Re: Help runnning a script after Installing an activity from .xo
I am using a tool to write the application. The sound will be played by this tool itself and it uses OSS. Sorry I cannot provide more information as to what the tool is and what is the application. So I cannot change the way I play sound since this would require me to change the underlying tool. Then is asking the user to run a shell script which does all the work for me the only way to ask the XO to load the OSS module? Isn't there any way else to do it so that the user doen't have to download the script, login to the terminal and then run this script. Thanks Shivaprasad On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 7:08 AM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: One more thing- If you are only using OSS to play sound, why not use pygame.mixer instead? It's part of the core Sugar dependencies and offers very low latency playback and the ability to mix channels. Or, are you using some extended functionality of OSS that's not present in pygame.mixer? -Wade ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to fix it. A much more reliable scheme would be to swap to an SD card, if one is plugged in and contains a swap partition (or a file in its root called SWAPFILE). See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8410. Even a small, cheap SD card could double or triple the available virtual RAM space. And if an SD card gets worn out, you merely pull it out of the laptop, throw it away, and buy a new one (for a fraction of the original cost, since Moore's Law has been working in your favor in the intervening years). This doesn't solve the least-common-denominator problem of people without SD cards -- but it does offer a user, or a deployment, a very simple and relatively cheap way to solve most problems related to physical RAM size. On the topic of memory overload in general: Older XO releases did much better things when they ran out of physical memory: they tended to rapidly kill off some process, leaving the system largely functional. In 767, the system instead goes from usable to molasses-like in a period of seconds, then freezes totally for minutes or hours. As far as I know, nobody has debugged why that changed. The prior behavior was infinitely preferable. John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 8:51 AM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that While I generally agree with you, www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf does seem to talk about the mtd driver having special handling for swap. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
On 18.12.2008, at 08:08, Philipp Kocher wrote: One more thing, the scratch icon is not shown in the journal for files with the scratch mimetype. I think the file /usr/share/sugar/data/mime.defaults has to be adapted to include the scratch-mimetype. It just has to be listed in the activity bundle's info file: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles#.info_File_Format - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
Hi, Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that While I generally agree with you, www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf does seem to talk about the mtd driver having special handling for swap. And see this old mail from Mitch: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-December/009030.html (Mitch doesn't mention how he feels about swapping in particular. We could perhaps attempt to conduct some experiments.) - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Exploding wireless interfaces on your laptop
[Getting server-devel back on CC] On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:29 PM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: Think the renaming fails when wlan0 already is present, and then the rename gets stuck at eth1_rename. with present meaning in 70-persistent-net.rules. Hmmm, you are right. I had removed the file, but it wasn't enough. When testing/debugging these scripts, you have to remove it on every reboot and plug/unplug cycle you're testing. That caught me. Removed the file and it all works. I wonder - do we have to remove it on 0.5.x - 0.6 upgrades? cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Downloading Scratch project to XO
philipp wrote: Hi Bert, John There is a bug in copy-from-journal, it is adding an additional dot before the file extension. Otherwise it is working. [o...@localhost ~]$ copy-from-journal -o 07474cf4-4883-4ded-a994-ab5511cfc29c /tmp/test.sb /home/olpc/.sugar/default/data/07474cf4-4883-4ded-a994-ab5511cfc29c - /tmp/test..sb My workaround in scratch-activity looks like this: if [ -n $object_id ] ; then filename=$SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/instance/temp.sb copy-from-journal -o $object_id $filename filename=$SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/instance/temp..sb else filename= fi will you file a ticket on this? (or perhaps at least update #5571.) paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org give one laptop, get one laptop --- http://www.laptop.com/xo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
Hi, Phillip. Re: Do you plan a journal integration for scratch? Probably not in the near future. There has been talk about making an API for the Journal that looks more like a file system to application programs. That might be the easiest way to integrate the Journal into Scratch in the long run. Sugar continues to evolve. Earlier versions still allowed access to the file system in a way that made it fairly easy to port applications like Scratch. More recently, with the Rainbow security system, it became much more difficult to use the file system directly. I support Scratch on many different platforms. The XO is an important one due to the educational mission of OLPC. Still, my time is limited and I can only spend so much of it on the XO version of Scratch. Thus, I try to steer a middle path -- create a Scratch port for the XO without changing too much of the Scratch source code. I am hoping that eventually Sugar will make life easier for those porting applications from file-based platforms by providing some sort of virtual file system API. The Journal and the virtual file system could just be two views on the same set of files. Re: At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font. Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's open dialog. That means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes. If project deletion is the only issue, my preference would be to add a way to delete projects to the Scratch open and save dialogs. (Although I'm not promising to do that immediately, since we're currently working on the release of Scratch 1.4.) Another solution (which could be more near-term) would be to increase the font size in the file dialog. Do you think that would help? -- John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!
