This is a discussion I had with one of the maintainers on IRC #freedomtoaster .. i'll summarize later for ur reading pleasure... here's the raw format,,
:::ME::: tumbleweed, hey :::ME::: tumbleweed, we are trying to implement a freedom toaster at nepal as well.. how much did it cost to do there? :::tumbleweed::: hi, sorry was out :::tumbleweed::: I'm afriad that I don't have those costs :::tumbleweed::: I host a toaster :::ME::: tumbleweed, hosting? :::tumbleweed::: front door :::tumbleweed::: brb :::tumbleweed::: ok, back :::tumbleweed::: SR71-Blackbird: the shuttleworth foundation sponsored all the toasters :::tumbleweed::: I look after one of them :::tumbleweed::: (i.e. host it) :::ME::: tumbleweed, ohh :::tumbleweed::: the hardware itself is quite basic :::tumbleweed::: one PC :::tumbleweed::: 3 DVD writers :::tumbleweed::: (each on a separate IDE channel, so you need a PCI IDE card) :::tumbleweed::: and a touch scree (that's the expensive bit) :::ME::: http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal/t/9e51f59dbe9530d2 :::tumbleweed::: the shuttleworth foundation produced a nice looking cabinet for it :::tumbleweed::: but I'm sure that that's expensive to manufacture :::ME::: if u r not too bg.. u can check our discussion.. maybe join in.. btw.. how may we contact.. if possible regarding this? :::ME::: tumbleweed, maybe they'll be interested to support FOSS in Nepal too :::tumbleweed::: SR71-Blackbird: unlikely I'm afraid, the project has been spun off into a separte company :::tumbleweed::: called "bread bin" :::tumbleweed::: www.breadbin.co.za :::tumbleweed::: they are trying to find a way to fund toasters, i.e. goverment sponsership, supermarket sponsership, etc :::tumbleweed::: I can put you in touch with them, if you want :::ME::: tumbleweed, yeah.. surely.. that'd be great :::tumbleweed::: um, ok, I've met one guy from breadbin :::tumbleweed::: Brett Simpson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> :::tumbleweed::: he isn't a techie, he's more into the business side :::tumbleweed::: but he's the only contact I've got :-) :::tumbleweed::: he's planning on getting the toaster software re-written in python, which I think is a great thing :::tumbleweed::: the current Perl / HTML / Firefox mess is quite nasty :::ME::: tumbleweed, hmm.. that'd be great... we were planning to do entirely in python before finding u had a software already :::tumbleweed::: heh :::ME::: tumbleweed, maybe sth to collaborate on? :::tumbleweed::: yes, one of my friends also attempted a re-write, but he didn't get very far :::tumbleweed::: that would be wonderful :::tumbleweed::: I think breadbin is going to pay a local developer to do the re-write :::tumbleweed::: I don't know how far they've got on that :::tumbleweed::: but the guy they want to hire is good :::tumbleweed::: I trust him to do a good job, and I think he'd love to work with other people on it :::tumbleweed::: have you had a look at the current code? :::ME::: not yet.. tumbleweed.. just took a look at some of the docs today.. :::tumbleweed::: btw, this is my toaster: http://wiki.clug.org.za/wiki/Freedom_Toaster :::tumbleweed::: ok, the code is rather hideous, but it works :-) * tumbleweed is reading through that thread you posted, I'll give comments as I come across them: :::tumbleweed::: * We don't have it on a UPS, the entire building has a UPS (Computer Science building, lots of servers), but it isn't very reliable... :::tumbleweed::: The toaster handles the outages fine :::tumbleweed::: (but I understand that lots of nepal probably has even worse power outages then we do :-) :::tumbleweed::: * Touch screen is important, yes, but make sure you get one of the newer USB ones that's supported natively by linux - the serial driver is a BITCH :::tumbleweed::: * We don't have backup hard drives. But we do have a little (2TB) FTP mirror on campus (that I maintain, ftp.leg.uct.ac.za), where we get all our distros :::tumbleweed::: As far as I know, this is the only toaster that has a network connection, local mirror, and gets updated regularly :::ME::: ohh :::tumbleweed::: * It doesn't have much RAM, only 512MB, but I think breadbin is giving us some more, soon :::ME::: ohh. how does 512 go...? :::tumbleweed::: * Every 6 months or so, another toaster mantainer (upcountry) gets me to buy