Re: [Server-devel] [ANNOUNCE] XSCE-0.4 released!
Well done all involved. I'll certainly try it out ASAP. Which are the relevant wiki and/or schoolserver wordpress pages? David Leeming Solomon Islands From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Anna Sent: Friday, 4 October 2013 4:00 a.m. To: xsce-devel; Server Devel Subject: [Server-devel] [ANNOUNCE] XSCE-0.4 released! Everyone has been waiting patiently for the latest release of School Server Community Edition and here it finally is! The XSCE 0.4 release is ready to go for deployments on most hardware iterations. But say you're a hobbyist with just a single XO-1 and an old computer for the XSCE? This is a fun and easy way for you to try out a server with the equipment you've already got. XSCE 0.4 provides many value-added features for both end-users and deployers. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed. End users: . Moodle, a free software e-learning platform, or Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment, available without internet, . Internet-in-a-Box, an electronic resources library, available without internet (download a test dataset - http://downloads.internet-in-a-box.org/IIAB_QuickStart_Sampler_20130809.tgz) , . Internet Content filtering via Dansguardian, . Customization stick for quickly adding activities and content. Deployers: . Install without needing internet, . Automatic monitoring of services for long-term unattended operation, . Usage statistics collection (optional, requires compatible clients), . Remote administration via secure connection (optional), . Supported on low cost, commodity hardware, minimum 512 Mb, . Supported on low cost, low power, Trimslice and Raspberry Pi. Install - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Installing http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Installing Hack - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking Known issue(s) . Internet-in-a-Box may perform poorly on inadequate hardware. Getting support . Check the FAQ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/FAQ and known issues from above. . Join the #schoolserver IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Lurkers welcome, just hang out for a while until you get comfortable enough to participate. . Ask by mail on xsce-devel@ or server-devel@ mailing lists, . Open a bug report at https://sugardextrose.org/projects/xsce and wait for the team to respond. Best, The XSCE team ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] RE: [ANNOUNCE] XSCE-0.4 released!
You right, it's there. My haste. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Friday, 4 October 2013 9:48 a.m. To: xsce-de...@googlegroups.com Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] RE: [ANNOUNCE] XSCE-0.4 released! Relevant pages for what? The release mail had a link for installing, so you must be looking for something else? On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 09:27:08AM +1100, David Leeming wrote: Well done all involved. I’ll certainly try it out ASAP. Which are the relevant wiki and/or schoolserver wordpress pages? David Leeming Solomon Islands From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Anna Sent: Friday, 4 October 2013 4:00 a.m. To: xsce-devel; Server Devel Subject: [Server-devel] [ANNOUNCE] XSCE-0.4 released! Everyone has been waiting patiently for the latest release of School Server Community Edition and here it finally is! The XSCE 0.4 release is ready to go for deployments on most hardware iterations. But say you’re a hobbyist with just a single XO-1 and an old computer for the XSCE? This is a fun and easy way for you to try out a server with the equipment you’ve already got. XSCE 0.4 provides many value-added features for both end-users and deployers. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed. End users: · Moodle, a free software e-learning platform, or Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment, available without internet, · Internet-in-a-Box, an electronic resources library, available without internet (download a test dataset - http://downloads.internet-in-a-box.org/ IIAB_QuickStart_Sampler_20130809.tgz), · Internet Content filtering via Dansguardian, · Customization stick for quickly adding activities and content. Deployers: · Install without needing internet, · Automatic monitoring of services for long-term unattended operation, · Usage statistics collection (optional, requires compatible clients), · Remote administration via secure connection (optional), · Supported on low cost, commodity hardware, minimum 512 Mb, · Supported on low cost, low power, Trimslice and Raspberry Pi. Install - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Installing Hack - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking Known issue(s) · Internet-in-a-Box may perform poorly on inadequate hardware. Getting support · Check the FAQ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/FAQ and known issues from above. · Join the #schoolserver IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Lurkers welcome, just hang out for a while until you get comfortable enough to participate. · Ask by mail on xsce-devel@ or server-devel@ mailing lists, · Open a bug report at https://sugardextrose.org/projects/xsce and wait for the team to respond. Best, The XSCE team -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XSCE automatic login permission denied
Just getting ready to show someone the XSCE but there was something wrong with eth1 so I wanted to log on Now it says [press ENTER to login] schoolserver : root login (automatic) permission denied Any help appreciated. To reinstall, how far back do i have to start from in the steps listed here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XS 0.7 CentOS boot hang
Hi, Apologies if this has been covered before. I noticed that sometimes an XS 0.7 installation will hang in the boot screen (the advancing white shaded bar bottom of screen). I have not been able to fix this other than by reinstalling. I read somewhere there is a bug involving X11 and the fix is to boot in single user mode and delete xorg.conf. But tried that and it still hung but with scrolling boot text on the screen. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS 0.7 CentOS boot hang
Thanks. That allowed me to establish that it's a HDD problem. David -Original Message- From: sv3...@gmail.com [mailto:sv3...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Sameer Verma Sent: Wednesday, 21 August 2013 6:42 a.m. To: Samuel Greenfeld Cc: David Leeming; XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XS 0.7 CentOS boot hang On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Samuel Greenfeld greenf...@laptop.org wrote: Given the XS-0.7 does not run X Windows by default, this likely is not the problem. You can try disabling the pseudo-graphical progress bar to get more information. I usually hit F2 to see when it slows down or hangs (like when it doesn't get a dhcp lease on the WAN port). Sameer On a system that hangs, choose to edit the default boot option before the countdown timer finishes. Delete the rhgb (Red Hat Graphical Boot) and quiet parameters, and then tell Grub to let the system boot to see if the hang point becomes obvious. On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 2:36 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Hi, Apologies if this has been covered before. I noticed that sometimes an XS 0.7 installation will hang in the boot screen (the advancing white shaded bar bottom of screen). I have not been able to fix this other than by reinstalling. I read somewhere there is a bug involving X11 and the fix is to boot in single user mode and delete xorg.conf. But tried that and it still hung but with scrolling boot text on the screen. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Attempting to upgrade XO 1.5 firmware. Says activation lease not found
Kevin, Is this a 2GB XO-1.5? We found it can't be upgraded beyond 883 without changing the internal memory card for a larger one. My 2 cents worth... David -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Drake Sent: Friday, 19 July 2013 8:25 a.m. To: Kevin Cole Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Attempting to upgrade XO 1.5 firmware. Says activation lease not found On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Kevin Cole dc.l...@gmail.com wrote: I thought I had given sufficient detail, but... Your original mail raised several questions which the additional detail below answer perfectly clearly, thanks. On the first day of summer vacation, I went downtown to look for a job and hung out in front of the drug store. On the the second day of summer vacation, I went downtown to look for a job and hung out in front of the drug store. On the third day of summer vacation, I went downtown to look for a job and hung out in front of the drug store... -- Cheech Chong (Sister Mary Elephant) * I booted my Ubuntu laptop. * I inserted a 1 GB USB thumb drive. * I opened Chrome * I went to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes * I clicked on Release_notes/13.2.0 * I clicked on 4.3 XO-1.5 * I clicked on 32013o1.zd which saved it to ~/Download/ * I clicked on 32013o1.zd.zsp.fs1.zip which saved it to ~/Download/ * I opened a terminal window * I typed: cd ~/Download/ mv 32013o1.zd.zsp.fs1.zip fs1.zip cp -v fs2 /media/usb/ cp -v 32013o1.zd /media/usb/ diff fs2 /media/usb/ diff 32013o1.zd /media/usb/ sudo shutdown -h now What is the fs2 thing? Can you post ls /media/usb output for double-checking? * I inserted the 1 GB USB thumb drive in the XO and pressed the power button while holding the X key on the gamepad. * I released the X when told it to do so. * I received an error about NANDblaster. (Sorry, I don't have the exact text of that message.) And if you can, post the output from the XO screen of the above. The NANDblaster error is not interesting, but the previous lines are. Another useful verification item: turn on the laptop, wait to hear the boot jingle, press escape. Connect USB disk. At the ok prompt type dir u:\ This will check that the laptop can read the USB disk successfully. * I booted my Ubuntu laptop. * I inserted the 1 GB USB thumb drive. * I opened Chrome * I went to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Firmware * I clicked on XO-1.5 * I clicked on OLPC Firmware q3c16 * I clicked on q3c16.rom which saved it to ~/Download/ * I typed mkdir /media/usb/boot cp -v q3c16.rom /media/usb/boot diff q3c16.rom /media/usb/boot sudo shutdown -h now * I inserted the 1 GB USB thumb drive in the XO and pressed the power button while holding the X key on the gamepad. * I released the X when told it to do so. * After a few minutes, I saw three icons, and a message at the top of the screen Activation lease not found. It's not clear to me why you are holding the X key here, are you expecting that to upgrade the firmware from the rom file? It doesn't quite work like that. What the X does is make the laptop boot in secure mode. Your laptop has security disabled (as you mentioned: no wp tag) but by pressing X you are simulating security-enabled. As designed, this then goes and looks for an activation lease or developer key, and fails. (it wouldn't have upgraded the firmware from the .rom even if you made it happy with the appropriate lease/key) Anyway, no manual firmware upgrade should be necessary. Lets figure out why the reflashing doesn't work. Thanks Daniel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint
This will be very useful. Can't wait to try it. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Tony Anderson Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2013 6:49 p.m. To: James Cameron; server-devel@lists.laptop.org; George Hunt; David Farning; Jerry Vonau Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint Hi, Thanks again. The laptops are good to go for this school year (12.1.0). I will be able to work the collection stick problem when I return to the schools (probably in December). I'll double check the flash time to check for variability between units. At these schools all the laptops are XO-1 or XO1.5. However, I think a Nandblast facility working across all the models would be very useful for the start-of-year update. Yours, Tony On 07/11/2013 09:32 AM, James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 11:07:04AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: Hi, Thanks again for this! What I gather is that we should use Nandblast from an XO for reflash. For a time it was not supported for XO-1.5, but my current understanding is that it supported for all versions of XO. Up to 13.1.0 it is supported on XO-1, XO-1.5 and XO-1.75. It is fast for XO-1, and quite slow for XO-1.5 and XO-1.75. The breakeven point, where I would switch from USB drive to NANDblaster, is about five XO-1, and about twenty for XO-1.5 and XO-1.75. In 13.2.0 it is broken, and I am working on that in ticket #12726, hoping to get fixes in before release. Fixes are available for XO-1 (Q2F19) and XO-1.5 (Q3C16). XO-1.75 is still a problem. It was not intended to be supported on XO-4 with the new 802.11n wireless card, but so far it looks possible. In Lesotho, the flash was taking 15min from boot to reboot for registration. These laptops (XO-1) date from the first G1G1 and so there is no telling about endurance. That time of 15 minutes is far too long, and should be investigated ... if the internal storage is three times slower than when the laptops were produced, you will have performance problems. I have some old XO-1 units here that have been used by children, and they are not showing that symptom. Naturally, reload of the Journal occurs via the file system after the flash. Sadly, this is not a current issue because none of the deployments actually use the Journal (e.g. in Lesotho the laptops are shared among several students). The laptops (XO-1.5s) at Saint Jacobs were sponsored by a group in Stuttgart and are not part of the Rwanda purchase. In any case, I believe the information needed for the collection stick is available (serial number and uuid). If it is already available, get it to me. Yours, Tony On 07/10/2013 10:55 AM, James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 10:11:14AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: The 'locked' XO problem derives from XOs distributed in the minimum 100 XO purchase - many of these are locked. Also, in Rwanda the policy is to keep the laptops locked even though they have indefinite leases. Rwanda probably has a deployment key and should be able to sign builds with it. My guess is that the laptops would also have the deployment keys injected already. You will need to work with the people who have the keys. My current plans are to visit these schools in December and so I may be able to get them unlocked then. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Collection_stick is perfect for this, provided the deployment did not remove the OLPC keys. (I don't have records of what deployments have done). What I would really love is a 'Nandblast' capability in the firmware that gets it's image from the schoolserver. That probably would work (how does an XO know an image is coming over wifi from an XO or a school server?). There is no implementation of NANDblaster for the school server, because it requires special support in the wireless device. A typical access point will not work. It requires an XO as the sender. (NANDblaster is implemented in the firmware, not the operating system. An alternate design could be engineered, but that doesn't seem likely to be attempted.) The normal flash problem is that several XOs need to be reflashed at one time, so the usb key approach is time-consuming. My experience is that a reflash from usb key takes 15min. Naturally, one key to this process is the ability to reload the backed up (hopefully) Journal. Reloading the backed up journal is costing you 10min? Reflashing an XO-1 from USB drive 13.2.0-12 costs only 5min. If the reflash is taking much longer than that, there may be an endurance or end of life problem with the internal storage of the XO. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo
[Server-devel] Installing XSCE on XO-1
Hello, Can anyone confirm that XSCE 0.3 has been successfully installed on an XO-1? If so, the starting point would be installing 31036o0.img (not .zd) onto an external 8GB+ SD card? We want to try this here in rural PNG but need to be sure as it is a long job with the downloading Oh yes, we tried to prepare an XO-1 as per the instructions on the wiki (installing the os on an SD card) but failed at the first step - we can't get a developer key for the XO because activation.laptop.org uses an invalid security certificate (Error code sec_error_expired_issuer_certificate). How can we get the developer key? We don't have any unlocked XOs available... (we checked the date/time on the XO was correct) David Leeming Leeming Consulting, P.O. Box 652, Honiara, Solomon Islands Tel: +677 747-6396 (m) 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XSCE links to filesfrom Moodle
Thanks Jerry your pointer was spot on. I edited the Directory permissions in /etc/httpd/conf.d/html.conf from the old syntax to Require all granted and it solved the problem. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Wednesday, 26 June 2013 2:36 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: XSCE links to filesfrom Moodle Hi, With the XS 0.7 we add links to Moodle pages that map to locations in the storage folder /library using aliases and html.conf file I have gone through the exact process as we used to use with the XSCE and all good in the set up, but when I try to access those resources with a connected laptop or authenticated moodle account t it tells me that I don't have permission to view the folder. A missing step I think... David Leeming Solomon Islands 24419 (h) www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Successfully installed XSCE 0.3 on my XO-1.5 (2GB) after first installing XO release 13.1.0 on an 8GB external SD card and then following the standard procedure. First time I ran xs-setup there were some errors probably caused by connectivity issues but when I re-ran xs-setup it successfully completed. Moodle is there, all looks good. I will put a selection of our Pacific Islands content and test our normal Moodle configuration (very basic) and try it out with some teachers in a scheduled training in a couple of weeks time. Also will try and get a 32Gb or 64Gb card and install on that. I noted Anna's advice and copied the yum cache. When I repeat with the larger card I will try and use that to reduce downloading. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Thursday, 20 June 2013 6:04 a.m. To: 'James Cameron'; 'Jerry Vonau' Cc: 'George Hunt'; 'server-devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 All going well so far - managed to install the 13.1.0 os on an 8GB SD card and have proceeded with the XCSE installation up to including the bootstrap. I assume that as it is on the external SD card anyway, I don't need to run prep-storage? I was also wondering, how important it is to have a USB Ethernet adapter present whilst setting it up and whether it needs to be active (i.e. connected to an AP) whilst running xs-setup Finally, is there any performance penalty for running it from the external SD card? David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Tuesday, 18 June 2013 4:45 p.m. To: 'James Cameron'; 'Jerry Vonau' Cc: 'George Hunt'; 'Michael Hutak'; 'server-devel'; 'Ian Thomson' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Thanks all for the great help and information. I will install the 13.1.0 os on my 1.5 on an external 8GB SD card and then test the XCSE installation, and let you know. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Tuesday, 18 June 2013 4:30 p.m. To: Jerry Vonau Cc: George Hunt; David Leeming; server-devel; Michael Hutak; Ian Thomson; David Farning Subject: Re: Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 12:20:04AM -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: This was the issue, no matter how careful I was inserting the SD-card the tab would move to locked. I used a dab of instant glue, that was enough to prevent the tab from moving. Ah, good. Yes, I've heard of that. Also, as it works fine for fs-update it makes one think it is not write protected. I don't know if there is a specification for the force required to move the tab. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Tried again with the devkey link in Browse, it is OK now. Just an unidentified glitch. Is there any way to speed up getting the key? David OK, didn't know you can do that. That's pretty convenient. First I have to get a dev key to unlock it, will take another 24 hrs. BTW I had to do it from file:///home/.devkey.html because the link in Browse led to a secure connection failure due to invalid certificate. David -Original Message- From: David Farning [mailto:dfarn...@activitycentral.com] Sent: Monday, 17 June 2013 9:24 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: George Hunt; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Yikes, you are having some bad luck with this install. Thanks for your patience. I looks like the 1.5 lite does not have enough space for the 13.1.0 image. You will need almost an 8gb hard disk in order to proceed with the installation. If the internal hard disk is less than that, you can use a sdcard to install the system, check the following instructions:http://activitycentral.com/community/news/installing-os-sd-card . We are adding this note to the install page. On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 4:57 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Still trying to set up my XO-1.5 2GB ready for XSCE, which as per advice requires the 13.1.0 release as starting point. I downloaded the 13.1.0 files as per http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.1.0#XO-1.5 31036o1.zd 31036o1.zd.zsp.fs1.zip Copied to a newly formatted 1GB USB stick, and checked the zd file md5sum matched Renamed the zip to fs1.zip Tried it: Fails as per attached. Renaming the fs1.zip as fs.zip makes no difference. Tried on a 2GB stick, also reformatted. No luck. Firmware seems OK. Something I am missing about the 2GB version of the XO-1.5 ??? David Leeming From: George Hunt [mailto:georgejh...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 8:41 p.m. To: David Farning Cc: David Leeming; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 There were kernel problems with 11.3.1 which kept us from getting the XO-1.5 to become an XSCE. It was only with the 13.1.0 release, that we were able to get the network adapters to work properly after a reboot. So I'm afraid that everyone will save a lot of time, and pain, in the long run, if the install procedure is followed exactly. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing) We were not able to test adequately the offline install for subsequent XSCE installations to have it be part of the 0.3 release. But for situations where internet access is slow, and expensive, it is possible to use a USB stick to transfer the rpm packages contained in the /var/yum/cache from the first XSCE to the next one, and greatly speed up the install process. (And if you leave a USB stick in the XSCE, during the first install, it is our intention, and design, that the /var/yum/cache will be copied to that USB stick during the install process on that first machine -- and then used automatically on a subsequent install) George On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:31 PM, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hmm, that is an interesting point that we kind of took for granted. Our goal with the 'reference' hardware and software is to provide a known set of stuff which 'just works.' While other hardware, software, and features might work... they have not been tested. Maybe george or jerry have a good answer for you. At the risk of carbon dating myself... I grew up in the era where my nerdy friends and I drooled over the pages of 'Computer Shopper' for a 9.6 kbit/s modem. Auto Resume for stalled downloads was a life saver:) Now, for simplicity, our testing involves reflashing everything to get back to a known state. As you point out, that is probably not the best assumption for low bandwidth areas. On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 8:36 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Sorry just realised the XO is only installed with 11.3.1 (os855) However, is it still possible to work around? It’s not easy or cheap to download the os file. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 12:28 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter “bootstrap-xo” is replies Not an XO please run ‘xs-config’ Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- David Farning Activity Central: http
Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
OK, didn't know you can do that. That's pretty convenient. First I have to get a dev key to unlock it, will take another 24 hrs. BTW I had to do it from file:///home/.devkey.html because the link in Browse led to a secure connection failure due to invalid certificate. David -Original Message- From: David Farning [mailto:dfarn...@activitycentral.com] Sent: Monday, 17 June 2013 9:24 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: George Hunt; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Yikes, you are having some bad luck with this install. Thanks for your patience. I looks like the 1.5 lite does not have enough space for the 13.1.0 image. You will need almost an 8gb hard disk in order to proceed with the installation. If the internal hard disk is less than that, you can use a sdcard to install the system, check the following instructions:http://activitycentral.com/community/news/installing-os-sd-card . We are adding this note to the install page. On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 4:57 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Still trying to set up my XO-1.5 2GB ready for XSCE, which as per advice requires the 13.1.0 release as starting point. I downloaded the 13.1.0 files as per http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.1.0#XO-1.5 31036o1.zd 31036o1.zd.zsp.fs1.zip Copied to a newly formatted 1GB USB stick, and checked the zd file md5sum matched Renamed the zip to fs1.zip Tried it: Fails as per attached. Renaming the fs1.zip as fs.zip makes no difference. Tried on a 2GB stick, also reformatted. No luck. Firmware seems OK. Something I am missing about the 2GB version of the XO-1.5 ??? David Leeming From: George Hunt [mailto:georgejh...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 8:41 p.m. To: David Farning Cc: David Leeming; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 There were kernel problems with 11.3.1 which kept us from getting the XO-1.5 to become an XSCE. It was only with the 13.1.0 release, that we were able to get the network adapters to work properly after a reboot. So I'm afraid that everyone will save a lot of time, and pain, in the long run, if the install procedure is followed exactly. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing) We were not able to test adequately the offline install for subsequent XSCE installations to have it be part of the 0.3 release. But for situations where internet access is slow, and expensive, it is possible to use a USB stick to transfer the rpm packages contained in the /var/yum/cache from the first XSCE to the next one, and greatly speed up the install process. (And if you leave a USB stick in the XSCE, during the first install, it is our intention, and design, that the /var/yum/cache will be copied to that USB stick during the install process on that first machine -- and then used automatically on a subsequent install) George On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:31 PM, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hmm, that is an interesting point that we kind of took for granted. Our goal with the 'reference' hardware and software is to provide a known set of stuff which 'just works.' While other hardware, software, and features might work... they have not been tested. Maybe george or jerry have a good answer for you. At the risk of carbon dating myself... I grew up in the era where my nerdy friends and I drooled over the pages of 'Computer Shopper' for a 9.6 kbit/s modem. Auto Resume for stalled downloads was a life saver:) Now, for simplicity, our testing involves reflashing everything to get back to a known state. As you point out, that is probably not the best assumption for low bandwidth areas. On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 8:36 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Sorry just realised the XO is only installed with 11.3.1 (os855) However, is it still possible to work around? It’s not easy or cheap to download the os file. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 12:28 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter “bootstrap-xo” is replies Not an XO please run ‘xs-config’ Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
Re: [Server-devel] Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Thanks all for the great help and information. I will install the 13.1.0 os on my 1.5 on an external 8GB SD card and then test the XCSE installation, and let you know. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Tuesday, 18 June 2013 4:30 p.m. To: Jerry Vonau Cc: George Hunt; David Leeming; server-devel; Michael Hutak; Ian Thomson; David Farning Subject: Re: Best XSCE strategy for us in Pacific with XO-1.5 2GB Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 12:20:04AM -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: This was the issue, no matter how careful I was inserting the SD-card the tab would move to locked. I used a dab of instant glue, that was enough to prevent the tab from moving. Ah, good. Yes, I've heard of that. Also, as it works fine for fs-update it makes one think it is not write protected. I don't know if there is a specification for the force required to move the tab. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
OK ... but can you give me a preview, I will test it and give feedback David -Original Message- From: David Farning [mailto:dfarn...@activitycentral.com] Sent: Saturday, 15 June 2013 10:34 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: George Hunt; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Let's add it to the 0.4 install section since it has not passed anna's QA for 0.3. Seem reasonable? On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:10 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Hi George It’s a great job the XSCE team has done and good thinking on the offline install. – would it be possible to add step by step instructions on using the yum cache for a subsequent offline install, to the wiki please? David From: George Hunt [mailto:georgejh...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 8:41 p.m. To: David Farning Cc: David Leeming; Jerry Vonau; server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 There were kernel problems with 11.3.1 which kept us from getting the XO-1.5 to become an XSCE. It was only with the 13.1.0 release, that we were able to get the network adapters to work properly after a reboot. So I'm afraid that everyone will save a lot of time, and pain, in the long run, if the install procedure is followed exactly. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing) We were not able to test adequately the offline install for subsequent XSCE installations to have it be part of the 0.3 release. But for situations where internet access is slow, and expensive, it is possible to use a USB stick to transfer the rpm packages contained in the /var/yum/cache from the first XSCE to the next one, and greatly speed up the install process. (And if you leave a USB stick in the XSCE, during the first install, it is our intention, and design, that the /var/yum/cache will be copied to that USB stick during the install process on that first machine -- and then used automatically on a subsequent install) George On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:31 PM, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hmm, that is an interesting point that we kind of took for granted. Our goal with the 'reference' hardware and software is to provide a known set of stuff which 'just works.' While other hardware, software, and features might work... they have not been tested. Maybe george or jerry have a good answer for you. At the risk of carbon dating myself... I grew up in the era where my nerdy friends and I drooled over the pages of 'Computer Shopper' for a 9.6 kbit/s modem. Auto Resume for stalled downloads was a life saver:) Now, for simplicity, our testing involves reflashing everything to get back to a known state. As you point out, that is probably not the best assumption for low bandwidth areas. On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 8:36 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Sorry just realised the XO is only installed with 11.3.1 (os855) However, is it still possible to work around? It’s not easy or cheap to download the os file. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 12:28 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter “bootstrap-xo” is replies Not an XO please run ‘xs-config’ Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter bootstrap-xo is replies Not an XO please run 'xs-config' Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Sorry just realised the XO is only installed with 11.3.1 (os855) However, is it still possible to work around? It's not easy or cheap to download the os file. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 12:28 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter bootstrap-xo is replies Not an XO please run 'xs-config' Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855
Actually, it's not that much of a problem (a mere $50 or so). More of an issue is my impatience, I was hoping to test it today - the download for the XO would take about 10 hours on my connection. If there's no quick answer I'll download it overnight. David -Original Message- From: David Farning [mailto:dfarn...@activitycentral.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 1:31 p.m. To: David Leeming; George Hunt; Jerry Vonau Cc: server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Hmm, that is an interesting point that we kind of took for granted. Our goal with the 'reference' hardware and software is to provide a known set of stuff which 'just works.' While other hardware, software, and features might work... they have not been tested. Maybe george or jerry have a good answer for you. At the risk of carbon dating myself... I grew up in the era where my nerdy friends and I drooled over the pages of 'Computer Shopper' for a 9.6 kbit/s modem. Auto Resume for stalled downloads was a life saver:) Now, for simplicity, our testing involves reflashing everything to get back to a known state. As you point out, that is probably not the best assumption for low bandwidth areas. On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 8:36 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Sorry just realised the XO is only installed with 11.3.1 (os855) However, is it still possible to work around? It’s not easy or cheap to download the os file. David From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013 12:28 p.m. To: 'server-devel' Subject: Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 Testing XSCE 3 on XO 1.5 2GB os855 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing I get as far as step 13, after the SD card (I am testing with an 8GB card) successfully configures. When I enter “bootstrap-xo” is replies Not an XO please run ‘xs-config’ Tried to do that but xs-config: command not found David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
RE: XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal
OK thanks James. For this project the only option is to delete the Spanish Wikipedia and educate good Journal management - and how to install/erase activities. A bit disappointing for the sponsor to have been shipped these (only a month or so ago), I must say. David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 12 June 2013 12:55 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal You can tell the size of each activity roughly like this, in Terminal, cd Activities du -s * | sort -n This gives a list by activity, measured in 1k blocks. The sizes of the activities in 13.2.0 ends with: 2836Chat.activity 2888Welcome.activity 3032Memorize.activity 3204Physics.activity 3408TypingTurtle.activity 3664Calculate.activity 3836Pippy.activity 4088InfoSlicer.activity 7956MusicKeyboard.activity 12300 Help.activity 12752 TurtleBlocks.activity 15264 TamTamEdit.activity 21264 Speak.activity 62560 Scratch.activity 114556 Wikipedia.activity 116888 WikipediaEN.activity Note the _two_ Wikipedia activities of around 100 MB. One is Spanish, the other is English. You should consider whether your deployment needs both language versions of the Wikipedia activity. Yes, another option is to buy 4 GB or 8 GB microSD cards and open each laptop to install them. But there's a small risk of them not working with the firmware ... we made sure the ones we used in manufacturing did work. I haven't evaluated 13.1.0 or 13.2.0 against a 2 GB size limit sorry. But os885 is 745 MB compressed, and 13.1.0 is 791 MB compressed, and 13.2.0 is 794 MB compressed, so I can't see your problem getting any better without you trimming the build in some way. On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 12:37:49PM +1100, David Leeming wrote: Thanks James. Seems that we got the 2GB version. How can I tell the size of each Activity? Maybe another option is to buy SDRAM cards for them and re-flash with the latest? We need those activities such as Wikipedia. Would you recommend 13.1.0 ? David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 12 June 2013 11:50 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal G'day David, Build 885 is OLPC OS 11.3.1. This release predated automatic sizing. Check which build file was used for installing. If the os885.zd2 (2 GB) file was used, then the symptom you report is likely. Check the size of the microSD cards inside the XO-1.5. You can get this information from the firmware banner, or from the operating system. There were three sizes possible; 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB. The os885.zd2 would have worked okay with any of these sizes, but the remaining space would not be used. The later releases of OLPC OS, such as 12.1.0 and 13.1.0, automatically use the remaining space. If the microSD cards are only 2 GB in size, then your options are to either: - explain how to remove journal entries to conserve space, - delete activities, or; - remaster the build with a smaller set of activities. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Re-install os885 on XO-1.5 error
Thanks again James. The md5sum was OK so I reformatted the USB stick and tried again - and no error. I have done this so many times before on XO-1 but never seen this. So the first time I tried on XO 1.5 it happened. I must remember the old adage, if the car doesn't start maybe it has no petrol... David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Thursday, 13 June 2013 3:47 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: Re-install os885 on XO-1.5 error G'day David, The CPU temperature of 54 celcius is a bit on the high side. Please run the heat spreader test on this unit: ok test /switches If the heat spreader does not contact the CPU properly, the temperature can rise too much during installation. If the temperature is too high, the CPU can pause, or make mistakes. Significant gaps, blocks staying gray, are normal, and nothing to worry about. These blocks don't need to be written, so the .zd file does not write to them. This saves on downloads. The error Wrong expanded data length means that the file was not correct on the USB drive, or the USB drive could not be read. The task was aborted. Things you can try: * check the file using md5sum, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Download#Verifying * try a different USB drive, * don't use a USB hub, * disconnect any other USB devices, * try a different port on the laptop, * upgrade the firmware; you are using Q3C07, but Q3C08 contains a fix for USB drives with embedded hubs, and Q3C13 has a fix for USB drives with unusual partitioning. Q3C15 is the latest version. That the XO starts up OK afterwards is not a valid test, since it would likely have the same build already installed. No logs are kept of firmware operations, so you won't find any evidence; you have to repeat the problem and gather data that way. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal
Hello We have a 200 XO deployment in Solomon Islands sponsored by a bank. I am helping out. Although we were expecting 1.75s, they have been shipped XO 1.5 with Build 885, Sugar 0.94.1 and firmware Q3C07 Out of the box there is very little space in the Journal and it only takes a few days of using the activities or downloads to cause the Journal full popup to appear. Is this the build they should be using? How can we work around this? Thanks for help, David Leeming Solomon Islands www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal
Thanks James. Seems that we got the 2GB version. How can I tell the size of each Activity? Maybe another option is to buy SDRAM cards for them and re-flash with the latest? We need those activities such as Wikipedia. Would you recommend 13.1.0 ? David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 12 June 2013 11:50 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal G'day David, Build 885 is OLPC OS 11.3.1. This release predated automatic sizing. Check which build file was used for installing. If the os885.zd2 (2 GB) file was used, then the symptom you report is likely. Check the size of the microSD cards inside the XO-1.5. You can get this information from the firmware banner, or from the operating system. There were three sizes possible; 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB. The os885.zd2 would have worked okay with any of these sizes, but the remaining space would not be used. The later releases of OLPC OS, such as 12.1.0 and 13.1.0, automatically use the remaining space. If the microSD cards are only 2 GB in size, then your options are to either: - explain how to remove journal entries to conserve space, - delete activities, or; - remaster the build with a smaller set of activities. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] ANNOUNCEMENT XSCE 0.3 Final Release
This is very exciting. I am just starting on a 200 XO 1.5 deployment in Solomon Islands and will give this a whirl. We have XO 1.5s with only 2GB onboard. Is that enough? I have seen the wiki pages and will work on that but if there are any tips, I will be watching this list, of course I will give my feedback too. I particularly want to use the 30GB of content that the Pacific islands jointly collected together (mostly OERs). The way we did this on the XS 0.7 was to put the content folders in /library and set up aliases in html.conf and then add links to resource or website on the Moodle pages. Can I assume I can do the same with XSCE 0.3 using a 32GB or 64GB SDRAM card? To install, is it possible to down the image and install with a flash drive? Then I can get the download from one of the few places here where we can get a decent download speed, and install more than one at my leisure. David Leeming Solomon Islands From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of George Hunt Sent: Friday, 7 June 2013 11:07 a.m. To: Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond to help AT laptop.org Cc: Support Gangsters; server-devel; Testing; IAEP SugarLabs; de...@laptop.org Subject: [Server-devel] ANNOUNCEMENT XSCE 0.3 Final Release After three months of hard work and three weeks of working out the kinks in the release process, XSCE 0.3 is ready for its final release. We went conservative this release. Emphasis on stability meant less time for new features. * XSCE now runs on the XO-1.5,XO-1.75 and XO-4. * Modular Architecture: cleanly integrate extendable services. * XSCE runs on the XOs' current OS 13.1.0 (we discovered some wrinkles with 13.2.0 which push its use off to the next release) * Moodle is Back! * Content filtering via openDNS.com * Script for formatting of SD cards, and integration into system for content storage and memory extending swap file (does not work on XO4's) Grab an XO-1.5, XO-1.75 or a XO-4 to give XSCE 0.3 give a whirl: http://schoolserver.org/0.3 http://schoolserver.org/0.3 If you are just getting started with XSCE we suggest using the instruction at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Installing to install your first server. Once you are through the install, a good second step is to work your new server though it's paces by doing the smoke test at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Testing http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.3/Testing Monster thanks to everyone who spent months of springtime work -- traveling days from quite different parts of North America to make this community product real. George Hunt ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] 12 Volt power system for School Servers.
