Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Jordan Crouse jor...@cosmicpenguin.net wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for them more than ten years ago, and updates of my work are still online on the AMD Web site. OLPC has educated AMD on how to use the power-management registers to do things that nobody previously knew were possible. AMD may have made some odd decisions over the years, but they don't deserve the kicking they are getting. AMD gave OLPC unprecedented access to the combined software and hardware expertise for the Geode - AMD didn't have to be so open and OLPC didn't ask for it. The AMD engineers (and there were many, many more than I) worked hand in hand with the OLPC designers from the beginning, long before virtually everybody on this mailing list or in the IRC room had jumped on the bandwagon. I was fortunate to be working with brilliant developers such as Mark and Mitch who were able to read datasheets and ask interesting qeustions, and they were fortunate to be able to have a nearly direct connection to the silicon designers that designed the part. AMD and OLPC educated each other My point. I took it as obvious that AMD had to teach OLPC about the Geode processors, and commented that OLPC also found some other things in addition to what they were taught. - and the result was arguably the most open processor in history on one side, and a little green machine on the other. So I take exception to the idea that AMD was the bumbling fool in this partnership - Which is not what I said. I know something about combinatory mathematics, and a good deal about the definitions of the Geode registers, and I think it would have been astounding if OLPC had not found combinations and sequences with new uses. I am also well aware that AMD contributed greatly to the design of the XO, as did Red Hat and Quanta. I am also aware that power management design and implementation is nowhere near finished. that is an unfair characterization, and an insult to the AMD engineers that spent a lot of hours reviewing schematics, looking at USB debug traces and writing code - much of which is still running on the system to this day. Jordan -- 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 (Ed Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Mesh support very likely to miss Sugar 0.84
Not sure who's able to contribute, but just wanted to wave a red flag here to warn that it's looking like any mesh support is very unlikely to make the 0.84 Sugar release, unless someone is interested/able to work on it: http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/230 It officially slipped to the 0.86 milestone today :-( so no kids working under a tree scenario (unless the tree happens to come with a wireless AP infrastructure). --Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Mesh support very likely to miss Sugar 0.84
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Not sure who's able to contribute, but just wanted to wave a red flag here to warn that it's looking like any mesh support is very unlikely to make the 0.84 Sugar release, unless someone is interested/able to work on it: http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/230 It officially slipped to the 0.86 milestone today :-( so no kids working under a tree scenario (unless the tree happens to come with a wireless AP infrastructure). There are two parts of the work. * Mesh support needs to be integrated into NetworkManager 0.7. Sjoerd started to work on it, but his patches are not upstream yet. * Supports for it needs to be added to the Sugar UI. More detailed informations here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network_manager_0.7 Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
Thanks for all the advice, I've gotten ubuntu installed. One OLPC question and one GTK question OLPC: where exactly is the keyboard mapping file that would let me change the behavior of the screen orientation button? GTK Development:: gcc works (IE I can compile hello world) python and pygtk works. I can't get the c/c++ gtk stuff to compile. Its missing the gio headers. specifically #includegio/gio.h There is a gio-unix-2.0, but no gio.h under that. I've searched in the synaptic package manager and no luck finding a package that looks like gio ??? Also the add-remove applications area (where I installed glade, that seems to work) . Should I go hunting for a GTK list? Thanks again, Paul ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
Hi Paul, OLPC: where exactly is the keyboard mapping file that would let me change the behavior of the screen orientation button? I don't think there's a way to stop the button from trying to perform a rotate (though I might be wrong), however you can register to receive a signal when the rotation happens. The signal is delivered over HAL's dbus method -- you can watch it happen with lshal --monitor. specifically #includegio/gio.h Ubuntu has a website that allows you to search for packages containing part of a filename: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=contentskeywords=gio%2Fgio.hmode=exactfilenamesuite=intrepidarch=any Hope that helps, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 17:08, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Paul, OLPC: where exactly is the keyboard mapping file that would let me change the behavior of the screen orientation button? I don't think