[Sugar-devel] GSoC projects - SOAS

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Is this proposal to make SOAS a live stick capable of installing Sugar 
on conventional systems (Trisquel, ...)?

We have a live version of this problem on the server side.

Jerry Vonau wrote a script mkusbinstall based on live-cd. OLE Nepal 
switched to unetbootin for NEXS 6_31 (OS-7 on CentOS 6.4).
I have been trying to make this work cleanly with BERNIE - to no avail.

One problem is that the user needs to be root. This is not possible for 
a script unless it is launched by a live user. Unetbootin is
a gui implementation.

What I am looking for is a way to make a bootable usb stick that is 
ready to install XS without user having to supply any configuration
information (like path names to image or /dev for usb stick) - sort of 
an all-in-one unetbootin.

The steps require formatting the usb device (as would be true for SOAS), 
copying the image to the disk,  and running live_cd to create the 
environment on the
usb stick.

In the SOAS case, the usb stick presumably runs live and has the option 
to install for some target platforms.

Tony

On 03/20/2015 06:26 AM, sugar-devel-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 22:25:55 +0000
> From: Iain Brown Douglas<iain at browndouglas.plus.com>
> To: James Cameron<quozl at laptop.org>
> Cc:sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] GSoC projects
> Message-ID: <1426803955.2592.56.camel at vey-waldorf>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Hi James,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to make a thoughtful contribution.
> Perhaps you will forgive me if I brainstorm this a bit.
>
> On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 08:48 +1100, James Cameron wrote:
>> >I've often thought of making such an application, because of the
>> >difficulties that some people report with downloading files and
>> >putting them on USB drive.
>> >
>> >The problem with an application is one may end up having to explain
>> >how to download the application; transferring the issue from the
>> >original problem to an application that was supposed to fix the
>> >problem.
>> >
>> >In the meanwhile, I have been working the overall problem as a
>> >training and experience issue, and maintaining a structured
>> >document:
>> >
>> >	http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Download
> Thanks for that - I believe that systematic approach would be great
> backup for those experiencing difficulties downloading.
>
> (Using curl is a sound idea from the point of view that one set of
> instructions can cover a host of different OS)
>> >
>> >Some further ideas for what your application might do:
>> >
>> >1.  the initial download,
>> >
>> >2.  resuming an interrupted download,
>> >
>> >3.  verification of download using md5sum or other hashes,
>> >
>> >4.  media verification, reading back the files or image to check that
>> >writing was successful and the media still works.
>> >
> I think I am right that 4 is covered already by livecd-iso-to-disk, so
> (in my model) the user only has to write a bootable CD.
>
> If one knew that a SoaS CD would always make a "Sugar stick", the
> prospect of selling the CD, (by third parties ?) becomes more doable.
>
>> >I've no evidence of proportion of people who have problems with
>> >downloading files and putting them on media; perhaps it is a
>> >non-problem.
>> >
>> >A more correct approach would be to do research and survey of people
>> >before and after such an application is made available.  A GSoC
>> >project could be padded out with this research, and easily fill three
>> >months.
>> >
>> >A systems engineering view would change the product so that the files
>> >don't have to be written to media in any particular way.  That's what
>> >we did with the original XO laptops, but SoaS bootable images are
>> >different because of the typical PC firmware being so exacting.
>> >
> I think this would be achieved if `liveinst` could be persuaded to write
> *only*  to an automatically confirmed target USB, with the host hard
> drive locked out during install and during use of the stick, and grub
> instructed to find only the USB SoaS system.
>
>
> With reasonably priced availability of 8 GB sticks, this would seem a
> preferable option to me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Iain

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