We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008). So far I have the following people confirmed: 1: Tyler 2: Jeff 3: Brian 4: Seth 5: Frances 6: Justin If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining. --HH. On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy he...@laptop.orgwrote: Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly drawing again! I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm. First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the menu but bottled drinks. --HH. -- ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed. --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945 -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Minutes of Power in 9.1.0 meeting
Thanks Chris! Could you also mention any planned GUI changes in the specification section? Name changes to the modes and moving the radio off to Network control panel only are two that come to mind. If you can define what it will look like and help close the loop with Sugar or whoever is needed to change the GUI that would be a big help. Also, who is tracking the added ability to shut off power to the radio interface and its logic when the radio is set to off in its control panel (requirement 2)? Joe, Its over to you to write the test plan now. I added two documentation links to the top of the specification section to give you more background on how it is supposed to work. Let me know if you have any questions. I want to have a solid test plan reviewed and in place early this time as I think that was a critical missing piece in the 8.2.0 release. Thanks, Greg S Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:56:04 -0500 From: Chris Ball c...@laptop.org Subject: Re: Minutes of Power in 9.1.0 meeting To: g...@laptop.org Cc: Richard Smith rich...@laptop.org, OLPC Development devel@lists.laptop.org, Joseph A. Feinstein j...@laptop.org Message-ID: m3myeuqum3@pullcord.laptop.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi Greg, * Chris to make some additions to requirement linking in the existing documentation, including what happens when the lid is closed. I believe Joe is waiting for Chris to update the requirements before he writes the test cases. I am waiting for the test cases so I can explain to people exactly how much longer the battery will last. I've added these new sections to the requirements (added to the end of the list in order to avoid renumbering the list). I also added a link to the most recent test plan we have for power management, which would be a fine model for the new one. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap/Improved_battery_life Thanks, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
After reading Belyakov's paper a few questions for the experts occurred to me: Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be gained by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash, perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer. First question is whether Linux treats the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if the compcache is exhausted. If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash swap be a signal to prune activities? On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:25 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: And see this old mail from Mitch: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-December/009030.html (Mitch doesn't mention how he feels about swapping in particular. We could perhaps attempt to conduct some experimen Not sure if this particular patchseries ever made it, but Richard Purdie has been working on this area (marc lets you see all his posts to lkml, and it's all around mtd, compression, swap). http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernelm=117285102508455w=2 Might also be worthwhile to ping him... cheers, martin-who's-reading-lkml-while-xs-reboots -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Don't think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our future depends on it. -- Barack Obama ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
The soldered in NAND is also 14 times slower on writes and half the speed of a good SD card. wad On Dec 18, 2008, at 5:51 AM, John Gilmore wrote: What about using a NAND partition as swap? Has this ever been done? Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely. Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to fix it. A much more reliable scheme would be to swap to an SD card, if one is plugged in and contains a swap partition (or a file in its root called SWAPFILE). See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8410. Even a small, cheap SD card could double or triple the available virtual RAM space. And if an SD card gets worn out, you merely pull it out of the laptop, throw it away, and buy a new one (for a fraction of the original cost, since Moore's Law has been working in your favor in the intervening years). This doesn't solve the least-common-denominator problem of people without SD cards -- but it does offer a user, or a deployment, a very simple and relatively cheap way to solve most problems related to physical RAM size. On the topic of memory overload in general: Older XO releases did much better things when they ran out of physical memory: they tended to rapidly kill off some process, leaving the system largely functional. In 767, the system instead goes from usable to molasses-like in a period of seconds, then freezes totally for minutes or hours. As far as I know, nobody has debugged why that changed. The prior behavior was infinitely preferable. John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [support-gang] Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!
