Re: The new OLPC ads
Hi Jean, Jean Piché j...@piche.com writes: http://www2.infopresse.com/blogs/actualites/archive/2008/12/15/article-29417.aspx This article is in french - maybe you better want to send this to the french OLPC mailing list: olpc-fra...@lists.laptop.org Regards, -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 23:21 -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: I'm no expert, but making the system work well without overcommit would probably require extensive modifications to the python interpreter, the fd.o libraries (dbus, gstreamer, telepathy, etc.), gecko, and maybe even X. All of these would need to allocate only as much memory as they need, and react appropriately when malloc returns NULL. In other words, 'tain't gonna happen. GLib will abort when g_malloc fails. This means that most libraries that use glib (GTK+) will not handle out of memory at all. It may be interesting to adjust the OOM score of some applications. This way it should be possible to protect the core applications (sugar-shell, journal, X, ...) from being killed in an OOM situation. Benjamin signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The new OLPC ads
The Lennon ad hasn't been released yet. I saw CDs with a version of it in the office this morning. SJ Martin writes: -- still, everyone mentions the Lennon ad and I haven't seen it. They mention and show the fast learners ad but no the Lennon ad. Anyone's seen it? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:45:52PM -0200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Well, I wasn't trying to give a solution, just suggested a less bad way to fail. IMO, just trying to find the perfect solution while not doing anything to improve what we have now is the worst of the possibilities. Oh, sure. I just thought that your proposed enhancement combines well with the stuff we've been discussing before :-) One good trick plus another one... What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. It could also (theoretically) allow us to do power-fully-off hibernation, a feature which seems very useful given the power usage patterns I've heard about from the field (laptop run until *dead*, suspend not used because of high power draw, hard power off). Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 15:29, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: I'm with Benjamin here, if the OOM killer kicked in soon enough and activities were clearly marked as first candidates to be killed, stability would be much much better. Combine that with Mac OS (pre X) style estimated memory allocation metadata for each activity and the user experience could perhaps even work. In terms of Ben's original email, what happens is a social problem, IMHO. Code that handles memory allocation failures is bloody hard to write -- because whatever decent handling you might want apply to the situation will also _need_ to allocate memory. So after many years of trying, the solution was a combination of virtual memory and a lie: memory will never run out. And if it does, the process will die badly because there is no way to die a nice death at that point. So we have some 15 years or more of programming with this soft malloc and memory never ends mantra. It works, and you can even request a ton of memory that doesn't exist... as long as you don't try to use it. Lots of nice tricks fall out of it - mmapping, etc - but again, the moment you actually use up memory, ouch. So IME the solution is to use very little memory - regardless of allocation. Malloc is just like a credit card. Well, I wasn't trying to give a solution, just suggested a less bad way to fail. IMO, just trying to find the perfect solution while not doing anything to improve what we have now is the worst of the possibilities. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The new OLPC ads
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:10 AM, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: I just assumed the OP did a mistake. And it's fun to try to read articles in foreign languages. I tried, and half-understood :-) -- still, everyone mentions the Lennon ad and I haven't seen it. They mention and show the fast learners ad but no the Lennon ad. Anyone's seen it? m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] New xs-config and a 5.1-dev iso...
Prepared these yesterday :-) - A new xs-config fixes the yum.conf problem - http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9123 http://fedora.laptop.org/xs/testing/olpc/9/i386/xs-config-0.5.10.gead84e5-1.noarch.rpm - A new iso candidate http://xs-dev.laptop.org/xs/other/?C=M;O=D cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] xs on cd
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:12 AM, Prithak Sharma prit...@olenepal.org wrote: Actually we have a boot CD that boots the first USB drive when the server does not support booting from USB. This is handy when we have old computers that cannot boot from USB. Sounds like a good trick to me :-) m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: The new OLPC ads
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Jean, Jean Piché j...@piche.com writes: http://www2.infopresse.com/blogs/actualites/archive/2008/12/15/article-29417.aspx This article is in french - maybe you better want to send this to the french OLPC mailing list: olpc-fra...@lists.laptop.org But then the amount of people that understand some french is bigger than the amount of people signed up for the olpc-france mailing list perhaps. And it's got nothing to do with France. It's in fact a Canadian publication. Writing about a 'world-wide' campaign. I'll stop now. I thought it was kinda interesting in any case. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The new OLPC ads
Ties Stuij cjst...@gmail.com writes: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Jean, Jean Piché j...@piche.com writes: http://www2.infopresse.com/blogs/actualites/archive/2008/12/15/article-29417.aspx This article is in french - maybe you better want to send this to the french OLPC mailing list: olpc-fra...@lists.laptop.org But then the amount of people that understand some french is bigger than the amount of people signed up for the olpc-france mailing list perhaps. And it's got nothing to do with France. It's in fact a Canadian publication. Writing about a 'world-wide' campaign. I'll stop now. Take it easy. I just assumed the OP did a mistake. No matter whether there are more french-speaking readers on devel@ than on olpc-france@, french articles are more relevant to olpc-france@ than to de...@. Especially when the article has nothing to do with xo/sugar development! Regards, -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
2008/12/16 Benjamin Berg benja...@sipsolutions.net: On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 23:21 -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: I'm no expert, but making the system work well without overcommit would probably require extensive modifications to the python interpreter, the fd.o libraries (dbus, gstreamer, telepathy, etc.), gecko, and maybe even X. All of these would need to allocate only as much memory as they need, and react appropriately when malloc returns NULL. In other words, 'tain't gonna happen. GLib will abort when g_malloc fails. This means that most libraries that use glib (GTK+) will not handle out of memory at all. It may be interesting to adjust the OOM score of some applications. This way it should be possible to protect the core applications (sugar-shell, journal, X, ...) from being killed in an OOM situation. I'm with Benjamin here, if the OOM killer kicked in soon enough and activities were clearly marked as first candidates to be killed, stability would be much much better. And if background activities were killed before the active one, we would avoid data loss. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Browse Start Page
