Re: [Server-devel] Booting from a big USB stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Adam

As you know this is an area where we agree to disagree. Currently the 
schoolserver's valid, useful content exceeds 500GB. I really do not want 
to get into the game of deciding what is worthwhile and what is not. It 
is clear that the planned expansion of OSM will require increased 
capacity. If local content is seriously supported, the amount will 
increase even further. At one time OLPC estimated storage of the Journal 
would take 2GB per XO. A typical Rwanda school has 200 XOs potentially 
requiring 400GB of additional space.


My dream is an RPi3 based schoolserver with a 1TB (or 2TB) external 
hard-drive at under $150 (about 1/3 of NUC-based server).


Tony

On 3/20/19 9:26 AM, Adam Holt wrote:
On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 9:22 PM Adam Holt > wrote:


Thanks Tony.

Another option is to buy a $19.99 128MB 100 MByte/sec microSD @
https://amazon.com/dp/B06XWZWYVP

I meant $19.99 128*GB*

Or a $39.99 256GB 100 MByte/sec microSD @
https://amazon.com/dp/B072HRDM55

The 400GB, 512GB and 1GB cards are completely excessive &
irrelevant for impoverished nations especially  unless you
happen to be a rich photographer/videographer of course, and want
to donate your time to an important cause in which case do let us
know...we will happily put your skills (and dollars) to work for a
more purposeful cause.


I meant 1*/TB/*



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Re: [Server-devel] Booting from a big USB stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Gerhard

The trick is to separate the server software from the content. Install 
the basic IIAB on a smaller SD card (e.g. 16GB). Then mount the 128GB 
usb drive (mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usb0 for example). IIAB expects the 
content to be in /library. This should be possible by a symbolic link 
such as /media/usb0/XC /library. XC is a folder containing the content 
whereas usb0 is a partition. The original installed content in /library 
on the sd card needs to be copied to the XC folder on the USB stick 
before the symbolic link is made. In principle, Ansible should recognize 
the /library (XC folder) and operate as expected.


Tim Moody has an img of the basic installation which should be perfect 
to set up the SD card (simple dd). I am looking forward to trying that. 
I am hoping that the img sets the 'box' (hotspot). This should mean 
everything can be done headless via ssh.


As always, it will be an adventure.

Tony

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Today's Topics:

1. Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big USB Stick - failure
   (Internet Box)
2. Re: Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big USB Stick -
   failure (Adam Holt)
3. Re: Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big USB Stick -
   failure (Adam Holt)
4. Re: Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big USB Stick -
   failure (Adam Holt)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 21:54:29 +0100
From: Internet Box 
To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big USB
Stick - failure
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hello all,

i am gerhard from berlin and i am experimenting with iiab

i succeded in booting my raspberry pi model b3+ from a 128 GB USB Stick
(costs are only 18€)
ok
then i wanted to let work this magic sentence

curl d.iiab.io/install.txt | sudo bash

but i got an error message in the beginning:

tune2fs: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden beim Versuch, /dev/mmcblk0p2
zu öffnen
Es kann kein gültiger Dateisystem-Superblock gefunden werden.
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi#

so i stick in this.

any solution for this problem


regards

gerhard. MD

Berlin
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:09:35 -0400
From: Adam Holt 
To: Internet Box 
Cc: server-devel 
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big
USB Stick - failure
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 4:54 PM Internet Box 
wrote:


Hello all,

i am gerhard from berlin and i am experimenting with iiab

i succeded in booting my raspberry pi model b3+ from a 128 GB USB Stick
(costs are only 18€)
ok
then i wanted to let work this magic sentence

curl d.iiab.io/install.txt | sudo bash

but i got an error message in the beginning:

tune2fs: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden beim Versuch,
/dev/mmcblk0p2 zu öffnen
Es kann kein gültiger Dateisystem-Superblock gefunden werden.


That seems to be German for:

File or directory not found when trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p2
Can not find a valid file system superblock.


What exact OS are you running?

Internet-in-a-Box strongly recommends Raspbian -- any one of the 3 from
this page:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/


PS click "installation guide" near the very top of that page if you're not
used to burning/flashing images using Etcher, Win32 Disk Images or "dd".
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:15:48 -0400
From: Adam Holt 
To: Internet Box 
Cc: server-devel 
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Raspberry Pi Model B3+ - booting from big
USB Stick - failure
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

HI Gerhard,

Can you please use a microSD card, instead of a USB stick?

Internet-in-a-Box is not normally installed onto a USB stick!

In fact I don't know if this has ever been attempted before, so you're
making your life difficult :-)

Then again if that is your choice, it is possible 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 129, Issue 9

[Tony Anderson]

What is the impact of this approach on internet dependence? The main 
problem I have is to create an offline
service with content. This has led to the creation of 'bernie', a copy 
of the schoolserver on an external 1TB drive.
There are, of course, many problems with dependencies. I view resolving 
these as the task in making bernie. I am
not sure what is meant about cross contamination. There are many 
duploicates in the current bernie - for example, Rachel
includes a sizable number of items from the Gutenberg project as does 
OLE Nepal's Pustakalaya. There is enough hard drive

space so this duplication is no problem.

Tony


On Tuesday, 01 May, 2018 12:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org 
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Today's Topics:

1. Provisioning services (Sameer Verma)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2018 10:29:08 -0700
From: Sameer Verma 
To: xsce-devel , XS Devel
,  Andreas Gros ,
Aaron Borden 
Subject: [Server-devel] Provisioning services
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Greetings!
I haven't written to this list in a while.

I am working with some other OLPC-SF members to package and make
available Pathagar using the snaps (http://snapcraft.io platform). We
are currently doing this as part of a two-day hackathon
(http://hackathon.sfsu.edu/challenges/snap-ify-pathagar).

Of course, the work continues past this hackathon, but let's see how
far we can get today. Right now, we are using the NextCloud snap
(https://github.com/nextcloud/nextcloud-snap) as a base example and
adding/removing to it to see if we can put together a snap.

If you haven't used snaps before, try it out the NextCloud snap. On
Ubuntu/Debian, try "sudo snap install nextcloud" Give it a few
minutes, and when installed go to http:// and it should
be there.

Our proposal and approach is to first do this with Pathagar, and then
see if we can do this with all the other services on the school
server. This will give deploymentw a menu approach to adding services
without worrying about dependencies and cross-contamination and such.
It's a little bit more work to architect services that do talk to each
other, but we think that in the end it's a much cleaner solution.

Ideas? Comments?

Please let us know. Andi Gros, Aaron Borden and myself are working on
this currently.

cheers,
Sameer



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Re: Devel Digest, Vol 132, Issue 2

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Peter

Sorry, must be age creeping up. I certainly thought I had read the email.

Yet as I read your text the phrases: 'could actually run', 'would just 
need', and  'might work OOTB' suggests the need for some testing.


Generally, the best place to start fixing is to locate the problem as 
exactly as possible.


Tony

On 09/18/2017 01:04 PM, Peter Robinson wrote:

On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_ander...@usa.net> wrote:

Has anyone tested a current fedora release on an XO model? It would seem
reasonable to install Fedora with the gnome desktop independent of Sugar as
a starting point.

Why don't you actually read the thread you're replying to. Userspace
will be fine, needs kernel work as they need a newer kernel.

The ARM XOs could actually as of Fedora 26 run with a completely open
userspace with the entaviv kernel if someone does the work for those
devices to boot on a current kernel. In theory the XO 1.75 would just
need a devicetree plus driver upstreaming. The 1.5 might work OOTB but
there are some drivers that were never upstreamed.

Peter


Tony

On 09/17/2017 05:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

 1. Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels (Samuel Greenfeld)
 2. Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels (Peter Robinson)
 3. Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
(Arne Babenhauserheide)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2017 23:28:14 -0400
From: Samuel Greenfeld <sam...@greenfeld.org>
To: OLPC Devel <devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
Message-ID:

<ca+caqjpkzng8rhjhzbnezadni2fhwnbohjr5gf9kjw3xkdz...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

It has been a few years (Fedora 18) since the original XO Laptop series
has
had any sort of major Operating System update.

In order to support newer versions of Systemd, features found in newer
versions of the Linux kernel are required.  And from limited exploratory
work done years ago, the XO-1 mesh networking & XO-1.5 Camera drivers may
need fixing even though they are in upstream kernels.

Are there any low-level kernel developers out there interested in porting
XO laptops (both x86 & ARM) to a Linux 4.x kernel or a later 3.x kernel so
they can be used with newer Linux distributions?  Or should we presume
that
all public XO laptop development (apart from minor patching) is officially
dead at this point?

I presume hardware can be made available provided someone has the
interest.

---
SJG
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2017 11:14:00 +0100
From: Peter Robinson <pbrobin...@gmail.com>
To: Samuel Greenfeld <sam...@greenfeld.org>
Cc: OLPC Devel <devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
Message-ID:

Re: Devel Digest, Vol 132, Issue 2

[Tony Anderson]

Has anyone tested a current fedora release on an XO model? It would seem 
reasonable to install Fedora with the gnome desktop independent of Sugar 
as a starting point.


Tony

On 09/17/2017 05:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels (Samuel Greenfeld)
2. Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels (Peter Robinson)
3. Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
   (Arne Babenhauserheide)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2017 23:28:14 -0400
From: Samuel Greenfeld 
To: OLPC Devel 
Subject: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

It has been a few years (Fedora 18) since the original XO Laptop series has
had any sort of major Operating System update.

In order to support newer versions of Systemd, features found in newer
versions of the Linux kernel are required.  And from limited exploratory
work done years ago, the XO-1 mesh networking & XO-1.5 Camera drivers may
need fixing even though they are in upstream kernels.

Are there any low-level kernel developers out there interested in porting
XO laptops (both x86 & ARM) to a Linux 4.x kernel or a later 3.x kernel so
they can be used with newer Linux distributions?  Or should we presume that
all public XO laptop development (apart from minor patching) is officially
dead at this point?

I presume hardware can be made available provided someone has the interest.

---
SJG
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2017 11:14:00 +0100
From: Peter Robinson 
To: Samuel Greenfeld 
Cc: OLPC Devel 
Subject: Re: Porting XO laptops to newer Linux kernels
Message-ID:

Re: [IAEP] do OLPC browsers support WebRTC microphone audio, input? (Adam Holt)

[Tony Anderson]

See http://www.webrtcinwebkit.org/

Tony

On 03/14/2017 12:00 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [IAEP] do OLPC browsers support WebRTC microphone audio
   input? (Adam Holt)
2. Re: [IAEP] do OLPC browsers support WebRTC microphone audio
   input? (James Cameron)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2017 12:16:57 -0400
From: Adam Holt 
To: Jim Salsman , iaep ,
"Devel's in the Details" 
Subject: Re: [IAEP] do OLPC browsers support WebRTC microphone audio
input?
Message-ID:

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 114, Issue 9

[Tony Anderson]

Inside the box, the hardware (chip-level) is the same. Buy the cheapest one.

Tony

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [XSCE] Intel NUC v/s Gigabyte BRIX (Anish Mangal)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2017 10:40:37 +0530
From: Anish Mangal <anis...@umich.edu>
To: xsce-devel <xsce-de...@googlegroups.com>,  server-devel
<server-devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Intel NUC v/s Gigabyte BRIX
Message-ID:
<cafym-tlqb-z_gz7kw9fgpeki7d825oybtbkm2nhim6macyx...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Adam, Tony,

Thanks. The reason for asking this question was pure economics. The BRIX is
$20 cheaper than the NUC from where we can buy it. So if there are no
problems short or long term with the BRIX, would like to purchase that.

The NUC is a nice device, but if we can get similar performance at lower
price, I am all for that.

In terms of battery, if anyone is interested in experimenting dead laptop
battery packs to make battery packs for NUC, please ping me. I have been
experimenting with the same :)

On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_ander...@usa.net>
wrote:


Hi, Anish

I have deployed both (several versions of each). I also deploy Zotac. The
internal hardware is identical so it really doesn't matter. There are
variations in hdmi connector, number of usb 3.0 ports, whether or not there
is vga and so on. Most recent configurations include a built-in wifi which
is helpful. The important parameters are the size of the hard drive
(minimum 1TB) and memory (4GB minimum and as much as possible).

Currently XSCE is configured to use the built in wifi as an access point.
In deployments which have access to the internet, it would be convenient to
have this set up to accept dhcp and to select a hotspot. Using the RJ45
port to access the internet makes it awkward to use to set up the LAN. We
generally assume the RJ45 port provides the best support for the LAN and
that the internet should be accessed via a usb-ethernet adapter or access
by a wifi hotspot.

Current laptops are equipped with a 1TB drive which makes them an
interesting alternative. They need to be configured to continue operation
with the lid closed. However, the laptop provides a convenient built in UPS
and enables installation using the builtin monitor and keyboard.

Tony


On 01/20/2017 12:24 PM, Anish Mangal wrote:


Dear folks,

If anyone here has experience of having used both these devices in the
field, which one would you recommend .. if the performance specs
(processor, RAM, etc.) were the same.

Best,
Anish







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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 110, Issue 5

[Tony Anderson]

Sugar Labs develops and supports Sugar. The goal of Sugar is to improve 
the educational experience of its school age users. For the vast 
majority of Sugar users who have limited or no access to the internet, 
the school server is a vital and integral element of the improved 
experience.


I understand your immediate concern is to register voters for 2017 
election cycle, but the real question is how can Sugar work better with 
a school server. XSCE has taken the responsibility for development of 
the school server from OLPC. It is sad but true that XSCE deployments 
are increasingly divorced from Sugar - largely because Sugar is viewed 
as limited to the XO and because XO's are de facto unavailable for 
deployment (except as recylcled).


What we should be asking is why our early users are now apparently 
moving away from Sugar. Could it be because we take no interest in their 
needs? Is Plan Ceibal still based on Sugar? What aspects of Sugar has it 
found valuable and what limitations has it found? What about Rwanda? 
What about Peru? What about Paraguay?


Tony

On 08/23/2016 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Is XSCE a Sugar Labs project? (Anish Mangal)
2. Re: Is XSCE a Sugar Labs project? (Dave Crossland)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:25:26 +0530
From: Anish Mangal 
To: Dave Crossland 
Cc: server-devel 
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Is XSCE a Sugar Labs project?
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I cannot say about SL membership but the XSCE does certainly cater to
non-sugar audiences. Most of the XSCE deployments in India I know of are
non sugar based. That said, a lot of XSCE deployments also use sugar and
olpc laptops. Recent builds of XSCE also contain sugarizer, and the
software certainly has components which support sugar/olpc laptops like
jabber, moodle integration, journal backup, sugar stats (xovis)

Hope this helps.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Dave Crossland  wrote:


Hi

In http://www.mail-archive.com/iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg17326.html
Caryl Bigenho  asked me to ask you all if you consider
XSCE a Sugar Labs project.

I'm assuming the answer is "no" but I was asked to confirm :)

As a follow up question, is anyone contributing to XSCE _not_ a members of
Sugar Labs?

I see Adam Holt, George Hunt, Tim Moody, and Anish Mangal are already
members; Jerry is not.

Jerry, would you like to be a SL member?

Would anyone else?

--
Cheers
Dave

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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 106, Issue 14

[Tony Anderson]

On 04/15/2016 12:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar-Server enhancement (Adam Holt)


--

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 20:30:26 -0400
From: Adam Holt <h...@laptop.org>
To: Sugar-dev Devel <sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org>,  xsce-devel
<xsce-de...@googlegroups.com>, server-devel
<server-devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] Sugar-Server enhancement
Message-ID:
<cahabugcstsvjfjaztapq5g_w5htpxfb3i2gd6vcj7exsba8...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 8:17 PM, Tony Anderson <tony_ander...@usa.net>
wrote:


James

I can't think of a use case for an XO to access multiple school servers.


Apologies am not following all the details of this conversation, but just
to point out some of our newer work in Haiti will experiment with XO
laptops moving between different school servers, in off-campus computer
club(s), librar(ies), and at school, etc.
I don't know why we don't first look at what we have before throwing the 
baby away.
In this scenario, it is only necessary to turn off the known_hosts 
check. We are hit with it
because we give each schoolserver the name schoolserver; hence the 
security concern.

Another obvious approach is to give different schoolservers different names.


Likewise there are definitely teachers who work in multiple schools, and
need to bring their main XO to each school, impressive!
I am not sure what you mean by impressive. I assume a consulting teacher 
would
be able to perform 'rm -rf ~/.ssh/known_hosts as needed. This is 
necessary only to
register the laptop or to use ejabberd (ejabberd acts like a chat room 
with all registered users

in the room). Using the XO to browse is not affected.



Also some schools campuses are just too large to tie in all the IT infra
together, with buildings just too far apart.  So there will be several
inexpensive school servers likely in these schools, who do not want to
network their buildings together at this point.


I have never seen this, although we have one school in Rwanda that has a 
big separation
between the primary school building and the secondary school building. 
However, this implies
that the school is large enough to justify a CentOs school server with a 
large hard drive and the purchase of
additional ethernet cable to connect the buildings. Essentially you are 
identifying a possible scenario, not a real one.




Finally George Hunt is advising us on how to construct even more mobile
servers too, based on a large USB battery packs supporting Raspberry Pi 3
(or XO-4 or whatever) permitting increasingly ruggedized knowledge hotspots.

*Not sure how we will deal with naming all these different school servers
coming down the pike, but definitely something to start thinking about now,
a great question :}*


I don't know how you can make a server more portable than it is now. You 
simply pick it
up and carry it to another site. The use of the built-in wifi as an 
access point makes it possible for

me to demo the NUC with just the box and a power supply.

The biggest needed component is the UPS. If George can arrange to power 
the NUC with a usb charger, there is a huge

array of usb battery devices available on the market.

Naming schoolservers is trivial. Schoolserver was the standard set by 
OLE Nepal (as well as schoolnet for the access point). Typically, there 
is one
schoolserver per network so the user connects to the network and is 
automatically connected to the schoolserver. The schoolserver name is 
part of
the url. Since the user is connected to one device, it can always be 
named schoolserver.


I was toying with the idea of Raspberry Pi servers each with a specific 
content. Using 128GB SD cards, it would take 8 to provide the same 
content as
a 1TB drive. A single CentOS server with 1TB is < $500. If an adequate 
supply of $5 Raspberry Pis were available with 128GB SD cards at $10 and a
wifi dongle for $10, eight of these would cost $200. A given deployment 
may want to add new content by adding a new server. However, then it 
seems that one network would have multiple servers so each would need to 
be named by its content (e.g. OSM, Zim, etc.).


Tony

If a school is so large (> 200 XOs), the easy solution is two school
s

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 104, Issue 6

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Adam

Indeed, the devil is in the details. The Pine64 appears focused on 
implementing Ubuntu on the board. With James Cameron's Sugar on Ubuntu, 
this could
give the board an ability to run Sugar. The problem, of course, is how 
to upgrade the board to a usable laptop with keyboard and monitor (and 
WiFi, camera,

microphone, USB ports, and SD card.

This has been the observation for many years, devices like this and 
Raspberry Pi are very inexpensive until you try to add the features of 
an XO: battery,
monitor, keyboard, wifi, camera, microphone, port for usb drives, port 
for sd card, and so on. So far I have not seen a laptop comparable to 
the XO for any significantly lower price (most devices like classmate 
are almost double). The only choices I see suitable for deployment are 
tablets (e.g. Fire) or refurbished standard laptops (available for about 
$50 each in quantity). Chrome books could be another alternative.


Sadly, the refurbished option is impacted by James Cameron's insistence 
on 64-bit only. Perhaps there is someone in the Sugar community who 
could provide a 32-bit option for older laptops. The Android and Chrome 
book options are impacted by the proprietary nature of the software plus 
their design for an internet-connected environment. However, again 
perhaps there is someone in the Sugar community who could provide a 
Sugar image for the Fire or similar device.


Tony

On 02/12/2016 01:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Raspberry Pi/clone(s) most ruggedizable for OLPC
   fieldwork? (Adam Holt)
2. School Server Weekly Call: Thur 10AM NYC Time (Adam Holt)


--

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 12:31:26 -0500
From: Adam Holt 
To: "Devel's in the Details" , "Unleash Kids!"
,  server-devel
,  "Community Support Volunteers -- who
help respond to help AT laptop. org" ,
xsce-devel ,  "Stefan / Dogi Unterhauser"

Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Raspberry Pi/clone(s) most ruggedizable
for OLPCfieldwork?
Message-ID:

Re: how to install essential codecs from rpmfusion to, gstreamer 1.0 comparable to current script for gstreamer0.1

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, James

Clearly installing codecs for mp3 and mp4 does not meet anyones 
standards for software freedom. I notice this issue did not impact 
OLPC's decision to support importing WIndows XP.


I really have no idea now who this OLPC is that makes these interesting 
decisions. OS-builder is brilliant software but useless for needs of a 
deployment. First, it requires technical expertise and access to the 
internet. It is also not compatible with the 'locked' state of the XO

in Rwanda.

I have never used (or intend to use) the update feature. The software 
should not be changed during a school year (except in the case of some 
emergency defect in Sugar or Fedora). Between school years, the upgrade 
is accomplished by reflashing the XO to the new Sugar level.


Updating multiple laptops is made more difficult by another interesting 
decision - not to support nandblaster. However, this is a

manageable restriction (multiple usb keys and time).

I will try your recommendation to provide an update to the install of 
the codecs to gstreamer 1.0.


The switch to libav is an example of another interesting trend in open 
software, the substitute project - e. g. Libre Office, MariaDB, and libav.


There is no issue of refusal, I deeply respect your products. In this 
case, they don't fit into the deployment environment over which I have 
no control.


(by happenstance, I have to delay sending this email because my internet 
connection has been lost).


Tony

On 02/02/2016 01:00 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2016 18:53:56 +1100
From: James Cameron
To:devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: how to install essential codecs from rpmfusion to
gstreamer 1.0 comparable to current script for gstreamer0.1
Message-ID:<20160201075356.go32...@us.netrek.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

In the GStreamer 0.1 to 1.0 transition, the codecs and dependencies
changed, in particular gstreamer1-libav should be substituted for
gstreamer-ffmpeg.

These codecs you asked about are third-party software that do not meet
the OLPC standards for software freedom.  The use of such software is
unsupported; OLPC does not endorse or encourage its use.

Also, OLPC doesn't don't support your method of changing the
filesystem, instead we provide olpc-os-builder, because it works with
our olpc-update feature.  The codecs you asked about can be added to
your builder configuration;

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_Builder/Add_Restricted

Many deployments use my restricted software builds, which are based on
the open source builds, but are not available for public download.

Using a restricted software build from me means you don't have to
rerun the builder.  The build installs as usual, and has the codecs
you asked about preinstalled.

My restricted software builds are made in Australia from imported
components, using the same infrastructure as the open source builds.

If you refuse to use my restricted builds, refuse to use the builder,
don't mind your changes being lost when you use olpc-update, and don't
mind having to scale your change up to multiple laptops, then you can
add codecs after install:


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how to install essential codecs from rpmfusion to gstreamer 1.0 comparable to current script for gstreamer0.1

[Tony Anderson]

Your question is how to abstract the filesystem changes made by
install of non-free codecs from the rpmfusion repository on a
Fedora 18 system.

On Mon, Feb 01, 2016 at 11:42:57AM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:


Aside from my rants, this is the crux. If I could have a script which installs
these files in gstreamer 1.0, I would be happy to upgrade.
While I haven't made a try in a couple of years, I was unable to find where
gstreamer 1.0 expects these libraries to be. The files are
different for xo-1 and xo-1.5, xo-1.75, and xo-4. Meanwhile, jukebox-26 with
gstreamer 0.1 works fine with 0.106.

Tony


 sudo cp libgstmad.so /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/
 sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmad.so
 sudo cp libmad.so.0 /usr/lib
 sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/libmad.so.0
 sudo cp libgstfaad.so /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10
 sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstfaad.so
 sudo cp libfaad.so.2.0.0 /usr/lib
 sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/libfaad.so.2.0.0
 sudo yum install gstreamer-ffmpeg-0.10.13-8.fc18.i686.rpm
 sudo ldconfig
 sudo rm -rf/home/olpc/.gstreamer-0.10/registry.i386.bin
>
> This script installs the necessary codes directly. I am sure the
> ffmpeg install adds unnecessary code but I don't know how to break
> this out. However, this script does not work with gstreamer 1.0 and
> I have spent hours researching the documentation to find out what
> happened to the libgst* libraries and the registry.i386.bin. The
> only documentation I found requires installing the complete bad and
> ugly libraries (granted, this was a couple of years ago so that
> documentation may now exist - but gstreamer 0.1 works with no
> problems so no need to spend more time on it).


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download.laptop.org

[Tony Anderson]

It appears that 13.2.5 is no longer accessible as download.laptop.org is 
not responding.


Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 100, Issue 10

[Tony Anderson]

In XS, usbmount executed scripts included in /etc/usbmount/mount.d when 
a removable device was inserted.


There may be an upstream problem with this feature in CentOS 7 so the 
first step may be to see if usbmount

executes a script (echo hello world).

If usbmount works, the script should determine if the mounted drive 
meets the condition (is relevant) and, if
not, exit. Daniel Drake used this in XS to install the content (XC) when 
a removable device was inserted which

met the requirements of the script.

Tony


On 10/27/2015 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. usbmount (Tim Moody)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 10:42:37 -0400
From: Tim Moody 
To: "xsce-devel" , "server-devel"

Subject: [Server-devel] usbmount
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I'm working on adding LibraryBox/PirateBox type functionality whereby if a
usb in plugged into the server it is automounted by usbmount and if it has
/share, /Share, or /PirateShare in its root directory a symlink will be
created in /library/content/USBx depending on where it was mounted.

  


I think this should be enabled by default.

  


Any comments?

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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 98, Issue 2

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, All

In an ideal world, the server name would be schoolserver and there would 
be no domain name (totally unnecessary in a lan). If a school needs more 
than
one schoolserver, they are all still named schoolserver. Which one an xo 
connects with is determined by which ssid it connects with (e.g. 
schoolnet1 for first grade,

schoolnet6 for sixth grade).

Tony

On 08/08/2015 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

To:xsce-de...@googlegroups.com, 'server-devel'
server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Cc: 'arvind thanvi'artha...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Changing the XSCE's hostname (or
the address one enters in the browser)
Message-ID:blu405-eas18671b3ee3d8d759f49ff98c5...@phx.gbl
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

xsce distinguishes between hostname (schoolserver) and domain name (defaults to 
.lan).  You can change the second of these no problem in the console.  You can 
override the first in local_vars, but if you do XOs won't automatically find 
the schoolserver.  (I have a machine that I named xsce.lan, which works fine.) 
The expectation is that if you need multiple schoolservers or need to add to an 
existing network that you will do it by changing the domain name, so only that 
is exposed in the console.


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[Server-devel] 13.2.5 simple tests

[Tony Anderson]

I have started some testing with 13.2.5 release. These results are 
probably of more interest to users than developers.


1. All of the images installed without problem. This includes XO-1, 
XO-1.5, XO-1.75, XO-4, and XO-1 SD Card.

2. The image on XO-1.75 shows 1.6G when intially installed.
3. Etoys is not installed. No Web activities are installed.
4. Etoys from ASLO installs and runs without problem. 
(sugar-install-bundle from USB and Journal)
5. Welcome Web, a web activity, from ASLO installs and runs without 
problem (sugar-install-bundle from USB and Journal)
6. Slides, a web activity, from ASLO installs from Journal without 
problem but not by sugar-install-bundle. The error is:
'No bundle in '/home/olpc/Activities/Slides.activity' exception at 
line 481 of bundleregistry.py: 'sugar3.bundle.ZipExtractionException'


Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] [IAEP] [XSCE] RE: [UKids] Re: [support-gang] Taking, OpenStreetMap Offline - DESIGN Call - Thur June 11, 10AM EDT / 2PM UTC

[Tony Anderson]

There seem to be two independent problems.


First, make an updated version of the IIAB OSM. The goal is to 
understand what are the computer requirements to do this and how long it 
takes and then be able to make a new version whenever needed.


Second, make available more detail than IIAB OSM provides for a region 
selected by a deployment while allowing the user (learner) to display, 
edit, and save it as a new map from this data.


On the first problem, I am confused. I would guess the job is cpu 
intensive. However, many comments about SSD suggest it is i/o limited. 
In a former life, I
worked on parallel programming in which the technical problem was to 
overlap disk i/o with computing. One thread bringing the data for the 
next case into memory while the processor worked on the current case. 
The trick was to determine the size of data needed to keep the processor 
busy and not waiting on i/o. The goal was to overlap i/o with processing 
to minimize processor idle time.


I assume the processing of the world can be broken down into independent 
pieces (e.g. one tile at the global zoom level). The experiment with 
Nepal should show the processing time required as well as the disk i/o 
time.


Based on that information, the work plan would be to load the global 
data on hard drive and then set up double buffered pipelines from hard 
disk to SSD to memory which can keep the processor busy.


On the second, it is not clear that the greater detail needs to be OSM 
tiles. Something like Nick's map.activity/mappack with the map data on 
the school server (separate from OSM) and a client application (Sugar or 
Sugar-web or html) accessing the data, displaying it, and enabling the 
learner to add to it (à la GIS). After discovering that umapper is not 
umap, umap is clearly open source and could be a good base for the 
client application.


This application should be able to get data from the school server and, 
as always, it should be possible for the learner to do meaningful work 
when not connected to the schoolserver or internet. Thia means knowing 
what data the learner needs to display and edit a map locally (even 
though the local store may be as low as 1GB) and how to specify that 
data to be downloaded to the Journal when connected.


Tony

On 06/15/2015 08:24 AM, iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [XSCE] RE: [UKids] Re: [support-gang] Taking
   OpenStreetMap Offline - DESIGN Call - Thur June 11, 10AM EDT /
   2PM UTC (Nick Doiron)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 23:24:11 -0700
From: Nick Doiron ndoi...@mapmeld.com
To: xsce-de...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Internet In a Box Working Group i...@sgvhak.org,Unleash Kids!
unleashk...@googlegroups.com, J?r?me Gagnon-Voyer
gagno...@gmail.com, Jaakko Helleranta jaa...@helleranta.com,
server-devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org, iaep
i...@lists.sugarlabs.org,   Community Support Volunteers -- who 
help
respond to help AT  laptop.org support-g...@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [XSCE] RE: [UKids] Re: [support-gang] Taking
OpenStreetMap Offline - DESIGN Call - Thur June 11, 10AM EDT / 2PM UTC
Message-ID:
calg_m-vxbhfm0ovcturwl-hvnu5ycdwpfsrhu6jh5c1vvtq...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

I don't think there's any technical issues with rendering the world at 10
and specific countries at 16, other than the human knowing where they can
and cannot zoom

-- Nick

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Tim Moody t...@timmoody.com wrote:


couple of observations:



As expected, the new tiles have a lot more detail.



There are more levels of zoom in the new ones.



Some names have changed - the old map had Lalitpur and the new one has
Patan (both are used)



I don't see any boxes for unprintable characters, but there is a lot less
Devanagari. (Google maps has more)



Is it possible to merge individually generated regional tiles?  for
example if you rendered India and Nepal separately would you get both?



What happens if you render the world at level 10 and then specific
countries at 16?



*From:* xsce-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:xsce-de...@googlegroups.com] *On
Behalf Of *Anish Mangal
*Sent:* Saturday, June 13, 2015 10:06 PM
*To:* J?r?me Gagnon-Voyer
*Cc:* xsce-devel; Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond to
help AT laptop.org; Unleash Kids!; server-devel; iaep; Internet 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 96, Issue 2

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Adam

Thanks, this is much more what I expected. This will need some time to 
read carefully.


Tony

On 06/06/2015 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2015 12:43:24 -0400
From: Adam Holth...@laptop.org
To: server-develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 96, Issue 1
Message-ID:
CAHaBuGfGG_fF_9ZHNuFPj6G1LiZ1ho_KvkWNG1WS4C=jd+s...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Tony Andersontony_ander...@usa.net
wrote:


Hi, Adam

I took a look at these sites but didn't find much information on what is
planned for 5.5.


It's true.  I'm hoping this key link becomes more structured showing
priorities in coming weeks:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/Features


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Re: Devel Digest, Vol 109, Issue 19

[Tony Anderson]

I also believe based on some observations in Rwanda that the firmware 
was modified.


Tony

On 04/27/2015 06:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 10:14:50 -0400
From: Ed McNierneyedmcnier...@gmail.com
To: Jhon Diazlinuxs...@gmail.com
Cc:devel@lists.laptop.org, John Watlingtonw...@alum.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Windows
Message-ID:cd7d93ab-1058-4b10-9d68-5b135ed48...@gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Yes, and due to Microsoft’s requirements it could only boot from a very 
specific make and model (and perhaps even production batch) of SD card.  AFAIK, 
the XO is still the only computer that could (legitimately) boot Windows XP 
from removable media.  Please don’t spend any time on this - it’s just not 
available.  You can search the list archive for previous fruitless efforts:-)

- Ed


On Apr 27, 2015, at 8:49 AM, John Watlingtonw...@alum.mit.edu  wrote:



On Apr 26, 2015, at 10:09 PM, Jhon Diazlinuxs...@gmail.com  wrote:

Is there liks a old version or copy a zip or something or are all the copies 
are deleted


One of the reasons we didn’t like Windows is that we can’t distribute it.
Even the version for the XO-1 had to be purchased from Microsoft (including a 
label to
affix to the computer).

Cheers,
wad


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Re: [Server-devel] laptops as servers

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The hard drive will certainly be replaced by a new 1TB drive. I am more
concerned about the battery, but at a deployment the server would run from
AC power with the battery used only for a UPS. Naturally 4GB would be more
comfortable than 2GB - although the processor is certainly more powerful 
than the

Atom systems we have been using.

Probably at the end of the day, the main concern may be the power draw.

I am in total agreement on the UEFI issue. I believe that OLE Nepal has 
this solved and
I hope to be able to take advantage of that when I get back to Kathmandu 
at the end of the month.


Tony


On 03/02/2015 04:10 PM, James Cameron wrote:

Yes, it is a possibility, but hard drives in refurbished laptops seem
to have a very limited future life.

It depends on where you want to put the costs; up front or later.

If there are issues with UEFI, perhaps it is best to develop a fix,
because UEFI will be around for longer than a refurbished supply
chain.



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[Server-devel] laptops as servers

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am using a laptop as my development server system (Gateway LT0004U). I 
replaced the 320GB drive with a 1TB drive.


Given the issue with UEFI, I am warming to the idea of deploying a 
laptop as the server. So I googled (duckduckandwent?) and found:


Lot 5 Dell Latitude D620 Core Duo 1.83GHz 2GB 80GB XP Pro for $550 at 
http://www.computerrefurb.com/. On Amazon, the tried-and-true


WD Blue 1 TB Mobile Hard Drive: 2.5 Inch, 5400 RPM, SATA II, 8 MB Cache 
- WD10JPV at $60. This means five school servers at $170 each!


While I am concerned that someone will try to use the server as a client 
system - this shouldn't be a problem. First, the installed software does 
only supports a command line interface. Second, after the system is 
booted up (detected by the ability to connect), the lid can be closed 
and it continues to work. A laptop provides its own monitor and keyboard 
for the sofware installation and includes a built-in UPS.


Interesting.

Tony

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[Server-devel] Project Bernie

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, All

I have finally got most of the project bernie site 
(www.projectbernie.org) showing what is available on the school server. 
The major missing piece is the 'homeview' button on the Class page. This 
piece is being uploaded at the moment and with luck will be added later 
today.


I think the site is pretty representative of the actual content 
available on an XO supported by a server with content from BERNIE. 
Naturally, the web site links to the online source of the data on the 
server.


The library software is used for 'learn' and 'explore' on the Class page 
and 'Sugar Activities' and 'Audio' on the Library page. These buttons 
are suggestive since the actual content is too large to put on the web 
site.


For example, there are about 200 Sugar activities available to be 
installed from the school server, but all I did was point to ASLO. 
Similarly for the Audio button, I linked to the source site of the radio 
clips, but you need the real server to see exactly which clips are 
available.


The 'learn' button on the Class page features the 'digital textbooks' 
from Siyavula. Here the link shows what an XO would see from the same 
link on the school server; however, on the school server the content is 
downloaded to the Journal and viewed locally in the Browser. In general 
content is downloaded to the XO so that it can be used when the XO is 
offline. I also think this makes the network load more manageable 
compared to streaming to a 30+ XOs. The 'explore' button features 
courses on Python, Web technology, and the Command Line Interpreter 
(Terminal activity). This also shows what would be seen on the XO.


Tony


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Re: [Server-devel] [IAEP] Intel's attempt at an offline server

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am currently using a laptop as my development server. It is certainly 
has a cheap ups. I managed to
break the screen by dropping a book on it (not a test I recommend). 
However, it happily serves with the lid down (I think I set the system 
not to sleep at some point).


Naturally, the question is whether the 400gb of educational content 
supplied by Intel is open and what overlap there is with the open 
content already available on the school server (IIAB, KA Lite, Rachel, 
EPaath, E-Pustakalaya, and so on).


Tony
On 01/28/2015 01:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [IAEP] Intel's attempt at an offline server
   (Christoph Derndorfer)
2. Re: [IAEP] Intel's attempt at an offline server (Sameer Verma)
3. Re: [IAEP] Intel's attempt at an offline server
   (Christoph Derndorfer)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 18:14:44 +0100
From: Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at
To: Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu
Cc: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org, iaep
i...@lists.sugarlabs.org, xsce-devel xsce-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [IAEP] Intel's attempt at an offline
server
Message-ID:
cakxaperzdxzaw7+g+pqadp2rvrymusf6jzohmzwnndqou7u...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Unfortunately there's a lack of pricing information as well as information
about the available content (and accompanying management systems) but
overall this looks like an interesting effort. Oh, and I really do like the
inclusion of a (supposedly) 5 hour battery as this will come in really
handy in places such as Nepal, rural Peru, etc.

Just my 2 eurocents,
Christoph

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 3:47 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote:


http://linuxgizmos.com/intel-spins-ubuntu-based-education-access-point/

cheers,
Sameer
--
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://commons.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/
http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
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Re: Devel Digest, Vol 100, Issue 8

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, James

Thanks for your response. I would conclude that the best approach at the 
moment is to
use 13.2.0 on the XO-1. This fixes the issue with the firmware and the 
libertas problem.

It also means working with only one build across the XO versions.

In my experience, the children we are serving are more patient than the 
developers.


Tony

On 06/14/2014 06:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Regarding the 12.1.0 vs 13.2.0 debate that Adam keeps raising, the
underlying problem is more about management of expectations.  The
teachers and students were probably not involved in development,
didn't get an early chance to point out the regression, and so Adam
was burned.

I find 12.1.0 as slow as 13.2.0, so I can't recommend it for XO-1
unless Gnome is used instead of Sugar.


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Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 13.2.1

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, James

It would also be very helpful to have a release 12.2.0 for the XO-1. 
This release would incorporate
the libertas patch and correct the firmware version. Perhaps the 
ds-backup.sh and ds-backup.py could
be replaced with versions that correct the reported problems. If 
politically acceptable, this could also be shown on the release page as 
the recommended  alternative for use with the XO-1.


Tony

On 06/12/2014 06:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:26:00 +1000
From: James Cameronqu...@laptop.org
To:devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 13.2.1
Message-ID:20140612052600.gf13...@us.netrek.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Announcing our next release cycle:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/13.2.1

Goal is to add hardware support for the new SIV121C camera sensor, and
include wireless performance fixes published since 13.2.0.

Scope is restricted to Open Firmware, and kernel.

-- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/


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restart by ctl+alt+bs

[TONY ANDERSON]

At some point, the ctl+alt+backspace signal to restart was dropped.  This was
a very handy way
to get out of dead-ends caused by starting too many activities.

What I would like to do is have this signal show a screen similar to the
switch desktop screen but with
a set of options:
   
Start Sugar
Start Gnome
Login

where the login option allows the user to set the nick to his/her username.
The advantage of this is that
the nick is reset at Sugar start. This option is needed at sites where more
than one person uses the laptop (even in OLPC sites, it can be expected that
more than one person will use the laptop when it is at home).

Does anyone know why this capability was dropped? Is there any technical
reason it can not be restored? How does one set the ctl+alt+bs to call a
procedure in globalkeys (similar to viewsource and screenshot)? Is that the
way this should be done?

Thanks,

Tony

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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 81, Issue 23

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am taking a simplistic approach to this problem. KA-Lite has a simple 
coach

report which basically shows a table with a row for each registered student
and a column for each activity. The cell is blank for no attempts, a 
light green

for attempts which did not reach 'proficiency', and a dark green to show
proficiency in that task.

I think this is adequate for teachers, particularly if they can click on 
a cell to
get more detail (e.g number of items completed, number of questions 
answered correctly, and so forth).


Many of the sites I am supporting do not follow the one laptop per child 
model. In one case, the teachers pass out laptops without regard to who 
used it previously. In other cases, a set of laptops are used in more 
than one class.

This means recording data against the laptop serial number is insufficient.

The implementation strategy is to have the site provide a list of 
students (currently first and last name with the username as a 
concatenation of the
two). The student logs in (By using the Journal activity, login is 
assured at boot
time. After that, students must login as laptops are passed from class 
to class).


A modification to activity.py adds id, start, stop, and outcome to the 
metadata.
The id is the db id of the student (not the username). The outcome is a 
string - empty by default. A procedure 'write_outcome' added to 
activity.py, analogous to read_file and write_file enables a Sugar 
activity to add specific outcome

information (either a string or a json with one of the keys: 'comment':'').

The ds_backup.py is modified to save objects in the datastore to the school
server (item by item, not rsync).

A data collection script on the school server can go through the saved 
Journals
adding this information to a database so that reports (such as the coach 
report) can be created on demand.


Similar to KA Lite, the goal is to make information available to 
teachers on the
progress of their students so that teachers can provide extra help and 
encouragement as appropriate. Currently, KA Lite does not provide feedback
directly to the students but the main Khan Academy site has many 
examples of

this (badges, points, etc.).

Tony

On 01/12/2014 04:31 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Sameer Verma)
2. Re: [Sugar-devel] The quest for data (Walter Bender)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:27:21 -0800
From: Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu
To: Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org
Cc: Devel's in the Details de...@lists.laptop.org,  XS Devel
server-devel@lists.laptop.org,  Sugar-dev Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org,Nina Stawski 
m...@ninastawski.com,
Leotis Buchanan leotisbucha...@exterbox.com
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [Sugar-devel] The quest for data
Message-ID:
CAFoGK8Go=Fh+Z0v7u+cj8yBqNhnPPz8hMupi_ZcrHD-e0f=n...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

We had our January meeting at OLPCSF (and our 6th birthday). We talked
about contributions to this project. Introducing Nina Stawski to the
thread. She works with HTML and Javascript and is familiar with
visualization. She suggested d3js.org as one of the options.

Has anyone created the wiki page as yet?

cheers,
Sameer

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote:

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote:

On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote:

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos mar...@gnu.org wrote:

For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but neither of
those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond some a few
rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript libraries, which
are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google Charts, which
I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations with Google
Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit
(http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts (http://highcharts.com). Then,
there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal.

Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local
XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online
library.

Yes, that's a very good point.  Originally, I was only thinking about collecting
and visualizing the information 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 79, Issue 20

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

In my experience the overwhelming majority of mobile phones are basic
Nokia models, not Android devices.

Tony


On 11/25/2013 10:45 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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than Re: Contents of Server-devel digest...


Today's Topics:

1. [crazy idea] Supporting basic mobile phones |Searching for
   possible standards (Anish Mangal)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:21:47 +0530
From: Anish Mangal an...@activitycentral.com
To: server-devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org, T Gillett
tgill...@gmail.com
Subject: [Server-devel] [crazy idea] Supporting basic mobile phones |
Searching for possible standards
Message-ID:
CAHFjNwNb5jh=kDm9Cw8gdKgW8-C1YHJe1GD=chdhktskigs...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Hi,

Disclaimer: Please do not construe this as a direction that XSCE should be
taking, but more of a crazy idea I am exploring on the side.

In developing nations, the most common communication device is the mobile
phone. It is atleast a magnitude more common any other electronic
communication device. If one were to look at building technology solutions
for education in less developed nations of this world, a cellphone would
seem like the perfect thing to piggyback upon.

On the other hand, this would seem like saying lets shut down sugar and
move to android, because it's everywhere, something I'm not sure is the
best thing to do. (So I am conflicted about it).

Cutting to the chase:
1. Is there any overlap between the xsce vision *as you see it* and
supporting mobile phones.
2a. If the answer to that is a yes, are there standards or software that
might help make XSCE content and services available on basic mobile phones.
We will probably forego 80% of the value XSCE provides, but that 20% might
be valuable.
2b. What kind of service standards would be most suitable to build upon?
WAP, SMS, Voice (navigation)? Most basic mobile phones today have a WAP
browser.

The more I think, the more it feels that this may not be the right thing
for the XSCE project, but still would like to have an understanding of the
challenges involved.

Thoughts?

--
Anish

P.S. this email is a result of talking to a few people over the past few
weeks and hearing from them again and again the sheer availability of
mobile phones. At the same time, I'm sure many people would have already
tried to figure out this space (maybe I'm trying to do just that).
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End of Server-devel Digest, Vol 79, Issue 20

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Re: SharedActivity

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Hi,

At Pycon 2008, Mike Fletcher gave a tutorial on implementation of 
tic-tac-toe as a shared activity
(www.vrplumber.com/olpc/pycon2008-handout.odt). The idea is that two 
children play while others watch.