I asked if I could bring 10 people, they said bring ten or as many as you want. The first ten responses are: 1: Tyler 2: Jeff 3: Brian 4: Seth 5: Frances 6: Justin 7: Mel 8: Richard 9: Adam 10. Dan B. If you still want to come and did not make the list, be at Chipotle by 1 and I will try to add you to the free food. If not, the place is pretty cheap and we can still hang out a bit. Suggest bringing your business cards (so we can win more free food later), and XO's if you want to play XO games (no reliable free wireless that plays nice with XO in H Sq, regrettably). See you at Chipotle between 12:45 and 1. --HH. On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Bennett dant...@gmail.com wrote: I've got an 11:00 am meeting in Davis, but I can try to meet you Harvard by 12:30. Bump me off the list if you manage to fill it with Solid responeses. MMM, -Dan On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Any chance that you can FedEx me a burrito? I love Chipotle! :-) Christoph Am 18.12.2008 um 16:07 schrieb Henry Edward Hardy hhard...@gmail.com: We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008). So far I have the following people confirmed: 1: Tyler 2: Jeff 3: Brian 4: Seth 5: Frances 6: Justin If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining. --HH. On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy he...@laptop.org he...@laptop.org wrote: Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly drawing again! I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm. First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the menu but bottled drinks. --HH. -- ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed. --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945 -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:57 AM, John Maloney jmalo...@media.mit.edu wrote: Hi, Phillip. Re: Do you plan a journal integration for scratch? Probably not in the near future. There has been talk about making an API for the Journal that looks more like a file system to application programs. That might be the easiest way to integrate the Journal into Scratch in the long run. Sugar continues to evolve. Earlier versions still allowed access to the file system in a way that made it fairly easy to port applications like Scratch. More recently, with the Rainbow security system, it became much more difficult to use the file system directly. I support Scratch on many different platforms. The XO is an important one due to the educational mission of OLPC. Still, my time is limited and I can only spend so much of it on the XO version of Scratch. Thus, I try to steer a middle path -- create a Scratch port for the XO without changing too much of the Scratch source code. I am hoping that eventually Sugar will make life easier for those porting applications from file-based platforms by providing some sort of virtual file system API. The Journal and the virtual file system could just be two views on the same set of files. Re: At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font. Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's open dialog. That means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes. I'm not sure this is the downside. That's one of the benefits. In fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field, so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's familiar to those using Sugar. - Eben If project deletion is the only issue, my preference would be to add a way to delete projects to the Scratch open and save dialogs. (Although I'm not promising to do that immediately, since we're currently working on the release of Scratch 1.4.) Another solution (which could be more near-term) would be to increase the font size in the file dialog. Do you think that would help? -- John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
On 18.12.2008, at 17:11, Eben Eliason wrote: In fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field, so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's familiar to those using Sugar. In theory, yes. In practice, you do not get a preview for downloaded files, not even for images. This has been known for ages: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2460 Besides, even if all entries had a preview, it is still cumbersome to find anything by preview, because the preview is hidden in the detail view, and there is not even a way to move directly between detail views (next/previous buttons as well as page up/down keys have been discussed but not implemented). Nor is there a way to navigate by keyboard at all in the Journal. Unfortunately usability is not one of the goals in the Sugar roadmap. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:42 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: Given that we still have issues cropping up with XS 0.5, are we still going to call it stable? It's great news that you care about this. Do you have a spare (standard modernish x86) you can use to join the testing efforts? Sure! I have a Fujitsu P2120 (Transmeta Crusoe ~900MHz proc, 384MB RAM) that I've been using for testing. We use it at all the OLPC-SF meetings. XS 0.4 works fine on it right out of the box, but no such love with 0.5, hence the concern. I've been following your thread on the built-in wireless card confusion and it looks like I may have the same issue. It's much easier than with the XO, which requires special HW. If you get involved, I can organise shipping additional hw that'll be useful. We can always dig up a relatively modern P4 for testing. What additional hw would this be? I'll soon push a new 0.5.1 candidate build. You'll be CC'd so you can lend a hand. OK. I'll wait for it. OTOH, all the reported issues have been diagnosed, and all but one fixed. Not bad for a milestone release in what is a fast development schedule towards 1.0. Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate your efforts. On my recent trip to India (http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/593), I realized the immense importance of the school server in environs with no Internet backhaul. Khairat, India's first pilot, has a server, but its an old build (160 or 161, I think) and they recently lost their backhaul, so they don't use it anymore. The teacher asked for a lot of things that could be fixed easily with the current XS feature set. In other schools where they might consider getting XOs, the immense cost of backhaul will kill the effort before it gets off the ground. The XS fills that gap. This reminds me: We should explore sneakernet-like e-mail at some point, but I digress. The offline nature of content and software (wikislice, moodle, etc.) is going to be instrumental in getting XOs to poorer school districts that cannot afford backhaul connectivity.. In fact, I think the role of the school server is undersold and overshadowed by the XO's capabilities and eye candy. I'm just concerned that folks like Manoocher (http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-December/000953.html) might get misled by the stable monkier only to find out that the 0.5 ISO has issues. cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 18.12.2008, at 17:11, Eben Eliason wrote: In fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field, so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's familiar to those using Sugar. In theory, yes. In practice, you do not get a preview for downloaded files, not even for images. This has been known for ages: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2460 Hmm, that's too bad. Maybe we can get that fixed. Besides, even if all entries had a preview, it is still cumbersome to find anything by preview, because the preview is hidden in the detail view, and there is not even a way to move directly between detail views (next/previous buttons as well as page up/down keys have been That's true. As soon as we have some manpower to put the new Journal design in place, we'll all be far better off here. In addition to improvements to the detail view itself, it will expose thumbnails in browsable views as well. discussed but not implemented). Nor is there a way to navigate by keyboard at all in the Journal. True, and extremely unfortunate. I think we need to keep some accessibility concerns on the short term agenda. Unfortunately usability is not one of the goals in the Sugar roadmap. Your pain is my pain. However, I still feel it necessary to keep everyone's eye on a larger prize. Rather than having every activity solve these problems in a different way, I'd like to convince one or two of the activity devs to help address the core issue so we have a net win for everyone. If the system is broken (and we know it is!) then we should fix it, rather than building numerous workarounds/substitutions. - Eben - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: Sure! I have a Fujitsu P2120 (Transmeta Crusoe ~900MHz proc, 384MB RAM) that I've been using for testing. We use it at all the OLPC-SF meetings. XS 0.4 works fine on it right out of the box, but no such love with 0.5, hence the concern. I've been following your thread on the built-in wireless card confusion and it looks like I may have the same issue. Is that the only issue? What does the output of iwconfig look like? Do you have an AA? In other words, bugreports and/or reports to this list can give me enough hints to fix it. I depend on you reporting it... We can always dig up a relatively modern P4 for testing. What additional hw would this be? The machine you have is low end, but it should do for small groups - no need for a P4. Was thinking of an AA and/or an XO if you don't have them. Depends on what you're testing. Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate your efforts. On my recent trip to India (http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/593), I realized the immense importance of the school server in environs with no Internet backhaul. Khairat, India's first pilot, has a server, but its an old build (160 or 161, I think) and they recently lost their backhaul, so they don't use it anymore. The teacher asked for a lot of things that could be fixed easily with the current XS feature set. Interesting to hear that. Do you think you could write up a brief summary of the things that teacher asked for...? (the slides linked, while interesting, don't seem to refer to this...) In other schools where they might consider getting XOs, the immense cost of backhaul will kill the effort before it gets off the ground. The XS fills that gap. This reminds me: We should explore sneakernet-like e-mail at some point, but I digress. Have you got an XO? I really need someone to help me experiment with booting F9 off an SD