I *still* do not understand why that should be so. The only machines available for me to experiment with are XO-1s. The above-described scenario does NOT work for me. -------- I did the zcat 20090525.bootable.gz > /dev/sdf1 (USB stick). That USB stick failed to boot on the XO. The messages from OFW were "Error: Unknown file system Can't open disk label package" Then I did the livecd-iso-to-disk.sh 20090525.iso > /dev/sdf1 (USB stick). That USB stick booted fine on the XO. Made some changes to the root filesystem, and rebooted. After the XO had completed rebooting (in the process, it reloaded its root filesystem from the USB stick), the changes I had previously made were NOT there. -------- I can understand how changes made to the "recording medium" will be there after a reboot. [For instance, if I boot from nand, then make changes to the filesystem in memory (and the system writes those changed memory pages back out to nand), then when I reboot (from nand) the changes will still be there.] But in the case of booting from an USB stick, I believe the system does *not* write the contents of changed memory pages back out to the USB stick. When I reboot from that USB stick (particularly if I've powered-down the system in the meantime), why would the changes still be there ?? Thanks, mikus