Sugar on a Stick/Strawberry

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Sugar on a Stick - Strawberry

Release Notes - last update: 2009/06/23

This document provides instructions for preparing a Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) installation. It also contains a list of known issues and sources of further information. For more detailed information, please check the SoaS wiki page.

The Sugar on a Stick Strawberry release is based Fedora 11 and includes the latest updates as of June 22. It also features the last Sugar desktop environment, namely version 0.84, and additional activities to enrich the user experience. Interested users can download further activities from the Sugar Activity Library. This release is step forward from the beta release; in addition to Fedora updates, it includes supplementary sample content, which is available in the Journal. Apart from the default fructose activities, additional activities are included in this release.

Fructose Activity Honey Activity Honey Activity
Browse CartoonBuilder Memorize
Calculate Colors Moon
Chat FlipSticks Paint
Etoys FreeCell Physics
Image Viewer InfoSlicer Poll
Jukebox IRC Record
Log JigsawPuzzle SliderPuzzle
Pippy JokeMachine Speak
Read Labyrinth StoryBuilder
Terminal Library ViewSlides
Turtle Art
Write


Get it!

Windows Users

  1. Download the latest version of Fedora LiveUSB Creator from https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ and extract it;
  2. Plug a target USB key into your computer (minimum 1-gigabyte);
  3. Use the Format dialog to rename your USB Volume to FEDORA;
  4. LaunchLiveUSB Creator;
  5. Select Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry in the drop-down menu on the upper-right side of the LiveUSB Creator window;
  6. Set the Persistent Storage slider to at least 160 MB (use more if you have a key with more space);
  7. Select your USB key as the target;
  8. Click the Create Live USB button and then wait for the process to finish (about 5 minutes);
  9. Eject the USB key using the Safely Remove Hardware dialog.

Linux Users

  1. Download the SoaS iso image from http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-strawberry.iso
  2. Install these three packages: syslinux, isomd5sum, and cryptsetup
  3. Download this script: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh
  4. Plug your target USB key into your computer;
  5. Unmount the USB key (e.g., sudo umount /dev/sdb1);
  6. Execute the script with the following command as root:
./livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --overlay-size-mb 300 --home-size-mb 160 --delete-home --unencrypted-home soas-strawberry.iso /dev/sdb1
Note: In this example, your USB device would be sdb1! Adjust this before confirming the command, if necessary. Also, you might want to increase the home or overlay size if you have more than 1 GB of space.

Mac Users

  • Mac users will need to have access to a Linux or Windows machine to prepare their USB key
  • Create your SoaS as described above for the different systems
  • Download the boot helper disk: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-boot.iso
  • Put both the CD and the USB key in
  • Turn the Mac on and press at the chime the "C" key
  • It should boot from the CD and continue to use the USB key then

Note: This is an experimental method to run SoaS on a Mac. Not all hardware configurations might be supported, as it is also noted in the known issues section. If you run into issues, you might want to consider using a virtual machine.

Boot it!

  • Set the option to boot from USB in your machine's BIOS and let it come up
  • If your machine doesn't support that, download and burn: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-boot.iso
  • Make sure to name your USB key FEDORA, as it won't be recognized otherwise
  • Put both the CD and the USB key in and let it boot from CD

Use it!

You have successfully installed Sugar on a Stick - now you can explore it. If you are interested in a guide for Sugar, you might want to check this: http://en.flossmanuals.net/sugar

Help Us

Please share your feedback with us - it helps us to improve following versions of SoaS. You can always send an e-mail to our feedback address feedback@sugarlabs.org or join the It's an Education Project mailing list: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

If you encounter any hardware related issues besides the ones listed below, please consider joining our hardware effort. There, you will be able to submit the specs of your hardware, so that we can look better into it and work together with upstream to resolve issues.

Finally, you might also submit a bug report at our bug tracker, for which you would need an account.

Known Issues

Sugar on a Stick Strawberry is based on Fedora 11, the latest release. Consequently, it contains a number of known issues with Fedora images that should be mentioned.

  • Recently, problems with ATI graphics hardware, as well as various Mac models have been reported. This was resolved by adding the nomodeset parameter to the kernel arguments.
  • If you encounter image flickering or are not able to get past a black screen, it might be worth pressing escape at the blue screen, which appears for a second before the normal boot process starts. You'll be presented a short menu, at which you can directly press tab - just add the nomodeset argument then in the appearing line and boot with enter.

For more information, please refer to the list of common F11 bugs.

Custom Builds

Instructions how to customize and compose an image will be provided here shortly.