card (backporting whatever cleverness has been applied to F10) so we can put XS-0.6 on SD cards and say: XO + SD card + external USB HD = XS! (I don't think the XO will boot from an ext USB HD...) The offline nature of content and software (wikislice, moodle, etc.) is going to be instrumental in getting XOs to poorer school districts that cannot afford backhaul connectivity.. In fact, I think the role of the school server is undersold and overshadowed by the XO's capabilities and eye candy. Of course I agree, the XS is the sexiest part of OLPC, and we're the only ones that have noticed ;-) Is it feasible to make Wikislices with cjb's toolchain for the various languages in India? I'm just concerned that folks like Manoocher (http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-December/000953.html) might get misled by the stable monkier only to find out that the 0.5 ISO has issues. Reasonable point. It does say stable, and it also says 0.5 ;-) And we can also say that 0.4 is not very stable either -- I know quite a few scenarios where it has significantly more trouble than 0.5. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Cmap tools
Hi All, Picking up this old thread (http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-September/018835.html) I want to move this forward again. There is a beta version of a smaller Linux implementation of CMap tools now. Download it from here: http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/cmaplite.php Does anyone have time to try running this inside of the X windows activity mentioned below? While we have some traction on other concept map tools (thanks Tomeu for Labrynth), CMap is incumbent in a number of countries and I want to figure out how close we are to supporting it. It will affect our ability to get XOs and Sugar in to more schools systems so its certainly valuable work. Let me know if anyone has a chance to try this out and document what it will take to make it work. Thanks, Greg S * On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de wrote: Am 04.09.2008 um 01:06 schrieb Michael Stone: On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 05:33:28PM -0400, Greg Smith wrote: Has anyone tried making the activity which is X-windows and inside which other activities can run? [1] and [2] seem apropos. Michael [1]: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7768#comment:8 [2]: http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/12/run_a_nested_x11_desktop_on_th.html I couldn't resist making an activity for that: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/X Anybody has any idea about how to make xephyr use the clipboard of the external X server? DND may be even harder. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be gained by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash, perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer. First question is whether Linux treats the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if the compcache is exhausted. If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash swap be a signal to prune activities? Both Belyakov and Richard Purdie seem to compress into a large-ish buffer in RAM first, and only past a certain threshold actually put it to NAND. This is to minimise number of erase ops, and improve performance, so the swaponflash driver Richard's posted does exactly what you describe. As to treating that as a signal, I dunno. I do think Sugar could monitor some mem stats and warn the user _early_ when under mem pressure. If more than one activity is open, it could sugges to close a bg activity... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: Have you got an XO? I really need someone to help me experiment with booting F9 off an SD card (backporting whatever cleverness has been applied to F10) so we can put XS-0.6 on SD cards and say: XO + SD card + external USB HD = XS! (I don't think the XO will boot from an ext USB HD...) I tried FC9 following these instructions awhile back. http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/08/regular-linux-desktops-on-the-xo/ Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO? And how would networking work? Anna Schoolfield Birmingham ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Anna ascho...@gmail.com wrote: Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO? And how would networking work? It should work but I haven't explored the practicalities of it. You're welcome to play in this area! Networking-wise, the laptop has a libertas device that appears to the OS exactly like an Active Antenna, so the XS OS will spot it and configure it to be the 'school mesh' antenna. That means that we're missing the WAN port, mainly. I think (and hope!) that if you plug in a USB-ethernet adapter (any that F9 supports), it'll be taken as eth0, and you're good to go if the school has dsl or something similar. Most linux-supported G3 (CDMA?) usb modems will also be autodetected -- configure ppp with the ISP-supplied details and run. This could be improved quite a bit to remove the need for local configuration -- take a usb stick with a predefined file with the ppp configuration, and autoconfigure a ppp0 device to automatically come up (and stay up). It should do something similar with a USB ext HD - use it for /library ... m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: No surprise on memory
