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? <div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:57 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <<a href="mailto:dr@jones.dk">dr@jones.dk</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 </div><div class="im">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! </div>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, <div class="im"> - Jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: <a href="http://dr.jones.dk/" target="_blank">http://dr.jones.dk/</a> [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) </div>iEYEARECAAYFAknoNn0ACgkQn7DbMsAkQLiifgCfZLRgzR6DWrxOpEMBODwpQOa3 tlkAn370vm1hW+efS+0rQtvC7THSglkh =Rm6F <div><div></div><div class="h5">-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </div></div></blockquote></div> -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax