As I noted in the wiki page about this: <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO#Sticks_are_dieing_a_lot_-_Make_sticks_more_robust">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO#Sticks_are_dieing_a_lot_-_Make_sticks_more_robust</a><div>
<br></div><div>2GB Sticks are $0.60 more then 1GB sticks.</div><div><br></div><div>If it improves reliability its definitely worth it from a sheer TCO point of view.</div><div><br></div><div>A full install also makes it possible to browse the files from other operating systems and allows the possiblity of a VM boot helper.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Sebastian Dziallas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@when.com">sebastian@when.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Caroline Meeks wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Gary C Martin <<a href="mailto:gary@garycmartin.com" target="_blank">gary@garycmartin.com</a><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<mailto:<a href="mailto:gary@garycmartin.com" target="_blank">gary@garycmartin.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br>
On 29 Jul 2009, at 21:35, Walter Bender wrote:<br>
<br>
Begin handwaving.<br>
<br>
LiveUSB came from the world of LiveCD and with it came an "overlay"<br>
concept to enable writing in what had been a read-only world. It is<br>
not clear that the approach was intended for more than demonstration<br>
purposes, in order to show off the power of Fedora Linux. That would<br>
suggest that in the long run, we may need to revisit the way in<br>
which<br>
we manage user data on our images.<br>
<br>
End handwaving.<br>
<br>
<br>
+1<br>
<br>
My gut feeling is we don't want a LiveUSB, we want a bootable USB<br>
with a regular install on it. Ideally being installed from a LiveCD,<br>
that can either directly boot and demo Sugar, install to a USB<br>
stick, or install to a hard-disk. Once booted we'd want the minimum<br>
of file writes to maximise a stick lifetime, and reduce the chance<br>
of a write landing as a child unplugs.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
--Gary<br>
<br>
<br>
+1 except I think that we need it sooner not later.<br>
<br>
It is the most likely suspect on most of our stick failures. We will<br>
have upset teachers and kids if its not more reliable plus added expense<br>
and time costs.<br>
<br>
It is a blocker on:<br>
<br>
* Reading things you've created on your Sugar Stick on a Windows or<br>
Mac machine.<br>
* Createing a VM that can switch stick based users without rebooting<br>
out of the native OS- This will help usability quite a bit on the<br>
Mac Laptops the GPA will be using next year.<br>
<br>
I'm going to try to create a spec and publicize our need for help to my<br>
network. I'd love help with both parts of that.<br>
</div></div></blockquote>
<br>
I'll throw my two cents in here, too.<br>
<br>
I agree with Walter that we might need to revisit the whole concept in the long term. However, it's probably the best we can get right now.<br>
<br>
Let me put it this way: Looking at my recent composes for SoaS, those were around 390 MB. This contains the compressed squashfs image. Because of this compression, it's read-only, but it's also that small.<br>
<br>
Now in comparison, we could obviously place the whole file tree on a USB key and hack up some magic to make it boot. In fact, that's from what I see already the somehow preferred way used for the XO.<br>
<br>
But for this, we'd also need to have the file tree uncompressed (since otherwise it would be read-only again). And that could become a problem. The compression works rather well for us, so if we'd try to go this way, we'd definitely need to move the USB key size requirement up (at least 2 GB, if not even more).<br>
<br>
And then, I'm not really sure if this solves the data corruption issue (which I haven't experienced myself, so far) - because files could get destroyed if the USB key is improperly removed anyway.<br>
<br>
Caroline, maybe you could explain the way you're using to make these keys, because I've lost track about what the current way is.<br>
<br>
Regarding reading contents one created in Sugar on Windows / Mac, I think this is still quite some time away. In fact, I'm wondering whether this isn't a datastore related feature. /me thinks about this...<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br><font color="#888888">
--Sebastian<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Caroline Meeks<br>Solution Grove<br>Caroline@SolutionGrove.com<br><br>617-500-3488 - Office<br>505-213-3268 - Fax<br>
</div>