[SoaS] Fwd: will try 2GB USB tomorrow

[Walter Bender]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stanley Sokolow <stanleysokolow at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: will try 2GB USB tomorrow
To: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
Cc: Sonya Sokolow <sonyasokolow at gmail.com>


Walter,

Thanks for your call today.   Here's a recap of the current status.
I downloaded the boot cd iso file, verified the checksum using my
Ubuntu Linux system, and burned the image onto a CD using a commercial
program I've used many times which runs under Windows Vista on that
same (dual boot) computer.  That system is a 3GHz Pentium D with 2 GB
of RAM.  I downloaded the iso of SOAS blueberry and installed it onto
an 8 GB USB flash drive which had a few other files but more than 7 GB
free.   I used the Fedora live USB program running on Vista to do
that.   It said it verified the checksum, then it installed
successfully and said it was finished, without any error message.
The Fedora utility did not close itself, so I clicked the "X" box.
When the window closed, an error message window appeared, saying that
an error had occurred, but it didn't explain.  I opened "Computer" on
Vista and renamed the USB to "FEDORA" volume name, then did an "eject"
on the drive to be sure that delayed writes were flushed to the USB
drive.   I inserted the help boot CD and kept the USB drive in its
slot, then restarted the computer.  The boot CD started up, displayed
the SUGAR ON A STICK splash screen, then the XO man.   The circle of
dots was written about 1 dot per second until it reached about
4-o'clock or so, then an error message was written saying something
like "we tried to delete an fb that we don't own" or something
similar, definitely about an "fb" (file block, file buffer, ?).   Then
it stopped doing anything.

I took the CD and USB to a different computer, this one being an Intel
Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz 2GB system running Vista Ultimate.   I inserted
the CD and USB, booted, and saw the same Sugar on a Stick startup.   I
noticed that the USB's LED was flashing from time to time, so I'm sure
the boot CD was loading the OS from it.   This time it drew the circle
of dots at a rate of about 1 dot per second until it got to about 6
o'clock, then slowed to 1 dot per 3 seconds until about 9 o'clock.
Then it took a couple of minutes to produce a couple more dots, then 5
minutes for the next to last dot, then much longer (I went away and
came back) to complete the circle of dots, at which point it just
quit.   I left it alone for a couple of hours while I did some
projects, and it had not changed.   I was able to ctrl-alt-del restart
the system, so it wasn't completely dead, just "mostly dead" (as in
Princess Bride, a cute movie).

Maybe the error during the creation of the live USB image was
responsible for the bad behavior of the system on the machine where it
actually got to the full circle of dots.   Why the two computers had
different failure modes with the same inputs is a puzzle.

I'll try again with a 2 GB USB, freshly formatted with FAT filesystem.
  The 8 GB has a FAT32 system.  Maybe that's the problem, although
Fedora should know how to use both types of filesystems, but maybe the
Fedora version in SOAS does not know FAT32.   I'll let you know.

Stan

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 7:41 PM, Sonya Sokolow <sonyasokolow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 3/15/10 7:40pm PST
>
> Hi Walter,
>
> So far everything Stan has tried since his talk with you on the phone (857-998-1860, Boston) has not yet produced an SOAS we can use.  I have cleared a 2GB USB so that he can try to use it tomorrow (since you said you have been successful with a 2GB USB).




-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org