Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
Hi, I'm trying to understand this. Is it possible to use the booting method Bill found, where we boot one kernal in Virtual Box, then that Linux mounts the USB and then it boots the Sugar kernal on the stick? On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Dave, On 24 Sep 2009, at 01:55, Dave Bauer wrote: Last I checked virtualbox could not boot from USB on a Mac. This may have changed in a more recent version. Yep correct, that is still the case**. But, we were not talking about booting USB. Just mounting it and using the data-store from there, tweaking a VM for deployment 'should' be small change. This of course runs into all the 'what version of Sugar is installed in the VM' vs. 'what version of data-store is installed on the stick' but for a small deployment with control over both, and with specific HW needs, I don't see this as an issue. Additionally, if some data-store validation checks could be put in place I could even see this being a very positive feature for Soas and/ or upstream Sugar; an ideal little solvable issue for the two to resolve in a way that would benefit any deployments with old or not currently compatible hardware (where either the OS or a VM has to be run from the physical machine). ** unless you put the whole damn vdi on the stick and forgo the idea of booting the stick independently as a normal OS, though there could be room to investigate booting of a small partition with a reliable host OS that did nothing but dive right into the VM for those cases. Seems doable, but scary. Would much rather spend effort in finding a way to boot a USB directly – likely requires providing a Mac only image, though they can quite happily boot from USB, they just require correct boot formats (EFI for Intel Macs) but current Linux's seems well behind that curve. Most other HW manufacturers are still on old BIOS set-ups, Macs can support this for booting, Boot Camp does just this, but not for booting from USB devices unfortunately. Regards, --Gary Dave On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf name_you_give_share name_of_intended_mount_point ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Dave Bauer d...@solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Hi, I'm trying to understand this. Is it possible to use the booting method Bill found, where we boot one kernal in Virtual Box, then that Linux mounts the USB and then it boots the Sugar kernal on the stick? I'm not even proposing that. :-) I would have to think about it a while to see if there were even any advantages. I think the fundamental problem here is that the people who are commenting (including myself) have never seen the actual problem occur. The hardware/software resources available as well as the minimum functionality (use cases) are still hazy to me as well. Could you clarify what you want to accomplish and leave anything out that isn't essential? For example, does it have to be VirtualBox (or even virtualization)? If something isn't required don't mention it except in the list of resource you know you have available to solve your problem. Thanks, Bill Bogstad P.S. I'm cc'ing this note to s...@lists.sugarlabs.org as it clearly is about SoaS Strawberry and has literally nothing to do with Sugar development. It's a more generic 'my machine won't boot Linux' problem. Where the Linux in question is SoaS Strawberry. I'm leaving sugar-devel on the cc line for now, but will probably drop it if this thread continues and certainly will for any future threads on similar topics. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Dave, snip ** unless you put the whole damn vdi on the stick and forgo the idea of booting the stick independently as a normal OS, though there could be room to investigate booting of a small partition with a reliable host OS that did nothing but dive right into the VM for those cases. Seems doable, but scary. Would much rather spend effort in finding a way to boot a USB directly – likely requires providing a Mac only image, though they can quite happily boot from USB, they just require correct boot formats (EFI for Intel Macs) but current Linux's seems well behind that curve. Most other HW manufacturers are still on old BIOS set-ups, Macs can support this for booting, Boot Camp does just this, but not for booting from USB devices unfortunately. SoaS does include EFI. I am not sure how it works. Macbooks do support booting from a USB hard drive, but I am not sure about a USB memory stick. Dave Regards, --Gary Dave On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf name_you_give_share name_of_intended_mount_point ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Dave Bauer d...@solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com -- Dave Bauer d...@solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
Hi Caroline, On 23 Sep 2009, at 20:10, Caroline Meeks wrote: The current status of the GPA is: The 4th grade classroom has a bank of 6 machines that can boot Sugar on a Stick. The 4th grade specialist has one used laptop that can boot Sugar on a Stick. Access to the PCs in the computer lab is problematic and likely not to happen very much. There are two laptop carts of 25 bought last year Macbooks but booting Sugar on a Stick is problematic. See https://answers.launchpad.net/soas/+question/81566 for gory details. The teachers are enthusiastic! The goal is to be able to use the classroom bank of computers for Center Work that is time in the day when students break into groups and work on different things in different parts of the room. Sugar would become one center. We also want to be able to do whole class instruction by signing out a laptop cart of Macbooks. We have sufficient privileges to install Virtual Box on the laptop cart Macbooks. Can anyone think of way to use Virtual Box that would allow students to use the info on their sticks so they can at another point in time use a classroom computer and not always need to use the same MacBook? Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Thanks, Bill Bogstad ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
Hi Bill, On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf name_you_give_share name_of_intended_mount_point ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