I’ve set up a moc start page for the Browse activity. It seems that a great opportunity is missed on the browse from page for helping provide information to the students about their computer, about resources available to them, and possible connections to the school server. My moc-up can be found here (this is for demonstration, layout and design aspects can be changed and by that I mean improved) http://sixthcrusade.com/start.html The layout is pretty simple, using the YUI, i set up a few tabs with information in each. The first is the standard ‘start’ page where the student is going onto the net. Other tabs can be set up for specific subjects based on the needs of the classroom or OLPC itself. For example, a tab just on the XO with links to the GPL, where to get the code, etc, would help with one of the recent discussions on this list. There could be links to Python information, tutorials, or even an entire tab on Python. This set up will allow more robust information to get to the student beyond the simple start page. Also this helps with the not-so-quite intuitive bookmarks that browse currently offers. On a related note, TiddyWiki (http://tiddlywiki.com) now works in the Browse activity. This too could be set up as the homepage, again with sections pre-set up for use, but adding the ability for the student to add things to it, such as a daily journal, or collections of links and such. Either the YUI example or the TiddlyWiki could be used, or both in some combination (YUI as home page with link to the wiki) these are just my thoughts/suggestions. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 04:42:48PM -0500, Greg Smith wrote: Hi All, Thanks for all the feedback on my questions about what it would take to run a slimmed down Fedora 10 on the XO NAND. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-December/msg00022.html To reiterate, the goal is one distribution with two Desktop Environments (Sugar and one standard one). What of the case where all the functionality of Sugar can be replicated using a properly-configured standard desktop environment? (Strawman this sentence may be, but I think we should be open to this option moving forward.) I think the main work now is to pick the minimal package list that we need and will fit on the XO NAND. This is *the* work of making builds. Can anyone get a slimmed down Fedora 10 with window manager running on an XO? Yes. I have a build tool which does so. See: http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/erik/rpmxo;a=summary or just: git clone git://dev.laptop.org/users/erik/rpmxo The build tool depends on the current development version of rinse, a rpm bootstrapping utility. For our testing purposes I have included a copy of the rinse mercurial repository in that git tree (http://rinse.repository.steve.org.uk/). Then install rinse by following the instructions in the rinse.repository.steve.org.uk directory in the rpmxo repo created by the above git command. You will need perl, rpm, and wget (note the dependencies listed at http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/rinse). Rinse manages a variety of common issues encountered when build and re-building images, such as caching rpms, bootstrapping yum, and running post-install scripts. It does so in a relatively platform-independent manner. The author and I have been working together to update the system for Fedora 10 and to increase its configurability. (Please note that I have submitted changes to the author's repo which may not yet be reflected in a fresh clone, this is why I have temporarily added the repository to the rpmxo git tree.) To run the build script do: sudo ./initchroot.sh ... in the rpmxo git repository directory yielded by the git clone command above. By default this will make f10.root. Then generate an image to flash onto an unsecured laptop by using: sudo ./mkjffs2.sh fc10.root fc10.img This will create the .crc and .img files which are required for OFW to flash the image onto the laptop. Putting these on a USB key and typing: copy-nand u:\fc10.img ... at the OFW prompt on an XO will flash the system onto the internal NAND. Rebooting should yield a prompt This procedure is still in alpha. Interested parties should test and immediately inform me of any issues encountered. The hard part will come when we need to pick the bare minimum set of functionality. I especially want to know what additional libraries/RPMs/features we need to install beyond what we alrady have in XO 8.2.0. I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard. Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these tools are typically used to do. The experience of building a Fedora system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian, where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is well-supported by the community. It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora community in doing so as possible. It just isn't easy and I have felt like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a build script. (I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue is good attention.) Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] Debugging tips for presence over Telepathy/Gabble?
Looking for Telepathy/Gabble hints... With the new ejabberd in 0.5 (2.0.1 + Collabora's patches) people have reported very unreliable Network View listings. The problem seems to be that everyone disappears after a short while, and if you leave it for a few hs, everyone reappears. The thread starting with this message has quite a bit of good info - including the fact that the problem is visible with standard xmpp clients too - http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2008-December/002658.html I am starting to work on reproducing it here, with a small number of XOs. Haven't worked on this area before -- so I am looking for good hints on this from people who've been doing this lots ;-) thanks in advance... martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Browse Start Page
Thanks, Jacob. It would be good to see other very different designs for the front page as well. I think it's important to include easy ways to - search for help and info about OLPC/XO/Sugar [with links to Help activity?] - learn about python / smalltalk / C / source / programming in general - search the web [with options for diff. engines] - search the computer [for documents / metadata; with links to journal-search?] TiddlyWiki in my experience is easy to mess up and be unable to restore... are there solutions for this now? SJ On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Jacob Haddon tha...@yahoo.com wrote: I've set up a moc start page for the Browse activity. It seems that a great opportunity is missed on the browse from page for helping provide information to the students about their computer, about resources available to them, and possible connections to the school server. My moc-up can be found here (this is for demonstration, layout and design aspects can be changed and by that I mean improved) http://sixthcrusade.com/start.html The layout is pretty simple, using the YUI, i set up a few tabs with information in each. The first is the standard 'start' page where the student is going onto the net. Other tabs can be set up for specific subjects based on the needs of the classroom or OLPC itself. For example, a tab just on the XO with links to the GPL, where to get the code, etc, would help with one of the recent discussions on this list. There could be links to Python information, tutorials, or even an entire tab on Python. This set up will allow more robust information to get to the student beyond the simple start page. Also this helps with the not-so-quite intuitive bookmarks that browse currently offers. On a related note, TiddyWiki (http://tiddlywiki.com) now works in the Browse activity. This too could be set up as the homepage, again with sections pre-set up for use, but adding the ability for the student to add things to it, such as a daily journal, or collections of links and such. Either the YUI example or the TiddlyWiki could be used, or both in some combination (YUI as home page with link to the wiki) these are just my thoughts/suggestions. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] One instance activity