We have a primary school in PNG with school server driving 9 wireless access points with PoE to cover a 200 laptop deployment with 7 classrooms http://wikieducator.org/OLPC_PNGSDP/Kisap Powered by 12V solar using the excellent Sundaya kits. The wiring looks untidy, I know, but they have worked very reliably over 2-3 years. Also the integrated batteries and proprietary DC connectors make it difficult to misuse the power (a common cause of early demise of batteries) http://www.sundaya.com/welcomeEN.php The Mikrotik GrooveA range of outdoor wireless access points are really good. They will work on 9-27V so even with 12V, you can get very long cable runs, and you can screw in a vertical omni or your antenna of choice. We didn't use them in the deployment above but I would do in the future. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013 4:17 p.m. To: Tony Anderson Cc: server-devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] 12 Volt power system for School Servers. Tony makes an interesting point that may be new to some: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 06:47:26AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: This discussion is relevant because 12vdc does not travel well over long distances. It may be necessary in a school with multiple classrooms to use an inverter to provide 110 or 220vac to the routers via PoE. As the distance between the battery bank and the access point increases, so too does the required _diameter_ of copper cable. Copper cable is quite valuable, and easily traded. It can be a good security practice to avoid installing too much of it. If the cable is too thin, the power demand by an access point causes too much of a voltage drop. For instance, one might put 12V DC in one end, and get 10V DC out the other end. The access point may still work fine. But some of the power will be lost as heat in the cable, lowering efficiency. At some point, depending on cost, reliability, and availability of equipment, it is worth operating at a higher voltage. The options would seem to be Power over Ethernet (PoE), which will yield 12.95W (IEEE 802.3af-2003) or 25.5W (IEEE 802.3at-2009), or an inverter with a separate power circuit. My best guess is that PoE will be cheaper, because a power circuit installed to meet electrical regulations would tend to be designed for the minimum domestic power standard of the country. For example, in Australia the minimum is 10A at 240V, or 2400W. The mass of copper is far more than what PoE would require. Then there's the cost of a 12V input PoE power sourcing equipment (PSE). -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Server usage statistics
Hello, We're conducting an assessment of server activity reports in a few schools in PNG equipped with school servers. Most are XS-0.6 and a few 0.7. Is there a way to copy the activity report source data (logs??) on to removable storage and then load it into another machine for analysis? The data we want is the activity report available in Moodle from the user account detail. David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
x11vnc
Note sure if this is for sugar-devel or devel@ but possibly relevant to both I've been trying out 12.1.0 / 0.96.2 on an XO-1. I use Classroombroadcast in trainings, it is very useful. But I can't get x11vnc installed. Comes back with no package xorg-x11-server-Xvfb available Tried yum clean all etc and the repo folder has the contents below fedora.repo fedora-updates.repo fedora-updates-testing.repo olpc-f17.repo olpc-f17-xo1.repo rpmfusion-free-rawhide.repo rpmfusion-free.repo rpmfusion-free-updates.repo rpmfusion-free-updates-testing.repo rpmfusion-nonfree-rawhide.repo rpmfusion-nonfree.repo rpmfusion-nonfree-updates.repo rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing.repo David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick
Hello, Apologies if this issue has been covered already. I am trying out 12.1.0 on the XO-1 and ran into an issue; to install additional set of activities on class sets of XOs we have been using the customization stick method as per http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customization_stick which involved expanding customization-2.zip onto root of a USB stick, copying .xo files into the bundles folder and then with USB stick inserted, starting the XO with the lower and right games keys pressed. I can't get it to work on an XO with 12.1.0 - it shows briefly a process error before powering off. Perhaps the instructions on the wiki page above are outdated? David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270
Just to check one of the basic details... Are you aware that the XS-0.7 doesnt configure network by default? You must take extra steps. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software_0.7#Network_configuration Daniel To conclude this thread, well Daniel you have been right. We returned to it later and had no problems with v0.7 on this machine. I must have missed something; less haste more speed. Thanks! ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270
Thanks Peter, dmesg | grep eth shows that the kernel sees the hardware, at least eth0 and eth1 hardware/MAC addresses are shown, and those agree with that shown from ifconfig -a which shows eth0, eth1 and lo but only lo with inet address (loopbackl). The physical ports appear to be inactive, the LEDs don't light up and when trying with a cable and computer, no network detected. Reinstalling with 0.6, the networking works fine David -Original Message- From: Peter Robinson [mailto:pbrobin...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 1 August 2012 7:28 p.m. To: Jerry Vonau Cc: David Leeming; XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270 On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 2:16 AM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 09:57 +1000, David Leeming wrote: Hello, I am training some teachers in PNG to set up school servers. We are using the EPC-AT270 (brochure attached, specs on page 7) and previously have installed X_-v0.6 with no problems at all. This time I am trying XS-0.7 but we have a networking issue. It does not configure either of the two Ethernet ports. The EPC-AT270 has two Ethernet ports. The installation is completely default as per the wiki 0.7 installation guide, from CD, starting with an unformatted HDD. No errors are displayed on the screen during installation (but there is some scrolling of data). After installing, the first symptom is that when plugging in a computer or AP to either eth0 or eth1, the port LEDs do not light up and no network is seen by the connecting device. When querying ifconfig -a I can see eth0 and eth1 but they have no IP configuration. Any next steps? Meanwhile we are reverting to 0.6 which is OK on the EPC To late to run mii-tool now, or check which kernel modules were loaded. Or check if HWADDR was set in ifcfg-eth0|1 while having 2 nics with the same kernel module: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11678 mii-tool is mostly (should be completely) obsolete. You should use ethtool for this functionality as it will work with all detected NICs. dmesg | grep eth will let you know what the kernel sees. The Marvell ethernet ports might not be well supported on CentOS 6. You might want to check if a newer CentOS kernel adds support. Alternatively you can likely use a Fedora kernel. dsd did that when he had issues with NIC support on one of the deployments he was involved with. I suggest checking the mailing list archives for the details. Regards, Peter ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270
Hi yes, we ran xs-install (quite a bit of scrolling resulted... will need to capture it. Currently on site, will investigate further over next 24 hrs. Peter, we are using the default 0.7 latest iso with whatever kernel it comes with. David Leeming -Original Message- From: dsdr...@gmail.com [mailto:dsdr...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Drake Sent: Thursday, 2 August 2012 8:36 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270 On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 5:57 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Hello, I am training some teachers in PNG to set up school servers. We are using the EPC-AT270 (brochure attached, specs on page 7) and previously have installed X_-v0.6 with no problems at all. This time I am trying XS-0.7 but we have a networking issue. It does not configure either of the two Ethernet ports. Just to check one of the basic details... Are you aware that the XS-0.7 doesnt configure network by default? You must take extra steps. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software_0.7#Network_configuration Daniel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270
On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 09:57 +1000, David Leeming wrote: Hello, I am training some teachers in PNG to set up school servers. We are using the EPC-AT270 (brochure attached, specs on page 7) and previously have installed X_-v0.6 with no problems at all. This time I am trying XS-0.7 but we have a networking issue. It does not configure either of the two Ethernet ports. The EPC-AT270 has two Ethernet ports. The installation is completely default as per the wiki 0.7 installation guide, from CD, starting with an unformatted HDD. No errors are displayed on the screen during installation (but there is some scrolling of data). After installing, the first symptom is that when plugging in a computer or AP to either eth0 or eth1, the port LEDs do not light up and no network is seen by the connecting device. When querying ifconfig –a I can see eth0 and eth1 but they have no IP configuration. Any next steps? Meanwhile we are reverting to 0.6 which is OK on the EPC To late to run mii-tool now, or check which kernel modules were loaded. Or check if HWADDR was set in ifcfg-eth0|1 while having 2 nics with the same kernel module: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11678 Jerry mii-tool? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270
On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 09:57 +1000, David Leeming wrote: Hello, I am training some teachers in PNG to set up school servers. We are using the EPC-AT270 (brochure attached, specs on page 7) and previously have installed X_-v0.6 with no problems at all. This time I am trying XS-0.7 but we have a networking issue. It does not configure either of the two Ethernet ports. The EPC-AT270 has two Ethernet ports. The installation is completely default as per the wiki 0.7 installation guide, from CD, starting with an unformatted HDD. No errors are displayed on the screen during installation (but there is some scrolling of data). After installing, the first symptom is that when plugging in a computer or AP to either eth0 or eth1, the port LEDs do not light up and no network is seen by the connecting device. When querying ifconfig –a I can see eth0 and eth1 but they have no IP configuration. Any next steps? Meanwhile we are reverting to 0.6 which is OK on the EPC To late to run mii-tool now, or check which kernel modules were loaded. Or check if HWADDR was set in ifcfg-eth0|1 while having 2 nics with the same kernel module: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11678 Jerry mii-tool? Clicked too soon - http://www.netadmintools.com/html/mii-tool.man.html will try it ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting
Would appreciate any more tips on why the Moodle database connection is in error. My resource person in PNG has repeated tests on the XS and confirms service postgresql status and service httpd status both report postmaster/httpd services are running OK, but the Moodle home pages states database error. I can research this error for default Moodle installations but don't know if there are any specifics related to the XS Moodle configuration. David Leeming -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Friday, 11 May 2012 10:38 a.m. To: 'James Cameron' Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting More on this from my remote XO Champion in PNG Reminder: The error is : Error: Database connection failed as viewed in a connected XO when they try to access the Moodle home page (local schoolserver link in Browse) Rebooting does not help. We already established disk space is OK. It's a default 0.6 installation. service postgresql status - gives postmaster is stopped service httpd restart - stops and starts up OK it pings the FQDN and the shortcut schoolserver OK on the XS and an XO using Terminal. Any help with this appreciated. It is difficult to have to reinstall it, as no-one there has the skills. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link www.rurallink.com.sb -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2012 6:13 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'Jerry Vonau'; 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting Have you tried rebooting the server? The reason that I ask, is that I imagine if the Unix domain socket was missing due to an accident, rebooting would start the database server component again and create the Unix domain socket. But I'm really not sure what other conditions might lead to the same symptom. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XO names when sharing with server
Thanks, I added my observations to the ticket. David Sounds like http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10750 Maybe some hints there. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XO names when sharing with server
I am sure this has been covered before, but would appreciate a reference to the thread... I am using XO-1s, release 11.3.0 (build 883) with Sugar 0.94.1 and we are still using XS version 0.6 with the latest updates. When using XOs connected and registered on the server to collaborate, the names of XOs which populate the neighbourhood view are displayed as very long strings ending something like @schoolserver.fqdn.org rather the correct friendly name. This also affects how activities perform when collaborating. Connect for instance, becomes difficult to use because the long name of the joined XO causes the playing area to resize to a small area on the right of screen. It doesn't seem to do this when using the mesh. Not sure if this is a server, the OS build or Sugar issue. It used to be fine with earlier XO builds and the same server version. Apologies if this has been covered before - if there is a ticket I can view or whatnot, would appreciate the tip. David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting
More on this from my remote XO Champion in PNG Reminder: The error is : Error: Database connection failed as viewed in a connected XO when they try to access the Moodle home page (local schoolserver link in Browse) Rebooting does not help. We already established disk space is OK. It's a default 0.6 installation. service postgresql status - gives postmaster is stopped service httpd restart - stops and starts up OK it pings the FQDN and the shortcut schoolserver OK on the XS and an XO using Terminal. Any help with this appreciated. It is difficult to have to reinstall it, as no-one there has the skills. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link www.rurallink.com.sb -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2012 6:13 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'Jerry Vonau'; 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting Have you tried rebooting the server? The reason that I ask, is that I imagine if the Unix domain socket was missing due to an accident, rebooting would start the database server component again and create the Unix domain socket. But I'm really not sure what other conditions might lead to the same symptom. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting
Thanks, I don't know how that might have come about as the server is not accessed via the terminal. It is quite important to us to try and find a solution on site. The chap there is able to follow simple instructions using the terminal. So any help greatly appreciated... David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2012 5:35 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'Jerry Vonau'; 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting The Apache error logs suggest that the database connection failure is because of a missing Unix domain socket file in /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 which I imagine might occur if the file was accidentally removed since last boot. There may be other causes. I don't know enough about XS to advise further, sorry. I hope someone who knows will review the logs and give you advice. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting
I have a resource person at a remote school contacting me to say their production XS is displaying Error: database connection failed on the Moodle home page. It had been running OK for some weeks with a low load - only 20 laptops. He is able to follow simple instructions with the terminal and we managed to check dish space - not a problem, the partitions are only 20% or so used. What else can I suggest to try? David Leeming Solomon Islands ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting
cron.log attached, not very helpful, which other logs might help? David From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2012 11:28 a.m. To: 'XS Devel' Subject: [Server-devel] Database error troubleshooting I have a resource person at a remote school contacting me to say their production XS is displaying Error: database connection failed on the Moodle home page. It had been running OK for some weeks with a low load - only 20 laptops. He is able to follow simple instructions with the terminal and we managed to check dish space - not a problem, the partitions are only 20% or so used. What else can I suggest to try? David Leeming Solomon Islands cron.log Description: Binary data ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
RE: [Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS
I'll do some work when I get a chance to replicate and isolate the issue and get some data as you suggest. Quick question, is it possible to transfer the database and Moodle history (users, etc) from one XS installation to a new one, i.e. effectively to make a copy..? David Leeming From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 29 April 2012 1:45 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: OLPC Devel; XS Devel; James Cameron Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS When the problem happens, it'll be interesting to see the output of olpc-netstatus and olpc-xos cmdline utilities on XOs that have trouble and on those that don't. There's additional debugging info you can get from ejabberd on the XS. There's a page in the wiki (in the XS techniques page?) that lists all the debugging/diagnostics steps for collaboration. What James mentions is correct, too. A reconnection is what is probably fixing it. hth, m On Apr 28, 2012 5:14 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Hi James, I have been fairly familiar some time with using the basic default installation of the XS. It is specifically the combination of XO-1 build 883 / Sugar 0.94.1 with XS0-0.6 which has thrown up some issues - with collaboration. A typical situation when we observe this recently: a workshop with 20 teachers, all who have freshly installed release 11.3.0 on their XO-1s and registered on the workshop XS and restarted. All have been accessing the Moodle pages with no problems and the links to the public content in the /library folder. I will have been using the XS network wirelessly to an XO that is running Classroom Broadcast Activity, with no difficult whatsoever. So there is no need to ping the server to understand that the XOs are all properly connected and registered, although I take your point and would have done more diagnostics if i knew how to isolate the issue with the collaboration problem we experienced. We were able to replicate the issue on identically set-up servers. The issue is: not all the other connected XOs appear in the neighbourhood view, and when trying to demonstrate collaboration using the set up above, it was only rarely that the sharing icon appeared on other XOs neighbourhood view even though all else seemed to be working fine. I tried using the discard network history with a few XOs only once at the end of the workshop, and we then run out of time. I tried again with my own setup later, using two XOs only, and replicated the issue but the discard history did not work then. So that might not be useful information. Perhaps I should rephrase my question: Was it intended that collaboration should work with XO-1s running release 11.3.0 using the XS-0.6 default installation? Secondary question, if this is not working, and I have made no customisation other than add some links using aliases presented as links on the Moodle home page, what can I do to trouble shoot? David Leeming -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Friday, 27 April 2012 7:39 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel'; 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 06:38:00AM +1000, David Leeming wrote: [...] we work around it by for instance using ?discard network history? which seems to help. I was deeply involved in the discard network history feature at one point in development, and at the time the only thing it did was to remove access point names (ESSIDs) from the list of known access points. I've just checked the code and that is still only what it does. So I'm surprised it is having an effect. But congratulations for finding it does have an effect. I know nothing about the network at the location. Is there more than one access point name available? If so, at the time of the problem, the reason the button is having an effect may be because a disconnection has led to the laptop associating with another access point, and pressing the button would prevent that. If not, then the button is only serving to disconnect the laptop from the network. You may find the same effect to occur by clicking on the access point in the network neighbourhood view. Lastly, whether activities are open at the time of the forced disconnect and reconnect may be interesting. Next time, please do some technical diagnosis at the time of the problem ... use Terminal activity to ping the server. As I have recently seen examples of TP-Link with OpenWRT access points that silently block data flow, it reminds me that some diagnosis is worth doing. In the cases I observed, data flow was restored by reconnecting. That you currently reconnect to work around the problem may be a coincidence, or it might be this same kind of problem. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel
RE: [Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS
Hi James, I have been fairly familiar some time with using the basic default installation of the XS. It is specifically the combination of XO-1 build 883 / Sugar 0.94.1 with XS0-0.6 which has thrown up some issues - with collaboration. A typical situation when we observe this recently: a workshop with 20 teachers, all who have freshly installed release 11.3.0 on their XO-1s and registered on the workshop XS and restarted. All have been accessing the Moodle pages with no problems and the links to the public content in the /library folder. I will have been using the XS network wirelessly to an XO that is running Classroom Broadcast Activity, with no difficult whatsoever. So there is no need to ping the server to understand that the XOs are all properly connected and registered, although I take your point and would have done more diagnostics if i knew how to isolate the issue with the collaboration problem we experienced. We were able to replicate the issue on identically set-up servers. The issue is: not all the other connected XOs appear in the neighbourhood view, and when trying to demonstrate collaboration using the set up above, it was only rarely that the sharing icon appeared on other XOs neighbourhood view even though all else seemed to be working fine. I tried using the discard network history with a few XOs only once at the end of the workshop, and we then run out of time. I tried again with my own setup later, using two XOs only, and replicated the issue but the discard history did not work then. So that might not be useful information. Perhaps I should rephrase my question: Was it intended that collaboration should work with XO-1s running release 11.3.0 using the XS-0.6 default installation? Secondary question, if this is not working, and I have made no customisation other than add some links using aliases presented as links on the Moodle home page, what can I do to trouble shoot? David Leeming -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Friday, 27 April 2012 7:39 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel'; 'OLPC Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 06:38:00AM +1000, David Leeming wrote: [...] we work around it by for instance using ?discard network history? which seems to help. I was deeply involved in the discard network history feature at one point in development, and at the time the only thing it did was to remove access point names (ESSIDs) from the list of known access points. I've just checked the code and that is still only what it does. So I'm surprised it is having an effect. But congratulations for finding it does have an effect. I know nothing about the network at the location. Is there more than one access point name available? If so, at the time of the problem, the reason the button is having an effect may be because a disconnection has led to the laptop associating with another access point, and pressing the button would prevent that. If not, then the button is only serving to disconnect the laptop from the network. You may find the same effect to occur by clicking on the access point in the network neighbourhood view. Lastly, whether activities are open at the time of the forced disconnect and reconnect may be interesting. Next time, please do some technical diagnosis at the time of the problem ... use Terminal activity to ping the server. As I have recently seen examples of TP-Link with OpenWRT access points that silently block data flow, it reminds me that some diagnosis is worth doing. In the cases I observed, data flow was restored by reconnecting. That you currently reconnect to work around the problem may be a coincidence, or it might be this same kind of problem. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Lesotho project network server: obstacles needs
Hi Janissa I am copying you separately a document that we use in PNG and Solomons that helps with a basic default installation of XS 0.6 and some very basic Moodle settings. It's a bit country/project specific so I need to clean it up before sharing on this list. I have installed from a USB stick before, but it's a while ago. OLPC-AU do this so will leave that to Sridhar. We use CD based installation. I too am learning by seat of my pants so happy to share your experience! David Leeming -Original Message- From: jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org [mailto:jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org] Sent: Saturday, 28 April 2012 8:17 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Lesotho project network server: obstacles needs Hi David, Sorry for my delayed reply. Thanks for your comments and advice. Please do send me the specs for the EPC-AT270 you are using. I tried downloading the XS operating system from the OLPC website onto a dongle/flash drive and installing it from that onto the PC we have designated as our server, but the installation failed. Later, we had two computer specialists reformat the PC and try the same thing without success. Each time, we got errors that said the XS files were incomplete. Did you install your XS software from a dongle, or did you download it directly onto your server? If you installed from a dongle, do you have any suggestions on what we might be doing wrong? Do you know if there is information anywhere with very detailed, step-by-step instructions for installing the XS from a dongle? We are all total Linux and XS novices, and none of us have ever operated a server before. Since we haven't been able to install the XS, I'm unfamiliar with the XS features you mentioned (Moodle home page, /library, class segregation etc.) Thanks, Janissa Janissa Balcomb jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org Laptops to Lesotho Inc. www.laptopstolesotho.inc - Hi Janissa Your programme sounds very worthwhile and I wish you all the best with it! Maybe I was not clear, but my point is that for us, the XS (we are using v0.6) installed on a low power e-box such as the EPC-AT270 (I can send you the spec sheet, it is available in Australia not sure where you are) has proven exactly what you seem to be looking for. Very low power, running at 15W or less on 12V DC solar power, with auto-power on enabled so even if there is a power outage the locals don't need to intervene. At one site it ran 18 months continuously and no problems. The access points all using DC power via PoE too. Our schools in PNG only theoretically have Internet access in some locationsas the quality of service is insufficient. Even if it were, it's only for the teachers due to cost. But the teachers do have some limited options with 3G dongles if they wish to sign up to the OLPC-Australia XO-Certification programme (extended to Pacific) laptop.moodle.com.au and so we spent time training them to do so. It is true one does need some initial centralised or outside expertise to set the servers up but in our case we are all Linux novices really and we get by. On site, as I said the servers are very useful, but as in your case we have to just install and leave them and expect little maintenance work although as time goes on various champions emerge. I am typing this in the remotest place in PNG, and yet I am planning today to training one teacher to be able to do some role assignment work on the XS Moodle in some schools we can't visit this time. I guess this list can help you design a suitable configuration for the XS. As I said in our case it is really basic, just using the Moodle home page as a links page to folders of resources in the /library, and some upload folders and the general news/forum. We don't use the class segregation as yet because we are unable to assist when the students change class at the new year, so the strategy is just to tell teachers try not to overload the server, coordinate with each other etc. In the future we can improve on it. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.rurallink.com.sb -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org Sent: Monday, 16 April 2012 9:07 a.m. To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: [Server-devel] Lesotho project network server: obstacles needs I work with a non-OLPC-affiliated XO laptop project in Lesotho. Our project uses G1G1 XO-1 laptops we buy on the open market and refurbish ourselves. Like David Leeming in PNG (see Server-devel Digest, Vol 60, Issue 13, Topic 1 -- Re: Looking for new low power server hardware candidate), I work with schools in a very remote area with rough terrain, difficult access, limited resources, and poorly trained teachers. Unlike David's area, our schools do not have access
Collaboration XO-1 with XS
I have noticed when using the combination XO-1 build 883 , Sugar 0.94.1 and XS-0.6 that collaboration for registered XOs connected to the XS network is unreliable. After doing some collaborating sometimes the populating of the neighbourhood views becomes unreliable and shared activities are not displayed on other XOs neighbourhood screens. Also, when hovering over some XOs which are displayed on neighbourhood view, the name is not shown but instead a long text stream. This has been attempting to disrupt teacher training I am conducting but we work around it by for instance using discard network history which seems to help. I am copying to both lists as I am not sure where the problem lies. Any advice appreciated and apologies if some of this has been covered in past discussions, if so just a referral would be most appreciated. David Leeming In PNG ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] Collaboration XO-1 with XS
I have noticed when using the combination XO-1 build 883 , Sugar 0.94.1 and XS-0.6 that collaboration for registered XOs connected to the XS network is unreliable. After doing some collaborating sometimes the populating of the neighbourhood views becomes unreliable and shared activities are not displayed on other XOs neighbourhood screens. Also, when hovering over some XOs which are displayed on neighbourhood view, the name is not shown but instead a long text stream. This has been attempting to disrupt teacher training I am conducting but we work around it by for instance using discard network history which seems to help. I am copying to both lists as I am not sure where the problem lies. Any advice appreciated and apologies if some of this has been covered in past discussions, if so just a referral would be most appreciated. David Leeming In PNG ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 7:39 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Also found a file named.run which is nearly 1GB in size, - I gather this is a debugging file, can I disable the function that generates it? Will Normally named.run should only contain a number, a small integer. If you restart the server, after having removed named.run, and let it run for a while, what happens with named.run ? This is a server machine I carry about to use in field trainings. Typically I use a Windows laptop connected to the server network with a VNC client running, to use with a projector to display XOs (using Classroom Broadcast). I have not had any problems before, perhaps I did not reach the limit. It is now clear this is due to the Windows laptop antivirus trying to update: after deleting named.run, a few hours later it is getting up to 100MB and it turns out that is made up of lines as below the below: network unreachable resolving 'dnl=12.geo.kaspersky.com/A/IN' ; 192.50.128.30 I also have problems this trip with collaboration. We only have 25 teacher's XO-1s (b883, sugar 0.94.1) and all are registered and appear in the Moodle user list. But the neighbourhood does not reliably populate and when sharing an activity the sharing icon does not reliably appear on all the other XOs neighbourhood view making it difficult to do collaboration training. Is there an issue with the combination of XS v0.6 and the particular XO build/sugar version? Or maybe something on my server is broken, ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached
Hello, I am running a training session on the school server but not sure if my problem is Browse or XS so copying to both lists. The trainees are teachers, learning the basics - they have zero computing experience. We are using Browse 129.1 and XS 0.6 with current updates. They have learned to connect to the wireless network and register. The group size is 25 and there are more than one (4 actually) physical access points. Moodle-XS is used to present links to folders of resources via URL aliases. Example, a link such as http://schoolserver/MyResource pointing at folder /library/myresource thus, the resources don't actually need Moodle to work. Suddenly all the trainees when trying to access the server Moodle pages with Browse get the error: Redirect Loop : Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. I can type in the URL alias http://schoolserver/MyResource manually and it will display the content OK. So it seems to be a Moodle issue? How to deal with it? I have never seen this before ... David ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached
Regarding the below, it seems that the database is not running and on checking disk space, the file system /dev/sda2 is 100% used. I am assuming this is the cause of the problem. We don't use that area for storage, all our resources are saved in /library. So I guess that it might be the database or other dynamic resource that has increased in size to the maximum available on this server. Looking for advice on what to do to free up space and get it working again, David From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Monday, 23 April 2012 4:09 p.m. To: 'XS Devel' Cc: 'Sugar devel' Subject: [Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached Hello, I am running a training session on the school server but not sure if my problem is Browse or XS so copying to both lists. The trainees are teachers, learning the basics - they have zero computing experience. We are using Browse 129.1 and XS 0.6 with current updates. They have learned to connect to the wireless network and register. The group size is 25 and there are more than one (4 actually) physical access points. Moodle-XS is used to present links to folders of resources via URL aliases. Example, a link such as http://schoolserver/MyResource pointing at folder /library/myresource thus, the resources don't actually need Moodle to work. Suddenly all the trainees when trying to access the server Moodle pages with Browse get the error: Redirect Loop : Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. I can type in the URL alias http://schoolserver/MyResource manually and it will display the content OK. So it seems to be a Moodle issue? How to deal with it? I have never seen this before ... David ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached
Regarding the below, it seems that the database is not running and on checking disk space, the file system /dev/sda2 is 100% used. I am assuming this is the cause of the problem. We don't use that area for storage, all our resources are saved in /library. So I guess that it might be the database or other dynamic resource that has increased in size to the maximum available on this server. Looking for advice on what to do to free up space and get it working again, Should have waited before posting; I found in filesystem /dev/sda2 several large message log files, on erasing them all works sweetly Also found a file named.run which is nearly 1GB in size, - I gather this is a debugging file, can I disable the function that generates it? Will named.run continue to grow with our deployed servers, all of which use the default install (version 0.6)? David From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Monday, 23 April 2012 4:09 p.m. To: 'XS Devel' Cc: 'Sugar devel' Subject: [Server-devel] Browse or Moodle-XS error - Redirect Loop Redirection limit reached Hello, I am running a training session on the school server but not sure if my problem is Browse or XS so copying to both lists. The trainees are teachers, learning the basics - they have zero computing experience. We are using Browse 129.1 and XS 0.6 with current updates. They have learned to connect to the wireless network and register. The group size is 25 and there are more than one (4 actually) physical access points. Moodle-XS is used to present links to folders of resources via URL aliases. Example, a link such as http://schoolserver/MyResource pointing at folder /library/myresource thus, the resources don't actually need Moodle to work. Suddenly all the trainees when trying to access the server Moodle pages with Browse get the error: Redirect Loop : Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. I can type in the URL alias http://schoolserver/MyResource manually and it will display the content OK. So it seems to be a Moodle issue? How to deal with it? I have never seen this before ... David ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Update error XO-1 883
Trying to install x11vnc on an XO-1 build 883 ... olpc-f14/primary http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum Trying other mirror ... Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from olpc-f14: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try I tried yum clean all, reinstalling and trying again, checking date is correct, checking Internet connection is OK, nothing works - but I did this successfully on another XO yesterday. David Leeming In PNG ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Update error XO-1 883
On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 11:40 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Trying to install x11vnc on an XO-1 build 883 ... olpc-f14/primary http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum Trying other mirror ... Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from olpc-f14: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try I tried yum clean all, reinstalling and trying again, checking date is correct, checking Internet connection is OK, nothing works - but I did this successfully on another XO yesterday. You need to use the baseurl directive in the yum repo config file not a mirror one as it's not mirroed. Peter Thanks, if you please can advise how do I do that, and comment why it worked previously (several times up to now I have done this successfully) ... David ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Update error XO-1 883
On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 12:05 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 11:40 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Trying to install x11vnc on an XO-1 build 883 ... olpc-f14/primary http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum Trying other mirror ... Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from olpc-f14: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try I tried yum clean all, reinstalling and trying again, checking date is correct, checking Internet connection is OK, nothing works - but I did this successfully on another XO yesterday. You need to use the baseurl directive in the yum repo config file not a mirror one as it's not mirroed. Peter Thanks, if you please can advise how do I do that, and comment why it worked previously (several times up to now I have done this successfully) ... I have no idea why it worked previously but the error says there's not more mirrors to try which means yum isn't getting a mirror, given that the rpmdropbox isn't mirrored it means that it's not using a baseurl configuration for it. The various repositories are configured in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and the various yum manual pages are your friend but you'll find the config file is quite simple, there's a couple of examples in that directory. Peter That directory contains olpc-f14.repo and olpc-f14-xo1.repo and both already have a baseurl line, i.e. baseurl=http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/ and baseurl=http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14-xo1/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: Update error XO-1 883
On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 12:05 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 11:40 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Trying to install x11vnc on an XO-1 build 883 ... olpc-f14/primary http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum Trying other mirror ... Error: failure: repodata/primary.xml.gz from olpc-f14: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try I tried yum clean all, reinstalling and trying again, checking date is correct, checking Internet connection is OK, nothing works - but I did this successfully on another XO yesterday. You need to use the baseurl directive in the yum repo config file not a mirror one as it's not mirroed. Peter Thanks, if you please can advise how do I do that, and comment why it worked previously (several times up to now I have done this successfully) ... I have no idea why it worked previously but the error says there's not more mirrors to try which means yum isn't getting a mirror, given that the rpmdropbox isn't mirrored it means that it's not using a baseurl configuration for it. The various repositories are configured in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and the various yum manual pages are your friend but you'll find the config file is quite simple, there's a couple of examples in that directory. Peter That directory contains olpc-f14.repo and olpc-f14-xo1.repo and both already have a baseurl line, i.e. baseurl=http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/ and baseurl=http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14-xo1/ Furthermore: I suspected it might be a caching issue, and tried yum clean metadata, physically removed the repomd.xml and primary.xml.gz files in the yum cache for olpc-f14 and fedora, and verified that those were then replenished when trying the update. But it still fails when doing yum install x11vnc with Metadata file does not match checksum for http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14/repodata/primary.xml.gz I suspect that it might be an ISP cache issue (just going from what learned searching for a solution) And it DID work reproducibly using freshly (and identically) installed XO-1s many times in the last two weeks until yesterday! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: [Sugar-devel] Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1 (solved)