there's a way to stop the button from trying to perform a rotate (though I might be wrong), however you can register to receive a signal when the rotation happens. The signal is delivered over HAL's dbus method -- you can watch it happen with lshal --monitor. It's sugar who listens for the keycode 0xEB and asks xrandr to rotate the screen. So you can modify sugar to not do that (see keyhandler.py) or you can run other desktop environment. Regards, Tomeu specifically #includegio/gio.h Ubuntu has a website that allows you to search for packages containing part of a filename: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=contentskeywords=gio%2Fgio.hmode=exactfilenamesuite=intrepidarch=any Hope that helps, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ 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: Touchpad problem
Daniel Drake wrote: 2009/1/31 Tiago Marques tiago...@gmail.com: Almost already as I started using it, I noticed that sometimes the touchpad would be irresponsive. I may use it for hours without having a problem but, when it happens, it usually doesn't start working again soon. Which OS version are you using? I'm assuming 8.2.0. This is fixed for 8.2.1, perhaps you'd like to join the testing effort? What does the fix do? I thought it was not fixable in software. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
paul wrote: Thanks for all the advice, I've gotten ubuntu installed. One OLPC question and one GTK question OLPC: where exactly is the keyboard mapping file that would let me change the behavior of the screen orientation button? this will be different under ubuntu-on-XO, i believe. are you trying to get it to rotate? or to do something else? there seem to be some tips, and a start on the how to get it to rotate topic here: http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2240.0 Its missing the gio headers. specifically #includegio/gio.h dpkg -S gio.h on my thinkpad install of ubuntu intrepid implies that gio.h should be /usr/include/glib-2.0/gio/gio.h, and comes from libglib2.0-dev. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Touchpad problem
bernie wrote: Daniel Drake wrote: 2009/1/31 Tiago Marques tiago...@gmail.com: Almost already as I started using it, I noticed that sometimes the touchpad would be irresponsive. I may use it for hours without having a problem but, when it happens, it usually doesn't start working again soon. Which OS version are you using? I'm assuming 8.2.0. This is fixed for 8.2.1, perhaps you'd like to join the testing effort? What does the fix do? I thought it was not fixable in software. i asked dan the same thing. the only true fix i know of in 8.2.1 keeps the touchpad from locking up entirely on occasion. this happens only rarely in earlier releases (and can be corrected by suspending/resuming the laptop). the other fix in 8.2.1 for the touchpad is not really a fix -- it's really more of a bandage that the user can unwrap and apply themselves (and even then, it only hides the cut, and doesn't help it heal :-). the touchpad driver in 8.2.1 has more tuneables, which allow reducing some of the pre/during/post- recalibration delays. all this does is make the touchpad failures less annoying. here's an earlier email (oddly, google's not finding it for me at laptop.org) -- http://n2.nabble.com/touchpad-tunables-td2138474.html paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
this will be different under ubuntu-on-XO, I want to write some code that runs in Tablet mode and I need one more key. So I want to disable the screen rotation. Currently even under ubuntu it rotates the screen. I'm a linux newbee so I have zero clue where to find the keymapping file or configuration utility. dpkg -S gio.h on my thinkpad install of ubuntu intrepid implies If I include that path it is now looking for glibconfig.h and dpkg -S glibconfi.h responds with libglib2.0.dev: /usr/lib/glib-2.0/include/glibconfig.h A dierectory that does not exist. So this probably means I need to install the libglib2.0.dev package right?? Again thanks for the help Paul ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
paul wrote: this will be different under ubuntu-on-XO, I want to write some code that runs in Tablet mode and I need one more key. So I want to disable the screen rotation. Currently even under ubuntu it rotates the screen. I'm a linux newbee so I have zero clue where to find the keymapping file or configuration utility. you're doing pretty well for a newbie. i just booted ubuntu to see how they do it -- turns out it's easy. they use a program called xbindkeys to bind all of the special XO keys. the configuration for that is in /home/olpc/.xbindkeysrc -- you'll see an entry in there that invokes /usr/bin/rotate_screen.py. all you need to do is change that to point at your own script or program. dpkg -S gio.h on my thinkpad install of ubuntu intrepid implies If I include that path it is now looking for glibconfig.h and dpkg -S glibconfi.h responds with libglib2.0.dev: /usr/lib/glib-2.0/include/glibconfig.h A dierectory that does not exist. So this probably means I need to install the libglib2.0.dev package right?? yes. though you meant libglib2.0-dev. in general on debian and ubuntu, to development of a program that needs a library, you'll need to have the -dev package for that library installed. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC where to go development advice.
