[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction - (CD.iso containing ASLO .xo files for installation to running soas sticks from CD without web access)
Thomas C Gilliard
satellit at bendbroadband.com
Tue Mar 23 15:19:42 EDT 2010
Sean;
As we discussed on #sugar-meeting today.
<satellit__> SeanDaly: what do you think about a DVD.iso with ASLO
archive so extra activities can be installed from it instead of off web?
<SeanDaly> satellit__: i like that idea in fact a CD even better,
coompatible with many older PCs and most Activities not large in Kbytes
<satellit__> or a set of CD's to download from sunjammer
<SeanDaly> also shouldn't be too difficult to automate a build like
that, unless there's a difficulty i'm not seeing
<satellit__> I do not know if I am able to do so.... I was thinking as a
part of Creation Package
<satellit__> especially for deployments w/o web access a "sneaker-net"
<SeanDaly> I totally agree we can't assume connectivity, especially from
within Sugar
<SeanDaly> universities, like businesses have firewalls & filters
* dirakx has quit (Read error: Operation timed out)
<satellit__> It should just require an index an DL of xxx,xo files (or
rpms) to CD then make .iso
<satellit__> s/and
<SeanDaly> unrealistic to assume first-time Sugar tryers will a) succeed
in configuring networking, b) will understand steps to search for and
obtain Activities
<SeanDaly> CD or DVD will be ideal for that
<satellit__> I am not sure how to proceed here ( I will experiment ) but
maybe a summer of code project?
<satellit__> *for someone else mor qualified
<satellit__> s/more
<SeanDaly> maybe we could ask Bernie for advice since would be a
server-side thing?
<satellit__> I guess so... I was thinking it should accompany
sugar-creation-kit
<SeanDaly> well, we could do one-off for kit and automate later if kit
takes off
<satellit__> great
<satellit__> *also useful for University and school marketing, I would think
Sebastian Dziallas wrote:
> Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>
>> Hi...
>>
>> This could result in having, at last, what I have been asking for for
>> over a year now... a stable, easy to use version that I can encourage
>> teachers and others to use. That would be wonderful!
>>
>
> We think so too :-)
>
>
>> The ideal version would:
>>
>> Be easy to make either a usb or live cd version for Linux (both Fedora
>> and Ubuntu), Mac, and Windows operating systems... hopefully without the
>> need for a boot helper or virtual box... something the average teacher
>> or parent could create without too much trouble.
>>
>
>
I have just uploaded a CD.iso which has most of the .xo files from
A.S.L.O
This can be downloaded and burned to a CD
Then be used to install new activities to a running SOAS Stick
I used soas-3 20100319 that sebastian just created.
http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20100319.iso
installed to a 2GB USB with liveusb-creator in f12
My test case:
EeePC900
external usb-HP External DVD/CD
I loaded a burned copy of ASLO.iso downloaded from:
http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/ASLO.iso
The CD showed up in the sugar frame
AS A TEST:
I Copied the Deducto.xo file to the soas clipboard and pasted it into
the Journal.
It works.
Deducto started and ran just as if I had downloaded it.
This may be a nice "sneaker-net" way to install activities for a
Sugar-Creation-Kit and for 3rd world locations off the web
Tom Gilliard
satellit
> We're currently working on making the instructions generally easier for
> v3 and are also trying to get the graphical LiveUSB Creator working on
> other distributions, so that everybody could use the same interface -
> without having trouble.
>
> Right now, the sticks should boot on most reasonably-modern computers
> running Windows or any variant of Linux. We can make sticks that boot on
> some Macs, but because of the different architecture, those sticks only
> work on Macs (if they work at all). The creation process for sticks to
> boot on Macs is also quite tricky and given the low success rate we've
> had, it's probably not worth recommending, other than marking it as
> "experimental".
>
> However, you can make the Windows/Linux sticks in any operating system -
> so it's "just" Mac stuff that doesn't work. We'd like to figure this out
> for future releases, but will need help from engineers who know about
> this kind of thing (and have Macs at home - we don't) - if you know
> anyone who'd like to help, that would be great. ;-)
>
>
>> On April 24 I will have another chance to distribute SoaS to a fairly
>> large group of teachers and parents at the LAUSD InfoTech event at the
>> LA Convention Center. Is there any possibility that this will be able to
>> happen in time?
>>
>
> We'd be happy to create a custom remix for you - just tell us what
> Activities you'd like to have on it, and we can work on that together so
> you have the image a few days (or a week, or however long you need to
> burn media) in advance.
