Copying is slower than with other tools

The code that copies the contents of the casper directory and updates the progress percentage is taking about 10hours and counting.

ive got a dual core 2GHz processor, 1GB ram, im using xubuntu 8.04.1.

the cd image is only like 600MB right?

whats going on?

It's looking like an all night affair here too... copying to a MXI Stealth MXP drive (unencrypted partition).

I am running it using the latest Ubuntu 8.10 daily build on a Dell Latitude D630 with Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM.

I am seeing virtually zero HDD activity and top shows almost 100% IO Wait on one of the cores.

OOPS... "virtually zero HDD" should be "virtually zero CD ROM activity"

Same deal here, with a lenovo rig with 512mb ram and a sempron 3400+ processor, running a xubuntu 8.04 livecd. Was in 'persistent data' mode. Hope it goes by morning.

I've got the same problem. Kubuntu 8.04.1 KDE 4 live cd. Dual core 3GHz AMD processor, 2 GB ram, you get the idea. Over 8 hours and it's still less than half way done copying /cdrom/casper.

Turning off persistent data mode and trying again worked fine for me. (Or at least it didn't hang on casper for more than 6 hours; I wasn't watching.)

I don't have persistent data mode turned on. Maybe I should just restart it, but I don't want to risk loosing my progress if it doesn't run faster after the restart.

Hm. Maybe someone who let it run could check back in? See if it just
never gets there?

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 7:45 AM, Leon Maurer
<email address hidden> wrote:
> I don't have persistent data mode turned on. Maybe I should just restart
> it, but I don't want to risk loosing my progress if it doesn't run
> faster after the restart.
>
> --
> Copying is slower than with other tools
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/263411
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Live USB system creator: New
>
> Bug description:
> The code that copies the contents of the casper directory and updates the progress percentage needs to be improved. I think the copying is currently much slower than it needs to be.
>

It was done when I got back from work, so it took less than 21 hours to complete (I ran it all last night too). The usb drive boots up fine, and it seems to work fine.

Can this be related to the 'sync' option that the device is mounted with?
If i remove the 'sync' in mountFirstPartition(self) on line 186 of usbdevice.py the progress-bar is about 1001 times faster. :)

In my case it did take some 22 hours, but was completed successfully and works fine.

I have generated USB keys in the past in less than 3 minutes -- so something appears to have regressed at least here.

I also encountered this issue. It took about 12 hours to create a USB key with this utility. Something has to be wrong. If I do it manually it takes me less than 10 mins to do all the steps.

Sebastian can you please explain where the usbdevice.py file is located? So I can change it.
Also, can anyone explain the difference between "casper-rw" and "home-rw" volumes and why I would want either vs the other?
One is explained as persistent root, and the other is explained as persistent home. If I want to change add packages that require root, or change root's password, would I need a "casper-rw" ext3 volume? or does the "home-rw" cover this?

roadrunner777: it is in /usr/share/python-support/liveusb/usbdevice.py

I also removed the sync option from the script which indeed sped up the copying process a lot.
Unfortunatly the copying process seems to hang around 95% and 668780 bytes copied.
No flash integrated, no persistent home folder.
I'd be happy to debug this further tomorrow, #usblive was empty when i checked.

=== modified file 'usr/share/python-support/liveusb/usbdevice.py'
--- usr/share/python-support/liveusb/usbdevice.py 2008-08-31 08:13:29 +0000
+++ usr/share/python-support/liveusb/usbdevice.py 2008-09-25 15:28:03 +0000
@@ -183,7 +183,7 @@
     def mountFirstPartition(self):
         try:
             tempmountpoint = tempfile.mkdtemp("","tmplive","/mnt") # make temp mountpoint in /mnt
- command = ["mount", "-o", "sync", self.device1, tempmountpoint]
+ command = ["mount", self.device1, tempmountpoint]
             subprocess.call(command)
             self.mountpoints = self.listMountpoints() # refresh list of mountpoints
         except:

Removed the sync option and the "-o" parameter, works fine.

Appearantly a faulty dvd-rw was the cause of my problems.
After burning a regular cd-r i could create the usblive disk perfectly.

No longer mounting with "sync".

I just downloaded and ran liveusb_0.1.1_all.deb and mine has been taking over an hour now to copy files. It isn't as bad as some have said as it is almost done, but I copied 2 ISO images to my usb drive in 3 minutes and this is taking forever.

Same here. Despite the latest release notes for 0.1.1 indicating this fix was included, I needed to apply the code change outlined by Carles above in order to get copying to go in a reasonable amount of time.

Same happening with me. Downloaded the latest deb (liveusb_0.1.1_all.deb) today, and it took over 6 hours to get up to 1/4 of the copy process.

Tried again after making the modifications that Carles advised and it copied within 10 minutes.

My system is a Dell Inspiron 1300, Pentium M (1.70GHz) and 1GB RAM.

Vic.