Sugar on a Stick/Linux: Difference between revisions

: To explore a variety of '''experimental''' options for putting a [[What is Sugar?|Sugar]] image on a USB or SD flash drive under GNU/Linux, see the following pages:

== Load SoaS onto a stick using Fedora or Ubuntu ==

This is known to work in Fedora and Ubuntu.

: {{Code|sudo mkdir /media/soas/}}

: {{Code|sudo mount /path/to/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-SoaS.iso /media/soas/}}

:: (mount: warning: /media/soas/ seems to be mounted read-only.)

: {{Code|cd /media/soas/LiveOS}}

/dev/loop0 iso9660    509M 509M     0 100% /media/soas

and looking in the output for the disk that corresponds to the USB key, e.g. a disk described with a stanza like

If you have only '''one''' storage device with 2 Gb of nominal capacity, it will be easy to recognize the USB key in the fdisk output by looking at which device has (about) 2 Gb of capacity. In the example above, "Disk /dev/sd'''?'''" reports to be as large as ''1939 MB'', that is, almost 2 Gb.

Indeed, if you have '''more than one''' disks with about 2 Gb of capacity, consider moving to a situation where you'll have only '''one''' device with 2 Gb of capacity, because this will help out a lot in recognizing the drive correctly.

:: <small>(The {{Code|/run/media/MyAccount/}} path is the new, Fedora 17 standard mount point. Other operating systems may use {{Code|/media/MyMountPoint}}.)</small>

:<div style="padding: 1em; border: 1px dashed #2F6FAB; background-color: #FBFBFB; margin: 1em 0px 1em 0em; font-family: Courier;">./livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb '''500''' --home-size-mb '''900''' --delete-home --unencrypted-home '''/path/to/downloaded'''.iso /dev/sd'''?'''1</div>

:If the command fails telling you that /dev/sd'''?'''1 does not exist, try using the command for /dev/sd'''?''' (the name of the device) and not for /dev/sd'''?'''1 (the name of the partition), like this:

:<div style="padding: 1em; border: 1px dashed #2F6FAB; background-color: #FBFBFB; margin: 1em 0px 1em 0em; font-family: Courier;">/run/initramfs/live/LiveOS/livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb '''500''' --home-size-mb '''900''' --delete-home --unencrypted-home /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sd'''?'''</div>

:If the command fails returning a complaint about the filesystem not mounted, '''and''' you can afford to '''loose all data on the USB key''', you can:

:* mount the USB key (e.g. by unplugging and re-inserting it),

:* repeat the steps for knowing its device name (there can be situations when the device name has changed!!!)

:* issue the command with the '''"--format option"''', like this ('''(WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE COMMAND DESCRIBED HERE WILL NOT ASK FOR CONFIRMATION AND WILL DESTROY ALL PRE-EXISTING DATA ON YOUR USB KEY!!!''')

::<div style="padding: 1em; border: 1px dashed #2F6FAB; background-color: #FBFBFB; margin: 1em 0px 1em 0em; font-family: Courier;">/run/initramfs/live/LiveOS/livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr '''--format''' --overlay-size-mb '''500''' --home-size-mb '''900''' --delete-home --unencrypted-home /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sd'''???'''</div>

: {{Highlight|'''Note''':In the above example, the {{Code|'''/path/to/downloaded'''.iso}} may be substituted with {{Code|/dev/loop0}}, as this is the loop device that the mount command chose.}}

: {{Highlight|'''Note''': Additional USB or SD devices may be loaded from a running ''Sugar on a Stick'' image that was loaded with the livecd-iso-to-disk script (but not those installed by other methods) by running this command in the Terminal Activity as a root user:}}

:<div style="padding: 1em; border: 1px dashed #2F6FAB; background-color: #FBFBFB; margin: 1em 0px 1em 0em; font-family: Courier;">/run/initramfs/live/LiveOS/livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb '''500''' --home-size-mb '''900''' --delete-home --unencrypted-home /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sd'''?'''1</div>

: The ''livecd-iso-to-disk'' installation method has other advantages over the ''liveusb-creator'' method by allowing the creation of a separate,  persistent /home/liveuser folder with the <tt>--home-size-mb ''NNN''</tt> option. This feature avoids consumption of the write-once persistent overlay for Activity storage (see [[LiveOS image]]) and allows one to update the OS image while keeping the user files (by running the script against your existing installation but <u>leaving out</u> the --home-size-mb NNN option).

::* The {{Code|--delete-home}} option is used to avoid an error message while requesting both a new home (with {{Code|--home-size-mb}}) and a persistent home (indirectly with {{Code|--unencrypted-home}}). You wouldn't use the --delete-home option on an upgrade of the operation system only.

:Depending on the size of your USB stick, you may have to decrease {{Code|--overlay-size-mb}} and {{Code|--home-size-mb}} values (for example, for a 2 GB stick, use 500 for the overlay and 900 for the home folder).

:: If you have sufficient capacity on your target device, and format it with an ext[234] filesystem to overcome the 2048-MB fat32 file size limit, you may avoid the SquashFS compression by including the {{Code|--skipcompress}} option in the script command line.

[LiveOS]$ sudo ./livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb 500 --home-size-mb 900 --delete-home --unencrypted-home /media/SoaS/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-SoaS.iso /dev/sdc1

/media/SoaS/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-SoaS.iso:   470134baa7e48085595243e53b55d41e

Fragment sums: 7de3e14f3d5aa991343fa35bdfe3a1db59d578db95a844a63d22de789de1

  512344064 100%   43.04MB/s    0:00:11 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

 

        8192 100%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

 

524288000 bytes (524 MB) copied, 5.1728 s, 101 MB/s

900+0 records in

900+0 records out

943718400 bytes (944 MB) copied, 152.195 s, 6.2 MB/s

mke2fs 1.42.3 (14-May-2012)

57600 inodes, 230400 blocks

11520 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user

Maximum filesystem blocks=239075328

8 block groups

7200 inodes per group

32768, 98304, 163840, 229376

tune2fs 1.42.3 (14-May-2012)