[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks

[Dave Bauer]

Last I checked virtualbox could not boot from USB on a Mac. This may have
changed in a more recent version.

Dave


On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin
> > <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM
> >> to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty
> >> way
> >> to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just
> >> tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then
> >> run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand
> >> point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar
> >> checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up
> >> (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so
> >> any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume
> >> could become the default data-store for that session.
> >
> > Could you clarify what you are suggesting?   Most VMs (including
> > VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host  environment to
> > provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under
> > virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically
> > allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to
> > the virtual disk.   I don't think this file is going to be directly
> > compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on
> > a USB stick.  If you were thinking of something else, please let me
> > know.
>
> Yes, I routinely use the "Shared Folders" feature for VirtualBox on
> the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy
> access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device
> (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run:
>
>        sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf <name_you_give_share>
> <name_of_intended_mount_point>
>
> ...which should should do the trick.
>
> Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use
> USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named
> devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to
> sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users
> sticks at the end of a session.
>
> Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me
> to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
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-- 
Dave Bauer
dave at solutiongrove.com
http://www.solutiongrove.com
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