All done and it works well. It was a question of trying to do it without fully understanding the process. In summary, steps 1 and 2 using gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg were all that were needed. The rpms thus collected were then tested on a freshly installed XO and all working, further enhanced by addition of the Adobe Flash 11 rpm. Thanks for helping! I'm all set now to do this offline in the field. rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noa rch.rpm rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stab le.noarch.rpm yum install -y yum-utils navigate to a USB stick mkdir myrpms cd myrpms yumdownloader --resolve gstreamer-plugins-ugly yumdownloader --resolve gstreamer-ffmpeg Download Flash 11 rpm from Adobe and add to myrpms On newly installed XO navigate to myrpms and rpm -Uhv *.rpm tested on XO-1 build 883 David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 4 April 2012 6:14 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: Kevin Mark; Sugar devel; OLPC Devel Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1 On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:06 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: A few stumbling blocks for me; (1) the two localinstall commands below each need Internet connections to succeed on a fresh install, or the error is cannot retrieve repository metadata. Correct. This is the preparation stage, where you need internet to prepare a USB stick. We cannot perform magic transfer of files yet :-) (2) I don't know what to use for package1 package 2 etc; I tried using gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg and it says no match for argument. Those are probably the package names you want. I would say gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly If it is not finding them, after you've successfully completed step 1, maybe you need to also pass an --enablerepo=rpmfusion* option to yumdownloader. (3) So I also need to download the dependencies of the two rpmfusion rpms. What is the package name? The package names are the names of the packages you want as discussed in step 2 above. I really feel we are going in circles here. Perhaps a read of the documentation for yumdownloader will help you picture what it does, so you can figure things out a bit more independently? cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - 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: [Sugar-devel] Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1
start from a fresh install on an XO yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rpmfusion-free-stable.rpm yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rpmfusion-nonfree-stable.rpm yum install yum-utils (may be yumutils) mkdir myrpms cd myrpms yumdownloader --resolve package1 package2 ... packageN Once yumdownloader is done, the relevant rpms and their dependencies are in the myrpms directory. Copy the directory to USB flash disk. This has been the preparation stage. Now take that USB flash disk to existing XOs, command is: rpm -Uvh /media/mydisk/myrpms/*rpm alternatively yum localinstall /media/mydisk/myrpms/*rpm This thread started a long tome ago on devel@lists.laptop.org, it has nothing to do with sugar. Now sure how we landed here. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - 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: [Sugar-devel] Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1
A few stumbling blocks for me; (1) the two localinstall commands below each need Internet connections to succeed on a fresh install, or the error is cannot retrieve repository metadata. (2) I don't know what to use for package1 package 2 etc; I tried using gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg and it says no match for argument. (3) So I also need to download the dependencies of the two rpmfusion rpms. What is the package name? start from a fresh install on an XO yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rpmfusion-free-stable.rpm yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rpmfusion-nonfree-stable.rpm yum install yum-utils (may be yumutils) mkdir myrpms cd myrpms yumdownloader --resolve package1 package2 ... packageN Once yumdownloader is done, the relevant rpms and their dependencies are in the myrpms directory. Copy the directory to USB flash disk. This has been the preparation stage. Now take that USB flash disk to existing XOs, command is: rpm -Uvh /media/mydisk/myrpms/*rpm alternatively yum localinstall /media/mydisk/myrpms/*rpm This thread started a long tome ago on devel@lists.laptop.org, it has nothing to do with sugar. Now sure how we landed here. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - 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
Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1
I have tried to install media codecs on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 so that we can play FLV video files directly (from a flashdrive, school server or network location)., in either Sugar or GNOME. (I have not been able to find a way to do that using Sugar). I had trouble getting it work using the instructions at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/GStreamer#Totem_plugin - I think it is outdated. After some research and trial and error (lots!!) I have it working, some using XO-1 may find useful The below works on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 freshly installed. It works in Gnome using Totem/Movie Player and in Sugar using Jukebox Activity. It plays mp3 audio and FLV video OK (such as the Khan Academy collection, which we have loaded on the school servers in project schools) We also add the Flash plug in for the browser and disable click to view. This allows embedded flash animations and FLV videos accessed with Browse, Youtube, etc to play with good performance. Note that Flash version 11 is much better than v10. So bringing it all together, I reproduced the above using the following. - XO-1 running 11.3.0, fresh install - In Gnome view in a terminal, as su - wireless Internet connection yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noa rch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stab le.noarch.rpm yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-ugly yum install -y gstreamer-ffmpeg rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/agent-stylesheet.css rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/clickToView.xml navigate to the flash rpm and run rpm -Uhv flash.rpm where flash.rpm is the Flash verion 11 RPM for Linux 32 bit from Adobe. Questions 1. Is the above the right way to do it, if someone with more Fedora experience than I can verify.. 2. In our narrowband countries it takes an hour and downloads a lot per laptop, this is unworkable in PNG with large numbers of XOs and where the bandwidth is so expensive and unreliable. Isn't there a way to do this offline with a download, something we can run on a flashdrive? 3. is the update step above necessary (it requires downloading 33MB) 4. In doing the above am I violating a ton of licenses? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1
I have tried to install media codecs on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 so that we can play FLV video files directly (from a flashdrive, school server or network location)., in either Sugar or GNOME. I had trouble getting it work using the instructions at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/GStreamer#Totem_plugin - I think it is outdated. After some research and trial and error (lots!!) I have it working, some using XO-1 may find useful The below works on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 freshly installed. It works in Gnome using Totem/Movie Player and in Sugar using Jukebox Activity. It plays mp3 audio and FLV video OK (such as the Khan Academy collection, which we have loaded on the school servers in project schools) We also add the Flash plug in for the browser and disable click to view. This allows embedded flash animations and FLV videos accessed with Browse, Youtube, etc to play with good performance. Note that Flash version 11 is much better than v10. So bringing it all together, I reproduced the above using the following. - XO-1 running 11.3.0, fresh install - In Gnome view in a terminal, as su - wireless Internet connection yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noa rch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stab le.noarch.rpm yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-ugly yum install -y gstreamer-ffmpeg rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/agent-stylesheet.css rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/clickToView.xml navigate to the flash rpm and run rpm -Uhv flash.rpm where flash.rpm is the Flash verion 11 RPM for Linux 32 bit from Adobe. Questions 1. Is the above the right way to do it, if someone with more Fedora experience than I can verify.. 2. In our narrowband countries it takes an hour and downloads a lot per laptop, this is unworkable in PNG with large numbers of XOs and where the bandwidth is so expensive and unreliable. Isn't there a way to do this offline with a download, something we can run on a flashdrive? 3. is the update step above necessary (it requires downloading 33MB) 4. In doing the above am I violating a ton of licenses? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link www.rurallink.com.sb ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] Changing domain name
If I change the domain name of an XS (version 0.6 + updates, default installation) after it has been used for sometime, will it cause problems for instance with Moodle? /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config new name.org David ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
RE: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1
Thanks to James, we successfully repaired the download. A very neat solution that I had not realised was possible. For others that may find it useful, we used the Linux split command (I used the XS) to chop the faulty download into 128 small chunks of about 5MB each and then did checksum with md5sum on each, identified the errant chunk, which I then downloaded and used cat command to rejoin them. I now have the 883 build for the PNG schools. Many thanks James and Alec David -Original Message- From: Richard Smith [mailto:smithb...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Richard A. Smith Sent: Monday, 9 January 2012 6:02 a.m. To: Alec Muffett Cc: David Leeming; Sugar devel; de...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1 On 01/06/2012 03:46 AM, Alec Muffett wrote: At the risk of sounding perverse you could do block-level repair on this by having someone put the same file up for Bittorrent somewhere, and David could start the torrent, pause his repeat download, install a copy of previously-downloaded file, restart his Bittorrent client and have it download/repair the corrupted blocks for fairly small bandwidth consumption. Having builds available via bittorrent or some other p2p tool would be very useful when the dev team in in China. Bandwidth at the factory is limited on per IP basis. If the builds were available via p2p with swarming then the team could peer each other and we all would download chunks in parallel. We do this sometimes manually now by cutting up the file into chunks and each of us download a chunk. I started to do this one trip but got stuck trying to find a text mode bittorrent server that you could work with via ssh and then get it working. I'm only a casual bittorrent user. -- Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.org One Laptop per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1
Hi Chris! Working on a neat repair with James - will report back how it goes. Cheers for the support! Let me know off list on the localising. David -Original Message- From: Chris Leonard [mailto:cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 7 January 2012 12:59 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: Sugar devel; de...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1 On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 12:26 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: So i conclude I have just thrown USD 85 down the toilet. Ouch, David, I will happily keep you supplied with pre-tested OLPC image downloads (by snail-mail CD-ROM) in exchange for some help recruiting localizers for the Oceanic languages. Consider it a standing offer. cjl Sugar Labs Translation Team Coordinator ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
883 on XO1
Apologies if this has been explored before, I have not been able to stay current. I am posting on both Sugar and OLPC dev lists. I live in Solomon Islands, where we have very poor Internet access and downloading is affected by satellite latency etc. I just tried to install the latest stable for XO1, advertised as 883 / 11.3.0 on one of my few XO-1s. I have not had access to any higher versions of the XO and am working with a programme in PNG which has XO-1s. I downloaded the image (BTW in Solomon Islands that cost me USD 85) using a download manager Star Downloader (to protect me against Internet drop outs). It downloaded with no errors reported. I then tried to install on my XO using a flashdrive as per the usual 4-game key method. On first attempt it failed during the part where you see the progress indicated graphically with the memory grid in green yellow and black. It says: 4ce Bad hash for eblock# 4ca Your USB key may be bad...please see http:/wiki.laptop.org/go/Bad_hash The diagnosis is that it's either bad flashdrive or bad download. I tried 2 other flashdrives that have successfully been used before, and same result at same place. So i conclude I have just thrown USD 85 down the toilet. Can anyone with similar or relevant experience comment. David in Solomon Islands Not Happy ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
RE: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1
Correction (883 not 833) Hi James, Here is the info below. Maybe it is something else? It fails at exactly the same place regardless which flashdrive I use. It's an XO-1 with build 852 David -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Friday, 6 January 2012 4:42 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'Sugar devel'; de...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] 883 on XO1 Please provide: 1. the names of the files on the USB drive, os883.img fs.zip (renamed from os883.img.fs.zip) 2. the sizes of the two files, in bytes, especially the files os883.img and fs.zip, os883.img 664,448 KB fs.zip 428 KB 3. the md5sum of the two files. 30ae72e62e78a4de32e21e5d76dd46fc fs.zip d23b46324cc2a50deb60fdb96649a828 os883.img md5sum -c ...: fs.zip OK os883.img OK This will let me check your download. You might be able to find some people here to do your downloads by post for much less than $USD 85. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops
HI, what I am trying to do is restore an XO-1 running build 860/0.84.31/Q2E45 that has been registered on one XS to a condition where it can be registered on another XS. When you register, the register option disappears from the options on the home page when you point at the icon in the middle. We want that back again so it can be used with another XS. On previous versions you would use Terminal and /rm/home/olpc/.sugar/default/config I tried sugar-control-panel -c registration and get this error: sugar-control-panel: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.) I must be missing something obvious? Of course we can always reinstall but would prefer more elegant solution ... David Leeming -Original Message- From: Sridhar Dhanapalan [mailto:srid...@laptop.org.au] Sent: Sunday, 15 May 2011 11:21 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: James Cameron; Richard A. Smith; XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops I believe the command is now: $ sugar-control-panel -c registration Sridhar On 14 May 2011 18:34, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: I am seeking a way to de-register XO-1s (10.1.3) that have been registered on one server to allow them to be registered on another. Previously we used rm /home/olpc/.sugar/default/config this no longer applies as per the thread below... David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 8 December 2010 1:33 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel'; 'Richard A. Smith' Subject: Re: deregister laptops On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 01:03:07PM +1100, David Leeming wrote: Terminal Activity was used, yes, version 31 # cat /boot/olpc_build 852 # rpm -q sugar sugar-0.84.22-1.fc11.i586 All above are results from the same XO Thanks. I've no further ideas. It seems to work for me. I've raised a ticket #10520 in the hope that those working on 10.1.3 can have a look at it. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10520 -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops
I am seeking a way to de-register XO-1s (10.1.3) that have been registered on one server to allow them to be registered on another. Previously we used rm /home/olpc/.sugar/default/config this no longer applies as per the thread below... David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of James Cameron Sent: Wednesday, 8 December 2010 1:33 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel'; 'Richard A. Smith' Subject: Re: deregister laptops On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 01:03:07PM +1100, David Leeming wrote: Terminal Activity was used, yes, version 31 # cat /boot/olpc_build 852 # rpm -q sugar sugar-0.84.22-1.fc11.i586 All above are results from the same XO Thanks. I've no further ideas. It seems to work for me. I've raised a ticket #10520 in the hope that those working on 10.1.3 can have a look at it. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10520 -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS-0.7 plans -- your thoughts please...
Great news, looking forwards to 0.7 I think three areas where we had some difficulties. 1. Perhaps making the default install easier to set eth0 up for static config 2. Not sure if it is relevant to the build, but we would have enjoyed an easy way to clone from a master, i.e. when setting up a customised XS for a number of schools 3. We had difficulties running the olpcxs update (yum --enablerepo .) at times, and although we couldn't always replicate the problem it seemed to be related to clock/date/time skew I have never tried selecting the Gnome option, but a nice GUI would be useful for users with limited grasp of command line stuff for file management. Maybe that is available already David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Drake Sent: Wednesday, 19 January 2011 7:28 a.m. To: Martin Langhoff Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XS-0.7 plans -- your thoughts please... On 18 January 2011 19:29, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: So -- going back on the traffic we've see in the last 24 months, what would you highlight? What have people asked for (that wasn't easy/trivial/possible)? What problems have we heard that were hard to diagnose...? Some items that spring to mind: 1. activity-server support for dotted activities 2. can't register if your name includes a : 3. automatic olpc-update via OATS (code was posted, but we never finished deciding exactly how to integrate it) ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS-0.7 plans -- your thoughts please...
OK point taken! We have used WinSCP on networked Windows PCs too, for this purpose. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: Anna [mailto:ascho...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 19 January 2011 10:11 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XS-0.7 plans -- your thoughts please... On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:31 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: I have never tried selecting the Gnome option, but a nice GUI would be useful for users with limited grasp of command line stuff for file management. Maybe that is available already David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link Managing a system with Gnome sounds seductive, but I can't think of a faster way to bork up a server than to let a novice admin loose in GUI tools with root powers. For file management, say a user level directory under /var/www/html, far better to mount it with sshfs from a remote system (there's even a Windows tool for that called dokan). That way you can have the ease of a GUI filesystem tool without the risks of actually running a Window Manager on the server itself. Not to mention installing Gnome and X Windows and all the deps takes a ton of space. Anna Schoolfield Birmingham ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS-0.7 plans -- your thoughts please...