While the MTD layer does go to memory first, my thought about two swaps was slightly different. Depending on how they are managed, one of two things might happen: (I assume the second swap isn't used until the first is full) 1. less busy stuff gets migrated to the second swap or 2) The second swap just gets the latest thing that needs swapping even if it is busy. (1) would be better if the second swap is on flash to minimize wear ... this is like old time hierarchical storage management on mainframes. Yes I did roam the earth with the dinosaurs. (2) would potentially allow for a graceful OOM management by using something about second swap usage to be a signal to make the user pick an activity to close. On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be gained by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash, perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer. First question is whether Linux treats the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if the compcache is exhausted. If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash swap be a signal to prune activities? Both Belyakov and Richard Purdie seem to compress into a large-ish buffer in RAM first, and only past a certain threshold actually put it to NAND. This is to minimise number of erase ops, and improve performance, so the swaponflash driver Richard's posted does exactly what you describe. As to treating that as a signal, I dunno. I do think Sugar could monitor some mem stats and warn the user _early_ when under mem pressure. If more than one activity is open, it could sugges to close a bg activity... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- Don't think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our future depends on it. -- Barack Obama ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
Thanks John! My previous comments weren't meant as an attack against you or Scratch, of course. We know as well as anyone about resource constraints! I just want to keep everyone honest, and make sure that the broader goals for Sugar and the Journal don't get lost while we struggle to figure out how to reach them. I wish I could say the Journal does all of these things wonderfully!, but alas, I can only muster the Journal, as (re)designed, would do all of these things wonderfully! Hopefully we'll get there. - Eben On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM, John Maloney jmalo...@media.mit.edu wrote: Hi, Eben. Yes, using the Journal would be optimal for XO users, and perhaps we will make Scratch do that in the long run. -- John Re: At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font. Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's open dialog. That means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes. I'm not sure this is the downside. That's one of the benefits. In fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field, so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's familiar to those using Sugar. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal integration for Scratch
Hi, Eben. Not to worry -- I did not see your email as an attack at all. You were just pointing out the fact that the Journal does support thumbnails and text info. That's a good point. Something as innovative as Sugar simply takes time to mature, and you can't get everything 100% right the first time. You need to have real applications and real users and you need to iterate many, many times. Sugar is still in the rapid-evolution phase of its development. (Even more so for the Journal.) I've been working with the XO for about 18 months now, and over that time the software has made enormous progress. And rapid progress is still being made. I'm sure that things will continue to get easier over the next 18 months -- both for XO users and for those of us porting applications. Keep up the good work! -- John On Dec 18, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Eben Eliason wrote: Thanks John! My previous comments weren't meant as an attack against you or Scratch, of course. We know as well as anyone about resource constraints! I just want to keep everyone honest, and make sure that the broader goals for Sugar and the Journal don't get lost while we struggle to figure out how to reach them. I wish I could say the Journal does all of these things wonderfully!, but alas, I can only muster the Journal, as (re)designed, would do all of these things wonderfully! Hopefully we'll get there. - Eben On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM, John Maloney jmalo...@media.mit.edu wrote: Hi, Eben. Yes, using the Journal would be optimal for XO users, and perhaps we will make Scratch do that in the long run. -- John Re: At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font. Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's open dialog. That means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes. I'm not sure this is the downside. That's one of the benefits. In fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field, so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's familiar to those using Sugar. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