At the end of the game, watchers can play (e.g. loser becomes watcher).

Nim might be better than tic-tac-toe since there is a guaranteed winner 
in nim.


This might be a simple enough activity to try with SharedActivity,

Tony

On 11/22/2013 03:16 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 18:01:09 +1100
From: James Cameronqu...@laptop.org
To: Agustin Zubiaga Sancheza...@sugarlabs.org
Cc: sugar-desarrollosugar-desarro...@lists.sugarlabs.org,
devel@lists.laptop.org, Sugar-dev Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org,Comunidad ceibalJAM
olpc-urug...@lists.laptop.org,  OLPC para usuarios, docentes,
voluntarios y administradoresolpc-...@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Introducing SimpleActivity / Introduciendo
SimpleActivity
Message-ID:20131122070109.ge21...@us.netrek.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

+1

I have reviewed simpleactivity.py and testactivity.py

This code is very legible and explains well what it does, and can
serve as an example for new activity authors.

The docstrings in simpleactivity.py are an effective explanation of
the simplified API, so perhaps you can generate the documentation from
them in the usual Python fashion.

Next to do is for a few activities to be developed using
SimpleActivity, so that you can see what remains common to the new
activities.  The common code might then be added to SimpleActivity.

testactivity.py is derived from SharedActivity, and so it is complex,
because a collaborating activity is complex.  I'd like to see also an
activity example derived from SimpleActivity.

The number of imports done by testactivity.py still seems high, and a
SimpleActivity example may be able to reduce that.

-- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 79, Issue 10

[Tony Anderson]

George,

Excellent!

Tony


On 11/18/2013 01:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Moving toward headless install on trimslice for XSCE (George Hunt)
2. Ansible facts listing (George Hunt)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 12:12:33 -0500
From: George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com
To: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] Moving toward headless install on trimslice
for XSCE
Message-ID:
cadfccpv5g3dyxd5mh5qkyxr8hmlzca_dde+yzou73b0njm-...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

I'm wanting to do the following:

- Get rid of the autologon to root at console tty.
- Add a non privileged user (not a sudoer, not wheel), as we had
pre-ansible, (user:admin,pw:12admin), so that the sshd config of
permitrootlogon no can remain in place.
- enable password authentication
- Configure avahi to announce, so that in a trimslice situation, we can
easily determine the remote sshd target ip.

What do people think?
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 12:17:09 -0500
From: George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com
To: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] Ansible facts listing
Message-ID:
CADfCcpVxWh-5SQ9c-6MpOueF2yGeMCBLXT=b23dzs3dwm99...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

I've been perplexed as to why the documentation about listing ansible facts
seemed to fail.

ie ansible localhost -m setup --connection=local returns no hosts found

What I discovered is that /etc/ansible/hosts file needs to be initialized
with:

[localhost]
127.0.0.1

Then the facts listing returns the desired information.
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Re: Devil is in the details

[Tony Anderson]

On 11/04/2013 10:49 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 7
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 19:50:52 -0800
From: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
To: Devel's in the Detailsdevel@lists.laptop.org,   Sugar-dev
Develsugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: different perspectives
Message-ID:
cafogk8fvvwygkephx5ee5iqd5+45drvr8gf68agg4bzkti3...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Dear Community,

As I was listening to the interviews of some of the OLPC SF Summit
attendees, I was amazed at the richness of diversity in perspectives.
In spite of being a part of this community since July 2007, and trying
to keep up with all that is OLPC and Sugar, these interviews threw me
off a bit.

The videos are uploading as I write this. They'll be available at
https://www.youtube.com/user/olpcsf/videos  soon. Bill Stelzer, who
usually interviews and runs the camera asks people a handful of
questions. So, here's a little community exercise. Why not ask you all
the same?

1) What brought you into the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?


I arrived back in the US after a visit to South Africa witnessing a 
computer lab in a
primary school where children had access to a computer for 30min per 
week. At this
time OLPC initiated G1G1. I was convinced that OLPC meant more than 
30min per week and
this initiative should be supported. As a retired computer professional, 
my question was: after the
kids get a laptop, what happens next? I am not sure I yet have a good 
answer to that question.


2) What keeps you going in the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?
Curiosity and the challenge of using my computer skills and experience 
to make something good happen.


3) What are the challenges you face in the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?
In most new applications of computers, the 'client' knows what he wants. 
Normally it is to do
what I am doing now, but better, faster and at a lower cost. In this 
case computers are provided to
deployment sites without the site having any input on the process. This 
makes it hard for a developer to
understand the requirements (sites say give me some laptops and that is 
enough).


4) What would you change/do differently so OLPC and/or Sugar
project(s) could do better?
Have the community really buy-in to 'it is an educational project'. 
Distinguish between enterprise-level deployments
(Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay, Rwanda, Australia) and deployments which need 
community support. Eliminate the assumption that deployments can support 
each laptop (100-400+) meaningfully surfing the internet (cf. Browse 
Activity portal page).
Recognize that it is what is on the screen for the child that matters, 
not whether it is Sugar or Android or Python or HTML5

or an XO or a tablet or a smartphone.

Tony



Reply-all in your answers.

cheers,
Sameer


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 78, Issue 39

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, TK

You are right, it will be a good opportunity. If you consider a 
one-classroom
deployment of 30-40 XOs, it would be worthwhile to test collaboration 
performance with a single router and ejabberd.


The mesh potato seems to offer benefits to deployments with more than
one classroom and more than one mesh. In this case, mesh potato routing
could enable collaboration by classroom replacing ejabberd service from the
school server.

It would be great if two routers could be set up and a school server run 
with

ejabberd and dhcpd not started. Then we could split the XOs between the two
routers and check their ability to interact with the school server and 
their

ability to collaborate within their subnets.

Tony


On 10/30/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 05:37:23 +
From:tkk...@nurturingasia.com
To: Tony Andersontony_ander...@usa.net, XS Devel
server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] mesh potato
Message-ID: W111281545263291383111443@atl4webmail18
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I was thinking that real testing of the XSCE, mesh-potatoe AP (if available), 
or openWRT TP-Link  could be done in the wild during the Basecamp@Malacca on 
Nov 16-18. Can get direct feedback of users with the 20+ XO and other devices 
from this direct/indirect stress test.

Cheers.. for BYOD


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[Server-devel] mesh potato

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

There was discussion of this at the SF sprint.

As I understand it, openWRT (from the Shuttleworth project) can be 
installed on
a TP-Link router. It can be configured to serve connected XOs (such as 
in a classroom)

on a mesh. It could also serve as a gateway to the school server's LAN.

If this could work, then the schoolserver would not provide DHCP (since 
the mesh potato routers would
have fixed addresses on the schoolserver LAN) and would not provide 
ejabberd (since that function is

served by the classroom-level mesh).

Presumably each classroom mesh would be a subnet of the LAN so that 
openWRT would act as a gateway

for messages directed at the schoolserver.

Is my understanding in the ballpark?

Is there someone in the community who is working on this capability or 
is an appropriate reference for further

information?

Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] authentication method

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

As usual, I am way behind the curve.

The Moodle authentication is based on the serial_number of the XO. This
is established by the 'registration' on the XO menu. Moodle, itself, 
supports

authentication by virtually every mechanism you can think of since it is
used by for-pay educational institutions.

I would like to shift to a login concept to support olpc deployments. 
Actually,
I think we need a user and user's family id as separate even in olpc 
deployments
since it is inevitable that a laptop taken home will be used by many 
family members as well as friends and neighbors.


One strategy is define a guest login. Guests would not have any activity 
recorded

in the Journal.

For login, there needs to be a 'session' which covers login to logout 
(or shut down of the laptop). If a registered user logs in, the 
activities in that session

would be recorded.

I also think that schools (or other deployment sites) can create a list 
of users and the XOs assigned to them. What I am doing is creating a 
database with two

record types: personal name record and xo record.

From this, it is easy to provide authentication as required to Moodle 
and to
the Journal backup. Note: the Journal backup is currently based on a 
public,
private key pair established at registration. My sense is that the 
easiest thing is
to keep this to enable interaction between the XO and the school server  
for backup without involving the user.


This does require a design decision. The public/private key gives access 
to a

folder /library/users/shf0001. One approach would be to identify users
by the person name record primary key and to maintain the public private
key pair by person. In this case the folder would be 
/library/users/primary-key.


In the case of guests, all of this would be ignored since no 
user-specific records
are being kept. This also works for Moodle since the Moodle 
administrator defines access priviliges for the guest account (which is 
always defined).


In short, it seems to me that Moodle should be the client of a 
system-wide authentication protocol, not the provider.


Also, the purpose of authentication needs to be defined. In general, 
most services do not need authentication but are open to all. However, 
there are services for staff members that involve privacy considerations.


I would welcome a discussion of the requirements for this feature as 
well as

alternative available implementation strategies.

Tony

Tony




On 10/28/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:
Message: 4 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 11:28:02 -0400 From: George Hunt 
georgejh...@gmail.com To: Miguel Gonz?lez 
migonzal...@activitycentral.com Cc: XS Devel 
server-de...@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [Server-devel] extension 
of Moodle authentication mechanism Message-ID: 
CADfCcpWTu=k3ruG+1ge6DdvmY++9RO_=2=8Kz7o=p7a_226...@mail.gmail.com 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Thank you. I'll spend 
some time studying it and try to write up some documentation, and use 
cases. On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Miguel Gonz?lez  
migonzal...@activitycentral.com wrote:



On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 4:54 AM, George Huntgeorgejh...@gmail.comwrote:


I heard that someone at activitycentral was extending, augmenting the
authentication used by Moodle, so that other web based services can climb
on.



It's called xs-autherserve and is a component in DXS initiative. If you
install XSCE using ansible you will find it in
http://schoolserver.local:5000.




Can someone point me to the code?



The source code is inhttps://github.com/migonzalvar/xs-authserver.




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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 78, Issue 28

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I looked at the Compulab website and the Trim-slice H is no longer 
offered. All
links to Trim-slice now go to Utilite. I was only able to find one 
vendor in the UK

which offered the Trim-slice for 208 pounds.

I suspect that the Trim-slice has gone out of production.

Perhaps, David Farning can check this out. Maybe we could work a deal to 
buy remaining inventory.


Tony

On 10/24/2013 09:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 7
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 22:42:23 -0700
From: Anish Mangalan...@activitycentral.com
To: Alex Kleideraklei...@sonic.net
Cc: server-develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Supported Hardware Architectures
Message-ID:
CAHFjNwNeL=fdyxm5rxkuvommgi6j9+bass6cftwh+eou-fp...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Does the $100 model have an enclosure for the hard drive? (even if the hard
drive itself is not present)


On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Alex Kleideraklei...@sonic.net  wrote:


On 2013-10-23 13:04, Martin Dluhos wrote:


For the upcoming 0.5 release, we will be targeting the following hardware
architectures:

* Trim-Slice
* XO-1.5, XO-1.75, X0-4
* i386
* x86_64

Feel free to provide XSCE support for other architectures, but these are
the
ones we believe are most useful to the user community.

Martin
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FYI and FWIW:
The price of the Trim-Slice is now down to US$100 (plus shipping.)
(Without a hard drive which most would probably want to replace with a
larger one anyway.)



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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 78, Issue 24

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The 'Sugar' approach is using ejabberd (ClassRoomBroadcast, ShowNTell).
My concern is the ability of ejabberd to support use in a 30+ student 
classroom.

Does this approach appear to scale up more effectively than ejabberd?

Tony



On 10/22/2013 09:00 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 01:04:02 +0200
From: Santiago Rodr?guezscoll...@activitycentral.com
To: Anish Mangalan...@activitycentral.com
Cc: server-develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Xsce 0.5 ideas being discussed
Message-ID:
CAK_FLKySgFwUr1dyHudi8j2mq5bLzjtEPyjnUXqjZE=kb+7...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hi

For the screen sharing feature, Anna and me just did a brief test using
icecast2 + gst-launcher as streaming service, and a XO1 as client with very
good results.

She also said that there was an idea floating arround, about doing the same
using vnc, so if our approach is not the correct one, please tell us.

Else, I hope we can add the playbook with the icecast2 server tomorrow.

/santi




On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Anish Mangalan...@activitycentral.comwrote:


Chip in on irc or here:)


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[Server-devel] Fwd: Khan Academy now available in Spanish

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

This from Caryl.

Tony


 Original Message 
Subject:FW: [somos-azucar] Fwd: Khan Academy now available in Spanish
Date:   Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:39:06 -0700
From:   Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com
Reply-To:   olpc-soc...@googlegroups.com
To: 	support-g...@laptop.org support-g...@laptop.org, 
socal-os...@googlegroups.com socal-os...@googlegroups.com, IAEP 
SugarLabs i...@lists.sugarlabs.org, olpc Social 
olpc-soc...@googlegroups.com




Hi...
From Laura Vargus in Peru...
The Khan Academy, the educational website, is now available in Spanish. 
On the  site thousands of problems and videos have been translated so 
that spanish speaking students, their parents, and teachers can learn in 
their native language.


http://es.khanacademy.org

Enjoy!

Caryl



From: la...@somosazucar.org
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 22:41:20 -0500
To: to...@somosazucar.org
Subject: [somos-azucar] Fwd: Khan Academy now available in Spanish

Khan Academy, el sitio web educativo, está ahora disponible en Español. 
El sitio, miles de problemas y videos han sido traducidos para que los 
estudiantes hispanohablantes, padres de familia y los maestros puedan 
aprender en su lengua nativa.



http://es.khanacademy.org



--
Laura V.
ID SomosAZUCAR.Org

Identi.ca/Skype acaire
IRC kaametza

Happy Learning!


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 78, Issue 15

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, George

The following from Sridhar's page appears to be relevant:


 Project vs Distribution vs Product

It is important to define the concepts of project, distribution and product.


A projectis an ongoing effort to develop a technical solution. It is 
under constant flux and hence is not generally intended for end-users. A 
distributionis a packaging of a version/snapshot of the project's files, 
often configured for a particular purpose.



A productis more comprehensive, providing properties such as ease of 
use, QA and accompanying documentation. What makes a product really 
stand out is integration with other parts of the deployment 
organisation's business. This can include factors such as supply chain, 
technical support and the educational programme.



The community XS is a project, open to participation/use by anyone. 
Deployments are encouraged to create their own distribution/product to 
better suit their needs. For OLPC Australia, this will take the form of 
our One Network 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dnhU2F6EntepVXTgN8QpkME8fZVUuPjcCoMUfAVKbcc/edit?pli=1#heading=h.60mn085jgn8eproduct.




This section outlines the architecture of the community XS.


   Scenarios

Here are some scenarios that the community XS should be compatible with. 
Non-conflicting combinations of these should also be possible.


1.

   it hosts the network, acting as an access point itself

2.

   it hosts the network, and bridges to an external wireless access point

3.

   it acts as a gateway to another network, such as the Internet

4.

   it participates on an existing network, without hosting core services

5.

   one XS server serves the whole school

6.

   many XS servers participate on the same network

7. the XS optionally provides services such as collaboration,
   registration, roster groups (presence segregation), backups and
   content on a modular basis


I do not see the distinction you make between XS and XSCE. XS-0.7 was
developed by Daniel Drake as an ongoing effort started by Martin Langhoff.
The major difference is that this project was a part of OLPC and not the
community.

The real question is whether the community is adopting and continuing 
the XS project or starting a new one.


As a continuation of the XS project, the first step could have been to
build XS-0.7 with a Fedora base. This essentially requires performing 
the build

process with a Fedora repository instead of CentOS. This would have made
XS-0.7 available for ARM-based platforms.

Sridhar did not mention 'remix' in his description. Generally for 
servers, the distinction is distribution + desktop vs distribution + 
server.


In the discussion of scenarios, Sridhar does not mention the most 
important point of the school server architecture, the distinction 
between LAN and WAN.
Here is a revised description. Note: all of Sridhar's scenarios are 
currently fully supported by XS-0.7.




1.

   it hosts the LAN network

2.

   it may be connected to one or more wireless routers

3.

   it acts as a gateway to another network (WAN), such as the Internet

4.

   it participates on an existing network (WAN) , without hosting core
   services for that network

5.

   one or more XS servers serve the whole school, dependingi on the
   number of XOs deployed.

6.

   many XS servers may participate on the same (WAN) network

7. the XS provides services such as collaboration, registration, roster
   groups (presence segregation), backups and content. These services
   may be used or not at the discretion of the deployment.



See below for specific comments.




On 10/12/2013 12:57 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 12:58:28 -0400
From: George Huntgeorgejh...@gmail.com
To: xsce-develxsce-de...@googlegroups.com,  XS Devel
server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE]
Message-ID:
CADfCcpU-XQ2=wDjWRbHcrwfmJKTZs=tangb_kiseio6zsnw...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hi Tony,

I'd add to Tim's comments:

Sridhar, early in the XSCE design,  made a distinction between project, and
product, which I find useful -See-
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dnhU2F6EntepVXTgN8QpkME8fZVUuPjcCoMUfAVKbcc/edit--
follow the Product vs Distribution vs Product link.

XS0.7 was a product, whereas XSCE is attempting to be a project. By
reconceptualizing, and restructuring the install process, now with the
higher level server description language, called ansible, we are
attempting to position the code base to be flexible, and applicable, to new
distributions, hardware, processors, needs and requirements.
I still do not understand who is the user of Ansible. It would seem to a 
be a tool for use of the XSCE project, not its clients.


As such, XSCE is not meant to be directly usable until it is married with
specific hardware, and a set of requirements. Two examples come to mind:

1. In September, I installed an XO4  and a trimslice at 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 78, Issue 8

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

It is important to download content to the XO so that children can 
access them offline. This is not a technical problem. In the Karma 
Learning System, this is done using cgi-scripts which access the school 
server using sftp.


Tony


On 10/07/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than Re: Contents of Server-devel digest...


Today's Topics:

1. The concept of pushing content to clients (Anna)
2. Re: [XSCE] The concept of pushing content to clients
   (James Cameron)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 21:31:09 -0500
From: Anna ascho...@gmail.com
To: xsce-devel xsce-de...@googlegroups.com, Server Devel
server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] The concept of pushing content to clients
Message-ID:
cafm0qr2mea9wut1qxkubktnux8okrzrf4dg2tzzw9q94aaj...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

I got my Mom a refurb Kindle for $50 for her birthday.  This past Thursday,
she visited me for a few hours and we did a bit of training over takeout
from Dreamland BBQ.

What in the world does that have to do with the XO/DXS/XSCE ecosystem, you
might be asking?

For one, there's registration.  Mom entered her Amazon user/pass into the
Kindle.  Then it was registered and she could see the Kindle when she
looked at her Amazon account from her laptop.

After registration, I asked her to go into her Amazon account to put my
email address and the Tinderizer (I'll explain later) email address into
the approved email list.  That's so you can send things to
mom@kindle.comfrom an approved email address and it'll just
magically show up on her
Kindle.

I installed Calibre on her Windows laptop, which luckily went well.  She
understood it was like iTunes for books.  (Mom has an iPhone and an iPad,
she knows iTunes.)  Then I showed her some free ebook sites where she could
get content, how to import the downloaded books into Calibre, and how to
put that content onto the Kindle.

Where Mom was really fascinated was how you can push content onto the
Kindle.  If you don't have a Kindle, here's how it works (remember Mom put
my email address into the approved list):

1.  I find something interesting that Mom might like to read
2.  I email m...@kindle.com that content in a .txt file attachment and
simply put the word convert in the subject
3.  Mom connects her Kindle to wifi and it automagically downloads the
content

Now, Mom is a huge fan of the NYT, she actually pays money to subscribe.  I
set her up with http://tinderizer.com like I use.  Sometimes the NYT has
very long articles that I'd like to read later on the e-ink Kindle.
  Tinderizer is a bookmarklet that, once you set it up (and setup is very
simple), it's one click to push it to the Kindle.  Once the Kindle is
connected to wifi, that content just magically shows up on the device.
  If I know I'm going to be offline for a while, or just want to sit out on
the porch in the sunlight, I'll browse for articles to push to the Kindle
to read later.  Instapaper is another option I've heard good things about,
but it doesn't sound as simple.

In my case, reading thoughtful, longform articles on my computer screen is
sometimes difficult, so I quite prefer them on the Kindle's eink screen.
  And reading offline minimizes distractions.

I know you're still wondering, what does this have to do with the
XO/DXS/XSCE ecosystem!  The concept of pushing content to client devices,
which then automagically shows up with no effort from the end user.  And
it's not a link, it's the full content, so the user only needs to have a
connection for a few minutes while the queued up content is pushed.

Many folks might think Amazon is evil or whatever, but their content
delivery system is notable and somewhat revolutionary as far as end users
are concerned.

Also, take note of this Kindle based project:  http://www.worldreader.org/

As we're going into XSCE 0.5 and thinking about value added stuff, lemme
just throw this concept in.

Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 14:03:53 +1100
From: James Cameron qu...@laptop.org
To: xsce-de...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Server Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] The concept of pushing 

Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Reflashing over a network

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

This is a very valuable discussion which I hope gets summarized on a 
wiki page. It probably also belongs in server-devel as well.


I believe the 'boot net' would require only moments more per laptop than 
the 4-key approach.


The real advantage of wireless 'flashing' could be that a roomful of 
laptops could be flashed concurrently as in NandBlast. I assume that 
NandBlast is using the broadcast capability of the network. This is 
getting beyond my understanding of networking, but wouldn't it be 
possible to implement the 'sender' side of NandBlast on the server and

have it start broadcasting the image.

Tony



On 08/29/2013 10:19 AM, James Cameron wrote:

No.  It addresses the boot server identified by the DHCP server, or if
no boot server is identified it attempts TFTP against the DHCP server.

(Reminder: this is the manual boot net scenario, not the automatic
four game key boot scenario).

Could we please move technical discussions on OLPC XO firmware back to
devel@?


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 76, Issue 22

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Adam

The model I have been pursuing is that the library contents are checked 
out by the child - i.e. copied to the Journal on the XO. There is no 
need to be connected to the school server to read a book. The same 
approach applies to media (audio, image, video).


Naturally, the child will have to erase some library items from the 
Journal from time to time, particularly with XO-1.


The schools I am working with have no access to the internet so keeping 
the server on to share internet access is not needed.


There are technical issues to provide this capability for Wikipedia 
articles and some work will probably be needed to enable download of 
Khan Academy videos (beyond the Arithmetic and Pre-algebra group which 
is supported by the Learn Activity). I suspect some work will be needed 
for the maps. Currently Nick Doiron's Map Activity expects to be online 
to Google Maps or Open Street Maps and to build map-packs on the XO. In 
addition, Braddock has had pre-render the tiles. I don't yet know what 
impact this has on the Map Activity.