Thank you all for your answers. What i am actually facing is a problem with a sugarizing. I need to run the script, copy-to-Journal.py from a C program. 1 - With exec dbus-launch CActivity $args in the sugarActivity file, i can run multiple instances but i cant run the script. It crashes throwing a python error. In olpc wiki says that the scripts only works running with olpc user. I dont know if the dbus-launch changes something in the way the scripts are called. Error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.AttributeError: Traceback (most recent call last): File /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/service.py, line 692, in _message_cb retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords) File /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/olpc/datastore/datastore.py, line 215, in create mp.create_async(props, filelike, can_move=transfer_ownership, AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'create_async' 2 - But changing it to exec CActivity $args the scripts run perfect, but the second instance of the activity throws an error when trying to load or save configuration... Configuration server couldn't be contacted: D-BUS error: Method LookupExtended with signature ssb on interface org.gnome.GConf.Database doesn't exist *** SugarActivity file: sugarPlanilla *** #!/bin/sh args= while [ -n $2 ] ; do case $1 in -b | --bundle-id) export SUGAR_BUNDLE_ID=$2 ;; -a | --activity-id) export SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ID=$2 ;; -o | --object-id) export SUGAR_OBJECT_ID=$2 ; echo o $2; args=$args -o $2 ;; -u | --uri) export SUGAR_URI=$2 ;; *) echo unknown argument $1 $2 ;; esac shift;shift done echo $args export LD_PRELOAD=$SUGAR_BUNDLE_PATH/lib/libsugarize.so export NET_WM_NAME=Planilla exec gnumeric $args and the Activity.info runs the sugarActivity file. exec = sugarPlanilla Thanks, Pablo Posada Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de 12/10/2008 11:17 AM CET To da...@lang.hm cc Pablo Posada pablo.pos...@tcs.com, OLPC Development devel@lists.laptop.org, Sugar Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org bcc Subject Re: [Sugar-devel] One instance activity On 10.12.2008, at 11:56, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 10.12.2008, at 03:57, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.12.2008, at 18:55, Eben Eliason wrote: Are you sure? Browse makes use of shared code, but still presents the user with the appearance of multiple instances. Right. The way to do it would be to create a unique D-Bus service in your activity. When the second instance tries to create that service it will notice that it already exists. It could then notify its first instance via said D-Bus service. you don't need to use D-Bus for this, it can be done by X without any other communication channels. I don't know the details for how to do this, but I've seen mozilla/ firefox do this for a few years. to see this start firefox on one machine, connect to another machine and point the display back to the first one. then try and start firefox on that second machine. the end result will be a new window opening up, but running on the first machine (if you have trouble seeing the difference, make the two machines have different bookmarks, or give one network access that the other doesn't have) please don't develop new mechanisms to do things that already exist. It's not a new mechanism. The usage of a named D-Bus service to ensure unique program instances is documented and not my invention (though I cannot remember where I saw it first). I should have written One way to do this would be ..., I give you that. But you cannot know which way would be preferable for a given activity. And since it is private to the activity and does not affect other activities, no harm is done either way. E.g., twiddling X properties is hard in various high-level languages, in particular when using higher-level UI toolkits. Sugar currently requires two custom X properties and this is causing activity authors considerable pain. Even Sugar itself had to resort to C code, adding a custom native library to manipulate these properties, it was not easy in pure Python. This is in stark contrast to the nicely general and easy-to-use Python D-Bus bindings, which are similarly available in other high-level languages. So please consider that not all people like having to go down into the machine room to make new plumbing with a C compiler. Having done too much of that myself I can relate to them. my initial reaction to this is that this sounds like a gap in the python libraries that would be very useful to fill. getting someone to write a python library to better access the X properties would help many areas. any idea why nobody has written one yet? Python is much better than many languages at letting you write a
Re: No surprise on memory
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Erik Garrison e...@laptop.org wrote: What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. There's been discussion on this list about it. I don't think the mtd driver does any wear-levelling, and the swap usage patterns are probably murder. googling about I landed this paper from an Intel guy - http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=linux+swap+mtd+nand www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Collaboration unreliable 0.5
2008/12/16 Anna ascho...@gmail.com: On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 7:47 PM, David Leeming leem...@pipolfastaem.gov.sb wrote: I am using USB active antenna (prototype). Has always worked well with 0.4. I've used both the AA and AP's and it doesn't seem to matter as far as this ejabberd issue goes. Right. My question was because I've seen _some_ models of AAs misbehave a bit with the firmware present in 0.5. The very early AA prototypes are subtly different -- and I've seen them reset themselves every few hours. Later black-box prototypes and pretty-green AAs should nothave as much trouble (and yet, I haven't tested in thoroughly but I suspect they do get wedged sometimes). (Fixes are hard, but are on their way - in the short term at least AAs are not supported.) My user group is fairly loyal and extremely patient. Big thanks to them and to you. I'm working today to repro and diagnose the problem, with an Active Antenna. Any further hints as to minimum steps to repro welcome. Have to say your wide testing of clients guves me excellent datapoints! thanks! martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
greg wrote: Hi All, Thanks for all the feedback on my questions about what it would take to run a slimmed down Fedora 10 on the XO NAND. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-December/msg00022.html To reiterate, the goal is one distribution with two Desktop Environments (Sugar and one standard one). I think the main work now is to pick the minimal package list that we need and will fit on the XO NAND. Can anyone get a slimmed down Fedora 10 with window manager running on an XO? yes. install any joyride. i'm being flip, of course, but please be precise. our installs _are_ slimmed down fedora releases. and sugar _is_ a window manager. (but seriously: we only need to add to what we have -- we don't need to start from scratch, rebuilding and/or subtracting from fedora.) paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org give one laptop, get one laptop --- http://www.laptop.com/xo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO
Hi, (but seriously: we only need to add to what we have -- we don't need to start from scratch, rebuilding and/or subtracting from fedora.) In particular, I think: * take a Joyride build * yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment * http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/sugar-xfce-control should be portable to GNOME in a mechanical (s/xfce/gnome/g) fashion. * follow the rest of the instructions in: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Xfce#Install_Sugar.2FXFCE_Control_Panel to launch GNOME if it's been selected in the control panel * write a GNOME menu item/desktop icon to switch back to Sugar - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] One instance activity
