[SoaS] Fwd: SOAS on 2GB USB with boot CD -- still doesn't work.

[Walter Bender]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stanley Sokolow <stanleysokolow at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 3:42 PM
Subject: SOAS on 2GB USB with boot CD -- still doesn't work.
To: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
Cc: Sonya Sokolow <sonyasokolow at gmail.com>


Walter,

I tried a 2GB USB drive, reformatted (quickformat) to FAT (which it
already was formatted) to remove all of the existing files.   Using
that blank USB, I ran the live USB creator program, which installed
successfully.   (It gives an error message after you close the program
window, but reading the log file shows that there were no errors --
the program just logged some warnings about drives that it could not
read because they were "not ready".   The drives indeed were not ready
because they were the media slots for various flash cards, none of
which had cards in them.   The actual drive for the USB was not on the
list of warnings because it of course was ready.  The media creator
should just report warnings, not call them errors.)

Then I renamed the USB volume to "FEDORA", inserted the boot CD, and
restarted.   Just as I described yesterday, the boot CD ran quickly
through the first half of the dots, then slower and slower until
finally after a long time it completed the last dot and just hung
forever.    I pressed a few keys at that point to see if I could get
any response.  The "up" arrow key brought up a virtual terminal screen
from Linux, which had some error and warning messages.
/sbin/dmsquash-live-root: 166: grep:  not found,
and 3 dracut warnings about selinux, then "not continuing".

So, in short, the boot fails.  A 2GB FAT-formatted USB doesn't work
any better than the 8GB FAT32 USB drive did.   This is definitely not
in turnkey condition yet.  We're stuck.

Stan

==============



On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 9:55 PM, Stanley Sokolow
<stanleysokolow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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