Even if a location doesn't have internet access, daily reporting of the number of unique XOs that got IP addresses would probably be informative. At least you'd have a quick way to see how many XOs are being brought to school and be able to track that over time. Anna Schoolfield Birmingham Strongly agree! David ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops
On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 06:34:05PM +1100, David Leeming wrote: James wrote: David wrote: James wrote: G'day David, XO-1 software release 10.1.2 is based on Sugar 0.84, which moved to using gconf for storing this setting. What should work is: 1. start Terminal activity, 2. type sugar-control-panel -c registration 3. use ctrl-alt-erase to restart Sugar. If that doesn't work, please let me know, as I'd like to track it. Sorry it has taken me a while to get round to testing this. Well it does not work. In terminal, the command above gives a lot of text feedback, referring to a configuration server. Good, please provide the text feedback, it is critical for understanding the problem. You can capture that with a screenshot, Alt/1, or use the Linux script command. sugar-control-panel: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.) This happens for me on 10.1.2 only if I try it at a virtual terminal console (ctrl-alt-f1), but it doesn't happen for me if I do it in the Terminal activity. I checked that I mentioned using the Terminal activity. Please confirm this is where you typed it? Certain environment variables are needed from the running Sugar session, and these are available by default to Terminal. Please confirm the OLPC OS build number, and the version number of the Sugar RPM package: Terminal Activity was used, yes, version 31 # cat /boot/olpc_build 852 # rpm -q sugar sugar-0.84.22-1.fc11.i586 All above are results from the same XO David Did either of these alternate methods work? - gconftool method gave same output as the first (as above) That also happens in a shell that is missing the required context. - rm -rf .gconf gave no errors but after reboot there is no Register option present in the home view shutdown menu, only Shutdown and My Settings. So I guess no. Interesting, thanks. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops
G'day David, XO-1 software release 10.1.2 is based on Sugar 0.84, which moved to using gconf for storing this setting. What should work is: 1. start Terminal activity, 2. type sugar-control-panel -c registration 3. use ctrl-alt-erase to restart Sugar. If that doesn't work, please let me know, as I'd like to track it. Sorry it has taken me a while to get round to testing this. Well it does not work. In terminal, the command above gives a lot of text feedback, referring to a configuration server. Not sure what it is trying to do, but what I am trying to achieve is to get the Register to appear on the XO home page when you hover over the middle, under Shutdown and My settings; i.e. to have the Register option available again in the shutdown dropdown menu so that I can register the XO on another XS. We have to do this quite often, for instance right now we have 25 teachers from 3 schools with OLPC projects visiting one school for training. They all need to access the XS server at that school, using their own laptops. Hence we need to deregister them. I am not sure if this question is for the Sugar dev or server dev list, but is certainly server related. Any help appreciated! We are stuck at the moment. We are otherwise stuck; we upgrade them XOs to 10.1.2 and now don't have access to the server without a lot of time consuming work. (it is a pity as the rm /home/olpc/.sugar/default/config method was well understood here) There's an alternate method using the gconftool-2 program that is somewhat more complex. gconftool-2 --set --type=string \ /desktop/sugar/backup_url \ '' And finally a brute force method rm -rf .gconf but this destroys other settings, most of which may not be important. References: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10261 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7765 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7764 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6857 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5380 -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] deregister laptops
On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 03:19:40PM +1100, David Leeming wrote: G'day David, XO-1 software release 10.1.2 is based on Sugar 0.84, which moved to using gconf for storing this setting. What should work is: 1. start Terminal activity, 2. type sugar-control-panel -c registration 3. use ctrl-alt-erase to restart Sugar. If that doesn't work, please let me know, as I'd like to track it. Sorry it has taken me a while to get round to testing this. Well it does not work. In terminal, the command above gives a lot of text feedback, referring to a configuration server. Good, please provide the text feedback, it is critical for understanding the problem. You can capture that with a screenshot, Alt/1, or use the Linux script command. Hi James, thanks for responding so quickly. Actually we can set up accounts on the XS manually of course. But we need to know how to do this. The text output is below sugar-control-panel -c registration sugar-control-panel: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.) There's an alternate method using the gconftool-2 program that is somewhat more complex. gconftool-2 --set --type=string \ /desktop/sugar/backup_url \ '' And finally a brute force method rm -rf .gconf but this destroys other settings, most of which may not be important. Did either of these alternate methods work? - gconftool method gave same output as the first (as above) - rm -rf .gconf gave no errors but after reboot there is no Register option present in the home view shutdown menu, only Shutdown and My Settings. So I guess no. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses
OK, well the clones seem to working fully. Is there anything we should test in particular? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2010 3:51 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: Jerry Vonau; XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:53 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Sub note to this. I found I had to delete the file altogether. Then it works. It regenerates the file with the new hardware addresses so if the HDD is moved again, I guess this step needs repeating. Yes. And if the NICs are replaced too. It's not enough however (from a correctness PoV) when cloning a disk. There's a number of files that get generated on first boot -- the ssh key files come to mind (/etc/ssh/ssh_host_* ) . The postgres' server.crt too. Unfortunately there isn't an easy command on linux distros to return the OS to a 'pristine' state (IIRC, there's one on Solaris). 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-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses
I have been cloning a master XS hard drive onto a number of copies, to be used in different computers (of the exact same type). I used the following simple way of cloning dd bs=8192 if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb where sda is the master and sdb is connected via USB. This done using a live CD to boot it up. The clones work fine in the same PC as was used with the master. However, on booting a cloned HDD in another machine it does not detect the NICs (the computer has 2). I assume I have to delete the HWADDR= line somewhere, for both eth0 and eth1. Question is, where? Or should this be done another way? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses
Cheers Jerry! David Leeming -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Thursday, 2 December 2010 9:02 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses On Thu, 2010-12-02 at 20:38 +1100, David Leeming wrote: I have been cloning a “master” XS hard drive onto a number of copies, to be used in different computers (of the exact same type). I used the following simple way of cloning dd bs=8192 if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb where sda is the master and sdb is connected via USB. This done using a live CD to boot it up. The clones work fine in the same PC as was used with the master. However, on booting a cloned HDD in another machine it does not detect the NICs (the computer has 2). I assume I have to delete the “HWADDR=” line somewhere, for both eth0 and eth1. /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules Delete the lines that refer to all the eth devices and reboot Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Cloning and hardware addresses
On Thu, 2010-12-02 at 20:38 +1100, David Leeming wrote: I have been cloning a “master” XS hard drive onto a number of copies, to be used in different computers (of the exact same type). I used the following simple way of cloning dd bs=8192 if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb where sda is the master and sdb is connected via USB. This done using a live CD to boot it up. The clones work fine in the same PC as was used with the master. However, on booting a cloned HDD in another machine it does not detect the NICs (the computer has 2). I assume I have to delete the “HWADDR=” line somewhere, for both eth0 and eth1. /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules Delete the lines that refer to all the eth devices and reboot Jerry Sub note to this. I found I had to delete the file altogether. Then it works. It regenerates the file with the new hardware addresses so if the HDD is moved again, I guess this step needs repeating. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
OK thanks Jerry. I have decided to test this out on a safe replicated environment rather than risk breaking something, as I'd then not be able to fix it in the short time left on site. You gave me the second option, for the few fixed Windows PCs that will be involved in the initial part of this project, on those I will edit the hosts file. I will be back here next month and will have then bring a second machine with me to br about with at no risk! Many thanks, you've really been a tremendous help, also Anna and other, cheers David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Tuesday, 2 November 2010 1:48 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 20:35 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: Sorry forgot to reply-all... On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 19:21 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 10:43 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Jerry, The computers wishing to access the server are Windows laptops that get their DNS from the ISP (actually the gateway router points to Google DNS). This gateway router is handing out the dhcp addresses and the nameserver is pointing to google's dns servers? That would be the place to hijack the dns for schoolserver, do you have access to this router? Is this the second linksys that you refer to below? On one of these Windows boxes can you add an entries to winpath\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file: 192.168.0.210 schoolserver 192.168.0.210 schoolserver.patukae.org and then test with ping: ping schoolserver ping schoolserver.patukae.org If that is successful, you should be able to see moodle in the browser. The 192.168.0.0/24 network is actually a schoolnet linking several village schools with Wi-Fi bridges and access points, and it has Internet gateway (VSAT). We want all those schools to access the XS moodle and my added wiki. QUESTION: Yes, I can access the gateway router (it is also a Linksys WRT54G2). Would you know how to add the enter pointing schoolserver.patukae.org to 192.168.0.210, where (in the router admin) would I add that entry? It is not obvious to me, sorry... Give me a bit on that one, I have to check. Just so were looking at the same thing, Figure 6-13 on: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21144997/Linksys-WRT54G-router-manual I don't see a way of adding any entries, just boxes in the dhcp part for the upstream static dns servers, this info is being passed to the clients, at a windows cmd prompt, what does ipconfig /all show? What you need is a nameserver on 192.168.0.XXX to handle the name resolution. Think I can rig that up with just the XS, give me a bit. Jerry The first order of business would be to have named use the forwarders that are configured in the linksys, because the XS can't resolve anything outside of its own domain. You can ping google's ip address but google.com will fail. You need use these directions to add them, you can skip the service named restart part: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=XS_Techniques_and_Configurationsection=15#Use_ISP-provided_DNS_servers Next edit /var/named-xs/school.external.zone.db changing 18.85.46.29 to be, in your case, 192.168.0.210 Now restart named: service named restart You should now be able to ping from the XS(and the client XOs as well if you have iptables enabled) to anywhere on the web. Don't go any farther unless this works. Ensure that the linksys that is between the XS and the main router is acting as a DMZ host for the schoolserver or ensure that both port 80 tcp and port 53 tcp/udp are forwarded to the XS. Boot your Ubuntu Live CD and edit the /etc/resolv.conf file, change the nameserver to be 192.168.0.210 now the ping test: ping schoolserver.patukae.org ping schoolserver Try out moodle. Don't go any farther unless this works. On the main router, in the dhcp config page move the other ip addresses down to the 2 3 slots and fill in the first slot to be 192.168.0.210 and save the changes. The clients will pick up the changes as their dhcp leases expire, or you can do ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew to force the change quicker. We're now handing out the linksys' ip address as the first nameserver to be used, where it will be forwarded to the XS to handle. This should result is less traffic up the isp's pipe as the XS will cache dns requests made to it. The second third entries on this linksys would be just backup for if the first nameserver(the XS)failed to resolve. Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Hi Jerry That sorted it out - almost... I added the gateway and the server can now ping through the router. I added port forwarding for HTTP and success partially From the outside I can enter the router WAN IP (which is now 192.168.0.210) and mixed results... http://192.168.0.210 gives the Firefox error Server not found, Firefox can't find the server at schoolserver.patukae.org (showing that it has found something at least). Same with http://192.168.0.210/moodle/ However, the MediaWiki installed on the XS is fine (http://192.168.0.210/wiki is fully accessible). The difference is that moodle lives in /var/www/moodle but the wiki lives in /var/www/html/wiki Would be sincerely grateful for the last piece in the puzzle so would all the teachers here, as this firefighting is going on in parallel with the XS/wiki deployment! David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link .. -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Monday, 1 November 2010 4:15 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 11:35 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Hi thanks jerry, Almost there, just need clarification... On the router, what should I use for the LAN network, like this or different? 172.18.0.88 255.255.255.0 (is that correct? It means the network does not include the higher ranges 172.18.96.xxx etc) That should work, then only the XS has a direct route, while the XOs on 172.18.96.xxx don't. Should the router firewall settings be virtual server port 80 to 172.18.0.1??? or 172.18.???.??? What is the main IP address of the XS, I thought is was 172.18.0.1 use 172.18.0.1 as the target of the port forwarding, that should work once the default route is set as below. To add a route on the XS, do you mean (and what are the ??/): route add default gw 172.18.0.88 netmask 255.255.???.??? landbond0??? Yea that is the idea, but you would need to re-add that upon reboots. Lets try to get this to auto configure, edit ifcfg-lanbond0:2 from: if [ $XS_SERVER_NUM = 1 ] ;then ONBOOT=yes IPADDR=$XS_LANBOND_MAINXS_IPADDR NETMASK=255.255.255.0 BOOTPROTO=static #BONDING_OPTS= IPV6INIT=no else To be: if [ $XS_SERVER_NUM = 1 ] ;then ONBOOT=yes IPADDR=$XS_LANBOND_MAINXS_IPADDR NETMASK=255.255.255.0 GATEWAY=172.18.0.88 BOOTPROTO=static #BONDING_OPTS= IPV6INIT=no else That should create the default route via 172.18.0.88, when the network comes up. restart the network service and retest service network restart ping 172.18.0.88 ping 192.168.1.88 This that fails, can you capture the output of: ip route ls Jerry David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Monday, 1 November 2010 10:41 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 18:13 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 08:55 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Still no luck here. What it boils down to, is that when placing the XS (eth1 - LAN) behind a router with NAT, in order to allow the XS web service to be visible on the external WAN side of the router, what are the required LAN IP settings including netmask and firewall settings, including port forwarding or DMZ Host or other. Anna, you seem to have been able to do that but I can’t replicate without more info on your router/firewall settings. I have tried everything I can think of and the XS is not visible from the external network. Only need to be able to see Moodle, etc, (not interested in registering XOs on the external network) David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Sunday, 31 October 2010 11:38 a.m. To: 'Anna' Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network Anna, What you describe below is what I am trying to do (see the net diagram in my other email). I only want apache/Moodle/wiki to be available to the external network (your “regular LAN”). You’ll see that I have a simple WRT54G router bridging but no matter what I try, I can’t see the apache service through the router. Can you say what Wan and LAN settings you used for your router? I used WAN – fixed 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN – fixed 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 Port 80 forwarded from WAN to 172.18.0.1 (or DMZ host with 171.18.0.1) In this set up: If I try to ping from the XS to 172.18.0.88 it is OK, if I try
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 05:43 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 20:35 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Hi Jerry That sorted it out - almost... I added the gateway and the server can now ping through the router. I added port forwarding for HTTP and success partially Good that's progress. From the outside I can enter the router WAN IP (which is now 192.168.0.210) and mixed results... http://192.168.0.210 gives the Firefox error Server not found, Firefox can't find the server at schoolserver.patukae.org (showing that it has found something at least). Same with http://192.168.0.210/moodle/ Shoot, the client can't resolve the name, add to /etc/hosts: 192.168.0.210 schoolserver.patukae.org schoolserver Jerry Tried but no different. I don't think the mediawiki installation has changed anything fundamental with the networking. The server functions normally when XOs and PCs connect wirelessly or wired to the eth1. I was wondering if the public folders part might be an issue... because the only difference I can think between the wiki and moodle is that Moodle exists at /var/www/moodle/ but the wiki at /var/www/html/wiki/ (i.e. one level down). Please note these observations: These results I get when browsing with a PC on the external network 1. http://192.168.0.210/wiki fully accessible! 2. http://192.168.0.210 gives “Server not found, Firefox can’t find the server at schoolserver.patukae.org” 3. http://192.168.0.210/moodle gives same as (2) above 4. http://192.168.0.210/gibberish gives a prompt apache error the URL /gibberish not found. Thus it does find something (i.e. compare with 2 and 3). My /etc/hosts file now 127.0.0.1 schoolserver.@@BASEDNSNAME@@ localhost.localdomain localhost ::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 192.168.0.210 schoolserver.patukae.org schoolserver Route: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface 172.18.16.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 mshbond0 172.18.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 lanbond0 172.18.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 lanbond0 172.18.14.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond2 172.18.12.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond1 172.18.10.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond0 172.18.64.0 172.18.1.7 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.72.0 172.18.1.8 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.8.0 172.18.1.1 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.16.0 172.18.1.1 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.24.0 172.18.1.2 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.32.0 172.18.1.3 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.40.0 172.18.1.4 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.48.0 172.18.1.5 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.56.0 172.18.1.6 255.255.248.