>
> In fact, we're happy to make a just-in-time custom demo remix (images
> for liveusb and/or livecd) for anyone who wants - with the understanding
> that these images are *demo* sticks, haven't been tested, and are *not*
> suitable for deployment. This is how we'd like to support folks going
> out to demo this at conferences and such - if you tell us the Activities
> you want and the date you'd like the image on, we'll spin it up the day
> before and you'll have the most recent code for all of the Activities on
> your image, instead of having to use 6-month-old code.
>
>
>> Caryl
>>
>> P.S. A live cd would be great because we could afford to make some in
>> advance and hand them out at our booth (CUELA).
>>
>
> As Tim said, you can simply burn the .iso image onto a CD. So if we
> created such a remix, you could just burn it in time for the conference.
> Would that work for you?
>
> --Mel and Sebastian
>
>
>> > Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:19:00 +0100
>> > From: sebastian at when.com
>> > To: soas at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > Subject: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
>> >
>> > Some of you may have overheard activity in #sugar-meeting today
>> > discussing the upcoming beta freeze for SoaS, and the engineering
>> > capacity we have to work on things for the upcoming release (in May,
>> > since as a Fedora Spin we are tied to the Fedora release schedule).
>> >
>> > The short version is that we'd like to try something pretty drastic -
>> > prior SoaS versions have included large numbers of Activities, which
>> > weren't always maintained and didn't always work, so we propose shipping
>> > a slimmed down version of SoaS with a small number of known-to-work
>> > Activities with active upstream maintainers (that we'll have the
>> > bandwidth to thoroughly test between now and May's release, and the
>> > bandwidth to relay deployment feedback back up to) and creating
>> > resources on how to find other excellent material at
>> > http://activities.sugarlabs.org.
>> >
>> > Here's a draft kickstart file of what a slimmed-down SoaS release might
>> > look like. It includes a few core Activities that will help you get,
>> > debug, and ask questions about more Activities (Browse, Log, and IRC),
>> > as well as a few well-tested Activities with active upstreams that we
>> > think tend to "demo well" for a variety of audiences and contexts
>> > (young/adult audience, large/small audience, dev/user/teacher audience,
>> > hands-on-lab/demo-on-projector audience, etc).
>> >
>> >
>> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/fedora-livecd-soas.ks
>> >
>> > And here's the image it produces - we haven't had time to download and
>> > test it yet, but are working on that right now, so you may beat us to
>> > finding out whether it works or not. ;-)
>> >
>> > http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20100319.iso
>> >
>> > In comparison, here's the old kickstart file with a large number of
>> > Activities, and the image it produced - if you try it out, you'll find
>> > that many of the Activities don't work, the quality of experience is
>> > inconsistent, and... well, we hope you'll see why we'd like to narrow
>> > the scope of this release's features to the amount of work we can
>> > comfortably maintain.
>> >
>> >
>> http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/spin-kickstarts?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob;f=fedora-livecd-soas.ks
>> >
>> http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/soas-i386-20100318.17.iso
>> >
>> > The rationale behind this is as follows:
>> >
>> > 1. Our ultimate goal is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with a
>> > wide variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers, plus
>> > resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
>> > communities of other learners. This was clarified in the earlier Sugar
>> > on a Stick Mission Statement:
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-September/008322.html
>> >
>> > 2. Since we don't currently have the resources to do this, we think a
>> > good intermediate step is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with
>> > a SMALL variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers,
>> > plus resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
>> > communities of other learners. This sets the bar for both the quality of
>> > the Activity and maintenance, and the level of interaction that Activity
>> > upstreams can expect from users.
>> >
>> > 3. Saving a good number of known-to-be-awesome Activities for
>> > http://activities.sugarlabs.org and creating (kid-tested and
>> > teacher-tested) resources on how to get stuff from ASLO sets a dynamic
>> > of experimentation, trying-stuff-out, and user community engagement that
>> > we want to see.
>> >
>> > We don't know if this is a good idea or not. We think so, and we don't
>> > have much time to decide as Beta Freeze is this upcoming Tuesday, March
>> > 23. Feedback? Questions? Comments? Firestorm?
>> >
>> > We'll be tinkering further on this over the weekend - we can do another
>> > kickstart on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so we have 3 drafts left to
>> > figure this out with. Please join us (sdziallas & mchua on #sugar) and
>> > ask questions if you have any, or join in and help if you have ideas on
>> > how to improve this.
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> >
>> > --Mel and Sebastian
>> >
>> > PS: We're going to ask more specific questions on the marketing and
>> > activities lists about this in a moment, for those of you following
>> > those sections of SL as well - and send a general iaep notification that
>> > these conversation threads are going on. One second...
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > SoaS mailing list
>> > SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>> =
>>
>>
>>
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