effected and stays. Tried live plasma and live XFCE iso’s.
I assume you want to know how the live system can have any influence on your installed system (but you did not ask 
).
Did you mount any file systems of the installed system while running the live system?
No and No.
For second question: Did not mount any file system explicitly. Only opened file manager. But did not “click” on any file system of installed system.
For first question: Actually I wondered if this happens to any other user and if this is really happens for others how this is not prevented.
In fact a life system is not different from any multi-booted system. The difference is mostly that multi-boot systems are on the same disk or on different disk connected to the same hardware system and booting managed by a helper like Grub… And a life system is booted from a temporary connected mass-storage device and this is probably done by configuring the BIOS to do so. But that is all from the view of the human standing beside the system.
For the system itself, it is just booted. And it will NOT read/write outside it’s directory tree, which exists of a range of mounted file systems. Thus, as long as file systems that basically belong to other operating systems are not mounted, nothing can change there. The exception is when the superuser of a system writes directly to the devices where file systems are located on, e.g. erases a partition. But in that case all would be gone on that file system and that is not what you report.
So the question is still (you did not answer it), did you mount any file systems from the installed 15.3 system during you running the live 15.4 system?
And you asking about experience. I do not think it is the case that people think they have “spontaneous” changes on their installed system by running a live system, except for the actions the have willfully done. Remember that live system are often used as rescue systems. And then mounting file systems of the installed system is often done to make repairs there. And then, yes, changes are done, for a purpose.
Occasionally I use LIVE-systems to inspect/repair systems which do not belong to me (so I have to be careful) and so far I never experienced a problem like the one you described in your first post.
However modern GUI-tools have to be used with care; e.g. if you choose to run dolphin (file manager) in superuser-mode a file system will be mounted without further notice when you select it in the dolphin-GUI.
Nevertheless there can be other reasons (not related to you using a LIVE system) which can cause the problem you described. So the question is:
What makes you that sure that your problem was caused by the usage of a LIVE system?
Regards
susejunky
Thanks for quick response and explanations.
As for the question still “unanswered”, I did not mount any file system on installed 15.3. Unless by opening file manager “mounts” them i.e. by means of “automount” etc.
In my humble opinion, no live system should be allowed such a “uncontrolled” change on installed system. I’ve been using Linux since 20 years and have not seen such a “behaviour”. My 1st distro was SuSE 7.1. After 2 or 3 months I installed Mandrake and used this distro and descendants for many years. Before OpenSUSE, until 7 months ago, I was using Rosa Linux which was “rock solid”. Unfortunately my hdd came to end of life and new version of Rosa was not “good enough” for me. Then I found OpenSuse. Especially this distro works very well with my Nvidia840m on my laptop with Nouveau, unlike OpenMandriva or Mageia. KDE-Plasma is my preferred destop, works very well. I will still use OpenSuse.
With live system I was preparing an USB stick for a friend. OpenSuse’s live system uses USB stick’s empty part seamlessly for storage besides live system. Because my friend’s laptop is an old one, I wanted to try XFCE live ISO. But this “unwanted behaviour” happens. Actually my previous experiments with 15.4 Plasma Live system was the same. Now when I do prepare such USB stick I’ll try to disable laptop’s hdd in bios to keep it intact. But if you “solve” this, if you accept this is a problem of course, I would be happy.
Regards.
This happens only when I use LIVE OpenSUSE system. Otherwise none of such thing happens.
If it is some sort of “automount” or not, you are still responsible. Thus when I say “did you mount …”, I mean in fact: are you 1000% sure there was no mount?
As @susejunky says, there seem to be file managers that try to grab around where they can. But again, except when one runs a file manager as superuser, I doubt it will succeed in mounting a Linux file system by itself.
In your post #6 you stated that you used the openSUSE-LIVE-System from an USB-memory-stick because “… it uses USB stick’s empty part seamlessly for storage besides live system”.
You should keep in mind, that a LIVE system on an USB-memory-stick will not only allow to store data beside the live system but it will store (and therefore “remember”) all its configuration status as well. Under certain conditions mounts could end up in /etc/fstab and would be re-done on every new start …
So the next question is:
Do you encounter the same problem when you use the openSUSE LIVE system from CD?
Regards
susejunky
First of all, I have to say, your “mount can cause this” idea is quite wrong and irrelevant. There is no way to mount any file system on the same point. So, live root file system’s /etc or other points should be different from installed system’s mount points. Of course unless the system is designed erranously. İf your idea were true then all live media could couse such errors.
I am not new to live USB sticks. I tried so far countless ISO’s. None of this worked to couse OpenSuse’s ISO’s error.
Today I tried Fedora36 KDE Spin Live ISO, OpenMandriva LX4.3 Live ISO and Mageia8 Live ISO with a persistent partition. None of this had the OpenSUSE’s erraneous behaviour.
