[Sugar-devel] [sugar] Sbuntu 8.10: Sugar for Ubuntu Live USB, updated

[Morgan Collett]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 18:48, Simon Peter <probono at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> I have updated sbuntu (Sugar for Ubuntu Live USB) to Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid
> Ibex). This solves many issues that were present in the earlier version.
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/~probono/sbuntu/
>
> Basically, you just need to add one file to a stock Ubuntu Live USB system
> made from  the official ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso and you will have a
> Ubuntu 8.10 Sugar Live USB system.
>
> Let me address some questions and concerns that came up on the Sugar mailing
> list earlier:
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> Is there a way I can I copy my USB and make the new one bootable
>> so I don't have to go through the whole process again?
>
> If you have more than one USB stick with the exact same size, you can clone
> the entire stick using the dd command. Boot a Linux distribution, attach the
> source and the target USB sticks. Find out their device names. In the
> following example I will assume that the source device is /dev/sdb and the
> target device is /dev/sdc. CAUTION! These names will likely be different on
> your system and using the following command is DANGEROUS as it will WIPE the
> target device. Unmount both sticks. Then as root, run:
> dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=8M
> This will clone the contents of the source stick (sdb) to the target stick
> (sdc). This is a standard procedure that should work with any kind of
> bootable USB stick.
>
> Walter Bender asked:
>> I've tried with a 1 GB and a 2 GB USB. In both cases, it complains
>> that I don't have enough space. Anyone have any experience getting
>> this to work? Also, creating the USB image was **very** slow.
>
> These were known bugs in the liveusb tool, but starting with Ubuntu 8.10,
> Ubuntu includes a different tool called usb-creator (System ->
> Administration -> Create a USB startup disk).
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> This particular setup doesn't let you escape out of Sugar
>> back down into Ubuntu as far as I could figure out.
>
> Sbuntu is configured to launch Sugar by default. But if you log out from
> sugar (press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace), you get the Ubuntu (GDM) login screen
> which lets you choose your session type from the settings menu in the
> bottom-left corner. Select "Gnome", and login as user "ubuntu" with no
> password. This will give you the standard Gnome desktop, with the Sugar
> Emulator available from the applications menu.
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> Please provide instructions on exactly what to download.
>> I picked liveusb_0.1.1_all.deb
>> Then also provide instructions on exactly what the user should do
>> to install it.
>
> This step is no longer necessary since starting with Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu
> itself includes a tool called usb-creator (System -> Administration ->
> Create a USB startup disk).
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> If you use the persistence option, you need to replace casper/initrd.gz
>
> This step is no longer necessary since the bug has been fixed in Ubuntu
> 8.10.
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> Add the file sugar.squashfs to the directory casper/ on the USB stick
>> Again the write protection on Casper made this more of a challenge
>> then might be expected.
>
> If you want to modify the USB stick you are currently running from, do:
> sudo mount /cdrom -o remount,rw
> Starting with Ubuntu 8.10, this will remount the USB stick writable by root.
>
> Tomeu Vizoso asked:
>> Have already been any discussions about adding Subuntu to the list of
>> official Ubuntu derivatives for the next release?
>
> Sbuntu is a customization (add-on file) to an existing Ubuntu Live system,
> not a derivative distribution. (This has advantages... you can update the
> sugar portion by exchanging 1 file, without having to remaster the
> underlying Ubuntu distribution itself. Also the download is much smaller.)
>
> Caroline Meeks asked:
>> Is there an easier way to help people create USBs?
>
> If there is enough demand, one could make a Sugar activity that would clone
> the currently running USB stick to a blank USB stick.
>
> Please report Sbuntu issues to me, and issues related to usb-creator to
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator
>
> Of course, ideas for improvement are welcome!

[Oops, I meant to actually comment, not just quote Simon's email...]

Simon, you can find some updated Sugar packages in the Ubuntu Sugar
Team's PPA: https://launchpad.net/~sugarteam/+archive

I'm updating those now to include support for Network Manager 0.7, so
that Neighborhood View will support connecting to access points again.

Regards
Morgan