Tony


On 08/17/2013 02:34 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Kids need to read in the evenings (and unforeseen times) on their XOs, from
http://internet-in-a-box.org  and most importantly much younger material,
rare colorful ebooks we've been granted in Creole.


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Re: [Server-devel] village server

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I assume this situation is also solar-powered. What is the range over 
which the school server has to be accessible? Do you wire the APs back 
to the central location or provide solar power directly to each?


I fully agree that the school server needs its own power in a solar 
environment. At the first school in Lesotho, the solar installation 
provides more than enough power so that the server did not require 
additional panels. However, additional panels were installed to enable 
the server to be located nearer to the 'computer room' when it was 
expected all computer classes would be conducted in that room.


At the second school, the laptops are charged from individual panels so 
that the school server needs a dedicated solar panel and set of batteries.


Even in the community server situation, I would expect it would be on 
say from 0700-1100 and shut down overnight.


Tony


On 08/17/2013 02:35 PM, Anish Mangal wrote:

I think this may be the case in a few other places as well. For example
in Bhagmalpur, the school server isnt deployed at a school but a
somewhat central location in the village and the children can access the
server anytime, not just during school hours.

Also one might think that the XS consumes negligible power when compared
with 50 xo laptops but keep in mind that the server needs to come across
as an 'always on' appliance, including all the wireless APs. Thus while
the laptops might be used for, say 2-3 hours a day. An XS must be kept
on always, along with the hard disks, and along with all the wireless
APs. In such a scenario I would say the the XS preferably have its own
power supply and backup system.



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Re: [Server-devel] village server - oops

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/17/2013 04:19 PM, Anish Mangal wrote:

At the second school, the laptops are charged from individual panels
so that the school server needs a dedicated solar panel and set of
batteries.

Even in the community server situation, I would expect it would be
on say from 0700-1100 and shut down overnight.


Do you mean 7am-11pm or 11am? I definitely see the server being powered
for more than 4 hrs in many cases.


Sorry, 0700-2300.

Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 76, Issue 21

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

What is the disk capacity required by internet-in-a-box?

The purpose of the server is to deliver the information not available 
from the internet.


The cost of a UPS which is required for a system on the grid is $80-100.

In my experience, there is need for one school server at a school 
supporting 30-200 XOs.


Tony

On 08/17/2013 03:02 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

The average difference between power consumption of an SSD and a HDD is
about 4W. [1][2]

Now considering the environments we're gonna head into we're looking at
typically 1-3 days of power backup for the server (lets average out at 2).

That means, the battery backup needed is:
4 * 24 * 2 = 192 W-hr

*That comes out to roughly $25-35 in battery costs*  (again based on quick
google searches for battery costs). *If you want a longer life from
you're battery, you're looking at about $50-60 in battery costs.*

Now if we're also giving solar backup, based on the calculator here
[3] we're going to need about a 25-30W solar panel (for just those 4 extra
watts). Again, google tells me that *such panels retail for about $65-80.*
*
*
*So, on average we'll save $100-$130 on TCO (total cost of ownership), if
we intend to provide an SSD as opposed to an HDD, considering the server
runs 24x7 and 2 days of backup is needed.*
*
*
On top of that, you're looking at less failures, a better operating
temperature range, and more durability.


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 76, Issue 21

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

My point about the UPS is that an off-grid setup doesn't need one which
somewhat offsets the additional cost of supporting a hard drive.

Currently the two schools in Lesotho are using MSI Nettop as school 
servers. In the context of charging 30-100 XOs, the additional power 
consumed by the school server is negligible.


However, at the second school which charges the laptops using individual 
solar panels, the school server takes a dedicated solar panel charging a 
pair of car batteries.


The big surprise was that the MSI does not boot on 12vdc. This required
adding an inverter (designed to charge laptops from a car battery).

I was hoping the Trim-Slice H would be suitable. I am concerned with its 
fixed 1GB memory. The Utilite looked like a promising alternative, but 
supports only SSD. We may have to wait for nettops based on the new
Atom technology for a one-box solution. In the meantime, the current 
Atom based systems are doable in an off-grid deployment.


By the way, the need for the school server is closer to 50 hours per 
week than 24/7. Normally it needs to be booted only during the hours 
when children are in school.


Tony

On 08/17/2013 06:21 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

On Sat, 2013-08-17 at 05:49 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

What is the disk capacity required by internet-in-a-box?


600-700 gigs


The purpose of the server is to deliver the information not available
from the internet.


Yup, or when your offline.


The cost of a UPS which is required for a system on the grid is $80-100.


Think the issue is mainly about off-grid systems, those are usually 12v.
What would be neat is if there was a power supply that you could replace
in your standard PC that used 12v as the supply voltage. Anybody know of
a manufacture that supplies one? I'd hate to see what the size of the
battery pack and the recharging requirements needed of the
solar/wind/insert others recharging system that would be needed to run
such a beast.


In my experience, there is need for one school server at a school
supporting 30-200 XOs.

Know of any low power devices that you might recommend for off-grid use?

Jerry



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Re: [Server-devel] Questions for today

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Sebastian

My concern was email access in deployments which only have access to the
Internet by taking a usb drive to an internet cafe. I thought that Peru was
developing such a capability at least for software distribution. The 
deployments
I am working with do not have access to the internet and so are unable 
to use

cloud-based resources.

Tony


On 08/08/2013 11:39 AM, Sebastian Silva wrote:

El 06/08/13 08:33, Tony Anderson escribió:
As mentioned, there are server developments at many deployments. What 
would be great is a co-operative team that would work to provide 
capabilities in a way that can be distributed widely. I am sure that 
Peru is working on a method to deliver email via usb drive (and 
internet cafes). I just don't have any visibility in the method 
taken, the technology employed, or whether the development can be 
applicable outside of Peru.


We've made a significant effort to have all of our development visible 
upstream:

http://git.sugarlabs.org/network
http://git.sugarlabs.org/platform

Also most of our technical and non-technical documentation is in English:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sugar_Network

We are server-solution-agnostic and merely provide a set of 
specialized services packaged for major distributions at this time. To 
take advantage of all Sugar Network capabilities, a patched Sugar 
shell is necessary (SN-plugin). It adds a special view to participate 
in the Sugar Network.


It is interesting that we are specifically trying to tackle the 
downstreams/upstream cooperation/distribution issue. Still, we're not 
planning to add an email gateway to the Sugar Network at this time, 
but expect most communication to happen over the Sugar Network support 
forums / knowledge base, which is also accessible using a regular browser:

http://network.sugarlabs.org/

Regards,
Sebastian


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[Server-devel] 20-xc-generic

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/06/2013 05:40 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

Think the attachment got scrubbed in digest mode. Can you reply to this
tread with the contents of 20-xc-generic script please?

#!/bin/bash
# Author: Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org
# XS auto-usbmount import script for code parts of the e-library
#modified for Rwanda configuration tony_ander...@usa.net
# execute XC-install if found
set -e

VERBOSE=no

# Log a string via the syslog facility.
log()
{
if test $1 != debug || expr $VERBOSE : [yY]  /dev/null; then
logger -p user.$1 -t rwxc-code[$$] -- $2
echo $(date +%F %T) rwxc-code: $2
fi
}

error_beep()
{
echo -en '\033[10;1000]\033[11;100]\007'  /dev/console
sleep 0.2
echo -en '\033[10;1000]\033[11;100]\007'  /dev/console
sleep 0.2
echo -en '\033[10]\033[11]'  /dev/console
return 0
}

if [ -f $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC/xc-install ]; then
exec  $UM_MOUNTPOINT/xc-usbmount.txt 21
fi

if [ -f $UM_MOUNTPOINT/xc.*.tar.bz2 ]; then
exec  $UM_MOUNTPOINT/xc-usbmount.txt 21
fi

if [ -f $UM_MOUNTPOINT/xc.*.tar.bz2 ]; then
log notice Updating School Server
rm -rf /library/update
mkdir /library/update
cp $UM_MOUNTPOINT/xc.*tar.bz2 /library/update
cd /library/update
tar -xvf xc.*.tar.bz2
if bash xc-update; then
log notice School server updated successfully
else
log notice School server update failed with code $?
error_beep
fi
fi

if [ -f $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC/xc-install ]; then
log notice Installing XC
cd $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC
if bash xc-install; then
log notice XC installed successfully
else
log notice XC install failed with code $?
error_beep
fi
fi
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/06/2013 05:40 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

I'd be interested in the contents of the xs-moodle files or is that an
example? Sounds like 20-xc-generic looks for xc-* directories and files
in those directories to execute, need to see the code to be sure on what
you require.

The install file for Moodle is

 cd $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC
if [ -f xc-moodle/xc-moodle-install ]; then
log notice Installing moodle
cd xc-moodle
if bash xc-moodle-install; then
log notice moodle installed successfully
else
log notice moodle install failed with code $?
error_beep
fi
else
log notice 'moodle not found'
error_beep

fi

The xc-moodle-install file is:

#!/bin/bash

#take backup from existing moodle
#su - postgres
#pg_dump moodle-xs  moodle-xs.sql

#stop httpd
/etc/init.d/httpd stop

#copy the moodle folder to /library
rm -rf /library/moodle
cp -r moodle /library/moodle
chown -R apache:apache /library/moodle

#restore the moodle-xs.sql backup of the database
psql -d moodle-xs -f moodle-xs.sql
#replace config.php file in /var/www/moodle/web and update 
/etc/httpd/conf.d/moodle.conf (if necessary)

cp config.php /var/www/moodle/web
cp moodle.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d

#start httpd
/etc/init.d/httpd start

Naturally, Moodle itself is installed as part of XS-0.7. This installs a 
PostgreSQL backup of Moodle content (courses). It also moved the Moodle 
data to /library.
This was a mistake in the XS implementation. Data directories which can 
grow
with use should be in /library not in the root partition. This is the 
change in

config.php.

The essence of this technique is that 20-xc-generic needs to be 
installed by xo-custom, xs-setup, or in the build. Once that is 
installed, a deployment can

perform any additional installations of content or packages via xc-install.

It would probably be useful to have a library of these optional 
installations.


Currently, I am using this technique to install the courseware for the 
Learn
activity, Django, the library, wiki4schools, mediawiki, wiktionary, the 
beginnings of a learning management system, and the beginnings of an 
itembank of questions. I hope to have an install script for IIAB 
(probably one for the front end and one or more for the content).


Tony


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

My purpose is to illustrate the technique. Frankly, since each script is 
intended

to install one package or content module, they change to meet the specific
requirement.

For example, xc-moodle in a repository should probably install a simple 
example
of a Moodle course since the one I use at the deployment contains some 
content

which is not free to be distributed.

Tony

On 08/06/2013 08:36 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

Yes it would then I could stop asking for source code for an open source
project.


Currently, I am using this technique to install the courseware for the
Learn
activity, Django, the library, wiki4schools, mediawiki, wiktionary, the
beginnings of a learning management system, and the beginnings of an
itembank of questions. I hope to have an install script for IIAB
(probably one for the front end and one or more for the content).


XSCE is working towards the same goals.


Tony



Jerry






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[Server-devel] config.php

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/06/2013 08:46 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Naturally, Moodle itself is installed as part of XS-0.7. This installs a
PostgreSQL backup of Moodle content (courses). It also moved the Moodle
data to /library.
This was a mistake in the XS implementation. Data directories which can
grow
with use should be in /library not in the root partition. This is the
change in
config.php.


yup, good catch. Got a copy of that also?


As far as I can remember, the only change is:

$CFG-dataroot  = '/library/moodle';

Tony


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Re: [Server-devel] Questions for today

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/06/2013 03:06 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 12:13 AM, Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu  wrote:

Just noticed that on
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software_0.7  it says that
stable version is XS 0.7 and unstable is XSCE 0.3

Is this correct?

Is XSCE to become XS 0.8? I am all in favor of the two projects
merging, but as I understand it, XS and XSCE are two very*different*
projects as of now. Some clarification would be great!

This question has many interesting implications! While I don't know
the answer to your question I do have some more specific follow on
questions.

Questions about today:

If I am a deployment, large or small, looking to deploy a school
server, which should I choose? and Why?
If a deployment has the power for an Atom-based server, then XS-0.7 is 
the choice today. According the 0.3 release notes, XSCE is only 
supported on an XO.


If I am a deployment, large or small, looking to make customizations
to my school server, which 'base' should I choose? Should I upstream
my customizations or should hold on to them?
Customization has to used carefully. There is not a system administrator 
alive who has built a custom server configuration. None of that has any 
impact on server software development.
For example, adding CUPS to support an attached printer is something 
that a deployment can do if desired.


If I a contributor looking to help ICT4E move forward, which school
server should I work on and why?

I am not sure what ICT4E means (ICT seems to be used in education to 
mean studying computers as a subject, not using computers to learn).


There are a number of important items still on the wish list. Adding
the IIAB content is probably at the top of the list. Providing a way for 
a deployment to be 'librarian', e.g. with Calibre is another. Finding a 
way for teachers to make assignments, receive student submissions, mark 
them, and return annotated copies (digital copybook) is high on the 
list. Providing an email capability with client software on the XO and 
an XS facility (e.g. pop3 and smtp) which is capable of
interface to Internet via removable device. Implementing Wikipedia in a 
child-safe form with fast full-text search. Providing an effective 
'badge' mechanism to honor children who have demonstrated learning.

There is no lack of things to do.

Questions about the future:

Is the XS feature complete? Does it do everything it can to add value
to deployments? If there are ways to add more value, is there a plan
or funding model to support that development?

XS-0.7 is a baseline install. The question should be what can 
deployments usefully install on XS-0.7. If we view every change as
requiring a new build, deployments are looking at huge expense. In 
Nepal, Abhishek and I had to download over 10GB of repositories to build 
XO-0.7 offline. That would take a decade at most of the schools I 
service (average download speed is 5kb/sec - with tens of restarts per

gigabyte -not to mention loss of sleep restarting).

Is the XSCE feature complete? Does it do everything it can to add
value to deployments? If there are ways to add more value, is there a
plan or funding model to support that development?

Questions for OLCP:

Are there steps OLPC can do to encourage deployments to fund further
development of XS by OLPC developers? Are there steps OLPC can do to
encourage direct development of XS by deployments?

As mentioned, there are server developments at many deployments. What 
would be great is a co-operative team that would work to provide 
capabilities in a way that can be distributed widely. I am sure that 
Peru is working on a method to deliver email via usb drive (and internet 
cafes). I just don't have any visibility in the method taken, the 
technology employed, or whether the development can be applicable 
outside of Peru.

Would it be effective for OLPC to support and fund future development
of XSCE or a product based on XSCE?

Would OLPC officially endorse XSCE as supported project?

Questions for XSCE:

What can XSCE do to ensure that it continues to improve by adding
values to deployments with each quarterly release?

What can XSCE do to ensure future development viability via community
support, deployment support, OLPC support, or support through Activity
Central?

What steps can XSCE do to ensure that is solid base project for future
product offerings by: OLPC-A, XS; OLPC-AU, One Network; Plan Ceibal,
?; OLE-Nepal, ?; Activity Central, Dextrose Server.

Immediate questions:

Is XSCE overstepping by have its wiki at laptop.org? Should XSCE
remain in a user space at laptop.org?

Should XCE have its own mailing list at laptop.org? Should it continue
the current blend ofxsce-de...@googlegroups.com  +
server-devel@lists.laptop.org  ?

So I don't know the answer to your original question. These are
the questions that come to my mind when I think about the relationship
between XS and XSCE and their future:)
I 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 76, Issue 3

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I think there is a real misunderstanding of the school server software.

Daniel Drake updated XS-0.6 to a CentOS 6.2 base because the Fedora base 
was obsolete. There is no need for continued development of XS at this 
time, it is functional and stable.


XSCE appears to be a substantially different development aimed, at 
several objectives:

enable XO hardware to act as the school server
support the ARM platform
provide gui support for basic system administration
modularize server functions so that deployments can pick and choose 
which capabilities to include.


I don't think we need or want an unstable XS. The existence of CentOS 
points to the difference between server and client software development 
models.


Tony




On 08/05/2013 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

I don't see any unstable version of xs-, and I don't see any stable
version of XSCE.  I'd like to see both.  The former would indicate
ongoing development of xs- and the latter would indicate finalisation
of XSCE.


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 76, Issue 4

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/06/2013 05:39 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Tony, you have quoted me and misunderstand my use of the word
unstable.  It means something that continues to change, that
develops, in response to user input in the form of enhancements and
bug fixes.  I would like to see continued change and development of
both XS and XSCE.  I don't see it happening at the moment; both
development streams appear stalled (there are no published plans to
release), but I would not be unhappy to see the streams restarted.

stable software means it isn't going to change, isn't going to
develop in response to changing needs, and isn't going to be fixed.



Sorry. I thought stable meant a production release - the one that 
deployments should use.


In the sense you describe, there never has been a ongoing server 
development. It was put together by Martin Langhoff and updated to

XS-0.7 by Daniel Drake. As far as I am aware, there is no Trac for
problems with XS-0.7. There is also no feature request process.

On the other hand, XSCE does have a development team and a planned 
release process (currently 0.3 with plans for 0.4 and 0.5).


As Sameer has written, the primary concern is a perception that XSCE is 
a successor to XS-0.7. It is an alternative designed to meet certain 
specific hardware and deployment needs. XSCE is also not a fork of XS in 
the normal use of that term in software development. XS is an open 
source project (primarily consisting of packaging and configuring 
CentOS, Moodle, and so on) so ownership by OLPC is not an issue.


Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25

[Tony Anderson]

On 08/01/2013 06:33 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Tony Andersont...@olenepal.org  wrote:

Hi,

As I have unsuccessfully tried to explain many times. OLE Nepal, with help
from Daniel Drake, an effective and proven means to add selected
capabilities
to the base server. Since this capability takes advantage of the running
base
server, all of its normal system administration capabilities are available
(ssh,
yum, etc.).


This is true, but not documented well and not known. For instance, we
use munin and openvpn on the XS 0.7 in Jamaica, and those are
add-ons. It would be good to document this and discuss approaches
for installing complementary services.


The process is straightforward.

At install time, the script xs-custom is executed.

#!/bin/bash
cp 20-xc-generic /etc/usbmount/mount.d
cp path.py /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages
python fixssh.py
adduser -padmin admin
xs-setup domain
poweroff

It installs a modified version of Daniel Drake's script 20-xc-generic 
which will be executed when a removable drive is mounted.

It puts path.py (a utility I use in many python cgi-scripts).
It executes a script fixssh.py which enables password authentication.
Finally, it adds user admin with password admin.
The xs-setup script is executed to complete the process.
The poweroff is a clear signal when the script is finished and forces a 
reboot.


The 20-xc-generic script is attached. It checks the removable device for 
a root folder
XC. If this exists, it checks for a script in that folder 'xc-install'. 
If so, it is executed. This allows a usb drive or hard drive to be used 
for this install or for other purposes by renaming the XC folder (e.g. 
xc) so that it is ignored.


The fixsh.py scripts enables password authentication:

#!/usr/bin/python

test = 'PasswordAuthentication'

fin=open('/etc/ssh/sshd_config.in','r')
txt = fin.read()
fin.close()
lines = txt.split('\n')
txtout = ''
fout = open('/etc/ssh/sshd_config.in','w')
for line in lines:
if test in line and not '#' in line:
print  fout, test + ' yes'
else:
print  fout, line
fout.close()


This is another reason for poweroff and reboot so that 
/etc/ssh/sshd_config is also

updated.

This enables login from an XO or other PC via ssh admin@schoolserver for
system administration.

The xc-install script in XC looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
# Author: Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org
# XS auto-usbmount import script for code parts of the e-library
#modified for Rwanda configuration tony_ander...@usa.net

set -e

VERBOSE=No

# Log a string via the syslog facility.
log()
{
if test $1 != debug || expr $VERBOSE : [yY]  /dev/null; then
logger -p user.$1 -t xc-code[$$] -- $2
echo $(date +%F %T) xc-code: $2
fi
}

error_beep()
{
echo -en '\033[10;1000]\033[11;100]\007'  /dev/console
sleep 0.2
echo -en '\033[10;1000]\033[11;100]\007'  /dev/console
sleep 0.2
echo -en '\033[10]\033[11]'  /dev/console
return 0
}

UM_MOUNTPOINT=/media/usb0

cd $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC
if [ -f xc-wiki/xc-wiki4schools-install ]; then
log notice Installing Wiki4Schools
cd xc-wiki
if bash xc-wiki4schools-install; then
log notice wiki4schools installed successfully
else
log notice wiki4schools install failed with code $?
error beep
fi
else
log notice 'xc-wiki not found'

It normally has several of these install sections. The install section 
looks for a
folder: xc-wiki and in that folder for an install script: 
xc-wiki4schools-install.

The contents of the folder are:

wiki.conf
xc-wiki4schools-install
xc-wiki4schools.tar.gz
xc-wiki4schools.tar.gz.sha1

The xc-wiki4schools-install is:

#!/bin/bash

wktar=xc-wiki4schools.tar.gz

log() {
logger -p user.notice -t nexc-wiktionary-inst -s -- $1
}

cp wiki.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d

rm -rf /library/wiki
mkdir -p /library/wiki

cp $wktar /library/wiki
cd /library/wiki

if ! tar -xzf $wktar; then
log could not extract $wktar
exit 1
fi

rm -rf /library/wiki/$wktar

chown -R apache:apache /library/wiki
chmod -R 755 /library/wiki

This script installs wiki.conf in /etc/httpd/conf.d, makes a folder 
/library/wiki,
copies the tarball to this folder and extracts it there. The tarball is 
removed and
permissions set. Note that the script removes previous content so that 
it can

be rerun.

The wiki.conf file is:

Alias /wiki4schools/ /library/wiki/
Directory /library/wiki
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
/Directory

This makes the wiki accessible via: http://schoolserver/wiki4schools/.


For simplicity, each folder in XC has this style. For example, xc-moodle 
installs
the Moodle courses and so on. If xc-moodle is renamed to xcc-moodle, it 
gets
ignored by xc-install. This way a deployment can select which packages 
or bundles to install.


As you can see bash scripting or python scripting works fine. The only 
really tricky
part is 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

As I have unsuccessfully tried to explain many times. OLE Nepal, with help
from Daniel Drake, an effective and proven means to add selected 
capabilities
to the base server. Since this capability takes advantage of the running 
base
server, all of its normal system administration capabilities are 
available (ssh,

yum, etc.).

The other difference with the school server is that disk capacity should 
not be

a constraint. This means leaving Moodle installed but unused has negligible
cost.

Making http://schoolserver go directly to Moodle is probably not 
justified. We
should probably create a home page or, at least provide an example that 
deployments could modify to their needs.


Tony


On 07/29/2013 07:56 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org wrote:

Hi,

The XS-0.7 release of the school server software is built with CentOS 6.2.
The main problem is that CentOS does not support the ARM isa.
XSCE, as I understand it, arose to fill an urgent need to implement the
school server on ARM to reduce the power requirements of the school server.