John Gilmore wrote: Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to fix it. Well, maybe it's not as bad as all that. When the NAND wears out, then you can buy the SD card, thus deferring that purchase and taking advantage of Moore's law in the interim. Note that I'm not advocating in favor of soldered NAND - in fact I've been one of the leading proponents of migrating to an SD-based storage solution. I'm just pointing out that, if you're willing to buy an SD card now (which is necessary for the SD-based swap solution), then you are probably willing to buy one later. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: No surprise on memory
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 09:13 -1000, Mitch Bradley wrote: John Gilmore wrote: Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea. It will tend to wear them out rapidly. Even if you use load-leveling software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to fix it. John, do the math: for the current chips (single level cells), life is of order 10^5 cycles. So you have 10^5 gigabytes of writing. This takes *a long* time. Swapping is not an insane idea, once you have wear leveling. We don't do it now because JFFS2 cannot support swapping, and we don't have a wear level beneath the file system. UBI and Ubifs fix this, and it is something we can consider. Well, maybe it's not as bad as all that. When the NAND wears out, then you can buy the SD card, thus deferring that purchase and taking advantage of Moore's law in the interim. Lots of people tend to forget, however, that warm (and/or cold) salt air is a serious issue in many of the places we have to go. Any connector tends to die under these circumstances. Note that I'm not advocating in favor of soldered NAND - in fact I've been one of the leading proponents of migrating to an SD-based storage solution. I'm just pointing out that, if you're willing to buy an SD card now (which is necessary for the SD-based swap solution), then you are probably willing to buy one later. Soldered down SD, however may be an intermediate point; may fewer wires than a conventional chip. -- Jim Gettys j...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Techteam] Weekend reports, holiday plans, PTO reporting
I'll be on vacation and out of town from Saturday, Dec. 20 to Monday, Dec 29, 2008. I will have intermittent internet access during this time. There will be no official OLPC Volunteer Infrastructure Group meeting next week. You may contact Reuben or Ed for *urgent* issues during this time. Otherwise please file an rt ticket, thanks. Happy and safe Holidays to all!! --HH. On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.orgwrote: Ed McNierney wrote: (2) Please send email to techteam about your plans for next week and the week after, so we know how to find people (or know they can't be found). I will be in Arkansas Dec 22nd - Dec 26 and return to work on the 29th. -- Richard Smith rich...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child ___ Techteam mailing list techt...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/techteam -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Anna ascho...@gmail.com wrote: Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO? And how would networking work? It should work but I haven't explored the practicalities of it. You're welcome to play in this area! Networking-wise, the laptop has a libertas device that appears to the OS exactly like an Active Antenna, so the XS OS will spot it and configure it to be the 'school mesh' antenna. I followed the instructions here for Fedora 9, but using the XS 0.5 install CD instead. http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/08/regular-linux-desktops-on-the-xo/ Also, in the kernel config file in /XO-alt-distro/kernel/2.6.25.15-XOaltF9-1 I enabled the bonding module before I ran the sd_fixup script. At the end, it failed to do the chroot thing, so I looked at the chroot.sh script in /XO-alt-distro/distro/fedora-9 and then manually did: sed -i /VolGroup00/d /media/disk/etc/fstab cp olpc.fth /media/disk/boot I didn't think I'd need the custom xorg.conf since the XS doesn't have a GUI. I don't have a USB to ethernet adaptor, so I downloaded and put the rpm in /root before I disconnected the 8 GB SD card. I booted up on an XO and did the usual XS stuff, including installing the rpm, and got what looked like a working XS, with the exception of failure to load the extra iptables modules. I booted up a regular XO, got an IP on msh0, and then successfully registered to the XSXO. Moodle looked like it was working on the XSXO, but when I go to http://schoolserver/moodle, all I get on the regular XO is a bunch of error messages related to scorm. I haven't tried ejabberd yet, though I suspect the little XSXO might be a little underpowered to handle that with too many users. At any rate, this needs testing, but if all you wanted to do was serve html content to students in a small environment without all the hardware associated with an XS, this might be a solution. Boa does work on a regular XO, but I don't know if that would work within a simple mesh environment. I bet this would even work on an XO with a broken screen if it was otherwise going to go unused, as you could either ssh in to do stuff or simply swap the SD card temporarily. Using ssh might be a better idea anyway, as the console display is very, very small. Anna Schoolfield Birmingham ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: No surprise on memory
