So the issue is with tar commands on the overlayfs storage driver that casper uses for persistence on Ubuntu live usb. It seems like there are some issues with permissions in overlayfs. For anyone following in my footsteps, here’s what I did to get past this.
Opened https://install.meteor.com and read through the script. It basically checks to see what operating system you have, downloads the appropriate tar file, copies “launch-meteor” script to “/usr/local/meteor” so you can use meteor command in terminal.
Operating system options are:
os.osx.x86_64
os.linux.x86_32
os.linux.x86_64
The last one is what you want for 64 bit linux.
And the current package version is 1.8.0.2 so replace the bits below if you have a different environment and download this:
https://static-meteor.netdna-ssl.com/packages-bootstrap/1.8.0.2/meteor-bootstrap-os.linux.x86_64.tar.gz
extract the .meteor directory to your home folder, mine is “/home/cookie”. For this i just used the default archive manager in ubuntu 18.10 which is “file roller” (renamed as archive manager in 18.10).
Next copy the script launch-meteor from:
/home/cookie/.meteor/packages/meteor-tool/.1.8.0_2.1om3lwx.sy8++os.linux.x86_64+web.browser+web.browser.legacy+web.cordova/mt-os.linux.x86_64/scripts/admin/launch-meteor
your directory structure may be different but copy this to /usr/local/bin and rename it meteor, I had to open the directory as root using a gui file manager (I’m using Nemo) but using sudo cp “source” “destination” might work too.
Now running my project with meteor it threw some errors which apparently happen sometimes when you copy a meteor project from windows:
cookie@ubuntu:~/Documents/project$ meteor
/home/cookie/.meteor/packages/meteor-tool/.1.8.0_2.1om3lwx.sy8++os.linux.x86_64+web.browser+web.browser.legacy+web.cordova/mt-os.linux.x86_64/dev_bundle/lib/node_modules/meteor-promise/promise_server.js:218
throw error;
^
Error: EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, unlink '/home/cookie/Documents/project/.meteor/local/dev_bundle'
at Object.fs.unlinkSync (fs.js:1061:18)
at exports.makeLink (/tools/cli/dev-bundle-links.js:20:8)
at exports.ReleaseFile.ensureDevBundleLink (/tools/project-context.js:1538:7)
at exports.ReleaseFile._readFile (/tools/project-context.js:1472:10)
at new exports.ReleaseFile (/tools/project-context.js:1422:8)
at /tools/cli/main.js:932:22
Deleting the directories in .meteor in my project that start with dev_bundle seemed to allow me to run meteor commands. I then got some more errors about missing packages which told me I should run meteor npm install --save @babel/runtime or similar but before i could do that I had to run sudo apt install git -y. After installing them I could get my app to run using the meteor command.
I know this is a dirty workaround that could probably be solved some other way but its working for me.