Hi Pablo, 2008/12/16 Pablo Posada pablo.pos...@tcs.com: Thank you all for your answers. What i am actually facing is a problem with a sugarizing. I need to run the script, copy-to-Journal.py from a C program. If what you want is to exec copy-to-journal.py from gnumeric, then using one of the functions listed in the link below may be best: http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/2.18/glib-Spawning-Processes.html 1 - With exec dbus-launch CActivity $args in the sugarActivity file, i can run multiple instances but i cant run the script. It crashes throwing a python error. In olpc wiki says that the scripts only works running with olpc user. I dont know if the dbus-launch changes something in the way the scripts are called. Error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.AttributeError: Traceback (most recent call last): File /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/service.py, line 692, in _message_cb retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords) File /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/olpc/datastore/datastore.py, line 215, in create mp.create_async(props, filelike, can_move=transfer_ownership, AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'create_async' What is happening here is that dbus-launch creates a new session bus and tries to activate a new instance of the datastore, which fails to open the index because the existing datastore instance is locking it. Why are you calling dbus-launch? 2 - But changing it to exec CActivity $args the scripts run perfect, but the second instance of the activity throws an error when trying to load or save configuration... Configuration server couldn't be contacted: D-BUS error: Method LookupExtended with signature ssb on interface org.gnome.GConf.Database doesn't exist Not sure why you get this error, even less only on the second instance, but you can check if that method exists with the given signature by getting the introspection data in the way explained in the link below: http://unmaintainable.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/using-dbus-introspection/ HTH, Tomeu *** SugarActivity file: sugarPlanilla *** #!/bin/sh args= while [ -n $2 ] ; do case $1 in -b | --bundle-id) export SUGAR_BUNDLE_ID=$2 ;; -a | --activity-id) export SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ID=$2 ;; -o | --object-id) export SUGAR_OBJECT_ID=$2 ; echo o $2; args=$args -o $2 ;; -u | --uri) export SUGAR_URI=$2 ;; *) echo unknown argument $1 $2 ;; esac shift;shift done echo $args export LD_PRELOAD=$SUGAR_BUNDLE_PATH/lib/libsugarize.so export NET_WM_NAME=Planilla exec gnumeric $args and the Activity.info runs the sugarActivity file. exec = sugarPlanilla Thanks, Pablo Posada Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de 12/10/2008 11:17 AM CET To da...@lang.hm cc Pablo Posada pablo.pos...@tcs.com, OLPC Development devel@lists.laptop.org, Sugar Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org bcc Subject Re: [Sugar-devel] One instance activity On 10.12.2008, at 11:56, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 10.12.2008, at 03:57, da...@lang.hm wrote: On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.12.2008, at 18:55, Eben Eliason wrote: Are you sure? Browse makes use of shared code, but still presents the user with the appearance of multiple instances. Right. The way to do it would be to create a unique D-Bus service in your activity. When the second instance tries to create that service it will notice that it already exists. It could then notify its first instance via said D-Bus service. you don't need to use D-Bus for this, it can be done by X without any other communication channels. I don't know the details for how to do this, but I've seen mozilla/ firefox do this for a few years. to see this start firefox on one machine, connect to another machine and point the display back to the first one. then try and start firefox on that second machine. the end result will be a new window opening up, but running on the first machine (if you have trouble seeing the difference, make the two machines have different bookmarks, or give one network access that the other doesn't have) please don't develop new mechanisms to do things that already exist. It's not a new mechanism. The usage of a named D-Bus service to ensure unique program instances is documented and not my invention (though I cannot remember where I saw it first). I should have written One way to do this would be ..., I give you that. But you cannot know which way would be preferable for a given activity. And since it is private to the activity and does not affect other activities, no harm is done either way. E.g., twiddling X properties is hard in various high-level languages, in particular when using higher-level UI toolkits. Sugar currently requires two custom X properties and this is causing activity
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
Hi Paul, I mean slimmed down Fedora (probably shouldn't even call it Fedora at that point) plus Gnome, KDE of XFCE window manager. Is that precise enough? If its as easy as yum install gnome on top of 8.2.0 image, that would be great! Thanks, Greg S p...@laptop.org wrote: greg wrote: Hi All, Thanks for all the feedback on my questions about what it would take to run a slimmed down Fedora 10 on the XO NAND. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-December/msg00022.html To reiterate, the goal is one distribution with two Desktop Environments (Sugar and one standard one). I think the main work now is to pick the minimal package list that we need and will fit on the XO NAND. Can anyone get a slimmed down Fedora 10 with window manager running on an XO? yes. install any joyride. i'm being flip, of course, but please be precise. our installs _are_ slimmed down fedora releases. and sugar _is_ a window manager. (but seriously: we only need to add to what we have -- we don't need to start from scratch, rebuilding and/or subtracting from fedora.) paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org give one laptop, get one laptop --- http://www.laptop.com/xo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:56:47PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote: Hi, (but seriously: we only need to add to what we have -- we don't need to start from scratch, rebuilding and/or subtracting from fedora.) In particular, I think: * take a Joyride build * yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment * http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/sugar-xfce-control should be portable to GNOME in a mechanical (s/xfce/gnome/g) fashion. * follow the rest of the instructions in: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Xfce#Install_Sugar.2FXFCE_Control_Panel to launch GNOME if it's been selected in the control panel * write a GNOME menu item/desktop icon to switch back to Sugar That seems sufficient to meet the requirement. Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Well, I wasn't trying to give a solution, just suggested a less bad way to fail. IMO, just trying to find the perfect solution while not doing anything to improve what we have now is the worst of the possibilities. Oh, sure. I just thought that your proposed enhancement combines well with the stuff we've been discussing before :-) One good trick plus another one... . m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Last XO test day of the year
Hello Wellington testers This Saturday will be the last test day of the year and I am getting excited about sharing everyone's holiday plans (and any exciting places XOs are holidaying with you). We have a few events lined up for the new year, mark 12 and 27 January in your diaries for some international guests - I hope to confirm exact times and locations by Saturday. The http://linux.conf.au/ is 19-24 January in Hobart and the Wellington XO test group have been invited to attend the Oceania OLPC meeting that will be held Sunday 18th. There are some OLPC and Sugar presentations at the conference too. Andrew McMillan is attending so those who can't make I suggest you gleen insights from Andrew on his return. See you at the Cross 10.30am (ish). If you can't make it, have a great holiday break and see you 12 January. Kind regards Tabitha Roder (64)21482229 Support OLPC G1G1 - laptop.org/xo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO
On 16.12.2008, at 18:56, Chris Ball wrote: Hi, (but seriously: we only need to add to what we have -- we don't need to start from scratch, rebuilding and/or subtracting from fedora.) In particular, I think: * take a Joyride build * yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment * http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/sugar-xfce-control should be portable to GNOME in a mechanical (s/xfce/gnome/g) fashion. * follow the rest of the instructions in: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Xfce#Install_Sugar.2FXFCE_Control_Panel to launch GNOME if it's been selected in the control panel * write a GNOME menu item/desktop icon to switch back to Sugar Just curious - why gnome? Isn't xfce supposed to be much lighter on resources? - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: I'm with Benjamin here, if the OOM killer kicked in soon enough and activities were clearly marked as first candidates to be killed, stability would be much much better. Combine that with Mac OS (pre X) style estimated memory allocation metadata for each activity and the user experience could perhaps even work. In terms of Ben's original email, what happens is a social problem, IMHO. Code that handles memory allocation failures is bloody hard to write -- because whatever decent handling you might want apply to the situation will also _need_ to allocate memory. So after many years of trying, the solution was a combination of virtual memory and a lie: memory will never run out. And if it does, the process will die badly because there is no way to die a nice death at that point. So we have some 15 years or more of programming with this soft malloc and memory never ends mantra. It works, and you can even request a ton of memory that doesn't exist... as long as you don't try to use it. Lots of nice tricks fall out of it - mmapping, etc - but again, the moment you actually use up memory, ouch. So IME the solution is to use very little memory - regardless of allocation. Malloc is just like a credit card. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO
Hi, * yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment I gave this a try with latest Joyride (2592), and get a couple of depsolving problems. Maybe one of the RPM ninjas on fedora-olpc-list could take a look at how we could resolve these? Alternatively, maybe we should be hand-picking the list of packages to add, since I see some deps in there we don't want, e.g.: -- Processing Dependency: texlive = 2007-35.fc10 for package: kpathsea -- Processing Dependency: httpd = 2.2.0 for package: gnome-user-share Here's the list of dependency errors: -- Finished Dependency Resolution gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems - Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) Thanks, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: performance work
Forwarding this to devel. Any comments or suggestions on how we can start to optimize graphics performance is appreciated. It looks like we have a good test bed in place which should help us focus on the right bottlenecks. Thanks, Greg S Greg Smith wrote: Hi Neil, That's great data, thanks! I put these links here for tracking: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap/General_UI_sluggishness John, Do you have further suggestions on what bottle necks this points to? What part of the code should be optimized to improve the graphics performance based on these results and what do you think Neil's next steps should be? Thanks, Greg S Neil Graham wrote: On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 15:43 -0500, Greg Smith wrote: Three ideas on how you can help. 1 - There is a recent thread on SVG performance. See: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2008-December/010200.html You may find something there you can contribute to. 2 - I also get the impression we do need to work on the Cairo front. If you can list a set of bugs, we can flag them as useful for 9.1 and track them. Well To start off with I compiled the cairo benchmarks and ran them on my slowest PC (2Ghz) and the XO (from a basic startx ) http://screamingduck.com/Cruft/cairo_benchmark_XO.txt http://screamingduck.com/Cruft/cairo_benchmark_2GHz_E2180.txt At least this gives me some base data to work with. Some of the tests on the XO have some eyebrow raising results, such as... downsample-nearest Testing 512x512-lenna... 0: 851892 (1.98 ms) 1: 855671 (1.99 ms) 2: 905907 (2.10 ms) 3: 862388 (2.00 ms) 4: 852743 (1.98 ms) downsample-nearest-xlib Testing 512x512-lenna... 0: 10102252 (23.44 ms) 1: 33629542 (78.02 ms) 2: 33715350 (78.22 ms) 3: 34031523 (78.96 ms) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fixed Puritan bug on F10/Intrepid
Michael, The build was successfully made on both F10 and Intrepid. How could I slip in a language pack? How could I set the Timezone for the build? How could I set the default language for sugar? Regards, Reuben Michael Stone wrote: Reuben, I was able to reproduce and work around the rpmdb version problem you found today on a new Intrepid vm I created on weka.l.o. Would you mind retesting with my new 767 compilation? (To do so, just wipe the compilation and re-clone it. I modified the cloning instructions so that, in the future, you'd be able to run 'git pull' to update.) Thanks, Michael ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 2593
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2593 Changes in build 2593 from build: 2592 Size delta: 0.40M -dbus-x11 1.2.8-1.fc10 +dbus-x11 1:1.2.4-2.fc10 -kernel 2.6.27-20081211.2.olpc.d2f19da5993402b +kernel 2.6.27-20081216.1.olpc.f87aa8759c39381 -yum 3.2.20-3.fc10 +yum 3.2.20-5.fc10 -PolicyKit 0.9-3.fc10 +PolicyKit 0.9-4.fc10 -bash 3.2-29.fc10 +bash 3.2-30.fc10 -dbus 1.2.8-1.fc10 +dbus 1:1.2.4-2.fc10 -dbus-libs 1.2.8-1.fc10 +dbus-libs 1:1.2.4-2.fc10 -dhclient 12:4.0.0-32.fc10 +dhclient 12:4.0.0-33.fc10 -freetype 2.3.7-1.fc10 +freetype 2.3.7-2.fc10 -gawk 3.1.5-18.fc10 +gawk 3.1.6-2.fc10 -glibc 2.9-2 +glibc 2.9-3 -glibc-common 2.9-2 +glibc-common 2.9-3 -gtk2 2.14.4-3.fc10 +gtk2 2.14.5-3.fc10 -iproute 2.6.26-1.fc10 +iproute 2.6.27-1.fc10 -libdhcp4client 12:4.0.0-32.fc10 +libdhcp4client 12:4.0.0-33.fc10 +libsoup22 2.2.105-3.fc10 -loudmouth 1.4.2-1.fc10 +loudmouth 1.4.3-1.fc10 -shared-mime-info 0.51-4.fc10 +shared-mime-info 0.51-5.fc10 -telepathy-glib 0.7.19-1.olpc4 +telepathy-glib 0.7.20-1.olpc4 -telepathy-salut 0.3.5-2.olpc4 +telepathy-salut 0.3.6-1.olpc4 -xapian-bindings-python 1.0.8-1.fc10 +xapian-bindings-python 1.0.9-1.fc10 -xapian-core-libs 1.0.8-1.fc10 +xapian-core-libs 1.0.9-2.fc10 -xorg-x11-server-Xorg 1.5.3-5.fc10 +xorg-x11-server-Xorg 1.5.3-6.fc10 -xorg-x11-server-common 1.5.3-5.fc10 +xorg-x11-server-common 1.5.3-6.fc10 --- Changes for PolicyKit 0.9-4.fc10 from 0.9-3.fc10 --- + D-Bus policy fix (fd.o #18948) --- Changes for glibc 2.9-3 from 2.9-2 --- + temporarily disable _nss_dns_gethostbyname4_r (#459756) + NIS hostname lookup fixes (#473073, #474800, BZ#7058) + fix unsetenv (#472941) --- Included libsoup22 version 2.2.105-3.fc10 --- -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What's going on with Text To Speech on the XO?
Ed, Thanks for your response. I never questioned that there was still interest in TTS on the XO. What I was wondering is if there was any progress made by Hemant Goyal or anyone else in getting the Speech-Dispatcher software included with the Sugar distribution, if the newer version of Python that resolved the power management issue was included, etc. I've sent a couple of emails to Hemant and haven't heard back from him. I was wondering if he was still working on these things, or if someone else had taken over his work, etc. He was making RPMs for Fedora for installing speech-dispatcher. James Simmons Edward Cherlin wrote: Welcome back. There is significant interest from other organizations in our use of TTS with text coloring. I have just started discussions with the Doug Engelbart Foundation, Creative Commons ccLearn, Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research, and OLE about a new project to create a full range of teaching materials around Sugar. TTS-TC is important for literacy, of course, and also for language learning. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: What's going on with Text To Speech on the XO?