him a hard drive, fill it with ISOs, and courier it to him :-) :::tumbleweed::: it does fine, the toaster runs a hotspot, (non-caching) web transparent proxy, snmpd, etc, and copes fine :::tumbleweed::: ubuntu is getting bigger, and I think more RAM would be a good idea, but I'm not convinced that it's necessary yet :::tumbleweed::: it also only has a 200G hard drive, which is tight. But we only keep ISOs on it. If anyone wants a full debian/ubuntu mirror, they use ftp.leg :::ME::: ohh.. yeah.. i've been using debian repo with ubuntu.. must be too huge to mirror.. :::tumbleweed::: heh, our mirror has about 2TB of space, and manages to mirror most distros. :::tumbleweed::: (not all the architectures: only i386 and amd64), but at least 2 versions of ISOs and packages for each of the main distros we mirror :::ME::: ohh.. :::tumbleweed::: it does use a lot of bandwidth, though, averages 2Mbps downloading for about 8hrs every night :-) :::ME::: tumbleweed, what's the update cycle.. coinciding with distro cycle.. and when r older distros cleaned.. like dapper when feisty comes :::tumbleweed::: ok, maybe 6hrs :::ME::: ohh boy.. we are so tight on bandwidth considering that... :::tumbleweed::: bandwidth in south africa is insanely expensive, but I bet you know all about that :-) :::tumbleweed::: there is no update cycle for the toasters :::tumbleweed::: on the whole, each one is independantly mantained :::tumbleweed::: and it's up to the mantainer to update it themselves :::ME::: tumbleweed, ohh.. so who's the maintainer.. u mean the distro maintainer? :::tumbleweed::: no, I mean tho toaster mantainer :::tumbleweed::: sorry, I'm discussing my mirror and the toaster at the same time, I bet it's confusing :_) :::tumbleweed::: they are linked, because I update the toaster from the mirror, whenever a distro releases :::ME::: ohh.. so there's a mirror.. that updates as any other mirror does.. :::ME::: and toaster mirrors from the mirror? :::tumbleweed::: yup :::tumbleweed::: not quite, I manually rsync ISOs from the mirror onto the toaster :::tumbleweed::: (100MBps university LAN inbetween them) :::tumbleweed::: some toaster mantainers download ISOs on their home ADSL connections, for their toaster :::tumbleweed::: others get someone to post them a hard drive or DVDs :::ME::: manually... why? no crons.. ? :::tumbleweed::: because each distro has it's ISOs in different places :::tumbleweed::: with different naming schemes :::ME::: tumbleweed, how much time does it take to do that? :::tumbleweed::: not very long :::tumbleweed::: distos don't release often :::tumbleweed::: maybe once every 6 months, I'll go through every distro on the toaster :::tumbleweed::: and see if there is a newer version on the mirorr :::tumbleweed::: otherwise, when I notice a big distro releasing, I'll copy it onto the toaster that night :::tumbleweed::: sometimes I don't notice, and someone e-mails me and asks for it :-) :::tumbleweed::: once one toaster is up to date, it would be entirely conceivable to do automatic mirroring of that toaster onto other toasters :::tumbleweed::: but that would be quite a bit of network traffic :::tumbleweed::: and affordable internet connections in ZA are capped to only a couple of GB / month :::ME::: yeah.. i'm thinking along same lines.. like have one at central place.. :::ME::: we have NPIX.. nepal internet exchange.. so bandwidth cost is none for updating between mirrors :::ME::: ***toasters :::tumbleweed::: that's really cool :::tumbleweed::: in south africa, the only people who can afford uncapped fast connections are universities, ISPs, and big business :::ME::: getting distros on mirrors can be really easy here... like i have a connection that's 64kbps but gives nearly .3Mbps for downloads.. :::ME::: using proxies.. perhaps colocated in US.. :::tumbleweed::: not bad :::ME::: better on univs and ISPs... so we need to tap that and make a mechanism there :::tumbleweed::: yes :::tumbleweed::: I'm sure you'll already find large ftp mirrors at such places anyway :::ME::: tumbleweed, problem in Nepal is that we're making that culture... in the first place.. :::tumbleweed::: heh :::ME::: ***problem==opportunity if u look at it :D :::tumbleweed::: well if you've got linux users, they'll appreciate fast updates :::tumbleweed::: and ISPs soon realise that