Sugar on a Stick/Boot

Computer booting basics

Booting is short for bootstrapping, or the process a computer goes through to load the operating system software to get the computer running on that operating system copy.

Changing operating systems

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

Boot device recognition

When a computer is powered up, a short piece of software saved in the computer's firmware gives it instructions to look for instructions to load an operating system from one or another standard devices, such as hard disk drives or CD/DVD/USB/SD storage devices.

A bootable operating system image

An image is a complete copy of a computer disk drive, and a bootable image is one that contains an operating system with additional instructions to load the system at computer start up.

Sugar on a Stick provides

a complete set of boot instructions (SYSLINUX),
an 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.

All these components must be made available to the computer in order to successfully boot into the Sugar Learning Environment.

Installation is required first

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.

Boot it

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

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.
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.
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.

Troubleshooting

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.

Using Sugar on a Stick