Also in my understanding, XSCE was ported to run on the Fedora base used on
the XO for Sugar. This was needed to enable XO hardware to be
used for the school server.

Another reason for the XSCE push was to make the server less
monolithic and allow deployments to select components. For instance,
Moodle is integral to XS 0.7. Most projects (to my understanding) use
the admin pages in Moodle (added to stock Moodle by OLPC) and not
Moodle itself. Most people on this list do not have a good exposure to
the continued use of Moodle in an institution (I use it at work every
day), so Moodle has failed to take root. In my opinion, for Moodle to
take root, it needs to come populated with sample courses and a set of
simple directions to add more. From what I gather, there are NO
instructions/documentation on the use of Moodle in the OLPC context.
This is most likely because we all hit the 24 hour limit per day :-)
Is it salvageable? Yes! We need a good set of courses and a repo to
host at and download from. A Youtube search for moodle backup
restore will show you how easy it is.

Moving along, XSCE hopes to provide a menu approach to select the
services you need (Pathagar, Drupal, your favorite service). That
requirement, along with AU's need to have a server per classroom (XO
based server)  got mixed up in the granularity requirement.


In short, there is no reason to do anything to run the school server on the
Intel isa, just use XS-0.7.

As of now, this is true. XS 0.7 is rock solid, and it's stability
comes from the CentOS/RHEL underpinnings. Once XSCE is able to provide
a menu to remove Moodle, add Pathagar AND provide a CentOS base, the
reasons for XSCE may get stronger.

In case you were wondering, I am NOT a fan of using Fedora for a
server. Stability and upgrade paths are my primary concerns.

cheers,
Sameer

In my understanding, the Sugar Desktop runs on Fedora on both Intel and ARM
architectures. The fact that Sugar is extensively tested and supported in
the Fedora environment probably outweighs any stability advantage of CentOS.

Tony

On 07/29/2013 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

We are mixing our channels abit here.


A Sugar based desktop on CentOS is pretty unlikely. As Peter noticed,
there are many dependencies necessary for a recent Sugar which are not
present in CentOS. CentOS intentionally lagges fedora by several
releases for stability. If someone wanted to do it badly enough, it
would be possible to backport the fedora 18 GTK stack to CentSO

A school server based on CentOS or Ubuntu LTS is more likely. The
challenge is remaining compatible with XOs. For hardware
compatibility, a XO requires recent OLPC-OS versions which are based
on recent fedora version.

The step necessary to make XSCE on CentOS run on _Commodity_X86_
hardware are not that great. The problem is that it would require
maintain a non-XO branch in parallel with the XO compatible branch..
Anyone have the time, energy, and flame retardant skin to tackle that?


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The XS-0.7 release of the school server software is built with CentOS 
6.2. The main problem is that CentOS does not support the ARM isa.
XSCE, as I understand it, arose to fill an urgent need to implement the 
school server on ARM to reduce the power requirements of the school server.


Also in my understanding, XSCE was ported to run on the Fedora base used 
on the XO for Sugar. This was needed to enable XO hardware to be

used for the school server.

In short, there is no reason to do anything to run the school server on 
the Intel isa, just use XS-0.7.


In my understanding, the Sugar Desktop runs on Fedora on both Intel and 
ARM architectures. The fact that Sugar is extensively tested and 
supported in the Fedora environment probably outweighs any stability 
advantage of CentOS.


Tony

On 07/29/2013 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

We are mixing our channels abit here.


A Sugar based desktop on CentOS is pretty unlikely. As Peter noticed,
there are many dependencies necessary for a recent Sugar which are not
present in CentOS. CentOS intentionally lagges fedora by several
releases for stability. If someone wanted to do it badly enough, it
would be possible to backport the fedora 18 GTK stack to CentSO

A school server based on CentOS or Ubuntu LTS is more likely. The
challenge is remaining compatible with XOs. For hardware
compatibility, a XO requires recent OLPC-OS versions which are based
on recent fedora version.

The step necessary to make XSCE on CentOS run on _Commodity_X86_
hardware are not that great. The problem is that it would require
maintain a non-XO branch in parallel with the XO compatible branch..
Anyone have the time, energy, and flame retardant skin to tackle that?


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Re: [Server-devel] Firmware install

[Tony Anderson]

HI,

Actually, what we did is plug in the AC adapter (running from an 
inverter powered
by a 12v car battery). The point is that the reflash was ok and the 
firmware update
is automatic the next time the AC adapter is plugged in. Interestingly, 
at the other
school this also worked when the laptop was getting power from an 
individual solar panel via a lead with a standard OLPC power plug.


Tony

On 07/20/2013 05:08 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

On Sat, 2013-07-20 at 07:33 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

We had this experience in Lesotho where we were rarely working directly
from the mains. However, if the firmware is not installed, the message
will appear on each subsequent boot. I am not sure that the battery
charge is an issue. The firmware installs when the laptop detects that
it is running from an AC adapter.

Tony


I have a olpc.fth file that defeats the mains AC check provided the
battery has 50% charge or more and installs the newer firmware when
present on the usbkey. Only works on unlocked XOs, hit me up if your
interested.

Jerry



On 07/20/2013 05:13 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

When reflashing to one of the newer builds; i.e., 12.1.0 or newer, be sure to
use a fully charged battery and a plugged in power adapter when reflashing. The
new builds will upgrade the firmware automatically if the battery is fully
charged. If it is not, during the end of the reflash process it will say
something like cannot get new firmware continuing to update with old
firmware. If you are not watching the screen you might not see this.

And, I always check the system date and reset it (from the root terminal per
instructions on the Fix ClockWiki page) before reflashing. That has solved the
stuck on the grey dots problem.

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[Server-devel] Firmware install

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

We had this experience in Lesotho where we were rarely working directly 
from the mains. However, if the firmware is not installed, the message 
will appear on each subsequent boot. I am not sure that the battery 
charge is an issue. The firmware installs when the laptop detects that 
it is running from an AC adapter.


Tony


On 07/20/2013 05:13 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

When reflashing to one of the newer builds; i.e., 12.1.0 or newer, be sure to
use a fully charged battery and a plugged in power adapter when reflashing. The
new builds will upgrade the firmware automatically if the battery is fully
charged. If it is not, during the end of the reflash process it will say
something like cannot get new firmware continuing to update with old
firmware. If you are not watching the screen you might not see this.

And, I always check the system date and reset it (from the root terminal per
instructions on the Fix ClockWiki page) before reflashing. That has solved the
stuck on the grey dots problem.


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Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I think this should be done in the overall context of XSCE as proposed 
by David Farning. I think of what I am doing as a system and not as 
isolated pieces. The ds-backup is independent because it only addresses 
backup and restore of the Journal. However, this is going to become more 
a system element as deployments turn to the shared model. It may become 
moot, if the community abandons dependence on Sugar.


Tony

On 07/12/2013 03:39 AM, George Hunt wrote:

Hi Tony,

When you sent me your ds-backup script to migrate student datastore to 
the server based upon the favorite star in the journal, I downloaded 
the olpc repo, and added your version as a branch, and uploaded it to 
https://github.com/georgejhunt/ds-backup/blob/ds_on_xs/client/ds-backup.py. 
This is a branch which I called ds_on_xs, but which could just as 
easily be called tony's ds-backup.


If you are interested, I'd like to create a repo at github for any of 
the following: (can't do everything at once):


  * epath library system,
  * english language content,
  * schools, a django application to keep track of students and teachers

And then we can all have access to it and make changes to separate 
branches, and contribute to one another's code.  If you'd like, you 
can have your own github account (they're free), or I can give you shared
access to the repo that we create together at the 
github.com/georgejhunt http://github.com/georgejhunt account.


George


On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org 
mailto:t...@olenepal.org wrote:


Hi,


On 07/10/2013 02:07 PM, David Farning wrote:

Pathagar is based on Django. The digital library on the
school servers in
Rwanda and Lesotho is based on the same technology but
supports any item
with a recognized mime-type. The issue is how to organize
the contents so
that it can be easily accessed.

Are these open source projects? Can you send links to project
code so
we can learn from the approach or include it directly
in XS? The plugin structure enables us to run multiple libraries.

Django is open source. I have sent you copies of the scripts with
install Django. Django is organized by applications - it provides
a framework to build an application.
The basic application is called schoolsite (this is sort of a
master application that handles the interface to Apache and to the
other applications). The library is handled by the 'library'
application.

Essentially the library content is organized into collections. A
collection is a set of media files (library items), a folder of
thumbnails (e.g. the first page of a pdf), and a json file
(books.json). The json file provides title, author, path to the
item, and mime-type, and path to the thumbnail. A script in the
library application loads the collection (i.e. puts the books.json
information in the database). The library is accessed by urls
(e.g. http://schoolserver/library/ for the home page). Clicking on
a category in the home pages goes to a topic page. A button on the
topic page goes to a list of items (show 9 per screen). A click on
the item, downloads it to the XO and installs it (activity) or
puts it in the Journal (pdf, etc.).

Logically, the library includes the Wikipedia (Wiki4Schools)
although that is not a Django application. It also includes
Wiktionary which is based on Mediawiki (and currently not working
because of the switch to PostgreSQL from MySQL). The Django
content consists of the Sugar Activities from ASLO, the English
pdfs from E-Pustakalaya, and a large collection of Old-time Radio
and Classical music (Musopen) audio files.

I am not sure about the comment about plugins. The current model
is to install XS-0.7 to obtain a running server (with the two
configuration scripts which should be eliminated), a
deployment-specific xs-custom script (which installs the usbmount
script, for example). The content is installed from a hard drive
using the usbmount script from the booted server.

My sense is that the deployment really needs to determine what
content it wants on the server particularly since the available
content is approaching a terabyte. We need software (api,
application) to enable this to be done, but the process will need
content specialists more than software engineers.

I can supply you with scripts and some rudimentary documentation
at the Django level and a sketchy index of what is in the content,
if that helps. It is very similar to Pathagar except that Pathagar
seems to intermediate between the internet and the server where
this application mediates between the servers and the XO clients.

Tony




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Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint

[Tony Anderson]

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.



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Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Thanks for the update.

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.


My current plans are to visit these schools in December and so I may be 
able to get them unlocked then.


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?).


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.


Tony


On 07/10/2013 10:02 AM, James Cameron wrote:

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 09:33:29AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:

The flash level needs to be handled by the firmware. I believe the
firmware is capable of obtaining the image from a network. This is
where the 'lock' is invoked so the trick will be to find out how to
do this for locked XOs.

Yes, the firmware is capable of obtaining an image from wireless or
USB ethernet, but this is not a very efficient use of time.  A USB
drive easily outperforms network reflash.

To do it for locked XOs requires signing the build with your
deployment keys, and honestly we haven't tested secure network reflash
feature for a long time, so the community should test it before
recommending it.  If I recall correctly, it was not in scope for
XO-1.75 and XO-4 engineering.

(p.s. I salute the bravery of any deployment that uses locked XOs
without a deployment key injected on the laptops ... but I recommend
that this be avoided because of the numerous pitfalls ... ensure a
deployment key is injected, or unlock the laptops).



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Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint

[Tony Anderson]

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.


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.


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).


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.



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Re: [Server-devel] XSCE Sprint

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

On 07/10/2013 02:07 PM, David Farning wrote:

Pathagar is based on Django. The digital library on the school servers in
Rwanda and Lesotho is based on the same technology but supports any item
with a recognized mime-type. The issue is how to organize the contents so
that it can be easily accessed.

Are these open source projects? Can you send links to project code so
we can learn from the approach or include it directly
in XS? The plugin structure enables us to run multiple libraries.

Django is open source. I have sent you copies of the scripts with 
install Django. Django is organized by applications - it provides a 
framework to build an application.
The basic application is called schoolsite (this is sort of a master 
application that handles the interface to Apache and to the other 
applications). The library is handled by the 'library' application.


Essentially the library content is organized into collections. A 
collection is a set of media files (library items), a folder of 
thumbnails (e.g. the first page of a pdf), and a json file (books.json). 
The json file provides title, author, path to the item, and mime-type, 
and path to the thumbnail. A script in the library application loads the 
collection (i.e. puts the books.json information in the database). The 
library is accessed by urls (e.g. http://schoolserver/library/ for the 
home page). Clicking on a category in the home pages goes to a topic 
page. A button on the topic page goes to a list of items (show 9 per 
screen). A click on the item, downloads it to the XO and installs it 
(activity) or puts it in the Journal (pdf, etc.).


Logically, the library includes the Wikipedia (Wiki4Schools) although 
that is not a Django application. It also includes Wiktionary which is 
based on Mediawiki (and currently not working because of the switch to 
PostgreSQL from MySQL). The Django content consists of the Sugar 
Activities from ASLO, the English pdfs from E-Pustakalaya, and a large 
collection of Old-time Radio and Classical music (Musopen) audio files.


I am not sure about the comment about plugins. The current model is to 
install XS-0.7 to obtain a running server (with the two configuration 
scripts which should be eliminated), a deployment-specific xs-custom 
script (which installs the usbmount script, for example). The content is 
installed from a hard drive using the usbmount script from the booted 
server.


My sense is that the deployment really needs to determine what content 
it wants on the server particularly since the available content is 
approaching a terabyte. We need software (api, application) to enable 
this to be done, but the process will need content specialists more than 
software engineers.


I can supply you with scripts and some rudimentary documentation at the 
Django level and a sketchy index of what is in the content, if that 
helps. It is very similar to Pathagar except that Pathagar seems to 
intermediate between the internet and the server where this application 
mediates between the servers and the XO clients.


Tony

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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 3

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Naturally, the primary problem is servers which have no access to the 
internet. In some cases, these servers can access the internet by 
expensive gsm modems. In such cases, the server has a leased ip address 
via DHCP and so must initiate the communication with the 'mothership'.


Once the school server opens communication with the mothership, it can 
act as any other client.




I am not sure administration, monitoring, or updating the server 
remotely is either needed or desirable. The key to a server is stability 
- which means don't mess with it!


The real need is updates to content not software. A very desirable 
capability would be email. Another might be access to selected rss 
feeds. Adding items to the local digital library would be another 
possibility. Providing an ability for students to upload their Scratch 
projects or the Sugar activities developed with Pippy would be exciting.

One could even imagine XO users at deployments on Support-Gang!

It would be very desirable if these capabilities could also be 
accomplished by 'sneaker-net' with a usb flash drive to the (hopefully) 
local internet cafe.


Unfortunately we often assume that the deployment lives in the same 
environment we are used to. We have several Sugar Activities that are 
meaningful only when the XO accesses the internet directly (the prime 
example is the portal on the Browse Activity).


Imagine the performance available to 100 XOs surfing the internet 
through your home DSL or cable modem. Imagine the cost with a contract 
that has a surcharge for transfers exceeding 5MB per month.


This model of a 'mothership' is far more significant than the model of 
every XO surfing online.


Tony

On 07/03/2013 10:35 AM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2013 01:25:17 -0500
From: David Farningdfarn...@activitycentral.com
To: server-develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org,  Community Support
Volunteers -- who help respond to help AT   laptop.org
support-g...@laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] Value of remote access to School Servers.
Message-ID:
CAOGko=8kA4s1YX9da5=vp3ryuxbqgsxjt1nwbcdop-9gkpd...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

One of the features that we have been experimenting with for XSCE is
OpenVPN access. Several pilots are using it to remotely monitor and
maintain their School Servers.

The functionality is pretty straight forward. It opens several doors for
future services like automatic updates and statistics collections.

The hard part is setting up and maintaining the OpenVPN server. Large
deployments will want to setup their own server. Smaller deployments might
want someone else to host their OpenVPN server.

To kick this off, AC would be willing to host OpenVPN for small deployments
for free to deployments willing to test XSCE.

Does this free service sound like something anyone is interested in testing?

-- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com


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Re: [Server-devel] Specific server hardware needs.

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The Nohana school is using a setup as you describe. However, the 
configuration includes an inverter. The first thing the teachers do in 
the morning is plug in their cell phones (the inverter is connected to 
an array of powerstrips some of which are used to charge laptops),


An interesting point is that usb cables with the mini plug are becoming 
more readily available. With these, an XO charged from a solar system 
can charge a cell phone via a usb port.


Tony

On 06/10/2013 06:59 PM, David Farning wrote:

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net
mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net wrote:

Hi,

The Trim-slice model H (with room for a 2.5 hard drive) looks like
a good candidate for a low power school server (e.g. for running
from a 12v battery). The Trim-slice AC adapter delivers 12v@1.5 - a
good sign.


Agreed. The ability to power these things from a 'car battery' is
critical. I used the term car battery loosely to mean any locally
sourced 12v power source. In my limited experience, the cell phone has
been a game changer in developing nations. Because of the need/desire to
recharge cell phones. Local entrepreneurs have sprung up everywhere to
provide the ability to recharge those phones.

Most of those solutions involve some sort of 12V battery or bank or
batteries plus charging system.

Things like UPSs give me pause because they are not as widely available
or widely under.

The Trim-slice also has a SD card slot. This could be valuable because
it would let the device be booted from the SD card and install the XS
via a USB port (USB drive or hard drive) from a tar ball, for example.

Currently I do the install in two steps: XS and XC.

The XS install loads XS (or XSCE).

The XC install (using the usbmount script) installs the
content (e.g. Moodle courses, Learn courses, library, internet in a
box).
This is also a way to install packages not included in XS such as
Django and Mediawiki.

The first is typically done with a USB drive and the second with an
external USB hard drive (content currently exceeds 64GB and should
grow significantly this summer).

Tony

Using the SD card could give several benefits:

SD card supports SSH allowing (finally) for headless (in the field)
install

Install XS to hard drive as image eliminating issues with making
bootable USB drive

Install update without repartitioning system and destroying content

It might also be possible to use the SD card as a 'rescue disk'.
Most common case is DHCP does
not init and so no network connection to school server is
possible.This would at least allow look at logs to see what went wrong.


Thanks for the use scenarios.
Dave

Checking this out is one of my summer projects.

Tony




--
David Farning
Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com


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Re: [Server-devel] Pathagar

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

When I looked at Pathagar originally, it only worked when connected to 
the internet. Has this changed?


What can Pathagar store? Is it limited to pdfs? As I remember, it 
created database entries with extensive (library standard) cataloging 
information. Is that still required? In many cases, that information is 
not easily available (e.g. multimedia items).


Tony


On 06/04/2013 11:48 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 4 Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:11:33 -0700 From: Braddock
bradd...@braddock.com To: David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com
Cc: server-devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org, xsce-devel
xsce-de...@googlegroups.com, pathagar patha...@archive.org Subject:
Re: [Server-devel] A Path to Pathagar. Message-ID:
51ae5805.1070...@braddock.com Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=iso-8859-1; Format=flowed I'm curious how Pathagar may be
applicable to our Internet-in-a-Box (http://internet-in-a-box.org). Can
it scale to the 40,000 epub books in Project Gutenberg? thanks, Braddock
Gaskill On 06/04/2013 01:46 PM, David Farning wrote:

One of the additions to XSCE 0.3 is the ability to add services to
XSCE without having an intimate knowledge of the entire server. Our
first real test of this is the inclusion of Pathagar as a bookserver.

For the last three releases the XSCE project has focused on the basics:
1. Network connectivity within the classroom.
2. Internet access were available.
3. Modular structure.

This has been the boring framework stuff which will enable the fun
user facing stuff like Pathagar to work.

Pathagar is a simple bookserver. In this case, simple means rugged and
maintainable. Pathagar has three purposes; browse, search and download
digital books from a server.

In the basic use case a librarian or curator places digital books in a
directory on the server. Students can then browse, search and download
from their web browser or bookreader software.

Technically, most of the pieces are in place:
1. I believe the XSCE needs a bit more work handle external storage.
(Not barfing if the USB connection is bumped.)
2. Pathagar is fully functional.

The remaining steps will be to:
1. Validate Fedora packaging.
2. Create the glue code to add Pathagar to XSCE is a plugin.
3. Validate loosely coordinated release.
4. Test, test, test.

Technically this seems pretty straight forward.  The more open ended
issues is curating content. A book server with no books is as useful
as school server which doesn't serve.

--
David Farning
Activity Central:http://www.activitycentral.com


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Re: Install Firefox

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I have found it unproductive to try to install Firefox by rebuilding.
It is far easier to update the XO with a bash script from a usb drive.
This also avoids the problem with using a signed release (the basic 
build is signed).


I am currently using Firefox 20 on build 12.1.0. The install script is:

#install firefox
echo 'install firefox'
rm -rf /home/olpc/.mozilla
sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*
sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/firefox
sudo cp firefox*.tar.bz2 /opt
cd /opt
sudo tar -xvjpf firefox*.tar.bz2
cd /usr/bin
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox firefox
sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*.tar.bz2
sudo poweroff

This script also installs some Sugar activities. The final poweroff
command shows the script is finished and also forces reboot of the XO.
Note: the * after Firefox keeps the script valid when the Firefox 
release level changes. Naturally, the downloaded tarball is installed on 
the USB drive.


Tony


On 05/30/2013 08:50 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 06:50:19 +0100
From: Peter Robinsonpbrobin...@gmail.com
To: Basanta Shresthabasanta.shres...@olenepal.org
Cc: OLPC Develdevel@lists.laptop.org,   Sugar Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: Re: Install Firefox
Message-ID:
CALeDE9MQvuWr9aZyM2QnYowcn9dYz4QMN_YhgNgTX3=ffdc...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Basanta Shrestha
basanta.shres...@olenepal.org  wrote:

Please check my repo list at this configuration file.
http://pastebin.ca/2384881

and xulrunner and firefox version
xulrunner-13.0-1.fc17.armv7vl
firefox-12.0-1.fc17.armv7hl

Firefox and xulrunner 17 are the late known good (and matching) builds
for Fedora 17, you need the major versions to be matching (so
12/13/17) but if you were pulling in all the latest stable updates
into the build you would have matching ones AFAICT from koji so
there's some other issue.

I'm not sure what the following lines translate to but you should
never use the koji repositories as repos as they contain all sorts of
randomly tagged bits that the release repos don't.

olpc_frozen_1=0,koji.dist-f17-armv7hl
olpc_frozen_2=0,koji.dist-f17-armv7hl-updates-12.1.0

Peter


Thank you.


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Re: [Server-devel] 12 Volt power system for School Servers.

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,


The setup at the Kokobe Primary school in Lesotho has a small solar 
panel (too small) which attempts to charge two car batteries (deep cycle 
would be better but not available).


The router (Belkin) runs directly from the battery (we cut the cable). 
Linksys and other routers I have used all run on 12vdc at 1A.


The MSI server does not run on 12vdc because of the design of it's power 
supply which requires a higher voltage (15vdc works). I purchased a 
Zotac which also uses an Atom processor but houses a 2.5in drive. It 
requires 19vdc.


