Find help

Finding answers to help

For general help on Sugar or about Sugar Labs, please see also

→ Getting started

→ Sugar Labs FAQ - a compilation of the team FAQs

→ Category:FAQ - an index to all FAQ pages (with links for new questions)

→ Category:Help - pages tagged as 'Help'

→ Category:HowTo - pages tagged as 'HowTo'

→ Community Forums - on-line forums with lots of topics

→ Service - an index to Sugar Labs infrastructure services

→ OLPC's Support FAQ - FAQs about the XO laptop, its version of Sugar, and Activities.

Much information is applicable to the current version of Sugar (e.g., using Activities). See also OLPC Project Help and Information below.

  Former sites—these have a short history of problems, but are no longer preferred by Sugar Labs.

http://getsatisfaction.com/sugarlabs & http://launchpad.net/soas

The Sugar Learners' manual

view now:
	available as: or 128 pages, 8.3 MBytes (for saving or printing). The manual needs to be updated to include information regarding Sugar-on-a-Stick.

Sugar glossary

There is a glossary with commonly used acronyms available here.

Tutorials

• Ideas for How to present Sugar.
• Tech Coordinator Guide and other training materials prepared by Teaching Matters(R) for OLPC in NYC
• Turtle Art tutorials by Tony Forster and Mokurai.
• Tutorials.iso - An off-line collection of .pdf copies of some of the tutorials on this wiki.

Annotated screenshot guides to Sugar

Click on the following links to go to wiki pages with annotated screenshots covering these topics.

Chatting with the Chat Activity

• Communicate with others on Sugar.
• A good example of collaboration on a shared Activity.

Chatting with the IRC Activity

• Communicate with developers and others with IRC.

Send file to friend

• Note: Requires a special version of Sugar.
• A nice way to sent a file to a friend.

Backup & restore Journal

• Backup & restore to an attached hard drive or USB device.
• Also works to save & retrieve individual files from the Sugar Journal that have been copied to a USB device.

Captura de pantalla comentadas en español

Haga clic en los siguientes enlaces para ir a las páginas wiki con capturas de pantalla comentadas que cubren estos temas.

Charlando con la Actividad Chat

• Comunicarse con los demás de Azúcar.
• Un buen ejemplo de la colaboración en una actividad compartida.

Charlando con la Actividad IRC

• Comunicarse con los desarrolladores y otras personas con IRC.

Copia con un simple arrastrar y soltar

• Fotos de exportación
• Importación / install <activity> archivo. XO

Installation

Install SoaS in VirtualBox

Old Anaconda up to Fedora 17

Installing and using liveusb-creator in Sugar

Make a bootable, persistent, Live USB device from a Fedora .iso file in SoaS.

* Windows: Create a SoaS v7 Live USB

Liveusb-creator in Microsoft Windows

Install SoaS in VMware Player

Old Anaconda up to Fedora 17

* Windows: Run SoaS with VMware Player

Install VMware Player in Microsoft Windows and run SoaS.

Fedora^®
Fedora and the Infinity design logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc.

Install_using Anaconda f18 RC1 DVDx86_64

newUI Anaconda

New version of the installer for Fedora 18

Testing Dextrose in VirtualBox

VirtualBox simulation of XO-1 software

Build_A_Fedora_Custom_Live_CD/DVD_Remix

• Build a Live CD/DVD .iso file with a customized kickstart file and livecd-tools in Fedora

How to Import a VirtualBox Appliance

• with links to Virtual Appliances to download.

Cómo importar un aparato de VirtualBox

• traducciones a través de http://translate.google.com/#auto%7Ces%7C Por favor, haga las correcciones por errores en la wiki.

Install from a booted Live CD/USB with liveinst

• The Fedora-16-Live-SoaS.iso file is a 443 MB download.
• Installs to a 4 GB USB stick or VirtualBox 4 GB hard drive. (The procedure is adaptable for installation to a regular hard drive.)

Instalar desde una calzada Live CD/USB con liveinst

• El archivo Fedora-16-en vivo-SoaS.iso es una descarga de 443 MB.

Anotado de fotografías en pantalla de una instalación

• Se instala a 4 GB de memoria USB o VirtualBox 4 GB de disco duro. (El procedimiento es adaptable para la instalación de un disco duro normal.)

Netinstall of Fedora with the Sugar Desktop Environment

• Note: Requires a high speed Internet connection!
• Install to a hard disk or USB device.

