Last I checked virtualbox could not boot from USB on a Mac. This may have changed in a more recent version. Dave <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin <<a href="mailto:gary@garycmartin.com">gary@garycmartin.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi Bill, <div class="im"> On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin > <<a href="mailto:gary@garycmartin.com">gary@garycmartin.com</a>> wrote: > >> Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM >> to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty >> way >> to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just >> tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then >> run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand >> point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar >> checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up >> (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so >> any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume >> could become the default data-store for that session. > > Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including > VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to > provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under > virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically > allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to > the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly > compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on > a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me > know. </div>Yes, I routinely use the "Shared Folders" feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf <name_you_give_share> <name_of_intended_mount_point> ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. <div class="im"> Regards, --Gary _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list </div><a href="mailto:Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org">Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel</a> </blockquote></div> -- Dave Bauer <a href="mailto:dave@solutiongrove.com">dave@solutiongrove.com</a> <a href="http://www.solutiongrove.com">http://www.solutiongrove.com</a>