Most standard laptops require 19vdc at 3.2A (maximum) to charge the 
batteries. I suspect the MSI and Zotac simply use laptop hardware for 
the power supply even though no battery is involved.


The router problem is that most home routers ($30 variety) can handle a 
limited number of connections (less than a classroom of XOs). OLE Nepal 
has found that a TP-Link router with DDWRT handles 25 connections (15 
with the delivered firmware). In any case, a school really should have a 
router per classroom to provide enough connections (not to increase 
signal strength). OLE Nepal powers all of the routers in a school from 
the same UPS that powers the server so that the network will continue to 
operate in a power failure. Since the routers are also connected by an 
ethernet cable, PoE would be quite useful.


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.


So far in Lesotho, the laptops have been used in a single classroom next 
to the server and router so I don't have live experience in distributing 
routers. We will face that problem next year at the Nohana school which 
has two classroom buildings about 50m apart and where the teachers want 
to use the laptops in their own classroom.


Tony

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Re: [Server-devel] Journal backup on school server

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I have attached the ds_backup.py code. Tack on all disclaimers - it has 
not been tested in the XS-0.7 and 12.1.0 environment. It will need some 
revision to deal with the 'shared' XO environment in Lesotho so I will 
work on it while I am there.


However, it really is not changed from XS-0.7 in areas that matter to 
you. The changes are in the way the Journal objects are handled. Martin 
Langhoff used rsync so that the backup is a snapshot of the local 
datastore. I am trying to establish the server-side as the real Journal 
with the local datastore containing only the currently relevant content. 
It seems sad that kids must delete their Journal because of the limited 
size of the local store. The message: Journal is full is not helpful, 
because the fact is that the store is full, often because of the 
excessive number of installed activities. With a school server, this is 
totally unnecessary since the Sugar Activities are available on the 
school server so that unused ones can be deleted on the XO.


I had to move to mod_wsgi for Django (library). As far as I know, there 
is no change needed client-side. Apache needs to have wsgi installed (in 
XS-0.7 it is). Then all that is needed is a file in httpd/conf.d.

I have also attached the one I am using.


On 04/07/2013 06:04 AM, George Hunt wrote:


Hi Tony,

I'm playing with ds-backup now, because one of the dependencies for
ds-backup is mod_python which was dropped from fedora 18, in favor of
mod_wsgi. It seems like a great time to rethink the issue.

I cannot find the working code you mention in this email in my google
stack.  Can you send it to me again?

I'm also talking with Tim Moody, about using puppet client as a way of
pushing and modifying the configuration of XO's in the classroom.  Do
you have any experience, or ideas, about such a proposal? I'm not sure
whether ds-backup might be used to introduce puppet client back into XOs.

George

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net
mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net wrote:

Hi,

I will send you the scripts as soon as I have a chance to try them
on 12.0.1 and XS-0.7. Last year they were running on xs-0.6 and
build 852 at Saint Jacob. There shouldn't be too much difference,
although so far on most of the code I have been wrong by about 3 days!

The identity problem really isn't that hard. A lot of the mailing
list discussion seems related to running Sugar on something besides
an XO.

The user is identified on the server by the serial-number. For the
backup, this is not a problem. The problem comes from OLPC where an
XO is shared. Then there needs to be something like a login to
identify the actual user. There also needs to be separate Journals
on the XO and separate backups on the school server.

I should be able to give you working code within a week (I leave
Kigali on 12/23 so it must be before then).

Yours,

Tony


On 12/09/2012 04:11 PM, George Hunt wrote:

Wow Tony,

Your solution definitely needs to be part of the mix as we go
forward.
Can you send me copies of the scripts, or the changes you made to
accomplish these objectives?  If we are going to look at the
serialnumber-user-identity issue, we might be making changes to
the same
packages.

Have you worked through the changes needed to add user identity to
journal backups? As Paul Fox was suggesting, I think there will
be lots
of ripple effects, if and when we start adding additional users, in
addition to the user olpc.  Or maybe, someone will come up with a
simplifying assumption, or approach.

George



On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Tony Anderson
tony_ander...@usa.net mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net
mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net__
wrote:

 Hi, Sameer

 I got an email from Nick Doiron re his visit to the Marshall
 Islands. He mentioned that you gave him a script to create
a csv
 from the Journal backup.

 As I have mentioned several times on the list, I believe
Martin's
 backup scheme while elegantly implemented is not adequate.
His model
 is the traditional backup/restore.

 The problem, as always, is storage space. When an XO-1 is
out of
 space, the user gets a message 'Journal is full'. The only
practical
 solution often is to reflash the XO losing all of the Journal
 objects. If a user deletes an object from the Journal on
the XO, the
 rsynch also removes it from the backup.

 I modified the scripts ds-backup.sh and ds-backup.py on the
XO to
 use a different paradigm. The registration process creates two
 scripts in the /library

Re: minimizing footprint

[Tony Anderson]

On 03/24/2013 09:38 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

It's true, we need learn new tricks, but does not have sense have a service
not needed on every xo, if we can do it in a better way.


Does this logic apply generally?

12.1.0 has a control panel entry 'Modem configuration'. How many XOs 
require this capability?


Tony
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Re: [Server-devel] Puppet

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Daniel Drake implemented Puppet for XS-0.7 (it is included in the 
services.).


Tony


On 03/19/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. puppet (Tim Moody)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:17:49 -0400
From: Tim Moody timmo...@sympatico.ca
To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] puppet
Message-ID: blu0-smtp101a74e0dcd71752749e23cb1...@phx.gbl
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1;
reply-type=original

Over the years there have been a number of expressions of interest in
puppet.  Are there any modules out there for actual XS services?

I know about http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/martin/puppet-example/tree/,
which has some manifests.



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Re: [Server-devel] Puppet

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Daniel Drake gave a talk on this at the OLPC SF summit. My recollection 
is foggy, but I believe he has posted what he used for XS-0.7 and showed 
the configuration in his talk.


It would be much more profitable to get him in the dialog.

Tony

On 03/19/2013 06:13 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

On Tue, 2013-03-19 at 12:20 -0400, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

Daniel Drake implemented Puppet for XS-0.7 (it is included in the
services.).

Tony



I believe the rpm is installed but the service is left disabled as there
would need to be some configuration needed to be preformed before
rolling out.

Jerry





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Today's Topics:

 1. puppet (Tim Moody)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:17:49 -0400
From: Tim Moody timmo...@sympatico.ca
To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] puppet
Message-ID: blu0-smtp101a74e0dcd71752749e23cb1...@phx.gbl
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1;
reply-type=original

Over the years there have been a number of expressions of interest in
puppet.  Are there any modules out there for actual XS services?

I know about http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/martin/puppet-example/tree/,
which has some manifests.



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Re: [Server-devel] Backup of XO 1.75 on XS 0.7

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

As I understand the question, he is asking about backing up the Journal 
(ds-backup.sh). In order for this to work, the XO must be registered 
with the server. Registration adds a user = serial-number and creates 
teh backup folder /library/user/serial-number.


Tony


On 03/10/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 8:40 AM,tkk...@nurturingasia.com  wrote:

Has anyone have a successfully done a /usr/bin/ds-backup.sh to backup the XO 
1.75 on a 0.7 XS? After hours of waiting nothing seems to have happen. My XO are 
successfully registered. My ds-backup.log and datastore.log has 0 byte.

I do not have ejabberdctl errors now -I install from USB bypassing the 
olpcxs.ks file and using my full domain name (e.g. schoolsever.abc.org) to replace 
the default localhost.localdomain. Works for me this way.

Am I missing anything ?


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[Server-devel] XS Community edition

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, All

I am disappointed that this team appears to be proceeding to re-invent 
the wheel.


If you are interested in What will schools worldwide really want from a 
server in the coming 10 years?, it would appear appropriate to start 
from what is available now and what new capabilities may be needed.


The XS Community edition has performed a vital service in enabling an 
Arm-based server. However, in the process I have lost track of the 
download and installation procedure in the discussions of some kind of 
cherry-picking procedure for 'services'.


It would be helpful to have a web page which provides a download and 
install procedure for the Arm-based server equivalent to XS-0.7.


If and when the services selection procedure is in place, it would be 
helpful to have a page which shows the services which can be provided 
and how this is done.


Currently (and for many years) OLE Nepal has deployed a school server 
with an extensive library (pustakalaya). This library is also available 
online (http://www.pustakalaya.org). A comparable library capability is 
deployed in Rwanda and Lesotho on XS-0.7 based on Django. However, 
unlike Pathagar, the library content (pdfs and so forth) is on the 
schoolo server so that the library is fully available at schools which 
have no internet connection. In addition, the school server at these 
schools has a complete set of Sugar Activities from ASLO (as of 5/2012) 
so that XO users can download and install any of these activities (with 
WebKit version of Browse). The Learn activity also enables teachers to 
develop their own lessons and provides for students to download these 
lessons (so they can be completed at home).


I think it would be a great use of the very limited available technical 
resources to look at what is already available, determine limitations in 
these capabilities, and devise plans to add new capabilities or to 
enhance those already available.


For example, in Uruguay, the urgent request was for a capability for a 
teacher to present a lesson on her laptop simultaneously to the laptops 
of all of the students in her class. Currently Ejabberd includes all 
registered (and connected) laptops in a single group. I suspect this 
will result in confusion when the students in a single class (e.g. 40 of 
120 laptops) try to connect to their teacher's lesson. Another option is 
to provide a single url for the lesson; however, someone would need to 
set up a synchronization (web2.0) method so the teacher can move all 
laptops to the next slide in the lesson. The ShowNTell activity attempts 
to provide this capability via Ejabberd but has not been tested in a 
classroom setting.


Even in schools not connected to the internet, it might be useful to 
have an email capability and a mailing list capability. This would 
require a very lightweight email client as a Sugar activity (not 
dependent on gmail) and a mail server (pop3, smtp) on the school server. 
It would be helpful if this capability supported a sneakernet access to 
the rest of the world (someone takes mail to be sent on a usb key to the 
internet cafe and sends it and then collects email for the school on the 
usbkey for upload to the schoolserve).


In many deployments such as Rwanda and Lesotho, the only internet access 
is via the mobile network. This network charges by time or by megabytes 
transferred. Aside from bandwidth issues, it is unlikely that schools 
will be able to afford the cost of 120 students surfing independently. 
If the school server could connect to a 'mothership' via a chron task 
uploading new content created at the school (email, local wiki, forums, 
blogs, ) and downloading new content for the school server (lessons, 
additions to the library, ...), there might be an affordable way to use 
the internet.


The most important service provided by the school server is storage 
capacity. The school server can reasonably be expected to have 2GB+ main 
memory and 500GB+ secondary storage. In this context, it is unimportant 
to minimize storage to exactly those services needed at a specific 
deployment (unlike the XO-1, for example). If a deployment does not use 
Moodle, nothing is gained by removing it (just don't start the daemon). 
However, the current use of http://schoolserver to access Moodle by 
default is probably not reasonable given the low number of deployments 
which use it. It might be better for this address to display a portal 
page as do most websites.


Currently OLE Nepal and the schoolservers I supply support access to 
Wiki4Schools. However, it might be better to implement Kiwix and access 
the .zim version of Wiki4Schools. This would provide a more effective 
search capability. Since the internet offers many capable search 
engines, Wikipedia does not need a search capability. However, when 
rehosted to a school server, this becomes a problem.


While Wiktionary is supported, the school server really needs 
interactive bilingual dictionaries as 

Re: [Server-devel] XSCE wants to become a framework for the next 10 years

[Tony Anderson]

George, Tim, et al

I can not speak for the server situation in Latin America but OLE Nepal 
upgraded from XS-0.4 to XS-0.6 and added services to it such as Dan's 
Guardian. (Actually during most of that time I was doing it).


I don't think we need to re-open the XO as server issue. Installing the 
school server on an XO does not need to use and should not use the 
Fedora/Sugar build (designed for a client computer).


So far I have not seen a single capability mentioned that cannot be 
readily implemented on XS-0.7 (except running on an ARM since CentOS 
does not yet support it). The importance of XS-0.7 is that it eliminated 
a dependency on Fedora 9. With the build system Daniel Drake put in 
place, it should be easy to upgrade to later releases of CentOS (or 
Fedora).


Again to be brief, I think the need is to add capabilities to XS-0.7 and 
not to redo the XS architecture. I see nothing in the XS-0.7 
architecture that will not be viable for at least the next 10 years.


Tony

On 02/28/2013 07:22 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:16:19 -0500
From: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
To: George Huntgeorgejh...@gmail.com
Cc: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XSCE wants to become a framework for the
next 10 years
Message-ID:
cafogk8fuvmc1aaquxv3bmn-6mx+tychkrrw37jomsflho+m...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 4:10 PM, George Huntgeorgejh...@gmail.com  wrote:

Tony, et al,

The group of developers, working on the XSCE, are indeed attempting to build
upon the good work that Daniel Drake did on the XS-0.7. But we are trying to
extract the essential information from the history of the school server up
to this point.

The XS-0.6, based upon FC4, was released in the 2008 time frame.
Nepal, Australia, Uruguay, perhaps for their own and different reasons,
deviated from this released version 2008-2012.
XS-0.7 was released for use in Nicaragua based upon Centos in early 2012.

Our analysis of this history has been that the monolithic nature of the
punji, anoconda build process is not helpful.  If the functionality of the
school server could be dropped on top of a current fedora build, all of the
hardware specific configuration would be handled by the general Fedora
community -- our school server software doesn't need to change to accomodate
arm, or x64.

But as with any basic restructuring, starting from the ground up, we need to
walk before we can run.  Whether it is reinventing the wheel or not --
networking needs to work flawlessly. We have determined that one the the
hardware platforms we need to support is the XO itself. The XO uses
NetworkManager as it's networking frontend, so to be compatible, we have
needed to learn how to configure NM.  Squid, ejabberd, and iptables need to
play in all configurations of network adapters.

Get rid of NM and replace with scripts?

Sameer


In addition, if we are thinking for the next 10 years, we wanted a more
modular plugin-like structure for adding additional services.

So I believe Tony, you are correct, we seem to be reinventing the wheel.
But it's my hope we are getting this wheel ready to carry a much heavier
weight.  We are hoping that by the third quarter of this year, the XSCE
might be to the point where it is a drop in replacement for XS-0.7. At that
point your good suggestions might be extremely useful.

We are trying to provide a software framework that is attractive and
flexible enough, so that in the future, the next Nepal, Australia, Uruguay
will not feel the need to go their own way.

George



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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 70, Issue 7

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am not sure why you addressed the server-devel mailing list. I don't 
see any connection with what you are doing and a server. If there is, 
that could be part of the problem.


With an XO as a standalone system, what you did should have worked.

However, you might want to find out if the datastore is the culprit. You 
may also have installed too many activities.


The activities are in /home/olpc/Activities. Check this folder to see 
how big it is.


This command: rm -fR /home/olpc/.sugar/default/datastore uses -fr not 
-fR which might be part of the problem.


I would do the following:

cd /home/olpc/.sugar/default
rm -rf datastore/*

Then you can do:

ls -l

to see if the folder is indeed empty.

If you have too much space allocated to the Activities folder, I would 
remove them one at a time from the list view.


You can check allocation of space using the command:

df -h

Within a specific folder such as Activities or datastore, you can use

du -h

to get a detailed breakdown of the disk space in use. The -h puts the 
numbers in more readable form.


I hope this helps.

Tony



On 02/26/2013 12:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. delete Activities and datastore (vanessa ramos da cruz)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:20:09 +
From: vanessa ramos da cruz v.ramosdac...@gmail.com
To: server-de...@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] delete Activities and datastore
Message-ID:
caakry0ycelupczwi2gek2y5+wor3io2oc0hyok76zxzrxt+...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hi,

I am trying to clean up the entire diary from an XO-1.5, because it was so
full, i deleted the datastore directory on the terminal. After reboot, the
diary was not empty. Then i tried to delete all itens one by one, after
reboot all itens were there again.
I used this command: rm -fR /home/olpc/.sugar/default/datastore


I tried to delete all activities on the same computer on the terminal, but
after reboot the activities were still there.

On /home/olpc/Activities i used the following command: rm -fR *.activity

Can you please help me? I dont know what else to do to clean up these
Computer!
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 67, Issue 12

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Since the children are accustomed to looking for items to download in 
the library, it seemed better not to introduce a new mechanism for 
activities.


I tried targeting the activity-server to look at the school server and 
not the internet, but the requirements for storing the activities on the 
school server were not obvious and I haven't really had time to pursue it.


Django is a simple way to proceed (see Pathagar, for example).

Tony


On 11/27/2012 09:04 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

On Tue, 2012-11-27 at 08:46 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

I placed the activities in the library on the school server -Django app.
Browse downloads a selected activity. Users can erase unneeded
activities to manage storage (they can always be installed again).
The updater is not really needed since the model is that the deployment
updates the server annually before school starts. This seems reasonable
since most activity updates relate to changes in the Sugar environment
which also would be updated annually.



Any reason your not using the XS's built-in activity server?[1] Seems
like a better way of using the built-in[2] software on the XO which
looks for the schoolserver for activities to be updated by default
without adding anything new to the XS except for the newer activities.



It was reported at one time that the underlying model (Firefox add-ons)
was moving to Django and that ASLO would do so also. If that happens, it
would be easy to remount on a SS.

Tony



Not knocking your implementation just wondering why use Django as you
could still browse to the activities at: http://schoolserver/activities/

Jerry

1. http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/martin/xs-activity-server/
2. http://git.sugarlabs.org/sugar-update-control




On 11/26/2012 07:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:39:52 -0600
From: Jerry Vonaujvo...@shaw.ca
To: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
Cc: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org,  Sugar-dev Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] offline a.sl.o
Message-ID:1353904792.1818.2.ca...@f14jerry.home.vonau.ca
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 20:04 -0800, Sameer Verma wrote:

Has anyone looked into running an offline copy of
activities.sugarlabs.org on a server that isn't on the Internet (a la
XS)?


What would be do-able except sugar's activity updater on the XO would
select every activity for installation by default[1].

Jerry

1.http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2011-December/034022.html



cheers,
Sameer
--
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://commons.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/
http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 67, Issue 12

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I placed the activities in the library on the school server -Django app.
Browse downloads a selected activity. Users can erase unneeded 
activities to manage storage (they can always be installed again).
The updater is not really needed since the model is that the deployment 
updates the server annually before school starts. This seems reasonable 
since most activity updates relate to changes in the Sugar environment 
which also would be updated annually.


It was reported at one time that the underlying model (Firefox add-ons) 
was moving to Django and that ASLO would do so also. If that happens, it 
would be easy to remount on a SS.


Tony


On 11/26/2012 07:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:39:52 -0600
From: Jerry Vonaujvo...@shaw.ca
To: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
Cc: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org,  Sugar-dev Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] offline a.sl.o
Message-ID:1353904792.1818.2.ca...@f14jerry.home.vonau.ca
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 20:04 -0800, Sameer Verma wrote:

Has anyone looked into running an offline copy of
activities.sugarlabs.org on a server that isn't on the Internet (a la
XS)?


What would be do-able except sugar's activity updater on the XO would
select every activity for installation by default[1].

Jerry

1.http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2011-December/034022.html



cheers,
Sameer
--
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://commons.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/
http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
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Re: OLPC OS on Zync Z930 Tablet

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

As I understand it, Android is not a GNU Linux. My guess is that an XO-4 
would be a quicker way to get there.


Tony


On 11/22/2012 05:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:37:20 +0100
From: Christoph Derndorferchristoph.derndor...@gmail.com
To: Sugar Develsugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, OLPC Developer's
Listde...@laptop.org
Subject: OLPC OS on Zync Z930 Tablet
Message-ID:
cakxaperfb+u45buvf20ud8ox7c44cxivfnf6nw3vffo0jfd...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hey everyone,

a Google News Alert just pointed me to this thread over on the XDA
developer forums where someone working for an NGO in India is trying to
figure out whether it's possible to get Sugar running on a low-cost tablet:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2005715

Not sure whether anyone has ever tried something similar but given the
ever-improving ARM support of Fedora I thought someone here might be able
to help the guy out.

Cheers,
Christoph


-- Christoph Derndorfer volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] editor,
OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] contributor, TechnikBasteln
[www.technikbasteln.net] e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu


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Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

One alternative is to write a simple script to do this using 
sugar-install-bundle.


I put the activities to be installed on the stick.

An example,

#run as olpc
cd /run/media/olpc/xxx #so relative paths work
#remove unwanted activity
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/someactivity.activity
#rm activity even if not installed just to ensure clean install
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/newactivity.activity
#install new activity
sugar-install-bundle newactivity-1.xo
sudo poweroff #ensures xo will be restarted to register activities

This also avoids the 'signing' issues in building a custom image.

Tony

On 11/15/2012 12:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:13:17 +1100
From: James Cameronqu...@laptop.org
To: David Leemingda...@leeming-consulting.com
Cc: 'OLPC Devel'devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick
Message-ID:20121115001317.ga15...@us.netrek.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

G'day David,

I think the customisation stick mechanism does not work for 12.1.0,
although it is only in the release notes section for XO-1.75, instead
of being general.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/12.1.0#XO-1.75_3
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11432

You could use the olpc-os-builder method of customising instead, or if
you cannot invest that time, use another method.

-- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/


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Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

As I understand it, if you make your own build, it cannot be installed 
on a 'locked' laptop unless you have local signing capability. It is 
also my understanding that this capability is only available to one 
deployment.


Tony


On 11/15/2012 05:54 PM, James Cameron wrote:

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:34:32PM -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

One alternative is to write a simple script to do this using
sugar-install-bundle.

I put the activities to be installed on the stick.

An example,

#run as olpc
cd /run/media/olpc/xxx #so relative paths work
#remove unwanted activity
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/someactivity.activity
#rm activity even if not installed just to ensure clean install
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/newactivity.activity
#install new activity
sugar-install-bundle newactivity-1.xo
sudo poweroff #ensures xo will be restarted to register activities

This also avoids the 'signing' issues in building a custom image.


Could you be more specific about these issues?



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Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

If I understand this:

1. Get a developer key for each laptop in the school.
2. Use the developer key to unlock each laptop.
3. Do a normal install of the build image.
4. Relock the laptop by removing the developer key on the XO

Still a bit complex, but should be usable.

Tony


On 11/15/2012 08:02 PM, James Cameron wrote:

Thanks.  Your understanding is adequate, but possibly incomplete.

Any deployment can unlock their laptops, add a deployment key, and
then relock them.  This deployment key can then be used in the
preparation of signed builds.  The capability is publically available,
and I'm aware of more than one deployment using it.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 07:16:04PM -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

As I understand it, if you make your own build, it cannot be
installed on a 'locked' laptop unless you have local signing
capability. It is also my understanding that this capability is only
available to one deployment.