i wrote: i just booted ubuntu to see how they do it -- turns out it's easy. they use a program called xbindkeys to bind all of the special XO to be clear, they isn't ubuntu. they is the person (who goes by the moniker teapot) who put together binary release you downloaded. a pure ubuntu would probably not be using xbindkeys. in that vein -- if you need much more help with your release, you're welcome to hang out here and ask for help, but you may get more help from the folks over on http://www.olpcnews.com/forum -- people over there probably have more experience with teapot's ubuntu than people here. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Touchpad problem
2009/2/1 p...@laptop.org: i asked dan the same thing. the only true fix i know of in 8.2.1 keeps the touchpad from locking up entirely on occasion. this happens only rarely in earlier releases (and can be corrected by suspending/resuming the laptop). That's what I'm referring to. Details are a little unclear but I think that Tiago is describing the exact problem that you fixed where recalibration fails and the mouse stops. I think this is a fair assumption given how often this seems to happen... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Touchpad problem
daniel wrote: 2009/2/1 p...@laptop.org: i asked dan the same thing. the only true fix i know of in 8.2.1 keeps the touchpad from locking up entirely on occasion. this happens only rarely in earlier releases (and can be corrected by suspending/resuming the laptop). That's what I'm referring to. Details are a little unclear but I think that Tiago is describing the exact problem that you fixed where recalibration fails and the mouse stops. I think this is a fair assumption given how often this seems to happen... ah -- sorry. i misread his symptoms. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Mesh support very likely to miss Sugar 0.84
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti marc...@sugarlabs.org wrote: There are two parts of the work. * Mesh support needs to be integrated into NetworkManager 0.7. Sjoerd started to work on it, but his patches are not upstream yet. The patches was proposed on the NetworkManager lists. They was generally fine but Dan requested some changes, which Sjoerd believe should not take a lot of work. See the thread here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2008-August/thread.html#00028 Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS Moodle design issues
Dan, you've replied both in moodle.org and here, with different notes... not sure where I should answer now :-) Everyone else - there's a complementary discussion at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=111437#p505921 (use login as guest to avoid nag/registration) On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Dan McGuire sab...@visi.com wrote: As I said in my previous email, I think you might be trying to do too much engineering upfront. Here's a couple of thoughts for you to consider. (from my earlier reply in moodle.org): the concerns I am addressing come from teachers and pedagogists that are working in the field -- in Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda, Mongolia, etc. Specially in Uruguay and Peru, where the whole country is being saturated with laptops (100K already handed out in Uruguay, Peru currently handing out 240K) -- and teachers are trying to integrate them into their daily routine. Some change their teaching strategies immediately, but most teachers will first try to integrate the laptop into their pre-laptop strategies, and then ease into doing things in new ways. Whether we agree or not, people absorb changes at their own pace. I am trying to fix obvious things up front - yes - because they are obvious, and there is no point in rolling out Moodle to 5K schools in Peru when I know that in the initial pilots there were fairly obvious problems. Rather go ahead with the most glaring flaws addressed smile 1. Topics-style course format, geared for a year-long: As a classroom teacher I would rather you not arrange the format for - You are used to Moodle already - teachers in Peru are not. - You prepare your lessons ahead of time _in the computer_. The teachers we are working with do _not_. It's a completely different world -- many of the teachers we are trying to help are in rural schools with mixed age groups and no clear programme from a ministry -- at least not in the sense that you are used to. The request to change the topic format is to support a teaching style that is more day-to-day. - The normal topics courseformat won't be removed -- so if you find yourself working in an OLPC deployment, you can switch to 'topics' and teach everyone around 2. Change of year admin tools. I don't see the need to put that much energy into moving whole classes at a time. Again, the enrollment options out of the box will work just fine. The sure need it. We have schools in Rwanda with 5K students, and all their enrolment stuff is on _paper_. Who is going to be clicking around to unenrol/enrol 5K kids... and get it right. They do have assistants and admin staff, but... they may not have a computer, and if they do, they are unlikely to be very fast with it. And whatever the procedure, as it happens once a year, they've forgotten it. 3. We want a course creation process that is streamlined -- skip the ... That's probably a good idea to start Right, my intention is to hide things behind an very advanced and scary options button. But it is a balancing act -- maybe it should only be enabled once they've had moodle for a while. When you go from 0 computers to lots of computers, across 5K schools, with a quarter of a million users that had never had a computer... even if you lock down all the options, you are going to have an end-user-support tidal wave. Once they are more experienced, and the initial wave is past, yeah, perhaps unhide the advanced options button. Browsing the Moodle forums is one of the most exciting things that I've ever encountered as a teacher. I take it you are conscious that there is almost _no_ material about moodle in moodle.org written in the languages of the regions we are working on. Right? Even if there is a small community 'course' in moodle.org, there is often next to no content. And bilingual users from those regions are far and in-between, and they'll rarely be teaching in a rural school. And that ~50% of the schools where we deploy do _not_ have internet access. We sure push to improve internet access, and often succeed, meaning that it goes from 0% to 30%! Of course, content and expertise in local languages and connectivity will improve over time. But when you are looking at rolling out next month with 240K users... that's no help. Deployment region are very different from what you're assuming :-) 4. What You Paint Is What You Get editor This is one I'd really like. Glad to hear that! I'll be really hard to get it right ;-) FYI, I've just recently started using the workshop module Yes! I'd love a simplified workshop module. And with good code too -- while we're asking for magic... ;-) 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
Service announcement scheme - (Re: [Sugar-devel] A small request.)