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 172.18.96.0 * 255.255.224.0 U 0 00 lanbond0 link-local * 255.255.0.0 U 0 00 mshbond2 default 172.18.0.88 0.0.0.0 UG0 00 lanbond0 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Jerry, The computers wishing to access the server are Windows laptops that get their DNS from the ISP (actually the gateway router points to Google DNS).The 192.168.0.0/24 network is actually a schoolnet linking several village schools with Wi-Fi bridges and access points, and it has Internet gateway (VSAT). We want all those schools to access the XS moodle and my added wiki. QUESTION: Yes, I can access the gateway router (it is also a Linksys WRT54G2). Would you know how to add the enter pointing schoolserver.patukae.org to 192.168.0.210, where (in the router admin) would I add that entry? It is not obvious to me, sorry... Other feedback: Everything on the XS is default apart from the added wiki. I ran domain_config patukae.org, yes. I have not done anything deviating from default installation that would cause the @@BASEDNSNAME@@ to appear. At the moment from the external net I can browse to http://192.168.0.210/wiki and it works fine but not http://192.168.0.210/ or http://192.168.0.210/moodle Maybe the above is relevant? David -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Tuesday, 2 November 2010 9:53 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 09:00 +1100, David Leeming wrote: On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 05:43 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 20:35 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Hi Jerry That sorted it out - almost... I added the gateway and the server can now ping through the router. I added port forwarding for HTTP and success partially Good that's progress. From the outside I can enter the router WAN IP (which is now 192.168.0.210) and mixed results... http://192.168.0.210 gives the Firefox error Server not found, Firefox can't find the server at schoolserver.patukae.org (showing that it has found something at least). Same with http://192.168.0.210/moodle/ Shoot, the client can't resolve the name, add to /etc/hosts: 192.168.0.210 schoolserver.patukae.org schoolserver Jerry That needs to be on the client PC/XOs that are on the 192.168.0.XXX lan, those clients can't resolve schoolserver.patukae.org. What dns server are the 192.168.0.XXX clients pointed too? Need to know where they're pointed too can you do a cat /etc/resolv.conf I'm going to say either your isp's servers, or the ADSL modem is caching the requests. Is this modem configurable? That would open up many more options. You can add an entry there for schoolserver.patukae.org pointing to 192.168.0.210, that would fix up the issue cleanly, else your forced to use the hosts file. Tried but no different. I don't think the mediawiki installation has changed anything fundamental with the networking. No, not likely. The server functions normally when XOs and PCs connect wirelessly or wired to the eth1. That is because they can resolve schoolserver correctly, while the clients on 192.168.0.xxx are failing to resolve schoolserver.patukae.org I was wondering if the public folders part might be an issue... because the only difference I can think between the wiki and moodle is that Moodle exists at /var/www/moodle/ but the wiki at /var/www/html/wiki/ (i.e. one level down). Please note these observations: These results I get when browsing with a PC on the external network 1.http://192.168.0.210/wiki fully accessible! 2.http://192.168.0.210 gives “Server not found, Firefox can’t find the server at schoolserver.patukae.org” 3.http://192.168.0.210/moodle gives same as (2) above 4.http://192.168.0.210/gibberish gives a prompt apache error the URL /gibberish not found. Thus it does find something (i.e. compare with 2 and 3). My /etc/hosts file now 127.0.0.1 schoolserver.@@BASEDNSNAME@@ localhost.localdomain localhost ::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 192.168.0.210 schoolserver.patukae.org schoolserver Stop, right there, don't add 192.168.0.210 to the XS hosts file, that needs to be on the *clients* only. I'm curious why @@BASEDNSNAME@@ is present, you have run domain_config patukae.org right? I'm going to say yes as the client that are on 172.18.96.XXX are ok. Is this the hosts.in file? Route: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface 172.18.16.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 mshbond0 172.18.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 lanbond0 172.18.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 lanbond0 172.18.14.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond2 172.18.12.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond1 172.18.10.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 00 mshbond0 172.18.64.0
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Still no luck here. What it boils down to, is that when placing the XS (eth1 - LAN) behind a router with NAT, in order to allow the XS web service to be visible on the external WAN side of the router, what are the required LAN IP settings including netmask and firewall settings, including port forwarding or DMZ Host or other. Anna, you seem to have been able to do that but I can't replicate without more info on your router/firewall settings. I have tried everything I can think of and the XS is not visible from the external network. Only need to be able to see Moodle, etc, (not interested in registering XOs on the external network) David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Sunday, 31 October 2010 11:38 a.m. To: 'Anna' Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network Anna, What you describe below is what I am trying to do (see the net diagram in my other email). I only want apache/Moodle/wiki to be available to the external network (your regular LAN). You'll see that I have a simple WRT54G router bridging but no matter what I try, I can't see the apache service through the router. Can you say what Wan and LAN settings you used for your router? I used WAN - fixed 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN - fixed 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 Port 80 forwarded from WAN to 172.18.0.1 (or DMZ host with 171.18.0.1) In this set up: If I try to ping from the XS to 172.18.0.88 it is OK, if I try to 192.168.0.88 it says network unreachable. But if I use a PC hooked up on the eth1 network, with fixed IP 172.18.0.89 / 255.255.255.0 (for example) I can ping the WAN address and beyond. This is what leads me to think it needs one extra step with route, or it may be something to do with the WRT LAN setting and XS having different netmasks. You can see I am reaching at straws a little L By way of example, here's a setup I've done in the past: Regular LAN: XS (eth0) 192.168.1.20 My Desktop 192.168.1.6 XO A 192.168.1.7 XS LAN: XS (eth1) 172.18.0.1 XO B 172.18.96.2 On the XS LAN, XO B can go to http://schoolserver or 172.18.0.1 and see the default Moodle homepage. It can also register to the XS and all that good stuff, cause it's getting its IP address from the XS's DHCP server. On theRegular LAN, my desktop and XO A can't see the Moodle homepage at 192.168.1.20 until I open port 80 in the firewall on the XS using lokkit (or edit iptables or whatever). Since XO A is not getting its IP address from the XS, it won't be able to register. If XO A wants to use the XS's Jabber server, that port needs to be opened in the XS firewall. XO A can now manually set the Jabber server to 192.168.1.20 and collaborate. If you want to use Moodle, not being able to register to the XS is a huge issue. Apache access works fine, though. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Martyn, In regard to the below, I am trying to set up the XS behind a Linksys WRT54G2 router. I think my issue is because eth1 (lanbond0) is set up as network 172.18.96.1/255.255.224.0 (for the XOs) but the server listens on 172.18.0.1 (or I have tried to use the route command to add the router LAN IP as the default gateway but it doesn't work or I did it wrong Could you please tell me what I should use for the LAN settings on the router? The WRT54 settings I am using here at home are .. WAN - static IP, 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 (external network is 192.168.1.0/24) .. LAN - static IP, 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 (could it be the netmask? The WRT only allows up that setting , i.e. 255.255.224.0 is not possible) .. Port forwarding, I tried everything, including UPnP forwarding and DMZ Host with 172.18.0.1 as the IP At the moment I can't ping from the XS to the Linksys WAN IP (on the external network). However, I can ping the LAN side (172.18.0.88). Moreover, from a PC connected to the same LAN side of the router, I ACN indeed ping all the way through the router to the external network and beyond. I can also ping the server and if I enter 172.18.0.1 in the browser I get Moodle. So in summary, the PC can send traffic through the router but the server can't. Beats me but I am sure it is the network settings somewhere. I tried this using with the router LAN network set to 172.18.96.0/24 but it didn't work either - I can't ping through the router even with a PC (destination reachable). Note that the PC is given a mask of 255.255.224.0 by the XS DHCP (and DNS server 172.18.0.1) and it's not possible to use that in the router settings. Is this going to be possible? Do I need a better router ? I am going to the remote site today for 7 days, and need to crack this one quickly David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Saturday, 30 October 2010 4:11 p.m. To: 'XS Devel' Cc: 'Mark Flynn'; 'Phill Hardstaff' Subject: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network Hello all again, A networking challenge this time. I have an XS at a school where there also exists a wide area private network connecting schools using Wi-Fi. We want those connected schools to be able to access the XS, for various reasons. That network (let's call it network 2) is 192.168.1.0/24 and it is connected with the Internet via a router running NAT and DHCP. The XS local network seems to be quite complicated, I don't fully understand it, but what I need to know is the correct slash designation for the httpd and dns servers at 172.18.0.1 so that I can bridge it to network 2. I am trying to use a Linksys WRT54G2 in DMZ Host mode with the IP address 172.18.0.1 bridged to the external Wan IP address of the WRT (set to 192.168.1.88) The WRT LAN IP setting only allows netmask values of up to 255.255.255.0 and I am worried if there is a mismatch then it could be why I can't get it to work. I also suspect I may have to add something to the apache or routing config on the XS, so as to listen on the WRT external IP address At the moment I set the Linksys to WAN - fixed IP 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN IP address - 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 (could the net mask be the issue?) Application: DMZ Host, value 172.18.0.1 Required changes to xs apache settings ?? Trying to connect on the network 2 side using a browser if I enter 192.168.1.88 or 172.18.0.1 it just times out. If anyone reading this recognises what I am trying to do, I'd very much appreciate your advice. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Thanks Anna, I'll just clarify; I am working on UNESCO project where schools in a remote area are linked by a WAN (both wired and Wi-Fi bridges). Only one school is an OLPC school. Schools generally (not just OLPC) contribute to an online wiki environmental encyclopaedia . Content in any kind of format is uploaded to a local server where it is moderated and digitally processed if need be, by a trained QA team prior to upload to the online wiki. This is needed for reasons of integrity of content, traditional views on what content can be shared, etc. Lesson plans are developed to support schools in ways linked to the curriculum to access and create content for the wiki. Excitingly we can have the OLPC uploading Sugar formats like eToys, etc. Other schools will contribute text, images, audio and video. So the content will be locally uploaded to either the XS Moodle or the offline wiki as appropriate - reducing barriers to participation. I have the server running so that once you get access on a non-XO computer, you bring up the Moodle using http://schoolserver/moodle andthe wiki from http://schoolserver/wiki. It all works fine on the eth1 network (the internal network). I can also connect any PC and enter 172.18.0.1 to bring up the server Moodle page. It is NOT intended that XOs on the external network can register on the single XS. The only school with XOs has local access to the XS on the XS's eth1 network. The other schools only need to be able to access the XS Moodle and wiki. So my problem is that even with opening and forwarding port 80, or using DMZ Host mode, the server cannot see through the router and reply to requests. On the other hand, a PC can ping right through the router so I just need in simple terms, to know what I need to do with the apache config or hosts or other files so that the XS can be seen on port 80 from the external network. I don't care about jabber etc. Only access to web services. I am packing to go now, but will look again at your advice - many thanks. But if anyone can quite specifically give me advice on the router LAN settings to use, and any required changes to the XS networking and routing settings so that it is able to reply back to port 80 requests through the router, I would be most appreciative. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: Anna [mailto:ascho...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 31 October 2010 9:33 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network David: I'm a little confused as to your setup. If you just have the one ethernet device on the XS, it can either get an IP address from your router (as eth0) or hand out DHCP addresses (as eth1). It can't be in both roles. I've played around with external access for the XS and it does involve some firewall stuff. I think I used lokkit to configure access to port 80 and the jabber port to my regular LAN. Then I opened up those ports on my router firewall for access from the rest of the internet. By way of example, here's a setup I've done in the past: Regular LAN: XS (eth0) 192.168.1.20 My Desktop 192.168.1.6 XO A 192.168.1.7 XS LAN: XS (eth1) 172.18.0.1 XO B 172.18.96.2 On the XS LAN, XO B can go to http://schoolserver or 172.18.0.1 and see the default Moodle homepage. It can also register to the XS and all that good stuff, cause it's getting its IP address from the XS's DHCP server. On the Regular LAN, my desktop and XO A can't see the Moodle homepage at 192.168.1.20 until I open port 80 in the firewall on the XS using lokkit (or edit iptables or whatever). Since XO A is not getting its IP address from the XS, it won't be able to register. If XO A wants to use the XS's Jabber server, that port needs to be opened in the XS firewall. XO A can now manually set the Jabber server to 192.168.1.20 and collaborate. If you want to use Moodle, not being able to register to the XS is a huge issue. Apache access works fine, though. I use ifcfg-eth0-local to set the static IP for eth0 on the XS. Here's my example: IPADDR=192.168.1.20 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 NETWORK=192.168.1.0 BROADCAST=192.168.1.255 GATEWAY=192.168.1.254 To see what I need to put in there, I'll do this on another Linux box connected to my Regular LAN: a...@anna-desktop:~$ ifconfig eth0 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0f:1f:80:0d:ea inet addr:192.168.1.4 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::20f:1fff:fe80:dea/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1328780 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1018129 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 RX bytes:1602636271 (1.6 GB) TX bytes:98891469 (98.8 MB) a...@anna-desktop:~$ netstat -nr Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Anna, What you describe below is what I am trying to do (see the net diagram in my other email). I only want apache/Moodle/wiki to be available to the external network (your regular LAN). You'll see that I have a simple WRT54G router bridging but no matter what I try, I can't see the apache service through the router. Can you say what Wan and LAN settings you used for your router? I used WAN - fixed 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN - fixed 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 Port 80 forwarded from WAN to 172.18.0.1 (or DMZ host with 171.18.0.1) In this set up: If I try to ping from the XS to 172.18.0.88 it is OK, if I try to 192.168.0.88 it says network unreachable. But if I use a PC hooked up on the eth1 network, with fixed IP 172.18.0.89 / 255.255.255.0 (for example) I can ping the WAN address and beyond. This is what leads me to think it needs one extra step with route, or it may be something to do with the WRT LAN setting and XS having different netmasks. You can see I am reaching at straws a little L By way of example, here's a setup I've done in the past: Regular LAN: XS (eth0) 192.168.1.20 My Desktop 192.168.1.6 XO A 192.168.1.7 XS LAN: XS (eth1) 172.18.0.1 XO B 172.18.96.2 On the XS LAN, XO B can go to http://schoolserver or 172.18.0.1 and see the default Moodle homepage. It can also register to the XS and all that good stuff, cause it's getting its IP address from the XS's DHCP server. On the Regular LAN, my desktop and XO A can't see the Moodle homepage at 192.168.1.20 until I open port 80 in the firewall on the XS using lokkit (or edit iptables or whatever). Since XO A is not getting its IP address from the XS, it won't be able to register. If XO A wants to use the XS's Jabber server, that port needs to be opened in the XS firewall. XO A can now manually set the Jabber server to 192.168.1.20 and collaborate. If you want to use Moodle, not being able to register to the XS is a huge issue. Apache access works fine, though. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Hello all again, A networking challenge this time. I have an XS at a school where there also exists a wide area private network connecting schools using Wi-Fi. We want those connected schools to be able to access the XS, for various reasons. That network (let's call it network 2) is 192.168.1.0/24 and it is connected with the Internet via a router running NAT and DHCP. The XS local network seems to be quite complicated, I don't fully understand it, but what I need to know is the correct slash designation for the httpd and dns servers at 172.18.0.1 so that I can bridge it to network 2. I am trying to use a Linksys WRT54G2 in DMZ Host mode with the IP address 172.18.0.1 bridged to the external Wan IP address of the WRT (set to 192.168.1.88) The WRT LAN IP setting only allows netmask values of up to 255.255.255.0 and I am worried if there is a mismatch then it could be why I can't get it to work. I also suspect I may have to add something to the apache or routing config on the XS, so as to listen on the WRT external IP address At the moment I set the Linksys to WAN - fixed IP 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN IP address - 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 (could the net mask be the issue?) Application: DMZ Host, value 172.168.0.1 Required changes to xs apache settings ?? Trying to connect on the network 2 side using a browser if I enter 192.168.1.88 or 172.18.0.1 it just times out. If anyone reading this recognises what I am trying to do, I'd very much appreciate your advice. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Bridging XS to another network
Corrected line in *** Hello all again, A networking challenge this time. I have an XS at a school where there also exists a wide area private network connecting schools using Wi-Fi. We want those connected schools to be able to access the XS, for various reasons. That network (let's call it network 2) is 192.168.1.0/24 and it is connected with the Internet via a router running NAT and DHCP. The XS local network seems to be quite complicated, I don't fully understand it, but what I need to know is the correct slash designation for the httpd and dns servers at 172.18.0.1 so that I can bridge it to network 2. I am trying to use a Linksys WRT54G2 in DMZ Host mode with the IP address 172.18.0.1 bridged to the external Wan IP address of the WRT (set to 192.168.1.88) The WRT LAN IP setting only allows netmask values of up to 255.255.255.0 and I am worried if there is a mismatch then it could be why I can't get it to work. I also suspect I may have to add something to the apache or routing config on the XS, so as to listen on the WRT external IP address At the moment I set the Linksys to WAN - fixed IP 192.168.1.88 / 255.255.255.0 LAN IP address - 172.18.0.88 / 255.255.255.0 (could the net mask be the issue?) *** Application: DMZ Host, value 172.18.0.1 *** Required changes to xs apache settings ?? Trying to connect on the network 2 side using a browser if I enter 192.168.1.88 or 172.18.0.1 it just times out. If anyone reading this recognises what I am trying to do, I'd very much appreciate your advice. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port
Tom That seems clear enough to me! I will give it a go and confirm back. I had not seen that section or overlooked it. Tahnks. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Tom Parker [mailto:t...@carrott.org] Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 2010 4:22 p.m. To: Jerry Vonau Cc: David Leeming; 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port On Tue, 2010-10-26 at 23:31 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: Can I configure it to work with the single port working normally as the LAN (i.e. functioning as the eth1 interface in default case)? If all you need to do is rename eth0 to eth1 just run as root: xs-swapnics and then reboot. Indeed I was confused by this for a while too. I tried to re-write the section on xs-swapnics to make it clear that it works in the one-nic case too: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software#Network_Configuration_Notes If someone can think of a clearer way to phrase it, please do. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port
Hi, I got lucky with this. The first USB-Ethernet device I tried worked straight away with no config changes. I ran xs-swapnics and that worked. So I have my main inbuilt NIC for LAN and an option USB interface for WAN. Great. There is one warning message that comes up on boot to do with the USB device Kaweth: failed to set RX mode : -16 Do you know if that's something I should worry about? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Tom Parker [mailto:t...@carrott.org] Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 2010 4:58 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'Jerry Vonau'; 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 16:26 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Would that leave the machine with all the normal services running on that single Ethernet port, and otherwise function exactly as the eth1 network on a machine with two NICs? I guess I'll find out soon enough... Yes, it does. My second question, is if there are any instructions on setting up a second interface using a USB Ethernet adapter. I don't see any instructions, but I believe it just works if the USB device is supported by the kernel. It certainly wasn't that hard to get going last time I needed it, but I don't remember the details. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port
Just received a small mini PC machine for an application at last minute, to my horror only one Ethernet port not two as specified. In this location WAN not needed (for the time being) as no Internet access. Can I configure it to work with the single port working normally as the LAN (i.e. functioning as the eth1 interface in default case)? Many thanks for any tips, I looked in the normal wiki locations but could not find what I needed, Otherwise, is there any info on configuring it with a USB Ethernet adapter? David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port