Install sugar-desktop in Fedora with anaconda-19.6

• Install of sugar 0.98.2 in VirtualBox

Testing of Anaconda anaconda-19.6-boot.iso

Videos

• Using the Journal
• Using View Source
• Turtle Art basics
• Turtle Art Portfolio basics
• XO Editor basics
• Waveplace Etoys video tutorials

More videos

• Creating a customized Memory game
• Hot-Cold game written in Turtle Art
• Installing a XO bundle in Sugar
• Installing InfoSlicer from Sugar Labs git repo
• Playing with OOo4Kids in Sugar
• Discovering the SocialCalc activity
• Discovering the Physics activity
• Introduction to Python in Sugar
• Overview of Sugar activity Read Etext
• Overview of the French Helpfr (Aide) activity for Sugar
• Turtle Art Continent Game
• Turtle Art State Game
• Gardner School Game
• Using the Physics Activity
• How to boot Sugar on a netbook
• Read Etexts: The Movie
• Reading With The Sugar Desktop
• Sugar on the OLPC in NZ

The Undiscoverable

We have tried hard to make it easy for children to discover what they can do with Sugar software without being told. But that isn't always possible. So we have a list of things that teachers should know about, and be able to demonstrate. If you find some feature of the software incomprehensible, please add it to the list, and we will see what we can do for you and everybody else who runs into the same problem. Sometimes the answer is a click of the mouse away, but not always. We are, after all, introducing children to all of human knowledge. They will inevitably need help with much of it. It took all of our ancestors many years to get this far, so it is alright if children spend a few years hitting the highlights, and getting help to do it.

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OLPC Project Help and Information

For general help and information about the OLPC Project, please see these links at the The OLPC Wiki:

Official OLPC FAQ, Support FAQ, for questions about the XO laptop and its use, Support, for more support mechanisms, :Category:OLPC FAQ, and Ask OLPC a Question (in roughly that order).

---

If you have not found the answer you need here:

try http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Help_Requests

The material below this point I have marked for deletion, it is duplicated at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_help

Request new features

Please use our Request New Features page.

If you can't find your answer, please request one or supply one! below:

Help Requests:

Click on an [edit] link next to a topic paragraph below to enter your request or an answer (you will see more instructions on the edit form). But first, if possible, login or register on the wiki, leave an email address (secured by your login password), and then you can choose to 'Watch' any page on the wiki (such as this one) by clicking the 'Watch tab', and you will receive an email if the page changes. Plus, others can respond to you privately by using the 'E-mail this user' link in the sidebar of your user page.

There are also links for new questions on the Category:FAQ pages.

on Usage

First, see the help links above.

• I would like to install Adobe Flash Player in order to access the learn-to-read website www.starfall.com with Browser. (i) Can the Sugar Browser run the Adobe Flash Player plug-in? (ii) If so, please modify the YUM instructions from Adobe (copied below) as needed for the Sugar environment. I'm a Windows user, so please include all necessary Terminal instructions (e.g., to change to the correct directory). Thanks in advance.

  Installation instructions for the YUM repository definition

  1. Click the download link to begin installation. A dialog box will appear asking you where to save the file.
  2. Save the .rpm file to your desktop and wait for the file to download completely.
  3. In terminal, navigate to the desktop and type # rpm -Uvh <rpm_package_file>. Click Enter. (Note: This must be done as a root user).
  4. Once the installation is complete, in terminal, type # yum install flash-plugin. Click Enter. (Note: This must be done as a root user).
  5. To verify the plugin is installed in Mozilla, launch Mozilla and choose Help > About Plug-ins from the browser menu.

  (See http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/instructions/#section-3.) - David Kergyl 23:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

on the Wiki

First, see the Wiki Team/Resources page.

on Submitting a bug

Please report problems or bugs on Submit Bugs/Problems page.

on Releases

First, see this page, 0.114/Roadmap.

on Distributions

First, see the Downloads and Supported systems pages.

• Live CD in Spanish

  Purport: I see as one of the selling points of Sugar that a non-expert user can use computers "off the bat". It has been reported to me that currently the LiveCD requires some tweaking at startup to adjust it to a given locale, which I feel is to ask too much precisely from users that are not skilled.
  Goal: a LiveCD version that is localized in Spanish from startup, with no tweaking required, to be distributable among the Spanish-speaking public.