With all of these 3, I run several applications, open Dolphin and look into my HDD’s / and /home partitions. Used Okular to show several PDF and image files on this partitions. Played some videos and audios as well.
On Mageia8 even I installed some packages.
After all of this experiments my installed system stays untouched/unchanged.
Now, I wonder if any other user encountered such an error? Any other user or developer could reproduce this?
That’s all. I had wrote my workaround. I’ll try to keep using OpenSUSE until I decided to continue with installing 15.4 or use another distro.
Regards.
I do not understand you here. But I stick to my point that there can be no changes on the file level (and that is what we are talking about, changes in KDEs configuration file(s)) can be done when a file system is not mounted somewhere in the running system.
But feel free not following this anymore.
We can not answer this. There are openSUSE users visiting these forums, bit not “any other user”.
I told you already that I have never encountered an error like the one you describe and I have used openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Tumbleweed, SystemRescueCD, Kubuntu and PartitionMagic LIVE systems (openSUSE LIVE systems always from USB-memory-sticks).
I never saw any of those LIVE systems mounting a file system from the host system without any user interaction.
Regards
susejunky
Well, I have to say none of this would be possible without actually mounting the file systems in question, i.e. / and /home. But I don’t want to harp on about the mounting issue. Trying to look at it from a neutral, analytic point of view.
With the above mentioned actions you haven’t just mounted and looked into these file systems but actually mounted them with write access and apparently also written to them by installing packages.
Question remains, what have you actually done with the 15.4 live system on your 15.3 system and how? Your findings seem very unlikely. However, IMHO there’s rather few reasonable ways how this could have happened. After all, it is a very specific user based issue with user settings. Is it possible, you have logged into the live system with the same user credential (UID, GID) of the local system? I don’t know if this is possible with a live system, at all. It seems to me the only way that “the system” might have tried to write settings into the actual /home/ of your user after having mounted it - assuming you have. Or otherwise by mistake some config file in your /home/ has been deleted, somehow.
As I said, I find both versions very unlikely but technically I can hardly imagine any other way how this could have happened, at all.
Hello:
The live version is good for problem installations, it has 2 ways to boot, normal mode and safe mode. (this last one loads generic drivers, a graphic example with a single resolution) .
Once finished, the screen remains with an icon to install and another to update. I seem to remember that it acts as root, from the live without installing or updating, you can configure the desktop, add repos (inc packman), configure network, add programs, wallpapers, updates etc.
The next reboot, it should be as the user left it. If you didn’t add wallpapers, it will use the root ones, but if you download even just one, a directory will be created in ~/.local/share/wallpapers , same for icon theme.
On the other hand, the configurations are saved in ~/.config and correspond to files ending in plasma type rc (look for modification in dolphin to see the file) .
Except snapper, it comes with almost everything, an update or installation, it has online repositories, including community ones, that takes longer than a distribution one, since it has fewer files (initial about 900MB),
As far as I know, it does not save in fstab, and from there if you can modify some things in the user, passwords, etc; but there are yast applications that don’t work in live mode.
I have a 15.4 that I update from time to time, but having 3 S.O. on pc, excuse me to use live.
The live ones appear as images in OpenQA, both 15.3 and 15.4, unlike the distribution one, it is usually updated from time to time; also available logs and videos in the same OpenQA.
https://paste.opensuse.org/images/14890763.jpg
Best regards .
I found the bug.
I had installed OpenSuse 15.3 by using live usb. The installer had created a symlink in /home partition to my user’s directory. Possibily this link is used by live OpenSuse system in a way, so some “code” corrupts my desktop configuration on installed system.
tanju@localhost:~> cd ..
tanju@localhost:/home> ls
live lost+found tanju
tanju@localhost:/home> ls -l
toplam 20
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Oca 24 2022 live -> /home/tanju
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Oca 24 2022 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 28 tanju users 4096 Ağu 8 10:46 tanju
tanju@localhost:/home> sudo rm ./live
[sudo] password for root:
tanju@localhost:/home> ls -l
toplam 20
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Oca 24 2022 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 28 tanju users 4096 Ağu 8 10:46 tanju
tanju@localhost:/home>
After deleting this link I’ve tried a USB stick with OpenSUSE-Leap-15.4-KDE-Live.
Did everything to prepare it. Changed keyboard layout, language, add some plasmoids, installed gkrellm even installed updates with kernel.
By Dolphin reached installed system’s /home and also copied some files from/to my installed home.
Everything went well. Of course to find which application/tool’s code of OpenSuse using this link corrupts installed system is not my business. That’s for developers of OpenSuse. Hope they fix this bug.
Cheers.
This forum here is a place where mostly openSUSE users try to support each other.
To reach developers you need to file a bug report at
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/
When you have done so please report a link to your bug report back here so that others who have followed this thread can join in.
Regards
susejunky
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1202236
Bug reported.