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:22 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Ed, Thanks for your response. I never questioned that there was still interest in TTS on the XO. What I was wondering is if there was any progress made by Hemant Goyal or anyone else in getting the Speech-Dispatcher software included with the Sugar distribution, if the newer version of Python that resolved the power management issue was included, etc. I've sent a couple of emails to Hemant and haven't heard back from him. I was wondering if he was still working on these things, or if someone else had taken over his work, etc. I'm starting a textbook initiative, and haven't kept up with software development that much. I would also like to have answers to your questions, because we will need TTS for some of the early-grade textbooks and for language learning. He was making RPMs for Fedora for installing speech-dispatcher. James Simmons Edward Cherlin wrote: Welcome back. There is significant interest from other organizations in our use of TTS with text coloring. I have just started discussions with the Doug Engelbart Foundation, Creative Commons ccLearn, Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research, and OLE about a new project to create a full range of teaching materials around Sugar. TTS-TC is important for literacy, of course, and also for language learning. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO
Hi, * yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment I gave this a try with latest Joyride (2592), and get a couple of depsolving problems. Maybe one of the RPM ninjas on fedora-olpc-list could take a look at how we could resolve these? Alternatively, maybe we should be hand-picking the list of packages to add, since I see some deps in there we don't want, e.g.: -- Processing Dependency: texlive = 2007-35.fc10 for package: kpathsea -- Processing Dependency: httpd = 2.2.0 for package: gnome-user-share Here's the list of dependency errors: -- Finished Dependency Resolution gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems -- Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 from olpc_development has depsolving problems - Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-15.fc9 is needed by package cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.22-15.fc9.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-gnome-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) Error: Missing Dependency: gnome-python2 = 2.22.1-3.olpc3 is needed by package gnome-python2-bonobo-2.22.1-3.olpc3.i386 (olpc_development) Do you have an old OLPC-3/8.2 repo hanging around. Those should all be either fc10 (unless they weren't recompiled in the F-10 rawhide) or olpc4 so you shouldn't be seeing any olpc3/fc9 packages. Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
Hi Paul, I mean slimmed down Fedora (probably shouldn't even call it Fedora at that point) plus Gnome, KDE of XFCE window manager. Is that precise enough? If its as easy as yum install gnome on top of 8.2.0 image, that would be great! It should be that simple with some caveats. well one word really. dependencies! Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 02:44:17PM -0500, Bobby Powers wrote: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Erik Garrison e...@laptop.org wrote: I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard. Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these tools are typically used to do. The experience of building a Fedora system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian, where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is well-supported by the community. It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora community in doing so as possible. It just isn't easy and I have felt like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a build script. (I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue is good attention.) sure :) why aren't you building off mstone's work on Puritan? It seems like a lot of duplication of effort; unless I'm missing something, the biggest difference seems to be that yours may be more debian-like. For one, Puritan is a multi-file python framework, which, for a build script which I would like to be as short and clear as possible, may be overkill. Shellscript is plenty concise for this work. I was able to get everything done that I needed without the script getting unweildy. I was additionally able to directly pull in some of the bashisms from the xodist toolset which deal with partitioned image creation, configuration heredocs, etc. (thank you dilinger and xodist devs). Additionally, writing my own simple build system was a great way to work through all the issues involved in setting up a given distribution to run on the XO. I came away from this work with a much better understanding of what issues our software development faces and the specific issues involved in setting up Fedora on the XO (such as nash and initramfsen jffs2 mounting woes). Otherwise, I don't think it really matters, and think that Michael and I should work together going forward. If Puritan does exactly what I have been trying to do and more, then I support working with it and will move that way. That said, if there is interest in having the 'simplest' build system possible, I can continue work on the rpmxo buildscripts. Hope that explains my perspective. Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: performance work
Greg Smith wrote: Forwarding this to devel. Any comments or suggestions on how we can start to optimize graphics performance is appreciated. That is a rather open ended question. I'll try to point you at some interesting places to start with the understanding that not one thing is going to solve your all problems - the total processing time is almost definitely a cumulative effect of all of the different stages of the rendering pipeline. I would start by establishing a 1:1 baseline - it is great to compare against a 2Ghz Intel box, but that the differences between the two platforms are just too extreme. No matter how good the graphics gets, we are still constrained by the Geode clock speed, FPU performance, and GPU feature set (what it can, and most importantly _cannot_ do). The first thing you need to do is determine which operations you really care about. I would first target the operations that deal with text and rounded corners, since those will be the most complex. Straight blits and rectangle fills are important, but less interesting, since they involve the least work in the path between you and the GPU. I recommend running the Cairo benchmarks on the XO again with acceleration turned off in the X driver. This will give you a good indication of which operations are being accelerated and which are not. If you have another Geode platform handy (which you should if you are at 1CC), then you might also want to run the same benchmarks again against the vesa driver (which will be completely unaccelerated). The difference in the three sets of data will give you a good idea of which operations are unaccelerated, and which operations are being further delayed by the Geode X driver. The low hanging fruit here are the operations that are not being accelerated; you will need to determine why. Sometimes its because the GPU cannot handle the operation (for example, operations on a8 destinations), or it might because the operation was never implemented in the code, or it could be that the code is just downright buggy. This is where it is imortant to know which operations you care most about. You could probably find a good number of bugs in the two pass operations (PictOpXor and PictOpAtop) but both are rarely used and not a good use of your time. I have no problems at all with biasing the driver toward very common operations. If there is something that can be done to the driver to improve text rendering at the cost of say, rotation, then I'm all for it. Outside of the driver, you are pretty much limited to evaluating alogrithms, either in the software render code (pixman) or in the cairo code. For those situations, I have less knowledge, but I do advise you to remember the two hardware constraints which I mentioned above - CPU clock speed and FPU performance. Remember that alot of this code was written recently when nobody in their right mind has 1Ghz on their desktop - no matter how hard they try, this will end up biasing the code slightly. FPU performance is more serious. The Geode does not do well with heavy FPU use - to mitigate the damage, try to use single precision only, and try not to use a lot of FPU operations in a row because the Geode pipeline stalls horribly if two FPU operations are scheduled one after another. Finally, I will remind you that you that no amount of hacking is going to magically make the Geode + Geode GPU all of a sudden look like a modern desktop Radeon. There are many modern GPU concepts that desktop toolkits are becoming increasingly dependent on that the Geode just cannot grok. Fading icons and anti-aliasing and animations may look really neat on your 2Ghz Intel, but they are a major strain on CPU resources on the Geode. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, but I am saying that at some point you will have to make compromises between what the UI does, and what the hardware can do. Until you are willing to bite that bullet, any optimizations you under the hood will be a treatment but never a cure. Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Downloading Scratch project to XO
