[Sugar-devel] [SoaS] SOAS

[David Leeming]

Hi Peter, 

Thanks for the confirmation of that. I did notice some issues, using the default online server with two or three SOAS active, I could sometimes see one of the identities in Neighbourhood but never both or all of them. Thus, collaboration was not possible to demonstrate.

However, even without collaboration the teachers in my Vanuatu workshop were keen to try for themselves. This issue we found was unpredictability. With some of the computer types we were using in the workshop it works well, but with others it might freeze after a few minutes, or not quite complete the boot sequence. We tested the 32-bit and 64-bit and several types of USB drive, reinstalled the USB drives and confirmed that there is a lot of hardware dependency. The only computer I have that it works on every time and never freezes is a small ASUS EEE PC network 6 years old. 

Likewise, when installing SOAS with Linux Live USB Creator it installs VirtualBox as an option, allowing one to launch SOAS from within Windows. But we found sometimes the boot sequence works fine and other times (especially when trying to demonstrate to a group) it would not start the Live boot sequence but go into Grub instead. So not very reliable way to do that either.

Hope this feedback is useful,

David Leeming
Solomon Islands 


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Robinson [mailto:pbrobinson at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 8 September 2015 8:04 p.m.
To: David Leeming
Cc: Development of live Sugar distributions; Sugar-dev Devel; Iain Brown Douglas
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] SOAS

Hi David,

Sorry, this seem to have fallen through the cracks.

> Iain referred me to a Fedora community where LinuxliveUSB installer was recommended and it works just fine. It also installs a Linux emulator for Windows Virtualbox and I found I could run SOAS beautifully in that way. That is very convenient for my purposes (a quick lead in to Sugar). I also found few problems booting USB sticks and SD cards installed using LinuxLiveUSB, on one machine it seems to hang but others it is fine. So it seems the installer was my issue.

I've never seen or heard of the above, I've also never used
VirtualBox, glad it works for you.

> Regarding collaboration, if we have a few PC computers on the same WLAN running SOAS, can we expect them to see each other and collaborate in neighbourhood view, without a server (ie. in the same fashion as XOs on an ad-hoc network)? I seem to recall doing that with early versions of SOAS. If not, is there a simple/light way to enable collaboration/presence service on a local server sufficient to allow a few local SOAS machines to collaborate?. I am familiar with XS developments (up to 0.7) but in the schools in Vanuatu we'll be using gateway servers we have developed ourselves based on Debian (Jessie 8).

I believe there's an issue with recent versions on collaboration, I
don't remember the exact issues, maybe one of the sugar devs can
answer the reasons and when it's expected it can be fixed.

Peter

> Best,
>
> David Leeming
> Solomon Islands
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sugar-devel-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Peter Robinson
> Sent: Wednesday, 22 July 2015 10:58 a.m.
> To: Development of live Sugar distributions
> Cc: Sugar-dev Devel; Iain Brown Douglas
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] SOAS
>
> Hi David,
>
> I'm the SoaS maintainer.
>
>> I want to demonstrate SOAS to teachers in Vanuatu. I would like to be more useful, but actually don't have the luxury of time to research these arcane technical issues in which I am not an expert. I just want to know, is there a version of SOAS that is properly tested and known to work? I have used SOAS many times before (years ago) without any problems. Which version is stable and will boot without errors and not hang on use?
>
> The lastest stable version is available here:
> https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/soas/
>
>> Could be hardware? I will try with another flashdrive. Is 2GB of persistent storage too little/too much?
>
> 2Gb should be fine.
>
> Ask here on the SoaS list if you've got any other queries or issues.
>
> Peter
>
>> David Leeming
>> Solomon Islands
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sugar-devel-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Iain Brown Douglas
>> Sent: Tuesday, 21 July 2015 7:52 p.m.
>> To: David Leeming
>> Cc: 'Sugar-dev Devel'
>> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] SOAS
>>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> From what you say, you already did a search for your error message.
>>
>> Does this Fedora forum answer cover your issue?
>> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=301945
>>
>> I have been working with the script livecd-iso-to-disk and it works
>> fine.
>>
>> I am working on SoaS Loader, here is a link to the work in progress.
>>
>> http://soas-loader.readthedocs.org/
>>
>> Good luck, and thanks for putting time in trying to demonstrate SoaS :)
>>
>> Iain
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 2015-07-21 at 10:51 +1100, David Leeming wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have familiarity with Sugar since working with OLPC from 2008, but I
>>> haven’t been active in these communities for some time. I’m just
>>> refreshing myself on current status of Sugar with a view to
>>> introducing teachers to it in a forthcoming workshop in Vanuatu. We’ll
>>> be using tablets as well as PCs so I have familiarised myself with
>>> Sugarizer. I then intended to introduce the wider world of Sugar
>>> conveniently with SOAS.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So I have downloaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit iso files and verified
>>> their hashes. I also download the latest version of USB Live
>>> Installer. I formatted a fairly new 16GB USB with FAT32 and installed
>>> SOAS on it leaving 2000Mb of persistent memory. The USB stick is a
>>> “SanDisk Cruzer Facet 16GB”.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Immediately I run into problems. When booting (on a fairly recent
>>> Toshiba i7 laptop) it stops with “vesamenu.c32 not a com32r image”. On
>>> pressing Tab key I do not see “Live” as an option, but it does start
>>> with the option linux0. Sugar boots and I can use it for a few
>>> minutes, I tried Speak and Turtle Art for instance, but within a short
>>> time it hangs and needs a hard boot.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I repeated the whole process with the 32-bit (verified) iso file and
>>> same problem. I’ll give this problem only a few hours as that is all I
>>> have. But I would like to know what are the requirements for a
>>> reliable repeatable experience with SOAS, as it says on the website,
>>> to get Sugar into Vanuatu schools.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> David Leeming
>>>
>>> Solomon Islands
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>>
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