Tony


On 11/15/2012 05:54 PM, James Cameron wrote:

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:34:32PM -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

One alternative is to write a simple script to do this using
sugar-install-bundle.

I put the activities to be installed on the stick.

An example,

#run as olpc
cd /run/media/olpc/xxx #so relative paths work
#remove unwanted activity
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/someactivity.activity
#rm activity even if not installed just to ensure clean install
rm -rf /home/olpc/Activities/newactivity.activity
#install new activity
sugar-install-bundle newactivity-1.xo
sudo poweroff #ensures xo will be restarted to register activities

This also avoids the 'signing' issues in building a custom image.


Could you be more specific about these issues?







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Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Thanks. Now two questions:

1. How do I create and install a local key?
2. How do I sign the build with that key?

This procedure uses a single key which is installed in all XOs (not a 
different key for each laptop like the developer key).


Tony

On 11/15/2012 09:06 PM, John Watlington wrote:


On Nov 15, 2012, at 8:44 PM, Tony Anderson wrote:


Hi,

If I understand this:

1. Get a developer key for each laptop in the school.
2. Use the developer key to unlock each laptop.
3. Do a normal install of the build image.
4. Relock the laptop by removing the developer key on the XO


Once you remove the developer key, it will refuse to boot an
unsigned image.

The process is more like:


1. Get a developer key for each laptop in the school.
2. Use the developer key to unlock each laptop.

2a. Install local keys (either in addition to the OLPC keys or replacing them)


3. Do a normal install of the build image.

3a. This build should be signed with the local keys


4. Relock the laptop by removing the developer key on the XO


Cheers,
wad

.



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[Server-devel] usbmount alternatives

[Tony Anderson]

On 11/12/2012 07:47 PM, Anna wrote:

Just throwing this out, but incron might be something to look into.  For
example, I've set up root's incrontab so that if a specific file is
modified, a script automatically runs with root permissions.

You could set root's incrontab up to watch /run/media/olpc/ and when a
directory is created there (i.e. any USB drive is automounted), incron
would call your script and run it as root.

Again, just brainstorming here.  I won't be offended if someone says
that's a terrible idea.

Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Adam Holt h...@laptop.org
mailto:h...@laptop.org wrote:

Thanks Tony..adding a couple others involved too :)

On 11/12/2012 6:59 PM, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi,

First, usbmount is the software that mounts a removable drive.
So I would think Fedora is replacing it with an alternative
(some software has to perform that function). CentOS is still
using usbmount.

Usbmount provided for a script to be installed by the
administrator that would be run whenever a removable drive was
mounted. Daniel Drake uses this to execute a series of XS
specific scripts (these scripts were developed for OLE Nepal and
are not in XS-0.7). The scripts he developed for OLE Nepal look
at the mounted drive and checks for the presence of specific
folders. If these folders are present then a corresponding
script is executed.

So there are two approaches going forward:

1. Implement the capability on the usbmount replacement.

2. Execute a script via ssh from an XO, a url, or even direct
access for a school server on the teacher's XO.

I am planning to use a 'generic script' on the server:

if [ -f $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC/xc-install ]; then
 log notice Installing XC
 cd $UM_MOUNTPOINT/XC
 if bash xc-install; then
 log notice XC installed successfully
 else
 log notice XC install failed with code $?
 error_beep
 fi
fi

Essentially it tests whether the drive has a folder XC with a
file xc-install., if so it is executed. If not, nothing happens.

The xc-install script is on the mounted drive and does whatever
is needed.

XC is the counterpart to XO and XS and refers to the content for
the school server (XS being the software). This isn't hard and
fast. The XC script can (and does) add packages (e.g. mediawiki
or django) not in XS-0.7. Of course, it can also change the
server configuration.

The script needs to be run with root privileges. In Sridhar's
scenario this could be a bit tricky. I set up the school server
for login by admin by password and su to root (requiring another
password). This works well when you have itinerant technical
support who may need to administer school servers at many
different sites. If a teacher is to accomplish this, it would
probably be easiest to arrange for the teacher to login via a
public/private key pair and be given root privileges.

It would be relatively easy to give the teacher's laptop a
special menu line in the XO icon or in the console so that no
command line interface would be needed. Essentially I am doing
this sort of change with a script which works after the XO
install (it could, of course, also be baked into the build). In
the latter case, all of the laptops would have the extra menu
line so the school server could be configured only to accept the
teacher's click (e.g. identify teacher by serial-number so that
only the teacher's public key would match).

Tony




--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !




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Re: [Server-devel] XS Community Skype Calls: Nov 12/14/16 (5PM NYC Time)

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

tony_anderson37

Tony

On 11/12/2012 04:43 PM, Holt wrote:

XS Community Hacking Week has begun...see you in 15 min on Skype (voice
call!)  Reply with yr Skype name if you want to contribute to the
conversation, thanks much.

Progress report/agenda:

* work has begun here outside Toronto since our late Saturday arrival
* Squid  Moodle are now working
* usbmount is blocking: we need a new program that listens to udisk2 on
the system dbus
 (for now, enable these manually: activity server, XS rsync, XS
tools, XS activation)
* address Tony Anderson's use cases @
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition#Use_Cases
* documentation won't be easy but I'd love feedback as I begin to help here
* appreciate more suggestions on what all we can practically achieve in
the week

--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !

.



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Re: gathering use cases

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

A server provides services to client computers. These services enable 
and shape the interaction of users with the client. For example, web 
pages are delivered to the user by a browser. However, the web pages are 
delivered to the browser by a service on the server side, e.g. Apache.


Suppose that a deployment wants email capability (a use case). The 
standard server side service is pop3 and smtp. Thunderbird is a possible 
client-side application for these services.
Most discussions on the lists are based on direct login to gmail which 
does not requires only httpd (Apache) on the server side. However, this 
means that email access only when the XO is connected to the internet. A 
client-side email client could enable email to be prepared offline and 
to be read offline. How would email capability be provided by 
sneaker-net with a usb drive, e.g. for someone to periodically take the 
usb key to an internet cafe and send/receive email?


Tony


On 11/09/2012 12:09 AM, Sameer Verma wrote:
To clarify, by use case, we mean a way to describe the interaction of 
people with a system. In this case, it may be how a child interacts 
with the XO, and the XS (via XO) or how a teacher may interact with 
the XS (via XO or otherwise) by using Moodle.


As you may have noticed, pretty much every response on this thread 
focuses on the system, with the assumption that the user end of it is 
understood well. I am not so sure.


Take a look at http://www.gatherspace.com/static/use_case_example.html 
to see if it helps you understand the idea behind use cases and user 
stories.


Here's another example of how use cases can vary by being very high 
level (which is what we are aiming for) and can be user centric or 
system centric. http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/systemUseCase.htm


Our focus is user centric, in a way where we would like to describe 
the actors (children, parents, teachers, admin, etc) and their actions 
(access class information, read books, send email) without the XS as 
the focus. Networking topology, storage, UI, LMS, DNS, etc. should 
flow from the storytelling exercise.


We are a bunch of technologists and it is easy to get carried away by 
designing from the tech and not the user end. Sometimes that misses 
the mark. We may build it and they may not come.


cheers,
Sameer


On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan 
srid...@laptop.org.au mailto:srid...@laptop.org.au wrote:


On 9 November 2012 10:19, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org
mailto:t...@olenepal.org wrote:
 Hi, Sridhar

 Thanks for the clarification. I guess I was mislead by
statements such as:

 The platform for the One Network server is an ARMv7-based XO,
running the
 One Education OS (based on OLPC OS). This makes development, and
deployment
 and support far simpler than a standalone distribution. The OS
can be
 extended with server capabilities using a bootable USB
Customisation Stick
 (offline) or yum.

 Please accept my apology if any statement I have made seemed
uncivil, that
 was certainly not my intention. Communicating by email in
certainly much
 more hazardous in this regard than face-to-face.

Thank you, Tony. I was quite careful to take your needs into account
when I wrote the design doc, so I had trouble understanding your
opposition to the idea.

Maybe we can make the doc clearer somehow? I structured it as:

  1. context
  2. Community XS design
  3. One Network server

The Community XS design itself is flexible enough to handle a variety
of different deployments' needs. One Network server is merely one
configuration of the Community XS, mentioned as an example of what can
be done.


 Just as the deployments you are supporting have specific and
urgent needs,
 so do the ones I am working with. I don't believe either of us
is pursuing
 personal desires. We certainly can easily differ on which is the
appropriate
 technical approach to solving the problems of a deployment.

I think we generally want the same thing in the end. I'm happy to
continue the conversation to improve the design and implementation. I
sincerely believe that this design can accommodate your needs.


 I really appreciate this specification:


   * this is a flexible design, built on Fedora
   * it will run anywhere where x86 or ARM Fedora will work
   * it can be installed on top of an existing Fedora installation
 using 'yum groupinstall xsce'
   * being designed in this way provides extreme flexibility for
deployments
   * all current features of the XS (Moodle, etc.) will be
ported, but
 will be optional
   * installation and configuration will be easy, but sysadmins
will be
 able to treat it like any Fedora installation

Awesome. I hope this also satisfies your desire to have it rebased to
Fedora

Re: gathering use cases

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Sridhar

One of the important potential benefits from gathering use cases is to 
clarify the roles of the Community XS project and XS-0.7.


From my perspective, if you can afford to deploy a server with 2GB or 
more main memory and 500GB or more hard drive capacity, XS-0.7 serves 
well and easily supports adding or customizing services. The 
configuration shown in SF costs less than $350 and draws 18w (based on 
measurements taken by George Hunt). With a large hard drive, it is 
perfectly to keep Moodle even if it is not used.


In my experience, the school server is installed in the school ready 
with XS-07 installed along with the available content. Barring hardware 
failure, the only interaction at the school is to turn the server on at 
the start of day and turn it off at the end. With modern computers, both 
functions require only a push on the power button.


Community XS serves a valuable role where only XOs are available or 
where power constraints are critical. It may also have a role in 
supporting special network requirements.


Tony


On 11/08/2012 10:55 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 13:57:12 +1100
From: Sridhar Dhanapalansrid...@laptop.org.au
To: Holth...@laptop.org
Cc: Devel's in the Detailsdevel@lists.laptop.org,   Maryam Rehan El
Bazmel...@mail.sfsu.edu,iaepi...@lists.sugarlabs.org, XS 
Devel
server-de...@lists.laptop.org,  Support Gangsters
support-g...@laptop.org
Subject: Re: gathering use cases
Message-ID:
CABPDnXn8Xz9BwRD_zy_PUr43CG=_rKXv8u6=zLjD0f+Juk=x...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 3 November 2012 07:46, Holth...@laptop.org  wrote:

Thanks much Sameer.  Am includingsupport-g...@laptop.org  to make sure we
gather microdeployment and support volunteer feedback too.

While our XS Community Edition experiment ain't quite ready for
showtime/download yet, its white paper  code repository are here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition

The white paper that Adam is referring to can be found at
https://docs.google.com/a/dhanapalan.com/document/pub?id=1dnhU2F6EntepVXTgN8QpkME8fZVUuPjcCoMUfAVKbcc

I am the primary author, but it was written by canvassing feedback and
opinions from schools and XS community members (including Jerry Vonau,
George Hunt, Adam Holt and many others). The paper discusses several
use cases and design goals, and outlines the underlying principles
behind how we do things in OLPC Australia.

There is some miscommunication being spread around that I'd like to
clear up. Firstly, this is not a 'secret' project. The white paper
explains our mission, and the code repo and issues trackers are open.
Secondly, the intent is to create a flexible framework that can be
adapted to suit local needs. This is*not*, as some keep asserting, a
project to have the XS work only on the XO. The community XS will work
on any x86 or ARM based hardware that works with Fedora. The white
paper explains this in depth.

Sridhar


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Re: gathering use cases

[Tony Anderson]

On 11/08/2012 05:01 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

Hi Tony and all,

On Thu, 2012-11-08 at 13:32 -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi, Sridhar

One of the important potential benefits from gathering use cases is to
clarify the roles of the Community XS project and XS-0.7.


Why is that an issue at at all? The Community XS (think XS-0.8 here)
is going to address the current shortcomings of XS-0.7.


This is my greatest concern. The ability of a server to deliver content 
is central. It is my understanding that your Community XS does not 
support a LAMP stack or Moodle. Please do not refer to the Community XS 
as XO-0.8 until there is a chance that it can deliver the essential 
capabilities of XS-0.7. My other concern is that a lot of very talented 
people are spending a lot of time solving a non-problem.


Naturally, the network problem you mention is solved by connecting the 
XS-0.7 to that network as the WAN.


Yours,

Tony



  From my perspective, if you can afford to deploy a server with 2GB or
more main memory and 500GB or more hard drive capacity, XS-0.7 serves
well and easily supports adding or customizing services. The
configuration shown in SF costs less than $350 and draws 18w (based on
measurements taken by George Hunt). With a large hard drive, it is
perfectly to keep Moodle even if it is not used.

In my experience, the school server is installed in the school ready
with XS-07 installed along with the available content. Barring hardware
failure, the only interaction at the school is to turn the server on at
the start of day and turn it off at the end. With modern computers, both
functions require only a push on the power button.


I'm not thinking about an XO here at all but on a server that you
spec'd. Tell me how do you deploy the 0.7 version on a network where you
don't have control over the DNS and have everything work? I have an idea
on how to pull that off with avahi, I would like to hear about how you
would implement that situation.


Community XS serves a valuable role where only XOs are available or
where power constraints are critical. It may also have a role in
supporting special network requirements.


Not to mention better hardware support for the latest hardware available
and ARM support by using Fedora. You can get on board with the future
and have a say in your pet interests but please don't get in the way of
progress.

Jerry
The other XS-CE developer


Tony


On 11/08/2012 10:55 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 13:57:12 +1100
From: Sridhar Dhanapalansrid...@laptop.org.au
To: Holth...@laptop.org
Cc: Devel's in the Detailsdevel@lists.laptop.org,   Maryam Rehan El
Bazmel...@mail.sfsu.edu,iaepi...@lists.sugarlabs.org, XS 
Devel
server-de...@lists.laptop.org,  Support Gangsters
support-g...@laptop.org
Subject: Re: gathering use cases
Message-ID:
CABPDnXn8Xz9BwRD_zy_PUr43CG=_rKXv8u6=zLjD0f+Juk=x...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 3 November 2012 07:46, Holth...@laptop.org  wrote:

Thanks much Sameer.  Am includingsupport-g...@laptop.org  to make sure we
gather microdeployment and support volunteer feedback too.

While our XS Community Edition experiment ain't quite ready for
showtime/download yet, its white paper  code repository are here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition

The white paper that Adam is referring to can be found at
https://docs.google.com/a/dhanapalan.com/document/pub?id=1dnhU2F6EntepVXTgN8QpkME8fZVUuPjcCoMUfAVKbcc

I am the primary author, but it was written by canvassing feedback and
opinions from schools and XS community members (including Jerry Vonau,
George Hunt, Adam Holt and many others). The paper discusses several
use cases and design goals, and outlines the underlying principles
behind how we do things in OLPC Australia.

There is some miscommunication being spread around that I'd like to
clear up. Firstly, this is not a 'secret' project. The white paper
explains our mission, and the code repo and issues trackers are open.
Secondly, the intent is to create a flexible framework that can be
adapted to suit local needs. This is*not*, as some keep asserting, a
project to have the XS work only on the XO. The community XS will work
on any x86 or ARM based hardware that works with Fedora. The white
paper explains this in depth.

Sridhar

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Re: gathering use cases

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

If you are re-implementing XS-0.7, one beneficial project would be to 
rebase it on Fedora so that it will run on Arm systems. This is 
currently a limitation of CentOS.


The design of XS separates the LAN and WAN networks. The XOs connect to 
schoolserver via the LAN network. The school server has a domain name 
relative to the WAN network appropriate to that network. This is set up 
by the netsetup.sh script. XS-0.7 provides normal firewall protection to 
the XOs. OLE Nepal has added Dan's Guardian to provide specific 
protection against access to objectionable sites.


Tony






On 11/08/2012 05:25 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

On Thu, 2012-11-08 at 17:10 -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

On 11/08/2012 05:01 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

Hi Tony and all,

On Thu, 2012-11-08 at 13:32 -0500, Tony Anderson wrote:

Hi, Sridhar

One of the important potential benefits from gathering use cases is to
clarify the roles of the Community XS project and XS-0.7.


Why is that an issue at at all? The Community XS (think XS-0.8 here)
is going to address the current shortcomings of XS-0.7.

This is my greatest concern. The ability of a server to deliver content
is central. It is my understanding that your Community XS does not
support a LAMP stack or Moodle. Please do not refer to the Community XS
as XO-0.8 until there is a chance that it can deliver the essential
capabilities of XS-0.7. My other concern is that a lot of very talented
people are spending a lot of time solving a non-problem.


That's very interesting LAMP is installed and George tells me Moodle is
now working. We just didn't quite have the time prior to SF to debug the
issue and I confident that the work done will become 0.8.


Naturally, the network problem you mention is solved by connecting the
XS-0.7 to that network as the WAN.


How do you deal with the name resolution of 'schoolserver' without
having the ability to alter the network dns server's entries or have the
server called something other than 'schoolserver' to avoid a clash with
an pre-existing server on the target network?

Jerry


Yours,

Tony

   From my perspective, if you can afford to deploy a server with 2GB or
more main memory and 500GB or more hard drive capacity, XS-0.7 serves
well and easily supports adding or customizing services. The
configuration shown in SF costs less than $350 and draws 18w (based on
measurements taken by George Hunt). With a large hard drive, it is
perfectly to keep Moodle even if it is not used.

In my experience, the school server is installed in the school ready
with XS-07 installed along with the available content. Barring hardware
failure, the only interaction at the school is to turn the server on at
the start of day and turn it off at the end. With modern computers, both
functions require only a push on the power button.


I'm not thinking about an XO here at all but on a server that you
spec'd. Tell me how do you deploy the 0.7 version on a network where you
don't have control over the DNS and have everything work? I have an idea
on how to pull that off with avahi, I would like to hear about how you
would implement that situation.


Community XS serves a valuable role where only XOs are available or
where power constraints are critical. It may also have a role in
supporting special network requirements.


Not to mention better hardware support for the latest hardware available
and ARM support by using Fedora. You can get on board with the future
and have a say in your pet interests but please don't get in the way of
progress.

Jerry
The other XS-CE developer


Tony


On 11/08/2012 10:55 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 13:57:12 +1100
From: Sridhar Dhanapalansrid...@laptop.org.au
To: Holth...@laptop.org
Cc: Devel's in the Detailsdevel@lists.laptop.org,   Maryam Rehan El
Bazmel...@mail.sfsu.edu,iaepi...@lists.sugarlabs.org, XS 
Devel
server-de...@lists.laptop.org,  Support Gangsters
support-g...@laptop.org
Subject: Re: gathering use cases
Message-ID:
CABPDnXn8Xz9BwRD_zy_PUr43CG=_rKXv8u6=zLjD0f+Juk=x...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 3 November 2012 07:46, Holth...@laptop.org  wrote:

Thanks much Sameer.  Am includingsupport-g...@laptop.org  to make sure we
gather microdeployment and support volunteer feedback too.

While our XS Community Edition experiment ain't quite ready for
showtime/download yet, its white paper  code repository are here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition

The white paper that Adam is referring to can be found at
https://docs.google.com/a/dhanapalan.com/document/pub?id=1dnhU2F6EntepVXTgN8QpkME8fZVUuPjcCoMUfAVKbcc

I am the primary author, but it was written by canvassing feedback and
opinions from schools and XS community members (including Jerry Vonau,
George Hunt, Adam Holt and many others). The paper discusses several
use cases and design goals, and outlines the underlying principles
behind how

Re: gathering use cases

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Sridhar

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I was mislead by statements such as:

The platform for the One Network server is an ARMv7-based XO, running 
the One Education OS (based on OLPC OS). This makes development, and 
deployment and support far simpler than a standalone distribution. The 
OS can be extended with server capabilities using a bootable USB 
Customisation Stick (offline) or yum.


Please accept my apology if any statement I have made seemed uncivil, 
that was certainly not my intention. Communicating by email in certainly 
much more hazardous in this regard than face-to-face.


Just as the deployments you are supporting have specific and urgent 
needs, so do the ones I am working with. I don't believe either of us is 
pursuing personal desires. We certainly can easily differ on which is 
the appropriate technical approach to solving the problems of a deployment.


I really appreciate this specification:

  * this is a flexible design, built on Fedora
  * it will run anywhere where x86 or ARM Fedora will work
  * it can be installed on top of an existing Fedora installation
using 'yum groupinstall xsce'
  * being designed in this way provides extreme flexibility for deployments
  * all current features of the XS (Moodle, etc.) will be ported, but
will be optional
  * installation and configuration will be easy, but sysadmins will be
able to treat it like any Fedora installation

There is clearly a great deal to be gained by a community taking responsibility 
for the ongoing development and maintenance of the school server as neither 
Daniel Drake nor Martin Langhoff are likely to have adequate time for this in 
the foreseeable future.

Tony


Tony



On 11/08/2012 05:59 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:

On 9 November 2012 09:10, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org wrote:

This is my greatest concern. The ability of a server to deliver content is
central. It is my understanding that your Community XS does not support a
LAMP stack or Moodle. Please do not refer to the Community XS as XO-0.8
until there is a chance that it can deliver the essential capabilities of
XS-0.7. My other concern is that a lot of very talented people are spending
a lot of time solving a non-problem.

Naturally, the network problem you mention is solved by connecting the
XS-0.7 to that network as the WAN.

Tony,

It appears that no matter what we say, you are cemented in some
strange notions about the community XS:

   * that it is intended to run only on XOs
   * that it cannot (and will not) serve content
   * that your personal desires from an XS are shared by every other
deployment in the world

I think we've been quite clear about what we're intending to achieve.
If you're going to criticise, at least be civil enough to do so based
on the facts:

   * this is a flexible design, built on Fedora
   * it will run anywhere where x86 or ARM Fedora will work
   * it can be installed on top of an existing Fedora installation
using 'yum groupinstall xsce'
   * being designed in this way provides extreme flexibility for deployments
   * all current features of the XS (Moodle, etc.) will be ported, but
will be optional
   * installation and configuration will be easy, but sysadmins will be
able to treat it like any Fedora installation

We've tried hard to be inclusive and constructive. I ask you to do the same.

Regards,
Sridhar




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Re: [Server-devel] Moodle connection

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

This message means that Apache was not able to complete a connection to 
the Moodle database.


