Insight: When Your Raspberry Pi "Forgets" Everything—Here's a Shell Script to Save Your Settings

Insight: When Your Raspberry Pi "Forgets" Everything—Here's a Shell Script to Save Your Settings

So you've set up a shiny new Raspberry Pi 5 as a video streamer, dashboard, classroom kiosk, or remote camera. You configure everything just the way you want it—logins, Wi-Fi, display settings, browser preferences—and then it happens: an update rolls through, or you reboot, and poof. Your settings are gone. Again.

That kind of behavior is enough to make a Pi user wonder if they imagined the whole setup. And yet, this isn’t a fluke. It’s a persistent pain point that shows up across forums, classrooms, and headless deployments alike. 

That's why we built pi-persist-check.sh, a lightweight Bash script that helps you understand what's happening under the hood when your Pi starts acting like it has amnesia.

A Real-World Problem, Meet a Real Shell Script

Imagine you're running a digital signage display in a library. You SSH in to set it up, launch Chromium in kiosk mode, and call it a day. But next Monday, the splash screen is back and your start page is gone. Or imagine your kid's Pi-powered media center: they log in, only to find their saved passwords and profiles wiped again. What gives?

The culprit might be a read-only root filesystem, or an overlay system like overlayroot that's booting into a temporary RAM disk. In some cases, it’s just the OS reverting changes after a system update or incorrect shutdown. 

Whatever the root cause, our script gives you simple diagnostic tools with zero install overhead. It runs headless, works from a terminal, and keeps a session log so you can review results after each test.

How to Use It

You can grab the script and instructions here:  

View the script and instructions on GitHub Gist

On your Raspberry Pi, open the terminal and create the script:

Bash

nano pi-persist-check.sh    

Paste in the contents of the script from the Gist, then save and exit:

• Press Ctrl+O to write the file
• Press Enter to confirm
• Press Ctrl+X to exit nano

Next, make the script executable:  

Bash

chmod +x pi-persist-check.sh    

Now run the script:

Bash

./pi-persist-check.sh    

You’ll see this main menu: 

Bash

==== Raspberry Pi Persistence & Diagnostic Utility ====
1. Check if filesystem is read-only
2. Check for overlayroot (RAM-based root filesystem)
3. Test file persistence across reboot
4. View session report
5. Exit
=======================================================
Enter your choice [1-5]:    

And here’s an example of a session report with simulated results:

Bash

==== Session Report ====
Write test passed.
No overlayroot detected.
Test file created: ~/test_persist_file.txt. Reboot and check if it remains.
========================
Press Enter to return to menu...    

What You'll Learn

If your Pi deletes the test file after reboot, you’ll know persistence is broken. If you detect overlay mode, you can decide whether to disable it or move your configs to writable volumes. Either way, you’re no longer flying blind—you’ve got visibility.

We built this tool because we kept hearing the same story from Pi users. Now it’s a shareable Gist, and we’ll be expanding on it with more utilities in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

🥇Bonus points if you uncover a hidden overlay mode and finally tame your Pi.

If this tool helped you, drop us a line—or pass it along to another Pi user who’s been struggling with lost settings.

Need Raspberry Pi Expertise?

We'd love to help you with your Raspberry Pi projects.  Feel free to reach out to us at info@pacificw.com.

Written by Aaron Rose, software engineer and technology writer at Tech-Reader.blog.