Sugar on a Stick/Windows

Introduction

This page is designed to help you to put your Sugar on a Stick image on a thumbdrive using Microsoft Windows. If you have questions, trouble or feedback, please let us know on the Sugar on a Stick talk page. If you can improve these instructions, please edit the page and do so!

with Microsoft Windows

There are three ways to do this:

• 1. Burn a CD-ROM disc, boot from it, then run the script, livecd-iso-to-disk
  1. Use Windows 7 built-in Disk Image Burner or a free utility, like ImgBurn, to write the downloaded Sugar on a Stick .iso file onto a blank CD.
  2. Insert a USB flash drive (or SD Card ^Notes) with 2 GB or more of free space into your computer.
  3. Boot your computer with the CD-ROM disc. You probably need to press F1, F10, F12, Esc, or a similar key as the computer starts up in order to set the boot source for your computer to the CD-ROM device.
  4. A successful boot will take you into Sugar on a Stick. You can From there, open the Terminal Activity, , from the Home list View.
  5. Switch to run commands with 'root' user permissions by entering su - on the command line.
  6. Change the working directory, by entering cd /run/initramfs/live/LiveOS
  7. Verify the USB/SD scsi drive node name (such as sda, sdb, etc.) and partition (such as 1, 2, etc.) for your USB/SD device. It would look like, for example, /dev/sdb1.
     • The df -Th command shows your device filesystem on a device node, for example, /dev/sdb1, mounted on a directory mount point, such as /run/media/liveuser/<USBdeviceManufacturer>

You should see something like the following:

[root@localhost ~]# df -Th
Filesystem          Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/live-rw ext4      2.9G  2.1G  773M  74% /
devtmpfs            devtmpfs  2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev
tmpfs               tmpfs     2.0G   72K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               tmpfs     2.0G  632K  2.0G   1% /run
tmpfs               tmpfs     2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sr0            iso9660   670M  670M     0 100% /run/initramfs/live
tmpfs               tmpfs     2.0G   32K  2.0G   1% /tmp
varcacheyum         tmpfs     2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /var/cache/yum
vartmp              tmpfs     2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /var/tmp
/dev/sdb1           vfat      3.8G  4.0K  3.8G   1% /run/media/liveuser/SanDisk

8. Unmount the USB device filesystem with this command: umount /run/media/liveuser/MyUSBdiscMountPoint, where MyUSBdiscMountPoint is SanDisk in the dropdown example, above.
9. Execute this command line:  (Substitute the /dev/sd?1, below, with the node name you determined in step 7, above.)
   
   ./livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb 500 --home-size-mb 900 --delete-home --unencrypted-home /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sd?1
(The 500 and 900 size values, above, are suitable for a 2 GB USB device. For a 4 GB device, one might use 1000 and 1800 megabytes instead.)
The installation transcript should look like the following:

[root@localhost LiveOS]# ./livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 1000 --home-size-mb 1800 --unencrypted-home /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sdb1
Verifying image...
/dev/sr0:   86396857ba250ac9622e2cced37242c0
Fragment sums: 9b844726affc45a47d6ddf73ba13d88c8f6f6fff2cbcf55476ebe3bbc4a4
Fragment count: 20
Press [Esc] to abort check.
Checking: 100.0%

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
Copying live image to target device.
squashfs.img
    632,832,000 100%    5.63MB/s    0:01:47 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
osmin.img
          8,192 100%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
Updating boot config file
Initializing persistent overlay file
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 193.866 s, 5.4 MB/s
Initializing persistent /home
1800+0 records in
1800+0 records out
1887436800 bytes (1.9 GB) copied, 592.395 s, 3.2 MB/s
Formatting unencrypted /home
mke2fs 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
115200 inodes, 460800 blocks
23040 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=473956352
15 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
7680 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done 

tune2fs 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Setting maximal mount count to -1
Setting interval between checks to 0 seconds
Installing boot loader
Target device is now set up with a Live image!

10. Shutdown the physical machine.
11. Reboot your computer from the newly-installed Live USB with Sugar on a Stick.

• 2. Use Fedora Live USB Creator

  (This installation method is NOT recommended for LONG-TERM usage of Sugar on a Stick!! Catastrophic data corruption may occur when the USB stick gets full! See why.)

  1. Download the Live USB Creator from Fedora.
  2. Insert a USB flash drive (or SD Card ^Notes) with 2 GB or more of free space into your computer.
  3. Launch Live USB Creator.
  4. Select the 'Browse' button to 'Use existing Live CD' and find the downloaded .iso file image on your system.
  5. Adjust the Persistent Storage slider. This enables you to save changes to the system and additional Sugar Activities onto the device.
  6. Select your flash drive as the target, and click the Create Live USB button.
  7. Wait for the process to finish, then close the Live USB Creator program.
  8. Stop your flash drive with the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media notification area icon dialog, and eject it.

See a screenshot tutorial for this.

See a video of an earlier version of this process.

• 3. Launch a virtual machine with the Sugar on a Stick .iso file, then run the script, livecd-iso-to-disk
  1. Download and install VirtualBox (for example; you could do something similar with another vm).
  2. Create a new virtual machine.
  3. Choose Linux for the Operating System and Version Fedora (64 bit) if available, or Fedora, on systems lacking 64-bit functionality.
  4. Attach the Sugar on a Stick .iso file as a CD in the Storage Section
  5. Insert a USB storage device into your physical computer and enable the VirtualBox USB controller. Then add a filter to recognize the inserted device in the USB section of the VirtualBox machine setup.
  6. Start the new virtual machine.
  7. Verify that the USB device is recognized in the running virtual machine.
     • Your device appears in the hover box for the USB stick icon in the virtual machine bottom frame.
     • df -Th shows your device filesystem on a device node, for example, /dev/sda1, mounted on a directory mount point, such as /run/media/<AccountName>/<USBdeviceManufacturer>

You should see something like the following:

[root@localhost LiveOS]# df -Th
Filesystem          Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs              rootfs    4.0G  2.5G  1.5G  63% /
devtmpfs            devtmpfs  1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /dev
tmpfs               tmpfs     1.6G   84K  1.6G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               tmpfs     1.6G  1.2M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/sr0            iso9660   509M  509M     0 100% /run/initramfs/live
/dev/mapper/live-rw ext4      4.0G  2.5G  1.5G  63% /
tmpfs               tmpfs     1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs               tmpfs     1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /media
varcacheyum         tmpfs     1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /var/cache/yum
tmp                 tmpfs     1.6G   40K  1.6G   1% /tmp
vartmp              tmpfs     1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /var/tmp
/dev/sda1           vfat      3.7G  2.1G  1.7G  56% /run/media/liveuser/TOSHIBA

9. Continue from step #4 in the Burn a CD-ROM disc section above.
10. Shutdown the virtual machine.
11. Reboot your physical computer from the newly-installed Live USB with Sugar on a Stick.

Notes

A Secure Digital (SD) card may not be marked as a bootable device. To check this, use these instructions at a Linux terminal or console:

• Check the disk partition table for a device, such as /dev/sdc,
  

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc   <----that's a lowercase letter 'L' for the list option.

You should see something like the following:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 4012 MB, 4012900352 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1019 cylinders, total 7837696 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000a9c7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *          62     7834071     3917005    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

The asterisk, * , under the Boot column indicates that the partition is bootable.

    If it is missing, then execute the commands here:
1. parted /dev/sdc
2. toggle 1 boot
3. quit