[IAEP] Anyone gotten a 4GB or greater USB stick to work for Sugar on a Stick?

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 03:14, Caroline Meeks <solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm,  This is all very interesting and in the field pretty confusing.
>
> We need to take this knowledge and use it in two ways.
>
> 1.  Simple recommendations today, for naive users, on how to be most likely
> to create a working stick.
>
> 2. Recommendations for the developers of the teacher Stick Creator activity
> that runs off of Sugar and lets teachers clone their system including apps,
> language settings, network settings etc. and create fresh sticks for their
> students.
>
> Anyone want to take a shot at summarizing what we know into actionable
> information for either of these uses?

Shouldn't we offer on-disk.com as an alternative for the less
technically adventurous?

Regards,

Tomeu

> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:57 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>>
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>> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 09:06:15PM -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote:
>> >Ahh, this maybe where some of the confusing behavior we were seeing
>> >comes from.  Let me repeat what I think I understand so I can see if I
>> >have it right.
>> >
>> >FAT is the same thing as FAT16
>> >FAT is only an option for USB sticks 2 GB or less. You can only format
>> >a USB stick larger then 2 GB as FAT32.
>> >Some computers will not boot from a FAT32 formatted stick but some
>> >will.
>> >
>> >Thus if you put SoaS onto a 4 GB USB it will fail on some computers and
>> >not others.
>> >
>> >A partition allows you to have one part of the USB formatted
>> >differently then another part.
>> >
>> >Thus a work around if you want to use a USB stick larger then 2GB would
>> >be to create a smaller partition for the boot area and format that as
>> >FAT.
>> >
>> >Let me know what I have right and wrong!
>>
>> You got it right.  But there are more works in that can:
>>
>> FAT is _often_ FAT16. In addition to FAT16 and FAT32 there is also
>> FAT12, which some BIOSed might expect in USB-FDD mode.
>>
>> Also, some BIOSes do not support booting from a USB stick containing
>> more than a single partition...:
>>
>> The various bugs in BIOS implementations apart, there are 3 kinds of
>> boot methods for USB storage devices: USB-FDD, USB-HDD and USB-ZIP.
>>
>> USB-FDD expects no MBR (Master Boot Record), but instead one single
>> unpartitioned whole - like a very large floppy disk.
>>
>> USB-FDD expects an MBR with standard DOS partition table - like a
>> harddisk.
>>
>> USB-ZIP expects an MBR with specific DOS partition table - like a ZIP
>> drive.
>>
>>
>> makebootfat includes a special "mbrfat" combination that makes the
>> device look like an unpartitioned single whole to BIOSes expecting
>> USB-FDD, while presenting an MBR with a DOS partition table for BIOS-HDD
>> use (and possibly BIOS-ZIP too).
>>
>>
>> I strongly recommend to read the manpage for makebootfat.
>>
>>
>> I don't know any tools to reverse-engineer boot sectors, which means it
>> is not enough to say "yes, it works with makebootfat" - you need to
>> document *what* works for *which* machine setup to use *what* USB access
>> method.
>>
>> If you want to approach this systematically, to gain knowledge on what
>> hardware supports which combinations of boot methods and tricks, then I
>> strongly suggest that you try use makebootfat to prepare the USB sticks,
>> or closely read documentation and/or code of other chosen tools to
>> understand what exactly they do in comparison.
>>
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>>  - Jonas
>>
>> - --
>> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
>> * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>>
>>  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
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