Sugar on a Stick/TODO
Sugar on a Stick Improve Deployability
Make it easier for a teacher or school to customize a spin and then copy it for a hundred kids
Tickets on this topic:
Red Hat - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=448030 - RFE: create a bootable Live USB stick from the running livecd SugarLabs Ticket 74 - http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/74
Use Case A teacher should be able to create a USB stick, add activities, add some content, change the language, change the jabber server etc. Then create new sticks that reflect these changes but do not copy the name, color or collaboration key.
It would be great if the teacher could use an inexpensive USB hub to burn more then one stick at a time.
Sticks are dieing a lot - Make sticks more robust
We don't know the root cause but we have plenty of theories.
We need a more robust files system
Fedora uses Squashfs file structure [1] for their live USBs. This is optimized for size not robustness. OpenSuse uses a different file structure.
Here is an idea for an alternative USB Format: [[2]]
Also see Ticket 907 [[3]]
A 2 GB USB is about $.60 more then a 1GB stick. If we need to compress less to get robustness its ok for us to require a 2GB USB.
Sticks are damaged during formatting or burning
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_Damage_a_FLASH_Storage_Device [[4]]
If we understood how to win and we had our own stick creation activity perhaps we would have less failures.
Sticks are of poor quality
Here is an explanation of two processes used to create USB sticks: http://www.solutiongrove.com/blogger/2008/09/08/there-are-two-type-of-usb-flash-memory-slc-and-mlc [[5]]
Sticks are being improperly removed
Yes they are, but its not at all clear to me that that correlates with the sticks that are failing.
Backup and recovery
Ham and Dave from Solution Grove are making progress on this. You can track progress on ticket 916 [[6]]
What is a reasonable expectation for the role of the XS in Sugar on a Stick deployments in the next 6 months?
Collaboration is unreliable and thus frustrating
Its working fairly well in the wired network at the GPA lab, but no other use case seem to work reliably.
Using a CD helper takes a lot of prep time before and after class
A floppy helper would reduce it. A VM solution might also reduce it.
Tickets
* Ticket 598 Boot Helper Virtual Machine [[7]] * Ticket 907 change the format we use for the USB stick [[8]]
See also Sugar on a Stick/Goals.
This is an the general todo list for SoaS. If you've any ideas or requests, please add them here.
| Task Name | Priority | Status/Notes |
| solicit USB key donations from companies | 1 | info needed |
| allow direct recreation of USB keys (cloning) | 2 | needs testing [9] |
| add additional activities, if requested | 3 | get them on a.sl.o |
| work on a keyboard layout control panel | 3 | work in progress [10] |
| be able to backup and restore from a School Server | 3 | to be worked out |
| support printers, scanners, cameras | 3 | to be worked out |
| activity for cloning USB Sticks and .iso files (cloning) | 3 | to be worked out [11] |
Here's a list with completed tasks; feel free to move them from the table above.
| Task Name | Status/Notes |
| get SoaS included in liveusb-creator | done |
| create a virtual appliance (builds) | done [12] [13] |
| release a helper CD for boot from USB | done [14] |
| add sample content | done - add more if needed |
| fix blockers for release | most important point, check rawhide, as it progresses towards beta |
| update remaining RPMs | good progress done so far |
| check localization support | done |
| get artwork and branding together | done |
| change default Browse location | done |