Hi, Bert. Re: does Scratch accept a .sb file on its command line? Yes, it does. The problem is that the journal is changing the file extension to something like .bin, and Scratch doesn't think a .bin file is a Scratch project file and simply ignores it. I believe the issue is just that we need one extra file in the Scratch activity info to tells the Journal that Scratch handles the file extensions .sb and .sprite. I figured out what that file should have in it a few weeks back but haven't yet had a chance to try it. I'll give it a try and, if it works, I'll release a new version of Scratch on the XO that includes that file. -- John On Dec 15, 2008, at 2:46 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: John, does Scratch accept a .sb file on its command line? If so, the launcher script could get the file from the Journal and pass it on. - Bert - On 15.12.2008, at 18:53, John Maloney wrote: Hi, Phillipp. Thanks for reporting this problem. I believe there is a way to tell the XO to associate the .sb file extension with Scratch. I will look into that and let you know if I figure it out. -- John On Dec 14, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Philipp Kocher wrote: Hi I would like to download Scratch projects from a local server to the XO. On the server I added the following line to the file /etc/ mime.types: application/scratch sb The apache server is now sending files with sb-extension with mime type application/scratch. On the XO the mime type gets stored in the datastore metadata-file. After adding the following line to the Scratch activity/ activity.info file, Scratch gets started when clicking on the Scratch project in the Journal: mime_types = application/scratch The problem is that the project doesn't get opened. The scratch start script bin/scratch-activity gets called with the -u argument holding a datastore object ID, but the script doesn't handle the -u argument. How can I convert a datastore object ID to a filename, so scratch can open the project? And how do I get the necessary permissions to access the file? Thanks, Philipp Pepyride School Cambodia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
The hard part will come when we need to pick the bare minimum set of functionality. I especially want to know what additional libraries/RPMs/features we need to install beyond what we alrady have in XO 8.2.0. I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard. Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these tools are typically used to do. The experience of building a Fedora system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian, where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is well-supported by the community. It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora community in doing so as possible. It just isn't easy and I have felt like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a build script. (I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue is good attention.) Fedora has a set of tools now called Appliance-Tools [1] for creating this sort of thing. You can use it to specify a minimal build and then pull in the extra stuff you want, specify repositories etc. I used it to build a joyride VM I could use for slicing and dicing package deps and the like the other day in around 15 mins (plus the time it takes to construct the actual filesystem etc). I can post the kickstart file somewhere if your interested in using it as a base. The image it produced has a boot issue that I need to get time to fix (or work out why its got root fs issues) but it was a quick demo to see if it helped. I think this is what you are after. There are still some issues with packages pulling in too many deps and as time permits I'm trying to work through most of these issues while not having to fork half the distribution which in turn makes it more work for the OLPC guys. Its a fine line. I can help you as much as possible, I'm relatively free for the next couple of days but will be then travelling over the next couple of weeks so will have limited connectivity. I have no issue with the flames, but would much prefer to help you out than flame back :-D Peter [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ApplianceTools https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ApplianceTools ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Downloading Scratch project to XO
Hi, Bert. Thanks for the help on this. To clarify, what I was doing was using the clipboard to move a downloaded Scratch project file. I dragged it from the Journal to the clipboard, then went to the Scratch activity and dropped it onto the Scratch window. So that's a somewhat different path from trying to open the project directly in the Journal. It would be great to get both paths working eventually. Re: But this retrieval could be done in the Scratch wrapper script. Cool! That would be an easy solution for me if the wrapper script is not too complex. Could you give me a hint about what the wrapper script would look like? Meanwhile, I will try to make the drag-n-drop-from-clipboard solution work. -- John On Dec 16, 2008, at 6:35 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: Not quite, Sugar will not actually pass the file name of the Journal entry when launching the activity. Instead, it passes the id of a datastore object, and the activity is supposed to retrieve that from the datastore. But this retrieval could be done in the Scratch wrapper script. - Bert - On 17.12.2008, at 00:35, John Maloney wrote: Hi, Bert. Re: does Scratch accept a .sb file on its command line? Yes, it does. The problem is that the journal is changing the file extension to something like .bin, and Scratch doesn't think a .bin file is a Scratch project file and simply ignores it. I believe the issue is just that we need one extra file in the Scratch activity info to tells the Journal that Scratch handles the file extensions .sb and .sprite. I figured out what that file should have in it a few weeks back but haven't yet had a chance to try it. I'll give it a try and, if it works, I'll release a new version of Scratch on the XO that includes that file. -- John On Dec 15, 2008, at 2:46 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: John, does Scratch accept a .sb file on its command line? If so, the launcher script could get the file from the Journal and pass it on. - Bert - On 15.12.2008, at 18:53, John Maloney wrote: Hi, Phillipp. Thanks for reporting this problem. I believe there is a way to tell the XO to associate the .sb file extension with Scratch. I will look into that and let you know if I figure it out. -- John On Dec 14, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Philipp Kocher wrote: Hi I would like to download Scratch projects from a local server to the XO. On the server I added the following line to the file /etc/ mime.types: application/scratch sb The apache server is now sending files with sb-extension with mime type application/scratch. On the XO the mime type gets stored in the datastore metadata- file. After adding the following line to the Scratch activity/ activity.info file, Scratch gets started when clicking on the Scratch project in the Journal: mime_types = application/scratch The problem is that the project doesn't get opened. The scratch start script bin/scratch-activity gets called with the -u argument holding a datastore object ID, but the script doesn't handle the -u argument. How can I convert a datastore object ID to a filename, so scratch can open the project? And how do I get the necessary permissions to access the file? Thanks, Philipp Pepyride School Cambodia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
Erik, what is the latest status on Compcache? Obviously, this could relieve some of the pressure, but does not remove the need for an OOM strategy (or strategies). Jameson On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Erik Garrison e...@laptop.org wrote: What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. There's been discussion on this list about it. I don't think the mtd driver does any wear-levelling, and the swap usage patterns are probably murder. googling about I landed this paper from an Intel guy - http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=linux+swap+mtd+nand www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Translation links from Activities