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: So this depends on a simple service-announcement scheme. I'll sidestep the how of it, and say: In terms of getting a service announcement scheme, I'd be happy to work with you guys to find a lightweight svc announcement scheme that works for Sugar and for the XS, and that doesn't tie the two together too tightly. Sugar clients want to interop with preexisting LANs with minimal/reasonable effort, and XS LANs want to be friendly to non-Sugar clients. One odd constraint we have is that we want it to play nice on wireless networks, and mesh networks too... and the popular solutions (mdns, etc) in this space seem to hog 802.11s badly. 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: OLPC where to go development advice.
On Saturday 31 Jan 2009 11:24:55 am Mikus Grinbergs wrote: But I have *not* been able to assign a static ip address when a real network was involved - Network Manager intervenes and destroys whatever setup I've configured. Network Manager does not handle interfaces which have an entry in /etc/network/interfaces. Just stick a auto iface entry in there if you wish to handle it directly through ifconfig commands. e.g. -- auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.1.11 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 FYI .. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Service announcement scheme - (Re: [Sugar-devel] A small request.)
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 9:35 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: So this depends on a simple service-announcement scheme. I'll sidestep the how of it, and say: In terms of getting a service announcement scheme, I'd be happy to work with you guys to find a lightweight svc announcement scheme that works for Sugar and for the XS, and that doesn't tie the two together too tightly. Sugar clients want to interop with preexisting LANs with minimal/reasonable effort, and XS LANs want to be friendly to non-Sugar clients. One odd constraint we have is that we want it to play nice on wireless networks, and mesh networks too... and the popular solutions (mdns, etc) in this space seem to hog 802.11s badly. My suggestions: DNS-SD and libepc (http://live.gnome.org/libepc/). There's no need for Sugar-specific solutions here; we just need to use existing standard solutions. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Service announcement scheme - (Re: [Sugar-devel] A small request.)
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:39 PM, C. Scott Ananian csc...@laptop.org wrote: My suggestions: DNS-SD and libepc (http://live.gnome.org/libepc/). There's no need for Sugar-specific solutions here; we just need to use existing standard solutions. Yep - I want existing standard stuff, but the devil we know seems to swamp the spectrum with 802.11s. Googling leads to a paper that could be useful. I don't have access - but they seem to claim that they can get DNS-SD to _not_ mess the mesh up with some new technique requiring new and adventurous patches affecting the mesh routing nodes: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/4489030/4489031/04489571.pdf?temp=x I don't want adventure. I want something old and safe ;-) Maybe we can fake this with good old DNS lookups - but those will fail if the DNS server has a wildcard (like commercial hotspots do). DNS lookup + http check? Why do the ugliest solutions end up being the ones that work in the field? 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
looked for, but did not find, control knobs for mesh
To me, two kids under a tree is a very important scenario. Although mesh fails on current Joyrides, I'm experimenting with manual intervention (e.g., ifconfig) to get it going anyway. What I notice is that that the mesh-related software on the XO does not support all descriptions: - iwconfig eth0 mode __ works, but iwconfig msh0 mode __ doesn't - don't have mesh start/stop described by Libertas Release Notes Aside from ifconfig up/down, what other control knobs exist for starting/stopping radio communication using a 169.254.x.x address ? [My environment does *not* have any wireless AP.] Suggestions, please mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
