Can't get persistence to work on 32Gb USB drive

[Levi63]

I am using a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 drive and the kali-linux-2019.1a-amd64.iso to make a live USB with persistence in Windows 7 Professional. I have read and followed every tutorial about persistence that's out there. I get Kali on the usb drive, reboot it and it works like a champ. I get the persistence partition created and labeled and formatted but when I make changes to Kali and download a test file it will not save them through a reboot. I have formatted the persistence partition in EXT3 and EXT4 and neither one works. Following the different tutorials I have used Rufus, unetbootin, LinuxLive USB Creator, win32diskimager, the universal usb installer and/or the minitool partition wizard either alone or in some combination as prescribed by whichever tutorial I was following. I am at a loss as to what the problem could be. Is it the brand of usb drive? Am I not holding my mouth right? Do I need to sacrifice something or someone to the god of persistence? I have inserted a graphic from the minitool partition wizard showing the partition table of the flash drive. Thanks in advance.

3382

[bigbiz]

Looks like for what ever reason the partition didnt mount at boot. You boot the thumb drive from the persistence mode right?
I made a thread on reddit with instructions ti create persistence usb from terminal of kali. Hope it helps.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Kalilinux/comments/b79hy7/kali_live_persistence_fill_in_what_you_need_when/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

The last icon isnt a pipe symbol its the cursor of the computer.
Just press enter after every line, also fill in appropriate info. its from offensive security team instructions simplified. Good luck.

[Levi63]

Thanks for the info bigbiz. When I do the parted print it gives me a list of all the commands and options I can do then it gives me the info for my hard drive (that has Windows on it) but shows nothing about the flash drive (sdb). When I do /dev/sdb it just gives me the list of commands. I don't want to do mkpart since all it shows me is the primary hard drive and I really don't need to re-partition that. When I do the "mount /dev/sdb2 /mount/frickin" command I get this response: mount: /mount/frickin: mount point does not exist. I did the "mkdir -p /mnt/frickin" step right before that but I don't know what to do from here. If I do mount /dev/sdb2 I get the response: mount: /dev/sdb2: can't find in /etc/fstab. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Levi63]

Ok I've gotten to the point that I now have an ext3 partition on my usb drive that is labelled persistence but when I reboot I still don't have actual persistence. What am I not connecting in the process?

[bigbiz]

Best guess reinstall kali onto the usb make sure the usb is wiped clean. Then try again.

[broomdodger]

I wrote a linux shell script to write an iso with persistence to a USB drive.
You could boot kali USB without persistence, run the script on another USB drive.
Please let me know if it works for you.



#!/bin/bash
# vi:nowrap
# write iso with persistence
# kali-persistence.sh {iso}

# *** IMPORTANT *** edit DEVICE as needed ***

DEVICE=/dev/sdb

# .......1.........2.........3.........4.........5.. .......6....
if [ ! -e $DEVICE ] # device exists ?
then
echo;echo "device $DEVICE ?";echo;exit 10
fi

ISO=${1}
if [ ! -e "$ISO" ] # iso exists ?
then
echo;echo ".iso $ISO ?";echo;exit 10
fi

# .......1.........2.........3.........4.........5.. .......6....
# writing the iso creates 2 partitions
echo;echo "Write $ISO to $DEVICE"
sudo dd bs=1M if=$ISO of=$DEVICE oflag=direct status=progress && sync

PERSIS=3 # write persistence to partition 3
START=$(du -B1000000 $ISO | cut -f1)
END=$(lsblk --noheadings --nodeps --bytes --output SIZE $DEVICE)
END=$(($END / 1000000))
echo;echo "Persistence on $DEVICE$PERSIS from $START to $END"
sudo parted $DEVICE mkpart primary $START $END &&
sleep 1
sudo mkfs.ext3 -L persistence $DEVICE$PERSIS &&
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/kaliUSB &&
sudo mount $DEVICE$PERSIS /mnt/kaliUSB &&
sudo sh -c "echo '/ union' > /mnt/kaliUSB/persistence.conf" &&
sudo umount $DEVICE$PERSIS &&
sudo rm -fr /mnt/kaliUSB/
sudo fdisk -l $DEVICE

# .......1.........2.........3.........4.........5.. .......6....

[Levi63]

That's great! I'll do that. Thanks for the help.