[Sugar-devel] Show Must Go On - SoaS for the XO-1

[Martin Dengler]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 01:28:58AM -0700, S Page wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Sebastian Dziallas<sebastian at when.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm very pleased to announce the first early preview of a new generation
> > of SoaS XO-1 images.
> Excellent news, thanks!
> 
> > Put them on a USB key or a SD card, plug them into your XO ...
> Yes!
> 
> > ... and execute:
> >
> > copy-nand u:\devxo-1.img or copy-nand sd:\devxo-1.img
> 
> Nooo, I want to keep my working 8.2.1 in NAND.  Can I simply boot my
> XO from the USB or SD card?

We're working on creating a bootable image, but in the meantime you're
describing what livecd-iso-to-disk has always been for.  You just
don't like the .iso you're being given, because it isn't configured
for the XO-1.

I'd suggest you ask sdz to make the .iso that he used to create the
.img file.

> Is there an xo-to-disk.sh script similar to the various transformation
> scripts described in http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/ ?

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Installation/OLPC

> If not, is http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_backup_your_XO the best
> way to save my precious 8.2.1 image?

Yes.  Man, that's a lot of preamble for:

1. Get to "ok"
2. Type "save-nand u:\my-nand.img" or "save-nand sd:\my-nand.img".


> It seems build engineers go to a a lot of effort to create multiple
> ginormous downloads in .img/.usb/.iso/.bootable.gz formats when
> they're 99% the same files laid out in different file system(s) with
> appropriate boot, config, and partition info.  Could some day a tool
> like LiveUSB Creator download only updated files from the net and
> create whatever image,read-only CD, or bootable/writable USB the user
> wants?  That may be ambitious, but it seems much like what Linux
> graphical installers do.

It's because those engineers have been whined at about because many
people lack experience typing text at a prompt, or the messages that
result from mistakes there.  I've seen questions on this list that
result from people not understanding that a virtual machine is, err,
like another machine (without have the same file system as the host
machine).  So you can see the definiciencies of both sides, which is
an admirable position to be in.  But yeah, there's a reason we want to
build bootable images like fedora-xo for the XO-1, so that we can just
tell people:

1. Download ginormous .bootable.gz file in its 1G, 2G, 4G size
appropriate to your removable drive
2. Type "dd if=<ginormous file> of=<removable drive device>"
3. Stick the removable drive in the appropriate XO orifice and reboot

Spend a few seconds contemplating how easy those steps can be.  Now
contemplate how many ways people might screw up each step (mis-type
the removable device letter? assume that dd just adds some stuff to
their USB stick and get upset when it overwrites their thesis?).

> =S Page

Martin
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