The links to Pootle from the activites seem to be broken. I tried both Record and Write, and the links in the sidebar on the right for pootle are all broken. Cheers, wad ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 12:32:58AM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote: The hard part will come when we need to pick the bare minimum set of functionality. I especially want to know what additional libraries/RPMs/features we need to install beyond what we alrady have in XO 8.2.0. I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard. Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these tools are typically used to do. The experience of building a Fedora system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian, where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is well-supported by the community. It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora community in doing so as possible. It just isn't easy and I have felt like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a build script. (I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue is good attention.) Fedora has a set of tools now called Appliance-Tools [1] for creating this sort of thing. You can use it to specify a minimal build and then pull in the extra stuff you want, specify repositories etc. I used it to build a joyride VM I could use for slicing and dicing package deps and the like the other day in around 15 mins (plus the time it takes to construct the actual filesystem etc). I can post the kickstart file somewhere if your interested in using it as a base. The image it produced has a boot issue that I need to get time to fix (or work out why its got root fs issues) but it was a quick demo to see if it helped. I heard about these (appliance tools) from Reuben. Any documentation you can post would be highly useful. There are a lot of ways to achieve a similar result, and a lot of people appear to have duplicated effort as a result. I think this is good, as it gives us some degree of selection moving forward. Eventually we need to coalesce effort around one system if we are going to update OLPC's build infrastructure successfully. FWIW: The boot issue might be related to nash's mount command not working for jffs2. The quick and dirty way to get around it was to drop busybox into an initramfs and change the root partition mount line in the init script to use busybox's mount command instead of nash's. Found nash extremely unweildy and am curious why it is used in the initramfs. The initrd I produced is: http://dev.laptop.org/~erik/rpmxo/initrd.img-2.6.25-20080925.1.olpc.f10b654367d7065.busybox (It is built against the stock 8.2-767 kernel using stock Fedora initramfs-tools, I just unpacked it and dropped busybox and its library deps in and made the afformentioned hack to init.) I think this is what you are after. There are still some issues with packages pulling in too many deps and as time permits I'm trying to work through most of these issues while not having to fork half the distribution which in turn makes it more work for the OLPC guys. Its a fine line. Yes. This seems to be endemic, but it appears to be generally a problem for systems which don't get stretched in this direction (I have seen the same kind of bloat while testing Ubuntu builds). I can help you as much as possible, I'm relatively free for the next couple of days but will be then travelling over the next couple of weeks so will have limited connectivity. Great! Any way you'd like to help. Paring down dependencies is crucial. 'Minimal' package lists would be also very helpful. I am hacking mine together and I'm worried I might miss critical things that would be obvious to a more experienced Fedora developer. One package-level curiosity I've had is how to auto-remove packages which were automatically installed to satisfy the dependencies of a manually installed package after said packge is removed. I have no issue with the flames, but would much prefer to help you out than flame back :-D And I prefer to cooperate as well! Thanks, Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: performance work
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 16:23 -0700, Jordan Crouse wrote: I would start by establishing a 1:1 baseline - it is great to compare against a 2Ghz Intel box, but that the differences between the two platforms are just too extreme. No matter how good the graphics gets, we are still constrained by the Geode clock speed, FPU performance, and GPU feature set (what it can, and most importantly _cannot_ do). I'm not even sure there _is_ a decent 1:1 baseline (and if there were wouldn't it produce exact same results). I did the 2GHz machine because it's my slowest running box and more data can't hurt. I suspect it would be more value to compare the ratios of speeds between different tests on the same machine rather than across machines. At the very least it can impress upon people the speed difference between the machines. The first thing you need to do is determine which operations you really care about. I would first target the operations that deal with text and rounded corners, since those will be the most complex. Straight blits and rectangle fills are important, but less interesting, since they involve the least work in the path between you and the GPU. Fundimentally, you care about the operations that are making it slow. Those are the ones A) being used lots B) Take notable amounts of time in total and C) have room for improvement. Is there a build of cairo that can produce a log of what calls are used in typical XO use? I recommend running the Cairo benchmarks on the XO again with acceleration turned off in the X driver. That's just a xorg.conf change? I can do that and rerun the benchmark. Outside of the driver, you are pretty much limited to evaluating alogrithms, either in the software render code (pixman) or in the cairo code. For those situations, I have less knowledge, but I do advise you to remember the two hardware constraints which I mentioned above - CPU clock speed and FPU performance. Remember that alot of this code was written recently when nobody in their right mind has 1Ghz on their desktop - no matter how hard they try, this will end up biasing the code slightly. FPU performance is more serious. The Geode does not do well with heavy FPU use - to mitigate the damage, try to use single precision only, and try not to use a lot of FPU operations in a row because the Geode pipeline stalls horribly if two FPU operations are scheduled one after another. Finally, I will remind you that you that no amount of hacking is going to magically make the Geode + Geode GPU all of a sudden look like a modern desktop Radeon. Agreed, but it at least should do something in the range of my old 166Mhz system with s3 card. Which it currently doesn't at a user experience level, how much of that is inefficiency and how much is trying to do too much remains to be seen. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Help runnning a script after Installing an activity from .xo
Hi, I am developing an activity for the XO. I have the .xo file ready to install but I still have one problem. After Installing the activity I need to make the XO run a script. I need to do this because the Application makes use of the OSS module to render sound which is not loaded by default on the XO. So I have to modify the /etc/sysconfig/modules/olpc-1.modules file so that I ask the XO to load the OSS module when it boots. As I understand it the .xo file is just a zip file and when you install it will just be unzipped and put in the proper location. So is there any way I can get it to run a script after installing and be in the super user mode when I run the script. I also need to run the script so that the proper localisation files suitable for the language of the XO to be copied to proper locations. I dont want to create a different .xo file for each language. Thanks Jbsp72 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Loosing the Activity window after displaying a OpenFile dialog box
Hi , In the application that I am developing for the XO there is a Open button which displays an Open File dialog box and lets you choose which file to open in the activity. But when I click on the button and the dialog box is displayed, I loose my application window and I come back to the Sugar home screen after choosing a file to open. The thing works perfectly on a normal Fedora machine and it's only when I am running on the OLPC that I loose the application window. I can see that the Activity is still running if I go to terminal activity and type in ps -A, but there is no window for my application. Could anyone think of what the problem might be? Is the window manager for sugar different from a normal Fedora distibution. If so how? Thanks Shivaprasad ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 2595
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2595 Changes in build 2595 from build: 2594 Size delta: 0.00M -kernel 2.6.27-20081216.1.olpc.f87aa8759c39381 +kernel 2.6.27-20081217.2.olpc.63019a306106450 -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
