Booting the Scouting Laptops

[Lucas V]

Preparing this year's scouting laptops has proven to be a pain, but Saty and I think we have nailed it down. To summarize what lies below (in layman's terms), the laptops will each need an SD card to help them use android.

In order for us to use these laptops with the scouting framework from last year, it is necessary that they run Android (at least 6.0). However, upon install, the laptops are unable to boot Android on their own. We think this might be a problem with the grub that comes with the Android x86 6.0 image. Either way, this means the laptops need an alternative boot method. We've proven that using a disk image of super grub2 we can successfully boot android on the laptops, but this requires a thumb drive every time we need to boot.

The solution we've come up with is to use an SD card with super grub2 in each laptop in order for them to boot "on their own". This way we won't need to cycle a thumb drive through every laptop every time we need scouting to happen. This means we need 7 SD cards of pretty much any size. I have one, so that makes it 6!

Links:
Android 6.0 r1: http://www.android-x86.org/download
Super Grub2 Disk Stable: http://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/supergrub2diskdownload/super-grub2-disk-stable/

[Lucas V]

UPDATE:

We might not need the SD cards anymore. We figured out a way to install Android that allows the laptops to boot on their own. Here is the process:

Make a thumb drive Android live CD
Boot laptop from thumb drive
Select Install
Select Create/Modify Partitions
Use GPT: No
***Partition Table must be MBR. We think this was the reason why the laptops were unable to boot on their own initially. If this is not the case, once you select No for Use GPT, the laptop will be unable to use cfdisk instead of GPT.
HDD Partition: Primary, Linux, Bootable, ext4
Format Partition: Yes
Install GRUB: Yes
Install EFI GRUB2: Yes
Format boot partition: No
Install /system as read-write: No
Reboot: Yes
When shown a list upon reboot, select the first option.

Android should run initial setup, the word android will appear in big font on the screen. After this, a welcome screen will appear, and you may begin setting up android.

Note that sometimes android gets stuck looking for networks on initial setup (this is when "Just a sec..." is displayed on screen). Rebooting should fix the problem.