This isn't directly related to swapping, but if anybody is curious about flash technology... Al Fazio from Intel gave a good talk at Stanford EE380 last November. He had lots of details and numbers about flash technology. Good geek bait. Intel is selling flash based disks for laptops. They do the wear leveling and block rewriting in hardware. No changes to the OS required. Nice power savings. (Google for Intel SSD gets lots of hits.) Flash disks have real good seek times. If you pick the right benchmark, you can get some impressive numbers. You can get the slides here: http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/081112.html You can get the video here. It was on November 12, 2008 http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ When the next quarter starts, this quarter will migrate to the archives. Look down below on the left column. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 2599
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2599 Changes in build 2599 from build: 2595 Size delta: 0.00M -sugar-update-control 0.17-1 +sugar-update-control 0.19-1 --- Changes for sugar-update-control 0.19-1 from 0.17-1 --- + Fix packaging problems; actually distribute translation files. + Trac #9044: Pick up Spanish translations for release. -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 2599
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2599 Changes in build 2599 from build: 2595 Size delta: 0.00M -sugar-update-control 0.17-1 +sugar-update-control 0.19-1 --- Changes for sugar-update-control 0.19-1 from 0.17-1 --- + Fix packaging problems; actually distribute translation files. + Trac #9044: Pick up Spanish translations for release. -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [support-gang] Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!
Sorry I missed it, my meeting didn't end til 1:45... Hope they were tasty! On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Henry Edward Hardy hhard...@gmail.comwrote: I asked if I could bring 10 people, they said bring ten or as many as you want. The first ten responses are: 1: Tyler 2: Jeff 3: Brian 4: Seth 5: Frances 6: Justin 7: Mel 8: Richard 9: Adam 10. Dan B. If you still want to come and did not make the list, be at Chipotle by 1 and I will try to add you to the free food. If not, the place is pretty cheap and we can still hang out a bit. Suggest bringing your business cards (so we can win more free food later), and XO's if you want to play XO games (no reliable free wireless that plays nice with XO in H Sq, regrettably). See you at Chipotle between 12:45 and 1. --HH. On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Bennett dant...@gmail.comwrote: I've got an 11:00 am meeting in Davis, but I can try to meet you Harvard by 12:30. Bump me off the list if you manage to fill it with Solid responeses. MMM, -Dan On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Any chance that you can FedEx me a burrito? I love Chipotle! :-) Christoph Am 18.12.2008 um 16:07 schrieb Henry Edward Hardy hhard...@gmail.com : We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008). So far I have the following people confirmed: 1: Tyler 2: Jeff 3: Brian 4: Seth 5: Frances 6: Justin If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining. --HH. On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy he...@laptop.org he...@laptop.org wrote: Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly drawing again! I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm. First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the menu but bottled drinks. --HH. -- ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed. --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945 -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang -- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. --anon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: Given that we still have issues cropping up with XS 0.5, are we still going to call it stable? It's great news that you care about this. Do you have a spare (standard modernish x86) you can use to join the testing efforts? It's much easier than with the XO, which requires special HW. If you get involved, I can organise shipping additional hw that'll be useful. I'll soon push a new 0.5.1 candidate build. You'll be CC'd so you can lend a hand. OTOH, all the reported issues have been diagnosed, and all but one fixed. Not bad for a milestone release in what is a fast development schedule towards 1.0. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Learning how to deploy/maintain an XS: workshop/materials-creation?
Question from Chris Vance (a Boston-area volunteer, cc'd) and the IMSA deployment team (for which Yifan Sun is the liason, also cc'd): What's the fastest way we can learn to deploy, and support a production XS? (The IMSA team is deploying an XS in Cambridge for the CFS grassroots XO pilot, and Chris is keen on maintaining it once they go back to Illinois.) /paragraph full of acronyms Martin, you'll be in town for FUDCON/XOcamp, right? Will there be any XS 101 crash course workshops available (you can ask attendees to film them, fix up docs, make materials available to others, etc. as part of the bargain, if you or someone else has time to teach. ;) --Mel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
