[IAEP] [soas] the 4 GB USB containing Soas-v3-Mirabelle appliance can be run interchangeably on a PC or a mac with VMPlayer or Virtualbox

[Thomas C Gilliard]

Running Soas files on a 2nd USB in Virtualbox 3.2 installed on the 
MacBook Air
: In VirtualBox Make a "new" Virtualbox appliance where you specify the 
existing vmdk file on the 2nd USB as the Hard Disk.

NOTE the same 4 GB USB; 2nd USB containing the students appliance files 
runs interchagably in BOTH VMPlayer and Virtualbox on Mac and PC.s

This a very simple solution with 
[http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.2.10/VirtualBox-3.2.10-66523-OSX.dmg 
VirtualBox-3.2.10-66523-OSX.dmg] installed on your Mac.

See: 
[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Mac_OS_X-Boot_USB_with_Virtualbox#Soas-v3_Mirabelle_virtualbox_files_to_put_on_2nd_USB 
Soas-v3_Mirabelle_virtualbox_files_to_put_on_2nd_USB]

I just discovered the great feature that the 4 GB USB containing 
Soas-v3-Mirabelle can be run interchangeably on a PC or a mac with 
either VMPlayer or Virtualbox.
This may be why Virtualbox 3.2 now allows multiple expanding HD of 2 Gb 
slices.
:: TESTED ON:
:: Acer Aspire One Netbook Ubuntu 9.10 Virtualbox
:: MacBook Air OSX Virtualbox
:: Dell 520n Dektop PC Ubuntu 9.04 VMPlayer


This means that the student has his individual copy of Soas on the USB 
stick and can open it on multiple computers and operating systems. This 
is not a live image but a full install to a virtual Harddisk. It should 
be much more robust. Plus the stick's contents can be copied any time as 
a backup. The application goes thru firstboot with the student's name 
and password required to access it.

I think that this may be the solution we have been looking for.

A compressed version of the Soas-v3 Appliance (before firstboot) is 
downloadable from

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Mac_OS_X-Boot_USB_with_Virtualbox#Prebuilt_Soas-v3-Mirabelle_4GB_Appliance

Thomas Gilliard
satellit