Sugar on a Stick/Boot

Boot it

Booting is short for bootstrapping, or the process a computer goes through to load the operating system software to start a computer to run on that same software.

Most computers have hardware, that is, central processing units, chips, disk drives, audio, video, and networking devices, that can work with different operating systems. So a Microsoft Windows computer can be booted with a different operating system, like the GNU/Linux variations that Sugar is build on.

When a computer is powered up, a short piece of software saved in firmware gives instructions to look for loading instructions on one or more standard devices, such as hard disk drives or CD/DVD/USB/SD storage devices.

To run Sugar on a Stick on a computer,

• the complete set of boot instructions (SYSLINUX),
• operating system (Fedora GNU/Linux, and
• the Sugar Learning Environment,
• all of which have been packaged by the SoaS team into the "SoaS.iso" image file,

must be made available to the computer.

The SoaS software image can be booted, once it has been "installed", from

• a CD-rom that has been "burned" with the .iso image,
• a USB/SD flash storage device that has been "loaded" with the .iso image,
• a hard disk file that is treated as a CD-rom containing the .iso image by virtual machine software already running on a computer.

(In each case, the software image is made to look like a bootable filesystem disk drive to the computer's firmware, and so each may be called a disk or drive.

Sugar on a Stick/Installation describes the installation methods available for the various systems that might be used.

Below, we describe how to boot from a USB flash storage device:

1. Insert the USB drive into a USB port on your computer. Ports directly connected to the mother board, or main circuit board, (usually made available on the back of the computer) are more likely to recognize the device at boot time.
2. Set the option to "boot from USB" in your computer's BIOS, and then start up the computer. This can be done in a number of ways and will VARY from machine to machine. What you are looking for is the term "Boot Loader" or "Boot Order" or something to that effect. You may have to play around with the settings quite a bit to achieve success. The BIOS is usually not a graphical user interface. Your mouse will not work, generally, in the BIOS. Use the arrow keys. Read the help lines for each BIOS option. If you've not gone into the BIOS before, don't be afraid, you can't do too much damage there, if you pay attention.

   Here's a video of the BIOS on my compac tc4400.

3. You should see the Sugar logo once the drive is booting. Proceed to the Use it page.

Boot Helper CD

In some cases, usually with older computers, the firmware does not support booting directly from a USB/SD device. In these situations,

• Download the soas-2-boot.iso and burn it to a CD.
• Use Windows 7 built-in Disk Image Burner or a free utility, like ImgBurn, to write the downloaded .iso file onto a blank CD.
• Use the Windows Explorer to name your USB flash drive FEDORA (from the Properties dialog for your device), as otherwise, it won't be recognized by the boot-helper CD.
• Put both the boot-helper CD and the USB flash drive in your computer and let it boot from the CD.

If your boot hangs, you may need to modify the boot command by appending:

selinix=0

You do this by interrupting the Helper CD boot by hitting the Esc key once the initial splash-screen appears. You should see a list of four boot options. At this point, hit the Tab key. The command line should appear. Add selinix=0 to the end of the line and hit Enter (or Return). The boot should proceed from here as normal.

Proceed to the Use it page.