Some relevant items are:

/etc/httpd/conf.d/moodle.conf - this file tells Apache how to route urls 
to Moodle


/etc/init.d/moodle - start up script for Moodle executed on boot

/var/www/moodle/web/config.php - home of Moodle, script initializes Moodle

Note Moodle at www.schools.sugarlabs.org

Tony

 Message: 1
 Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:08:29 -0600
 From: Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca
 To: vanessa ramos da cruz v.ramosdac...@gmail.com
 Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
 Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Moodle conection
 Message-ID: 1352311709.19054.3.ca...@f14jerry.home.vonau.ca
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

 On Wed, 2012-11-07 at 14:17 +0100, vanessa ramos da cruz wrote:
 Halo all!


 I am trying to connect Moodle and i get the following message:


 Error: Database connection failed.


 It is possible that the database is overloaded or otherwise not
 running properly.


 The site administrator should also check that the database details
 have been correctly specified in config.php

 I am using XS 0.7.


 Can some one help me?


 You might of missed a configuration detail, can you tell me the steps
 you did to install the XS?

 Jerry
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Re: Gnome in os9

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I get a similar error trying to run Firefox on an xo-1.75. I suspect the 
problem is that these are binaries that can not be run on an Arm system.


Tony

On 11/07/2012 12:00 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than Re: Contents of Devel digest...


Today's Topics:

1. Re: [Sugar-devel] Multi-touch test activity (Martin Langhoff)
2. Re: [Sugar-devel] Multi-touch test activity (Bert Freudenberg)
3. gcc-4.7.x and kernel compilation (Yioryos Asprobounitis)
4. Gnome in os9 (Yioryos Asprobounitis)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:50:17 -0500
From: Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com
To: Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de
Cc: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org,  Sugar Devel
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Multi-touch test activity
Message-ID:
CACPiFCJ-tDzyKoUBRHvcgwdJJv=ntustqqszl9yuv3z_xwj...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote:

Ah, thanks. I wasn't even going to file a bug report about the aliasing because 
that is a limitation inherent to the kind of sensor we have.


There are of course limitations, but we are in the process of tuning
and tightening things on the IR.

All sensor types have some forms of aliasing. If you know how, you can
confuse capacitive sensors too :-)



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


--

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 00:02:06 +0100
From: Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de
To: Sugar Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Cc: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Multi-touch test activity
Message-ID: b0804db5-a75e-4874-840c-98656f374...@freudenbergs.de
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

On 2012-11-06, at 23:50, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote:

Ah, thanks. I wasn't even going to file a bug report about the aliasing because 
that is a limitation inherent to the kind of sensor we have.


There are of course limitations, but we are in the process of tuning
and tightening things on the IR.


Okay. The breaking up of touch contacts was surprising. I attached a photo here:

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12282


All sensor types have some forms of aliasing. If you know how, you can
confuse capacitive sensors too :-)


Yep. You may find my updated activity version useful in testing:

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4611/

I modified it to keep displaying the last touches.

Single-touch works pretty well already, tweaking multi-touch sounds good :)

- Bert -




--

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 07:58:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Yioryos Asprobounitis mavrot...@yahoo.com
To: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: gcc-4.7.x and kernel compilation
Message-ID:
1352303916.38442.yahoomailclas...@web163402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

As far as I can see fedora-18 uses gcc-4.7.3. From what I understand (and 
tested, though with gcc-4.7.1) with gcc-4.7.x, 2.6.35 kernel compilation fails  
because of a asmregparm call in ptrace.h, .
I was wondering if the olpc-2.6.35 kernel source should be patched with this 
patch: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/1301031/ to avoid future issues.
The patch (and resulting kernels) work fine BTW.


--

Message: 4
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 08:41:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Yioryos Asprobounitis mavrot...@yahoo.com
To: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Gnome in os9
Message-ID:
1352306470.43858.yahoomailclas...@web163403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I can understand is not a priority right now but I ventured a bit on the GNOME 
side of os9. Is considerably improved!
A couple of issues on the XO-1.75. Abiword exits with the cryptic Aborted.
Switching back to Sugar (or restarting X) takes a good 30 seconds after the 
gnome panel has exited, with no feed back. Looks like hanged.
Also Xtrem somehow sneaked in back in the build.
None of these is the case on the XO-1.

In both XO-1 and 1.75, Etoys is under sound and video, Squeak is not working 
because it can not find the squeak.image 

Re: Adobe Flash no longer compatible with XO-1

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

OLE Nepal's EPaath includes a flash player. I am not sure about the 
distribution issue.


Tony

 Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:05:28 -0600
 From: Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org
 To: Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca
 Cc: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org
 Subject: Re: Adobe Flash no longer compatible with XO-1
 Message-ID:
CAMLZHHTWS5jsEoSDvQnj1UmfbHwSm=v8qrh3stx2q93-hnx...@mail.gmail.com
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

 On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote:
 If is was installed for a while there should be older copies in OOB's
 yum cache, check build/cache/imgcreate/adobe/packages/. If present you
 should be able to pin the version you want to install in OOB's
 modules/adobe_flash/kspkglist.50.adobeflash.inc. You could always dig
 out the version you want from the cache and place it in a custom repo
 and alter the url for adobe to the new repo.

 As mentioned, there is an old copy around for use here, so the local
 problem is solved.

 What would be useful would be to have one available for other people
 who hit this issue, who don't have an old cache. Due to its licensing,
 this would have to come in the form of a download from Adobe (I don't
 think anyone else would be allowed to distribute it).

 Daniel


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Re: Setting the time

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The primary need is for the XOs in the school to have the same time (to 
a few seonds, even a minute or so, is probably ok. The primary need is 
to have information from the XOs be somewhat consistent. The school 
server time should also be accurate to a few minutes, of course.


At the moment, it is off by some hours because of problems setting the 
time zone. Some of the XOs are off by a day or two.


Once I get XS-0.7 set up (currently using XS-0.6 (NEXS version), it 
should be easy to set the school server time. Having a gps stick would 
reduce the burden on the school staff to administer although it may be 
possible to get low bandwidth access to the internet via a gsm modem 
(edge) which could allow ntp synchronization.


What I would really like is a method to allow the XOs to synchronize 
with the school server as they connect. This should happen two or three 
days a week when school is in session.


Yours,

Tony

On 08/27/2012 08:28 PM, Hal Murray wrote:



In a school deployment, it is desirable that all of the XOs have the  same
time. This time should be synchronized with/by the school server  (even if
the school server is wrong). It is not reasonable to base this  capability
on access to the internet.


How closely do you need them to be synchronized?  1 second?  1 microsecond?
1 minute?

It should be reasonably easy to setup ntpd on the school server and get the
XOs to set their clocks when booted.

You may want/need a cron job to set the time occasionally.



Casio sells 'atomic' watches that synchronize to Ft. Collins by radio.
Neat, but how does this work in Rwanda?


WWVB runs at 60 KHz.  There are several similar systems in other countries.
I don't think any of them make it to Africa.  GPS does.

You can get USB GPS receivers for under $50.  The SiRF chip is the most
popular in the low cost units.  It's crappy if you need ms level timing, but
good enough if all you need is 1 second.





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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 64, Issue 9

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

If you connect an XO to a different school server, you will get an known 
host error. The solution is to use the Terminal activity and enter:


cd (cd with no parameters goes to the user's home folder).
rm -rf .ssh/known_hosts
ssh admin@schoolserver

You should get a question whether to continue or not. Respond yes.

After this, you should connect to the new schoolserver normally. I have 
to do this several times a day because I have a production server for 
content development and a test server for working with the server software.


Note: OLE Nepal's solution to the re-registration problem is to register 
the XO every time it connects. Redundant connections cause no problems. 
In fact, if you reflash a laptop, it automatically registers the new 
public key!


Tony

On 08/28/2012 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than Re: Contents of Server-devel digest...


Today's Topics:

1. Re: [OLPC-AU] Registering an XO for the second time
   (Sridhar Dhanapalan)
2. Re: registering an xo for second time (Jerry Vonau)
3. Re: registering an xo for second time (Samuel Greenfeld)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:43:08 +1000
From: Sridhar Dhanapalansrid...@laptop.org.au
To: vanessa ramos da cruzv.ramosdac...@gmail.com
Cc: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org, olpc...@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC-AU] Registering an XO for the second
time
Message-ID:
CABPDnX=tLnpHKBdBGa9gAad-N_q_JyzoF9ipkE3arHM=her...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

On 27 August 2012 20:14, vanessa ramos da cruzv.ramosdac...@gmail.com  wrote:

Halo Martin,



I am Vanessa; I am working in Angola with this project. I am new on the
project so I have a little concern.



I had a server with XS 0.6, I registered on it some XO?s just for tests. Now
I have a new machine on witch I installed

the XS 0.7. I would like to register the XO?s on this new Machine. How ca I
register the few XO?s I already registered before?

I don?t have the old Machine with the XS 0.6 installation any more?



Can you please help me?



Hi Vanessa,

You're better off asking these questions on the server-devel list:

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel

Regards,
Sridhar


Sridhar Dhanapalan
Engineering Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia


--

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:50:51 -0500
From: Jerry Vonaujvo...@shaw.ca
To: vanessa ramos da cruzv.ramosdac...@gmail.com
Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] registering an xo for second time
Message-ID:1346122251.9047.20.ca...@f14jerry.home.vonau.ca
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On Mon, 2012-08-27 at 15:48 +0100, vanessa ramos da cruz wrote:

  Halo!


I am Vanessa; I am working in Angola with this project. I am new on
the project so I have a little concern:

I had a server with XS 0.6, I registered on it some XO?s just for
tests. Now I have a new machine on witch I installed

the XS 0.7. I would like to register the XO?s on this new Machine. How
ca I registered the few XO?s I already registered before?



Try entering this from sugar's terminal activity:

gconftool-2 --get /desktop/sugar/show_register

If false is returned, you could try toggling that setting with:

gconftool-2 --toggle /desktop/sugar/show_register

Hope that restores the right-click register option to the home view for
you.

Jerry





--

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:19:17 -0400
From: Samuel Greenfeldgreenf...@laptop.org
To: Jerry Vonaujvo...@shaw.ca
Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] registering an xo for second time
Message-ID:
CAOC9B=BQf6fxuVmp=_Z=BRaY1zyU9+i=kzd8fda4qcuhooy...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

If the OS/Sugar build is new enough, the Register option never disappears
from the Right click menu of the XO character in the home view, and
re-registration is possible with no editing required.

The Register option only appears on the screen which has the application
Circle/Spiral present, and not in the Network view or Friends view.  Given
shutdown  restart appear on all three screens, this is potentially a bug.

I believe 11.3.0 supports re-registration; 11.3.1  12.1.0 definitely do.
The exact ticket which enabled this behavior currently is eluding me.


On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 10:50 PM, Jerry Vonaujvo...@shaw.ca  wrote:


On Mon, 

Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 64, Issue 8

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

Peru has the advantage that it and OLPC know the origins of the 
computers. The 100 XO-1.5s at Saint Jacobs are of unknown (to us) 
origin. I have tried to find someone who might have the original 
manufacturer's spreadsheets, but no one seems to know anything about them.


What I am hearing is that the best solution may be to convince the 
school to allow the laptops to be unlocked and taken home. This approach 
has worked in Nepal and has avoided a lot of these difficulties. Nepal 
also gets the community involved and has a 'contract' approach with the 
parents.


However, I think there is some merit in the antitheft system provided 
that it is well publicized (and locally manageable!). A serious thief 
expects to resell the XO. If the potential buyers know that the XO will 
be a brick, there is going to be no market.


Tony

On 08/27/2012 04:47 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. antitheft:: avoiding the need (jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org)
2. antitheft:: avoiding the need - cont.
   (jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org)
3. Re: antitheft (Tony Anderson)
4. Re: antitheft (Yannick Warnier)
5. Re: antitheft:: avoiding the need - cont. 2
   (jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org)
6. Re: antitheft:: avoiding the need - cont. (Sameer Verma)
7. registering an xo for second time (vanessa ramos da cruz)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 10:53:28 -0600
From: jbalc...@laptopstolesotho.org
To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] antitheft:: avoiding the need
Message-ID:
225ff2cdf074f8052572a4edc8f5e7c5.squir...@server504.webhostingpad.com

Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

We got around the need for antitheft measures with a community-based
approach.  This may not work in all communities, but it has worked very
well for us.

BEFORE distributing any computers for student use, we held meetings with
all participants, including teachers, students, parents, and the
community.  After getting their input, we guided the teachers and school
administrators in developing a written set of rules and regulations for
the project, with four sets of contracts that the students, parents,
teachers, and school administration had to sign in order to participate in
the project.  We did this by posing a series of what if scenarios, and
then requiring the local educators to come up with answers that best
suited their school and community's culture, needs, and economic
situation.

Included in the contracts that resulted from this were fine schedules
and clearly defined consequences for any damage, loss, or theft of a
laptop.  Because we work in very poor communities, work in lieu of fines
for parents was included, with a very detailed schedule of hours and type
of work required.

One critical stipulation that we required to be included in the governing
documents was that, if a laptop goes missing (lost or stolen), the project
comes to a complete halt until there is a satisfactory resolution.  What
constitutes a satisfactory resolution is clearly defined in the documents.

Since deployment, within the school and immediate community, laptops can
be left unattended in classrooms and the school yard without worry.  This
is because they aren't ever really unattended.  The entire community is
hyper-vigilant about keeping an eye on them.  When students or teachers
who live in other communities take laptops home, they are hyper-vigilant
about taking care of the laptops and protecting them, to the point that
one teacher who lives in an unsafe area will not even take his flash drive
home with him, let alone a laptop.  Their protectiveness is so strong that
one school paid to put burglar bars on the classrooms and storage room,
and another school hired a security guard for off-hours.

The result has been that 2? years after deployment, we have not had a
single laptop damaged, lost, or stolen. This is especially impressive
considering that I was told repeatedly before we started about cases of
computer theft and vandalism at other computer projects in the country.
We were told this would be a major impediment, but we proved them wrong.

Our approach was a long, grueling process, but by bringing the
participants into the process, allowing them to customize the governing
documents to meet their needs, and giving them complete control over the
outcome, we have not had to deal

Re: Setting the time

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

In a school deployment, it is desirable that all of the XOs have the 
same time. This time should be synchronized with/by the school server 
(even if the school server is wrong). It is not reasonable to base this 
capability on access to the internet.


Casio sells 'atomic' watches that synchronize to Ft. Collins by radio. 
Neat, but how does this work in Rwanda?


Tony

On 08/27/2012 03:19 PM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Impossible to set date in 11.3.0? (James Cameron)
2. Re: Firmware issu (Kevin Gordon)
3. Re: Firmware issu (Kevin Gordon)
4. Re: Impossible to set date in 11.3.0? (Kevin Gordon)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:43:39 +1000
From: James Cameronqu...@laptop.org
To: devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: Impossible to set date in 11.3.0?
Message-ID:20120827084339.gh7...@us.netrek.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 01:07:35PM -0400, Samuel Greenfeld wrote:

To the best of my knowledge this is an intentional omission for
antitheft reasons.  Instructions on how to set the clock from OFW or
the command line are at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Fix_Clock .


I think the task of setting the clock should be split from the
problems that lead to it described in that page.  It is far too scary
looking.


If using the date command is not sufficient to permanently store
the change, hwclock --systohc or similar may also need to be used.


date followed by a successful normal shutdown should work, because a
normal shutdown runs hwclock ... but hwclock --systohc is handy in
case you aren't sure that a normal shutdown will happen next.


In newer firmware builds (potentially newer than 11.3.0's), Open
Firmware can log into a Open, WEP, or WPA-PSK secured access point
and use NTP to set the time.  To do this use the essid command
followed by the actual ESSID to set the ESSID, wep or wpa to set
the password, and ntp-set-clock (without any parameters) to query
a server from the public NTP pool and get the current time.


The firmware included with 11.3.0 can already do ntp-set-clock with
open wireless access points and USB Ethernet adapters.  More recent
firmware fixed WEP and WPA-PSK, if I recall correctly.

(Nothing to do with WEP and WPA-PSK in Linux though, you can stay on
older firmware for that.)



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Re: [Server-devel] antitheft

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

The Saint Jabob school in Kigali where I am providing deployment support 
is not currently allowing the students to take laptops home

because the antitheft capability is not implemented.

The laptops were donated by WCE in Stuttgart. The laptops are locked. 
The software version installed (852) does not allow the screen to be 
rotated (a real problem for pdf reading). Recently, OLPC Germany has 
helped provide the school with some additional laptops, also locked, but 
with a 860 build.


So essentially, there are two problems. One, being able to install a 
custom XO and second, to enable the XS-0.7 server to provide 
activation-leases.


The os-build documentation (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_Builder) 
suggests that it is possible for a deployment to 'sign' a custom build.
If I knew how to do this, it would be possible to install an identical 
build on all of the schools laptops.


The description of the 'antitheft howto'
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Antitheft_HowTo)
implies that this can be done by a deployment based
on the serial-number and uuid.

Somehow I need to get this resolved by Jan. 7 when the new school year
begins so that the students can take the laptops home.

Naturally, all of this must be done without internet access.

Tony




On 08/26/2012 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. antitheft (Sameer Verma)
2. Re: antitheft (Yannick Warnier)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:41:43 -0500
From: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
To: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org,  Devel's in the
Detailsde...@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] antitheft
Message-ID:
CAFoGK8FkBifthYSTk1btg9s9oznAvQ+fP-N=mwittszxqh7...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hello!

I'm looking to get a sense of how widely antitheft is being used and
to what level of success. There was a post recently where Bruce Baikie
came across 500 XO-1s in Ethiopia, that were locked, but the server
was dead/gone/missing/ so these were unusable. On the other hand, when
XOs are not set up for antitheft, there is attrition (we have some in
one of our Jamaica projects, although its fairly low).

1) Does antitheft work as advertised?
2) What are comfortable parameters for it to work? How many hours
should the lease be?

Not looking for very specific answers...more like a conversation around it.

cheers,
Sameer


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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 62, Issue 1

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

What build are you running? Registration updates config in early builds 
and updates gconf in recent builds. In gconf, registration creates an 
entry in /home/olpc/.gconf/desktop/sugar/%gconf.xml. This is used by the 
backup procedure to recognize that the laptop is registered. In earlier 
builds this was in /home/olpc/.sugar/default/config. You might want to 
check to see if that entry was created. In earlier builds, successful 
registration removes the register option from the home view menu. In 
more recent builds, it changes the option to register again. When you 
register you should see a 'registration successful' alert.


Tony

On 06/03/2012 06:00 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. failed to register (Sameer Verma)
2. Re: failed to register (Sameer Verma)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 10:10:37 -0700
From: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
To: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] failed to register
Message-ID:
cafogk8emdqhkb9vnzrzhspnr+skufa-gn8sjwubm1dubcna...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

XS 0.7
OLPC build 874
Sugar 0.92.2

The XO fails to register, but a folder is created for the XO on the XS
under /library/users/

The XO shows no collaboration server under Control Panel | Network

Any ideas? Pointers?

cheers,
Sameer


--

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 13:15:50 -0700
From: Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu
To: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] failed to register
Message-ID:
CAFoGK8FcG5Dfwx-4tSF170=-yfx-nc97bohyvy1w8zsycnn...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu  wrote:

XS 0.7
OLPC build 874
Sugar 0.92.2

The XO fails to register, but a folder is created for the XO on the XS
under /library/users/

The XO shows no collaboration server under Control Panel | Network

Any ideas? Pointers?

cheers,
Sameer


On the XS I see the machine as registered via /var/log/messages
(schoolserver olpc_idmgr: Registered user abcdefgh with serial
SHC03345845)

So, looks like the server end is doing what it should, but the XO end is not?

--
Sameer


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End of Server-devel Digest, Vol 62, Issue 1
***



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Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 58, Issue 28

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am sorry that in Rwanda I do not have internet access; otherwise I 
might have seen this earlier. Actually, I disabled iptables on that 
system because I couldn't access through it and did not have time then 
to figure out the issue.


Squid is indeed installed and with the proper iptables, it should be 
possible to do what you need.


In Nepal, practice is to leave the LAN network open when the SS is not 
connected to the internet (almost universal) and to use a wpa2 password 
when it is. XO handles wpa2 reasonably well although someone must be 
available to explain the occasional request for password.


Tony

On 02/29/2012 05:05 PM, server-devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. A quick networking question (George Hunt)
2. Re: A quick networking question (Holt)
3. Re: A quick networking question (Holt)
4. Re: A quick networking question (Anna)
5. Re: A quick networking question (John Watlington)
6. Re: A quick networking question (Holt)
7. Re: A quick networking question (rolf)
8. Re: A quick networking question (Samuel Greenfeld)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:29:37 -0500
From: George Huntgeorgejh...@gmail.com
To: XS Develserver-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: [Server-devel] A quick networking question
Message-ID:
CADfCcpVJ_=tvxpsadnyo6phdfcm6gfd5cgcbfgdfc3xyikh...@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hi,

In Haiti, Adam and I have been trying to get a school server online.  We're
finding that volunteers are going through the school server to the internet
with their laptops, and he wants to turn that off, at least for now.

I've turned off /proc/net...ip_forward and verified that there is no
masquerade enabled in the iptables.

But that's not enough!!  I wasn't sure that the vpn wasn't setting up a
gateway, so I had him turn off the vpn.  But still the school server was
routing to the 3G usb modem dongle even with the vpn pipe closed down.

How does the school server act like a router?  It may be related to the ppp
connection and wdial configuration.  But I'm stumped.

But I'm trying to bring myself up to speed quickly because he really wants
to get it turned off.

Any ideas on what to try next?  I'm afraid the solution is going to be to
pull out the 3g dongle.

George
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:49:34 -0500
From: Holth...@laptop.org
To: server-de...@laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] A quick networking question
Message-ID:4f4d13ae.10...@laptop.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 2/28/2012 12:29 PM, George Hunt wrote:

In Haiti, Adam and I have been trying to get a school server online.
We're finding that volunteers are going through the school server to
the internet with their laptops, and he wants to turn that off, at
least for now.

I've turned off /proc/net...ip_forward and verified that there is no
masquerade enabled in the iptables.

But that's not enough!!  I wasn't sure that the vpn wasn't setting up
a gateway, so I had him turn off the vpn.  But still the school server
was routing to the 3G usb modem dongle even with the vpn pipe closed
down.

How does the school server act like a router?  It may be related to
the ppp connection and wdial configuration.  But I'm stumped.

But I'm trying to bring myself up to speed quickly because he really
wants to get it turned off.

Any ideas on what to try next?  I'm afraid the solution is going to be
to pull out the 3g dongle.


Interestingly the XS(*) creates an open path for any random non-XO
laptop to access the web, but seems to block non-web traffic like ssh
and IMAP.

In any case, even if it's just forwarding port 80 and 443 (?) we just
cannot afford to become a free ISP here in semi-rural Haiti, given so
many visitors to our school especially.

  (*) XS as set up by Tony Anderson early autumn 2011, and currently
maintained by George Hunt  I.

--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !



--

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:05:13 -0500
From: Holth...@laptop.org
To: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] A quick networking question
Message-ID:4f4d1759.7000