  Contact: yamaplos at bolinux.org

on Sugar hardware ports

First, see the Supported systems page.

on Sugar activities

First, see the Activity Team pages.

• I downloaded Sugar on a Stick and ran it on my computer -- however, the project I'm working with is about the Calculate activity. I found how to download the Calculate activity from your Activities page, however I don't know how to take that downloaded activity and incorporate it into my USB device/environment. So my question is: How can I take a downloaded activity and use it with Sugar on a Stick?

  There are a number of ways to install new Activities into Sugar:

  1. Using the Browse Activity in Sugar, navigate to the Sugar Activity Library (http://activities.sugarlabs.org), find the Activity you want and click the 'Download Now' button. In Sugar, you should see an alert that counts down the transfer. Once the download is saved, a new alert offers to show the new Activity in your Journal. Clicking the 'Show in Journal' button will take you to a detail view of the <ActivityName>.xo entry. Clicking the icon at the top left of this view will launch the Activity. The Home view favorites and Journal will show the new Activity installed.
  2. If the Activity is downloaded to another computer, the downloaded activity is contained in the <ActivityName>.xo file that is saved on the computer that did the download. If you have another USB device, copy that file to the root folder, "/", at the base of your USB device. Then boot Sugar on a Stick and go to the Journal. When the second USB device is inserted, it should appear in the bottom bar of the Journal. Clicking on the USB device icon will show its contents. Drag the <ActivityName>.xo file to the Journal icon at the far left of the bottom bar. Then click on the Journal icon and the <ActivityName>.xo entry will display at the top of the Journal. Click the icon for <ActivityName> and it will launch.
  3. If the downloaded <ActivityName>.xo file is copied to the SoaS USB device, and that device is booted into Sugar, one may use the Terminal activity to unzip the file into the /home/liveuser/Activities folder using these commands:

     cd /home/liveuser/Activities/

     (The /home/liveuser/ path may be substituted with /home/olpc/ on an XO.)

     unzip /mnt/live/<ActivityName>.xo

     (The /mnt/live/path-to-.xo may be substituted with an accessible <ActivityName>.xo path.)

     The Activity will appear in the Home view favorites, and after it has been launched, it will appear in the Journal.

• According to this review, Scratch requires some setup in Terminal:

  ... Scratch lacks Sugar integration but it does have the benefit that you can store and retrieve Scratch in file folders which the user can setup. Unfortunately this does require some help with setting up files under Linux and giving the user write permission on those files. The plus side of all of this is that the user can read and write to a USB memory stick and share Scratch files with Scratch on other computers.... Rated 4 out of 5 stars by Bill on February 28, 2010

  Is this correct? Is such setup also required to use the Scratch included on the Blueberry SoaS? If so, please add a wiki section containing specific instructions for performing this setup in Terminal. The Scratch activities page should also link to the instructions. - David Kergyl 16:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

  Thank you David for you contributions to the wiki both here and elsewhere! While you have entered your questions at appropriate places in the wiki for their future reference, if you accompany your question with a post to either of these mailing lists, It's An Education Project, IAEP (for general), or sugar-devel (for development-related) discussions, you will reach many more Sugar Labs followers who are not currently following changes on this wiki. We can then reference the discussion thread in the wiki and also provide a consolidated summary. --FGrose 17:25, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• Please add a Scratch activity page on the Sugar Labs wiki, with a link to Scratch. --David Kergyl 21:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

  All users can create a page in our wiki, see this guide page. In this case, I've created a pending page just by entering the internal link syntax Activities/Scratch. Users may also move pages to adjust the name or location. --FGrose 03:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

on Sugar deployments

First, see the Deployment Team pages.

on Sugar Labs

See the Sugar Labs page. Sugar Labs was created to provide a mechanism for supporting the Sugar community of volunteers. These volunteers are engaged in a variety of activities: some are writing software to improve Sugar; some are porting Sugar to new platforms; some are developing new activities that run in Sugar; some are helping to debug Sugar and help with quality assurance; some are writing documentation for Sugar developers and for those who use Sugar in the field; some are developing new scenarios for learning with Sugar; some are using Sugar and reporting upon their experiences to the community; and some are providing help and support.

Since we started Sugar Labs, we have been receiving a number of requests for help: porting Sugar to new distributions; tuning Sugar on a specific hardware platform; developing specific Sugar activity; helping with support in specific deployments, etc. Please use this page both to make requests and respond to requests for help.