Last I checked virtualbox could not boot from USB on a Mac. This may have changed in a more recent version. Dave On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf name_you_give_share name_of_intended_mount_point ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Dave Bauer d...@solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: I wondered if you might be thinking of Shared Folders. I don't think of this as accessing a device. I believe the access is at a filesystem level rather then a block level. Kind of like a network-based client-server (NFS, CIFS) filesystem which just happens to be running all on one physical machine. I don't see how this would allow the guest OS running inside VB to actually boot off of the USB stick. If you use the raw disk method that I suggested, then you really do boot off of the USB stick. Theoretically the raw disk method could be used with any USB bootable stick because you get everything from the stick (not just the users home directory). Still one could install SoaS to a virtual disk under VB, install the VB guest software there, modify the installed SoaS to mount the a directory via the shared folder mechanism. Then the question is what is in the shared folder. You can't just have it be the mounted USB stick. That's isn't the SoaS user's home directory. You have to to dig inside the USB stick to find the linux filesystem image there which is used for the user's home directory. I'm guessing Mac OS X doesn't mount Linux filesystem images located on VFAT formatted USB sticks. One possibility might be to make the shared folder just be the VFAT formatted USB stick and mount the Linux filesystem image from within the Linux guest OS (kind of like SoaS does it now anyway). Personally, I think the raw disk method is much simpler for the SoaS use case of wanting access to all of the users journal entries/activities. I just don't know if this works under Mac OS X. Also, if you want any user modified OS stuff as well; I don't see any way to get it to work. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I I don't see why. You aren't actually giving the the VB Guest OS direct access to the USB stick at any level. You are giving it access to some directory in some filesystem which is mounted somewhere by the host OS. The guest OS (SoaS/Fedora) doesn't ever see it as a USB device at all. This is true with the raw disk method as well, but block level access via USB is close enough to block level access via an emulated IDE controller that it seems to work. Only the kernel itself cares which device driver is being used. think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. If I get some time to actually do something about it, I'll let you know. Thanks, Bill Bogstad ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] A Virtual Box solution that works with Sticks
Hi Dave, On 24 Sep 2009, at 01:55, Dave Bauer wrote: Last I checked virtualbox could not boot from USB on a Mac. This may have changed in a more recent version. Yep correct, that is still the case**. But, we were not talking about booting USB. Just mounting it and using the data-store from there, tweaking a VM for deployment 'should' be small change. This of course runs into all the 'what version of Sugar is installed in the VM' vs. 'what version of data-store is installed on the stick' but for a small deployment with control over both, and with specific HW needs, I don't see this as an issue. Additionally, if some data-store validation checks could be put in place I could even see this being a very positive feature for Soas and/ or upstream Sugar; an ideal little solvable issue for the two to resolve in a way that would benefit any deployments with old or not currently compatible hardware (where either the OS or a VM has to be run from the physical machine). ** unless you put the whole damn vdi on the stick and forgo the idea of booting the stick independently as a normal OS, though there could be room to investigate booting of a small partition with a reliable host OS that did nothing but dive right into the VM for those cases. Seems doable, but scary. Would much rather spend effort in finding a way to boot a USB directly – likely requires providing a Mac only image, though they can quite happily boot from USB, they just require correct boot formats (EFI for Intel Macs) but current Linux's seems well behind that curve. Most other HW manufacturers are still on old BIOS set-ups, Macs can support this for booting, Boot Camp does just this, but not for booting from USB devices unfortunately. Regards, --Gary Dave On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Bill, On 24 Sep 2009, at 00:17, Bill Bogstad wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Sure, you could just link the ~/default/datastore directory on the VM to the matching location on the stick. I'm not sure how the pretty way to do this would be (likely at this moment in time would be just tweaking the VMs to assume the stick was there). Pop stick in, then run the VM would be the workflow once set-up. From a future stand point, you'd likely want to push upstream for a feature where Sugar checked for valid (and correct version) data-stores on start-up (perhaps with a UI if more than one valid data-store was found), so any external media device, or perhaps even mounted network volume could become the default data-store for that session. Could you clarify what you are suggesting? Most VMs (including VirtualBox) typically use large files within the host environment to provide the contents of virtual disks to the OS running under virtualization. By default VirtualBox uses a format that dynamically allocates in the real filesystem as the guest OS actually writes to the virtual disk. I don't think this file is going to be directly compatible with any file (or filesystem image) that SoaS is storing on a USB stick. If you were thinking of something else, please let me know. Yes, I routinely use the Shared Folders feature for VirtualBox on the Mac :-) Every thing Sugar flavour I work on resides there for easy access between different VMs. VirtualBox treats this as a device (after installing guest additions) so after a reboot I run: sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf name_you_give_share name_of_intended_mount_point ...which should should do the trick. Also be aware that you need to tell VirtualBox it's allowed to use USB, I think it defaults to allow, but you can also filter for named devices if that makes more sense in a deployment. I would also want to sanity check the shut down process to make sure we didn't bork users sticks at the end of a session. Ping if you'd like to work this through, should be easy enough for me to set up a test cycle here if you think this is valuable. Regards, --Gary ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Dave Bauer d...@solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
