Our short term goal is to on Monday prep 5-10 computer to put into the GPA classrooms on Weds. So we don't need super simple or something we never have to upgrade, we will have lots of access to these computers. Also we don't need computers to be both boot-helpers and have a Guest Sugar system on them. They can be one or the other. This week is about what we can do this week. <div> <br></div><div>Hopefully this experience will lead us to a super simple installation that we can use for donated computers and put it into kids homes without having to worry about how we will upgrade them.</div><div><br> </div> <div>Thanks!</div><div>Caroline<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Bill Bogstad <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bogstad@pobox.com">bogstad@pobox.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <div class="im">On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Caroline<br> Meeks<<a href="mailto:caroline@solutiongrove.com">caroline@solutiongrove.com</a>> wrote:<br> > Anurag a CS student at BU, my husband, a CS grad from MIT and I, a techie<br> > never give upper, are going to be working on Monday to take the pile of<br> > computers in my house and prepare them for installing in the GPA school on<br> > Weds.<br> > We will be wiping all the hard disks and putting on something else.<br> > Can I put install some version of the boothelper on the hard drive so when<br> > it boots off of the hard drive it automatically looks for a USB?<br> <br> </div>Probably yes, See below for more.<br> <div class="im"><br> > I think<br> > this would be preferred especially for older computers that don't let us set<br> > the bios for USB boot preference.<br> > Perhaps with newer computers we should install Sugar locally and make it the<br> > "Room 33" user so that guests can get access with out a stick.<br> > Thoughts? help?<br> <br> </div>A boot menu could allow this. Will require at least some config file<br> investigation/changes. Also, I understand the the current beta for<br> SoaS 2 has a method to install to a hard drive and it would be best to<br> remain compatible with that. Unfortunately, I know nothing about how<br> it works.<br> <div class="im"><br> > Got a good answer? Put it here for future<br> > deployments: <a href="https://answers.launchpad.net/soas/+question/81627" target="_blank">https://answers.launchpad.net/soas/+question/81627</a><br> > We will also use this for tracking what I do and documenting results.<br> <br> </div>The floppy boot helper (using kexec-loader) that I've been working on<br> with you does the initial boot via syslinux. Respinning it to boot<br> from a hard drive is therefore theoretically easy as syslinux can be<br> used on hard drivers as well as floppies. However, how to create an<br> easy to use UI to get it installed to the hard drive isn't immediately<br> obvious to me.<br> <br> Alternatively, the current CD helper uses isolinux for it's initial<br> boot which is part of the same suite of programs as syslinux.<br> Syslinux can used more or less as a drop in replacement for isolinux.<br> Therefore the CD helper method could also be theoretically respun,<br> but with identical install issues as the floppy helper.<br> <br> Bill Bogstad<br> <br> Technical notes: A fundamental difference between the CD helper and<br> the Floppy helper is that the CD helper actually contains the SoaS<br> kernel and ramdisk and only points to the Flash drive to get the root<br> and /home filesystems. The floppy helper actually reads the SoaS<br> kernel/ramdisk off of the USB stick at boot time. As a result, I<br> believe that the floppy helper is less likely to need to be respun for<br> new releases of SoaS. OTOH, the floppy helper makes no use of the<br> BIOS to read/find the SoaS and if the floppy helper doesn't have a<br> driver for hardware you want to boot from the BIOS doesn't help.<br> </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>