Opened 15 years ago

Closed 13 years ago

Last modified 6 years ago

#74 closed enhancement (fixed)

Add self replication and customization capabilities to SoaS

Reported by: mungewell Owned by: sdz
Priority: major Milestone:
Component: Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) Version: SoaS 3 (Mirabelle)
Severity: Major Keywords:
Cc: sascha_silbe, FGrose Distribution/OS: Fedora
Bug Status: New

Description

At present the SOAS installation has to be 'created' on a PC after downloading a CD '.iso'/'.img', this requires a moderate amount of knowledge/computer literacy.

It would be nice if a previously installed SOAS could duplicate itself onto another USB drive. All the required files would be there, so this should not be a huge headache.

We would have to ask about the persistance file (if existing) to check whether:
1) 'No' file required
2) 'New' file of size XX MBytes
3) 'Clone' file

This would provide a way in which a school installation could be set up by a teacher/IT staff to include addditional software and then duplicated across multiple stick to hand out to students.

Also helps the students share the application themselves, lets make it as easy as possible for them by sugarizing the application.

From an Ubuntu point of view, the application usb-creator can recognise that it is running from a CD and create an image onto USB. However it does not (currently) peform the same function when running from a USB drive.

Cheers,
Mungewell.

Change History (18)

comment:1 Changed 15 years ago by marcopg

  • Bug Status set to New
  • Distribution/OS set to Fedora
  • Milestone set to 0.84
  • Severity set to Major
  • Version set to 0.83.x

comment:2 follow-up: Changed 15 years ago by CarolineM

We need this if anyone is looking for a project. Here are some suggestions on additional features it should have from a teacher. He is writing to the Feodra live-usb guy but I think these are issues we should think about for our clone activiity.

Sir;

I found your e mail address from:

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/wiki

I have been working on setting up a USB or SD to act as a portable Dual Mode Sugar on a stick.

see: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Getting_Involved/Testing/Soas-F11b_Sugar0.84.2

There are several improvements that would make this a more easily used format:

  • Have a way to disable the live user account in a SD or USB stick (created with Fedora Live USB Creator) if it has a persistence file

after a User account has been created.

  • a way to remove the un-deletable "Install to hard disk" icon. There is always the danger a user would click on this and damage the underlying OS on the machine

it is plugged into.

  • allow system updates to occur with out destroying the USB or SD installation.

I hope that these are changes in liveusb-creator are possible as it would turn a USB or SD card into a full F11 beta with Sugar Desktop portable environment
for Students and other users. ( I use mine now a way use my EeePC with Fedora and Sugar without installation. I can then move the whole package to another computer when I travel.....)

Cordially;

Tom Gilliard
Bend, Oregon

comment:3 in reply to: ↑ 2 Changed 15 years ago by satellit

Replying to CarolineM:

We need this if anyone is looking for a project. Here are some suggestions on additional features it should have from a teacher. He is writing to the Feodra live-usb guy but I think these are issues we should think about for our clone activiity.

Sir;

I found your e mail address from:

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/wiki

I have been working on setting up a USB or SD to act as a portable Dual Mode Sugar on a stick.

see: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Getting_Involved/Testing/Soas-F11b_Sugar0.84.2

There are several improvements that would make this a more easily used format:

  • Have a way to disable the live user account in a SD or USB stick (created with Fedora Live USB Creator) if it has a persistence file

after a User account has been created.

  • a way to remove the un-deletable "Install to hard disk" icon. There is always the danger a user would click on this and damage the underlying OS on the machine

it is plugged into.

  • allow system updates to occur with out destroying the USB or SD installation.

I hope that these are changes in liveusb-creator are possible as it would turn a USB or SD card into a full F11 beta with Sugar Desktop portable environment
for Students and other users. ( I use mine now a way use my EeePC with Fedora and Sugar without installation. I can then move the whole package to another computer when I travel.....)

Cordially;

Tom Gilliard
Bend, Oregon

Re Ticket 74:

The idea of being to self replicate from a SD or USB stick to a second one is great. (Basically a replicator)

(A great way to make multiple copies of a custom configuration of a Soas entity.)

Could it also generate a .iso file on request so it could be sent over the internet for distribution?

comment:4 in reply to: ↑ description Changed 15 years ago by satellit

Replying to mungewell:

At present the SOAS installation has to be 'created' on a PC after downloading a CD '.iso'/'.img', this requires a moderate amount of knowledge/computer literacy.

It would be nice if a previously installed SOAS could duplicate itself onto another USB drive. All the required files would be there, so this should not be a huge headache.