if they only download stuff once, it saves them on upstream bandwidth :::ME::: yeah.. we need to have some kinda meeting regarding this.. i tend to use ISP's copy if they have them.. wayy faster for me.. :::tumbleweed::: (some ISPs here have enourmous ftp servers full of porn, they tell the big bandwdith users about them...) :::tumbleweed::: yes, exactly :::tumbleweed::: mantaining a mirror takes a bit of work, and a weekend here and there... :::tumbleweed::: but it's well worth it, to get fast downloads, and make it easier to spread free software / OSS :::ME::: yeah... quite so.. :::tumbleweed::: our mirror actually belongs to our Linux Users Group :::tumbleweed::: http://wiki.clug.org.za/wiki/CLUG_Home_Page :::tumbleweed::: the university hosts it, and our mailing lists, in exchange for providing mirrors for the university :::tumbleweed::: (a lot of the university servers run freebsd / linux) :::ME::: tumbleweed, ohh.. :::tumbleweed::: oh, one thing I forgot to mention about toasters: :::tumbleweed::: the DVD writers die like flies :::tumbleweed::: they only seem to last for about 6 months :::tumbleweed::: we thought it was due to the cabinet over-heating, so I installed an extractor fan a few months ago :::ME::: ohh.. :::tumbleweed::: maybe it'll help... :::tumbleweed::: first they stop writing DVDs, and only write CDs, then eventually they die completely :::ME::: it will prolly.. anyways these days those hardwares are so short living.. :::ME::: i still have 1993's laptop and it works.. these days they last for like 3 years.. :::tumbleweed::: heh :::tumbleweed::: yes, my current laptop is only 2 years old :::tumbleweed::: and the battery is down to 20 mins * tumbleweed is looking at replacing it :-( :::tumbleweed::: poor laptop... :::ME::: tumbleweed, u dun have problem if i share this discussion with others,,,, not on the mailing list probably.. noone reads.. :::ME::: ? :::tumbleweed::: not at all :-) :::tumbleweed::: I was kind of hoping you would :::tumbleweed::: I hope they can make sense of it all :-) :::ME::: tumbleweed, hehe.. telling same thing over and over will be such a problem after some time :::ME::: tumbleweed, btw.. i gotta take a shower now.. got a family party to throw.. :::ME::: see u :::tumbleweed::: ok :::tumbleweed::: cool enjoy :::tumbleweed::: some days I'm on IRC a lot :::tumbleweed::: some weeks I don't go near it :::ME::: nice talking with u.. real learning opportunity :::tumbleweed::: but I'd love to hear how your freedom toaster project is going :::tumbleweed::: we have freedom toaster mailing lists somewhere, if you'd like to chat to the other guys * tumbleweed digs around On 6/9/07, Abhishek Singh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm in too. I'm quite interested in this project and our department is > very optimistic too. > > On 6/9/07, Ankur Sharma < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > have you seen its implementation on seneca college, I wikied it and > > found a lot of info, even cost estimations, you can check it too, btw, I was > > also checking cost for various part at tigerdirect.com , but seems like > > cost could be finalized later after specs. is checked out. and one info is, > > abt. 17" touchscreen LCD costs about $750. I am also looking at proposal > > they (seneca guys) prepared to get funding. so lets decide the design first > > and start costing , team division and proposal preparation later. I think > > this friday meet should focus on the design goal setting. > > > > On 6/9/07, Prasanna Gautam < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > Yeah.. just came back.. had some progress today.. will post some info > > > here... (after editing...) learnt a lot on how it's being implemented at > > > South Africa. > > > > > > On 6/9/07, Manish Regmi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > this project sounds interesting... > > > > i am in... > > > > i'll do whatever i can... > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > regards > > > > Manish Regmi > > > > > > > > http://manish-cs.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > _______________________________________ > > Abhishek Singh > > Fedora 7 has released!! > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ FOSS Nepal mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
