[SoaS] [support-gang] "Read Only" SoaS Almost Passes the "Teacher Test"... but not quite.

[Bert Freudenberg]

The iso file is a "CD image". ISO is short for "ISO 9660", a.k.a. "CDFS (Compact Disc File System)". It is a file system designed for CDs, which is read-only.

When you just copy the iso file to a USB stick, the stick will have the same file system, and will be read-only. To your Mac it looks exactly like a CD. This doesn't make sense, you could have used the CD in the first place, instead of using a boot helper CD to boot a CD image ...

The process of creating a "Live USB" stick uses a different file system. The best option would be to port Live USB Creator to Mac OS X. Given it's a Python program with Qt interface that might actually be not that hard.

The best near-term option might be if someone created a live-usb stick on Linux or Windows, and zipped up the files it created. Extracting those on another stick might work (I'm not entirely sure how the live usb booting works). Alternatively, a disk image of the whole live usb stick could be made, distributed, and written on other sticks using image-writer-mac. This would be less flexible because it only has a fixed size (e.g., snapshotting a 1 GB stick and putting the image on an 8 GB stick would leave 7 GB unusable) but I can't see why it shouldn't work.

- Bert -

On 16.04.2010, at 19:46, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi George and All,
> 
> OK, so I tried changing the name of the SoaS usb stick to "FEDORA" in the finder on 2 different Macs, running 10.4 and 10.5.  It wasn't an option on either... but I found out why. I just don't know how to fix it.
> 
> I did the get-info process (highlight the item on the screen, then "command-i".  At the very bottom I expanded "Sharing & Permissions"....
> 
> "You can only read"
> 
> So.... that explains why I can't change the name and why the Name and Color Combination choices don't persist between boots (recall... I was able to boot it with the extra step of holding down the "c" key while booting with the boot helper disk and then "Tab" and editing the text that appears on the screen as suggested by George below).
> 
> So...  How do we create an SoaS stick that isn't "read only"????
> 
> Caryl
> 
> Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:17:23 -0400
> From: georgejhunt at gmail.com
> To: support-gang at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: Re: [support-gang] SoaS Almost Passes the "Teacher Test"... but not	quite.
> 
> on my OSX10.4, if you open finder, <ctl>click on the usb name in the left column, I am given the option to rename the USB stick.
> 
> George
> 
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi George and All,
> 
> Thanks to George's patience and persistence and all of the hints you sent,  I finally got the image-writer-mac program to work and make a SoaS usb stick. We used the method where we dragged the files over from a finder window to the terminal window.
> 
>  I feel sure it is good, but I don't have a handy PC to try it on and there is a funny problem trying to boot it on the MacBook with the help of the Boot Helper CD. I got that same fateful sounding  "sleeping forever" message that someone else got earlier in the week.
> 
> The MacBook, requires a boot helper disk that looks for a usb stick named FEDORA.  I suspect they wrote it that way so it can also be used with Strawberry and with other future versions of SoaS. However, this stick is named  "soas-2-blueberry", not FEDORA.
> 
> Well  I tried to rename the usb stick "FEDORA" when it was finished so I could use it on the MacBook, but, try as I may, I cannot change the name.  I even tried it on Ed's computer too (a G4 Powerbook) with no luck.  I can change the name of any other file or other usb stick, but not this one.  It is apparently "soas-2-blueberry", forever.
> 
> I even tried another tack.  I changed the name of the "soas-2-blueberry.iso" file to "FEDORA.iso" before going to terminal to run the image-writer-mac program again and make another stick.  It still wrote the name as "soas-2-blueberry". So now, I have made 2 SoaS usb drives I can probably use on PCs, but not on Macs.
> 
> Finally, I tried the method one of you put up a few days ago where you boot holding down the C key, then the Tab, then change the instructions in the edit mode. While this did work, it is definitely not "Teacher-friendly."
> 
> If someone could figure out a way to change the name of the usb stick from "soas-2-blueberry" to FEDORA somewhere along the way when making the SoaS stick, we would have something that definitely would meet the "teacher test."  I repeat, all usual methods failed.  Any ideas??? 
> 
> I still have 8 days before InfoTech.
> 
> Caryl
> 
> BTW, The choice of "Name" and color combination did not persist from boot to boot.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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