We would have to ask about the persistance file (if existing) to check whether:
1) 'No' file required
2) 'New' file of size XX MBytes
3) 'Clone' file

This would provide a way in which a school installation could be set up by a teacher/IT staff to include addditional software and then duplicated across multiple stick to hand out to students.

Also helps the students share the application themselves, lets make it as easy as possible for them by sugarizing the application.

From an Ubuntu point of view, the application usb-creator can recognise that it is running from a CD and create an image onto USB. However it does not (currently) peform the same function when running from a USB drive.

Cheers,
Mungewell.

*

The idea of being to self replicate from a SD or USB stick to a second one is great. (Basically a replicator)

(A great way to make multiple copies of a custom configuration of a Soas entity.)

Could it also generate a .iso file on request so it could be sent over the internet for distribution?

comment:5 Changed 15 years ago by CarolineM

Another cool feature would be letting the teacher choose some of the files in the Journal to prepopulate in the clones but not other.

Also would be cool to erase nickname and colors and ask for them again.

Right now I'd take having this be possible for the above average techie teacher and we can add cool features later.

comment:6 Changed 15 years ago by satellit

The best solution seems to be make an downloadable activity which can clone a USB stick or .iso file
This could work like a print activity where one can specify number of copies wanted and prompts for insertion of new device to copy to after unmounting and or (Ejecting) previously completed clone.

comment:7 Changed 15 years ago by CarolineM

Would Clonezilla help with any of this?

comment:9 Changed 14 years ago by wadeb

  • Milestone changed from 0.84 to 0.88

New feature, moving to 0.88 to get more attention.

comment:10 follow-up: Changed 14 years ago by sdz

  • Milestone changed from 0.88 to Cloudberry
  • Version changed from 0.83.x to Git as of bugdate

Alright, making this something for SoaS v3. Note that there's already a command line solution. Something like this should work: livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 300 /dev/sr0 /dev/sdc1

A GUI solution for this would be darn nice, though. If anybody wants to help with this, it'd be awesome.

comment:11 Changed 14 years ago by sdz

  • Owner changed from marcopg to sdz
  • Status changed from new to assigned

comment:12 Changed 14 years ago by sdz

Could somebody please give said command line a try and report whether it works? :)

comment:13 in reply to: ↑ 10 Changed 14 years ago by sascha_silbe

  • Cc sascha_silbe added

Replying to sdz:

Alright, making this something for SoaS v3. Note that there's already a command line solution. Something like this should work: livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 300 /dev/sr0 /dev/sdc1

Does this allow replicating the customisations (e.g. downloaded activities) as well?

comment:14 Changed 14 years ago by satellit

look at:

How To Sugarize liveusb-creator
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category_talk:Live_USB

works with 3 USB sticks:
1: Boot USB with sugarized liveusb-creator
2: USB with .iso to write to USB (3)
3: Target USB to write

*Liveusb-creator Icon installed on F3 Ring of sugar
works in Blueberry v2 and Nighly Composes v3 soas

comment:15 Changed 14 years ago by FGrose

  • Cc FGrose added
  • Summary changed from Add self replicating function/application. to Add self replication and customization capabilities to SoaS

Please see http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/soas/2010-April/000998.html for a
method using a modified livecd-iso-to-disk.

Review and testing needed.

comment:16 Changed 14 years ago by sdz

  • Milestone changed from Mirabelle to Future SoaS Releases
  • Version changed from Git as of bugdate to SoaS 3 (Mirabelle)

I think there's progress in the upstream merging concerning livecd-tools, so I'm optimistic here. Moving it to the next target as Mirabelle has been released. If it gets done before the v4 release, we can package and pull it in as an update! Looking forward to this!

comment:17 Changed 13 years ago by pbrobinson

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from assigned to closed

This will be available in SoaSv5

comment:18 Changed 11 years ago by dnarvaez

  • Milestone Future deleted

Milestone Future deleted

comment:19 Changed 6 years ago by FGrose

livecd-tools version 25 has new features for editing a LiveOS image.

  • overlays can be merged and the image and overlay refreshed.
  • overlays and home file systems can be resized or reformatted to different file systems.
  • livecd-iso-to-disk can be used to replicate an existing installation.
  • livecd-iso-to-disk can be used to install multiple images on a single USB disk device.

Installation of a fresh image can be made easier by having an onboard installer.

See livecd-tools version 25 at https://github.com/livecd-tools/livecd-tools/tree/c8f31b99880786974ff59c00d376f2a044a224e2

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