Thanks Jerry Would that leave the machine with all the normal services running on that single Ethernet port, and otherwise function exactly as the eth1 network on a machine with two NICs? I guess I'll find out soon enough... My second question, is if there are any instructions on setting up a second interface using a USB Ethernet adapter. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link -Original Message- From: Jerry Vonau [mailto:jvo...@shaw.ca] Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 2010 3:31 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: 'XS Devel' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] How to configure XS with only one Ethernet port On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 15:07 +1100, David Leeming wrote: Just received a small mini PC machine for an application at last minute, to my horror only one Ethernet port not two as specified. In this location WAN not needed (for the time being) as no Internet access. Can I configure it to work with the single port working normally as the LAN (i.e. functioning as the eth1 interface in default case)? If all you need to do is rename eth0 to eth1 just run as root: xs-swapnics and then reboot. Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] MediaWiki on XS
I have this all working following these instructions: http://www.wikihow.com/Install-MediaWiki-on-Fedora In my case I used mysql. All working and I can access the wiki from an XO as follows http://schoolserver/wiki All good. We're now able to upload content to Moodle and mediwiki as appropriately, on the same machine. You might ask why we need both, well it's explained in the background info below. Were now working on lesson plans to guide teachers and students in creating local language content about the environment in many formats using the XOs where available and SOAS and other means in schools without OLPC. The server is available to several schools around Marovo Lagoon over a wireless WAN. Teachers will collaborate on creating lesson plans using a great tool in the WikiEducator, which uses templates. More here (note it will all be divided into Marovo/English). http://wikieducator.org/Patukae_College/OER_Reef_and_Rainforest_wiki_in_Maro vo_Language David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Saturday, 23 October 2010 3:30 p.m. To: 'Reuben K. Caron' Cc: 'XS Devel'; 'Michael Stein' Subject: Re: [Server-devel] MediaWiki on XS Hi, Things may have moved forward a bit since this useful document was shared on this list. I have tried to follow the instructions and installed mediawiki (without texlive) and mysql using yum install, but (a)In the attached document, MySQL Preparation, the stated directories i.e. /usr/local/mysql/* do not exist. (b) There seem to be instances of the packages in /usr/bin but the command /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password mypassword gives error Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)' Something has changed with the XS or does this show my installation has some issues? Background to his - I'm working on a project involving an OLPC pilot in Solomons, rural community and schools wi-fi network, and a UNESCO indigenous knowledge management project. To cut things short, we need to have mediawiki running on the same server as the XS. Then students using specially prepared lesson plans will create local language multimedia content for a wiki. For various reasons moderation is needed, and we also want to reduce any barriers to creativity and participation so a local wiki as well as the XS will be needed for user uploads (content contributions for the wiki) http://wikieducator.org/Patukae_College/OER_Reef_and_Rainforest_wiki_in_Maro vo_Language David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: Reuben K. Caron [mailto:reu...@laptop.org] Sent: Thursday, 14 January 2010 2:33 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel; Michael Stein Subject: Re: [Server-devel] MediaWiki on XS David, I've attached a how to install mediawiki paper written by an OLPCorps member CC'd here. Please report back your experiences. Regards, Reuben ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] PDA mambot on XS
Martin, Mike, I am exploring the possibility of increasing access to the server by providing mobile-friendly content targeted at people in the community, and the increasing number of phones with Wi-Fi support. For instance, the school server as a multi-purpose resource could serve as a sort of on-demand community radio station broadcasting audio information in the form of mp3s (or any playable formats commonly used in mobile phones). It would be nice to have a tidy way to share such content, with user uploads allowed too, and thus I thought of using a dedicated CMS with a mobile extension or plugin. I understood by mambot that one could use a plugin that causes mobile browsers to be recognised and then display content tailored to suit. For instance, Wordpress comes with a mobile edition plugin. On the XS it might run in parallel to Moodle with a different CMS, and I am experimenting with that on an Ubuntu 10 machine, or there might be a way to do it with Moodle. It might not be needed, I was happily surfing the XS on an iPhone without any such reformatting. However, I want to see what the range of options are, so I am interested in any feedback. David Leeming Solomon Islands -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 2 October 2010 1:04 a.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] PDA mambot on XS On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 6:39 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: No-one has replied to this, but I remain interested in a mobile friendly plugin for the XS. I personally don't even know what mambot is (and I'm under a pile of hi-pri work). If you outline goals more openly maybe someone can help you... Or (in the opposite direction)if you outline specific technical challenges in installing mambot,... 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-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] PDA mambot on XS
No-one has replied to this, but I remain interested in a mobile friendly plugin for the XS. If anyone has any thoughts on this I would be very interested. I'm thinking more in terms of increasing access to community through the most ubiquitous devices, sharing multimedia content, especially audio. David Leeming Solomon Islands Rural Link From: David Leeming [mailto:da...@leeming-consulting.com] Sent: Monday, 27 September 2010 3:18 p.m. To: 'XS Devel' Subject: PDA mambot on XS Hello, Coming from someone with as meagre Linux skills as me this may seem rich. But I am interested in an application targeting mobile users as well as XOs. Is it possible to install a PDA-mambot on the XS without doing it via a Joomla or other CMS? If so would I just follow a standard approach to installing it? David Leeming Leeming International Consulting, P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] PDA mambot on XS
Hello, Coming from someone with as meagre Linux skills as me this may seem rich. But I am interested in an application targeting mobile users as well as XOs. Is it possible to install a PDA-mambot on the XS without doing it via a Joomla or other CMS? If so would I just follow a standard approach to installing it? David Leeming Leeming International Consulting, P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands +677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Cloning
Hi Martin We had some results doing this , but it is actually much more time consuming than installing and configuring the servers individually. What would be really useful is (a) some way of automatic this or (b) the ability to export the XS configuration especially the Moodle settings. David Leeming -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 13 August 2010 11:46 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Cloning Hi David, super brief - - get the machine in 'single user mode' (init 1 on the commandline will work) - plug new disk in, setup the partition table, and the filesystems - rsync / and /library to the temp mountpoints - remove hardware-specific files: /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persisntent-net.rules - fixup /etc/fstab to match the UID of the new filesystems - run grub targetting the new disk - move new disk to new machine that will _clone_ the XS so it will keep a lot of identifiers (and all the data) from the original XS. Do NOT use this technique for cloning a base install. Use kickstart/anaconda methods to automate many-machine rollouts. cheers, martin On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 6:22 AM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Are there any recommended ways of cloning an XS installation? We have tried Ping and Reflect but with difficulty. David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- 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-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Cloning
Are there any recommended ways of cloning an XS installation? We have tried Ping and Reflect but with difficulty. David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Updating offline
Having problems trying yum --enablerepo=olpcxs-testing -y update Could not retrieve mirrorlist (Error 404: Not Found) Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml). Please verify path and try again. Could be our bad connection here. Meanwhile we downloaded the latest rpms manually (eJabberd 2.0.3.11, Moodle xs1.6 and xs1.7, Xs config 0.6.0.18 and Xs activation 0.2.44). What is the procedure to apply them on the XS? David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Updating offline
Missed that, thanks. Done. David From: plo...@gmail.com [mailto:plo...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Maxime RAYNAUD Sent: Sunday, 8 August 2010 8:25 p.m. To: David Leeming Cc: XS Devel Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Updating offline While i'm no expert on this, i can point to a previous answer from server-devel 2 weeks ago. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2010-July/005046.html Maxime Raynaud 2010/8/8 David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com Having problems trying yum --enablerepo=olpcxs-testing -y update Could not retrieve mirrorlist (Error 404: Not Found) Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml). Please verify path and try again. Could be our bad connection here. Meanwhile we downloaded the latest rpms manually (eJabberd 2.0.3.11, Moodle xs1.6 and xs1.7, Xs config 0.6.0.18 and Xs activation 0.2.44). What is the procedure to apply them on the XS? David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Exporting Moodle config from XS
Is it possible to export the Moodle configuration from the XS and then install it on another server intended for another site? Obviously the user data is not important in this instance. However the second example would be backing it up, when user data is important. David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] (cancel) Problem with registered users locked out
Sorry folks... this was just a case of latency, it took time for some changes to propagate through the system David Leeming Leeming Consulting, P.O. Box 652, Honiara, Solomon Islands Tel: +677 747-6396 (m) 24419 (h) www.leeming-consulting.com From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of David Leeming Sent: Thursday, 5 August 2010 12:25 p.m. To: 'XS Devel' Subject: [Server-devel] Problem with registered users locked out After doing some minor Moodle changes using the admin login at one school in PNG, we found that all the students have become unable to access the server - it redirects to the login page. However, using the admin XO we can see that all these XOs are appearing as registered users (in Site Admin) and also they still appear in the course to which they are joined. We found we can correct this be re-registering but what can have happened, and is there a quick way to bring them back in again? David Leeming ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] wifi setup
Tom We use multiple APs in schools set up in simple AP mode, using DHCP (not fixed IP), the same SSID exactly, and only one network icon appears in neighbourhood view. Same capitalisation is important. But you never have to choose which one it should connect to. At the current school we had to accept some 120 sector APs as there was no omnis in stock. Walking about with Terminal Activity running and pinging, you could clearly see where it hopped onto a new AP. Can't add much more from technical point of view. We've used Linksys W54 types, EnGenius various types, DLink cheapo and more expensive types, and usually in the default state with minimal config - just SSID, simple access mode and DHCP client. Everything on the eth1 network. David Leeming -Original Message- From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org [mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Tom Parker Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 1:42 p.m. To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: [Server-devel] wifi setup Howdy from Samoa. I'm doing wifi testing here and I am wondering if there is a way to make the access points merge together, so only one shows up on in the neighbourhood and the laptop connects to the closest one? I'm using Ubiquiti PicoStations http://www.ubnt.com/picostation If I set them all to the same essid, I see 3 access points with the same name. Am I missing something? I've been to conferences where the wifi just works no matter which room you are in. Thanks. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server performance feedback and testing suggestions
Some feedback inserted David, quick comments as you have short time over there. On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 5:31 PM, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: - One eBox fanless VIA server with 1GB RAM (non-expandable). We had planned two (one for G3-4 and one for G5+) but vital eqt did not show up in time so we are managing with one. One server should be ok - Campus wide wireless network, solar powered, using a ratio of less than 30 XOs per AP. Super! Layout is 3 x single storey double classrooms (G3A, 3B... 4A, 4B...etc) in line, separated by about 15m. The server is situated in a parallel line of classrooms about 6m to one side. We use some centrally located solar power supplies with POE. The whole system is DC powered and we use digital; timers to turn things off when not needed to save power. However the system provides good access for at least 15 hrs per day. Great idea on the digital timers -- when you have a chance, documenting the setup would benefit other deployments. Will be posting up details on wiki pages when I get a chance. But we are using Sundaya S4 kist with the 55W panels doubled up with 2A loads or less. The units are self contained, well priced, and the system is modular so that if one part goes down due to low voltage it doesn't pull the rest. So far we have seen the unit with the server (1.5A load) running all night reaching full charge by 11am even on a cloudy day. The 12V DC digital timers were sourced from Rainbow Power, www.rpc.com.au) (Advice on power management): I would like suggestions how the server can be safely turned on and off automatically. I have designed the server so that it survives sanely hard power off. During development and testing I almost never issue a formal shutdown. Removing the powercord is de rigueur. Just don't do it during yum / rpm updates (how I wish those were saner!) OTOH, given that you have set timers, if everything is running smooth you know what time power will be off, so you can set a cronjob at a regular time to run shutdown. (As various clocks drift, this won't be particularly reliable...) Daily reboot _not_ needed. OK, well we have set it up to run 24/7 with the timer override, allowing teachers to set the timer to auto if need be (but then they will have the daily task of manually switching it on, that can get neglected in my experience, especially as the servers are in locked rooms, with the daily hassle of finding keys etc. Sounds a minor issue but in practice it is best to have the system as automated as possible). We also added a line to the cron table (crontab -e) to have a daily reboot just because we have been brought up to think that is a good thing!!! ... generally the impression was that networking was functioning well over the entire campus. Excellent! However, we noticed that collaboration was not working well. XOs could not see all members of their course in neighbourhood view it seemed to be I would have expected that. The ejabberd server (if you've updated the RPMs to the latest from olpcxs-testing) will handle many XOs well, but the neighbourhood view on the XO doesn't cope well with so many XOs. The cure: segregate presence by course (see xs techniques and configuration in the wiki for the steps). We reconfigured with smaller groups (less than 35 per group) and it tested OK - 6 class groups all independently collaborating and isolated from each other. As it was the last day and Sunday, we could only do a limited test with 5 XOs per class but we had Chat running with pretty good responsiveness (the icon appearing in a few seconds on all laptops) on each of the 6 classes. Whilst this was happening I measured memory use as 184KB total using ps_mem.py up from 170KB with no XOs active. We'll have to wait for a monitoring visit to get the data on the full load situation. We only had 2 weeks to do all the training and obviously focused on laptop use and classroom integration / the pedagogical side, although one teacher was trained to do basic user management on Moodle. These teachers have mostly NO previous computing experience. This contrasts with the good responsive and reliable browsing. In this test, we were using presence service split by course, with the students added as students and the teachers of those grades added as teachers. No-one was Hmmm, so even with segregated presence service you are seeing slow presence issues. Can you confirm yum --enablerepo=olpcxs-testing update doesn't bring a new version of ejabberd? Yes was updated. Now works OK (at least based on the reduced load test described above) given site roles. The teachers were also members of another course teachers intended to allow collaboration between the teachers in different grades. That's best practice -- good. We would like some feedback on what could be the issue. Very unlikely to be a problem on your end. An ejabberd bug or ejabberd-moodle interaction issue could be what's
[Server-devel] Server performance feedback and testing suggestions
In our PNG deployment we have only just got the system up for testing due to late delivery of most of the infrastructure eqt (we had the laptops so were able to complete the initial training); - 250 XOs divided into six classes G3A - G5B and all 15 teachers - One eBox fanless VIA server with 1GB RAM (non-expandable). We had planned two (one for G3-4 and one for G5+) but vital eqt did not show up in time so we are managing with one. - Campus wide wireless network, solar powered, using a ratio of less than 30 XOs per AP. - 1Gb switches used throughout - 1:1 use of 15W thin film (GoldPeak) panels with DC Share cables for the laptops. No power in this school. I have questions about power management for the server, and feedback on server performance. Layout is 3 x single storey double classrooms (G3A, 3B... 4A, 4B...etc) in line, separated by about 15m. The server is situated in a parallel line of classrooms about 6m to one side. We use some centrally located solar power supplies with POE. The whole system is DC powered and we use digital; timers to turn things off when not needed to save power. However the system provides good access for at least 15 hrs per day. (Advice on power management): I would like suggestions how the server can be safely turned on and off automatically. I guess auto off at an agreed time would be easy, turning on might be hardware dependent. Or can we put it into sleep mode when not needed (10pm-7am) and have it running 24/7? With solar power one has to be efficient as possible. If it is run 24/7, we'd like to know how a timed daily reboot can be activated, and whether that is a good idea or just leave it on. (Advice on server performance and testing suggestions): We only have 2 days to test the full system due to the crazy logistical issues that have plagued us. Yesterday we had it all running with the students in the classrooms, logged on to the server OK. They are segregated into 3 courses at the moment (G3, G4, G5) with about 60 students per course. However in the test yesterday it was out of school hours and only maybe 30 students per course (Grade) were present. We observed that browsing the server, both with site files and public folders (such as Schools Wikipedia and the heavier UNESCO ASEAN SchoolNet series of flash animations) was generally working good and the server as responsive. Moodle admin (such as adding users to courses) was working very responsively. So generally the impression was that networking was functioning well over the entire campus. However, we noticed that collaboration was not working well. XOs could not see all members of their course in neighbourhood view - it seemed to be taking a long time to populate the view, and you could see some dropping out occurring - XOs that were on and connected, suddenly disappearing from view on a neighbouring XO. Likewise, sharing activities was almost universally not working - no icon displayed on the course members neighbourhood view. This contrasts with the good responsive and reliable browsing. In this test, we were using presence service split by course, with the students added as students and the teachers of those grades added as teachers. No-one was given site roles. The teachers were also members of another course teachers intended to allow collaboration between the teachers in different grades. We would like some feedback on what could be the issue. Is it the low power server with only 1GB RAM? But we only had a maximum of about 90 students divided into the three courses online yesterday. Could it be some inefficiency in the networking? But browsing was working well. Could it be that Moodle is broken in some respect? But during training we were experiencing no issues with collaboration with the teachers. What data , logs can we collect to analyse the performance and feed back to this list? Thanks. David Leeming and Dudley ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
