Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-17 Thread Sridhar Dhanapalan
On 17 April 2012 23:39, Martin Langhoff  wrote:
> Thanks for your notes.
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
>  wrote:
> But you have some economies of scale :-) do once per school vs do it
> on every machine in the school.
>
> The school XS can be shipped preconfigured, sidestepping the "local
> configuration" barrier.
>
> Thanks for those answers, they clarify a few things for me. I'm with
> you on the "show an XS icon in the network neighbourhood" part, but I
> don't see the "configure XMPP server on _every_ XO" as a good
> tradeoff, if I can prep an XS once (maybe in a central location).
>
> It's relatively easy to prep an XS + switch + APs + cat 5 cabling,
> label all the RJ-45 connectors, and ship it all in a big box. The
> hardest part is guessing the cat 5 lengths right ;-) -- much better to
> ship a crimping tool, cable, RJ-45s.

Our deployment methodology appears to be different from the others
I've seen in other countries. We are trying to scale *down*, not up. I
have a rule here that no technology is introduced unless it can be
deployed and managed by a non-technical person with minimal training.
Shipping pre-configured servers and other infrastructure builds a
dependency that will cause problems later down the track, and creates
a burden on us.

We generally do not have any support and only begrudging permission
from education departments. We are working around this by
building/configuring the technology so that the teachers and
communities can totally own the deployment for themselves.
Unfortunately the XS in its current state does not allow for this.

Sridhar
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-17 Thread Martin Langhoff
Thanks for your notes.

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
 wrote:
> Ideally, I think we'd want to have the servers be auto-detected on the
> network and available to select by the XO. Ideas to implement this
> include making them show in the Neighbourhood View and a selector in
> the Network CP applet.

Significant programming investment there...

>>> Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the
>>> Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their
>>> classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way.
>>
>> How do kids know what domain name to put in there? Isn't it a complex
>> and error-prone step?
>
> Typing an IP address into the client is far less complicated than
> setting up and maintaining an XS server.

But you have some economies of scale :-) do once per school vs do it
on every machine in the school.

The school XS can be shipped preconfigured, sidestepping the "local
configuration" barrier.

Thanks for those answers, they clarify a few things for me. I'm with
you on the "show an XS icon in the network neighbourhood" part, but I
don't see the "configure XMPP server on _every_ XO" as a good
tradeoff, if I can prep an XS once (maybe in a central location).

It's relatively easy to prep an XS + switch + APs + cat 5 cabling,
label all the RJ-45 connectors, and ship it all in a big box. The
hardest part is guessing the cat 5 lengths right ;-) -- much better to
ship a crimping tool, cable, RJ-45s.





m
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-16 Thread Sridhar Dhanapalan
On 14 April 2012 01:37, Martin Langhoff  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:28 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
>  wrote:
>> appliance runs nothing more than ejabberd. There's no moodle, dhcp,
>> dns or other services.
>
> How does the appliance get a domain name?

IP addresses will suffice to begin with.

Ideally, I think we'd want to have the servers be auto-detected on the
network and available to select by the XO. Ideas to implement this
include making them show in the Neighbourhood View and a selector in
the Network CP applet.

>> Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the
>> Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their
>> classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way.
>
> How do kids know what domain name to put in there? Isn't it a complex
> and error-prone step?

Typing an IP address into the client is far less complicated than
setting up and maintaining an XS server.

Sridhar
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-14 Thread David Leeming
I am just about to go to Oksapmin in the remotest highlands of PNG, where
there will never be road access, as nature surrounds it with her finest such
as the Strickland Gorge. The only access is a 5 day trek or a single engine
plane (landing on a one-way strip sloping with 9000 mountain on one end).
People only have access to newspapers several days late, there is no free to
air TV, no power, and of course school libraries are non-existent partly
because they can never be sustainably stocked with having to be flown in. In
a nutshell, a very information poor area.

Thus the school servers are seen as a highlight of the programme. Even
before the XOs are being used in class in a properly focused way, the
teachers themselves, who are also almost complete beginners with computers,
point out the early gains in terms of early-age students learning
information literacy skills by searching through the resources on the
server. This is a selling point (badly needed as there is such weak support
from the education authorities and their donor partners) that is obvious to
everyone, i.e. the highly efficient means of enriching the educational with
resources. 

I agree with Sridhar that with the skill sets available in these remote
schools, it is simply not an option to train them and support them in Moodle
administration and so on, but there are some basic functions that the
teachers can use and are very useful, such as the upload facility. I was
just training some teachers to prepare worksheets for students (mostly using
Write but also Joke Machine and other formats) and upload them to a folder
where the students can access it in class. This is so simple and obviously
useful, saving time, engaging the students, and allowing teachers to work
more on one to one basis, that it makes a great introduction to lesson
planning. Not to mention the productivity gains saving time writing and
copying from the blackboard, as they have no way to provide paper worksheets
regularly.

We are also now training teachers to access the OLPC-AU training resources
offline, via the server. The excellent XO-Cert Manual can be browsed with
all the instructional videos and examples of lesson plans, etc, from a
teacher's XO. The mobile network there is only just workable for Internet at
2kbps and the teachers can't afford to view videos online even if possible.
So the server makes it possible to provide a self learning resources - which
w support with an initial workshop. At a later date w hope some of the
teachers can do the guided online XO-Cert and XO-Expert courses, and we will
localise them for PNG. Thanks Sridhar, Tracy and team!!! [Note - to do this,
we had to figured out how to install offline all the codecs needed for
Jukebox to play FLV, etc]

So the XS is really a highlight for us. We do use Moodle but only to provide
links to the 40GB or so of mainly OERs, which are mainly accessed in html
(Schools Wikipedia, UNESCO ASEAN SchoolNet resources, regional organisation
resources, Khan Academy videos, PNG teacher curriculum documentation,
diverse local stuff, e-books collections). Those are just links to /library
folders using aliases, added as resources on the Moodle home page. We then
add a couple of folders and set up the system so teacher's XOs can upload
and "edit files" and students just browse and download, plus another for
students to upload. We don't bother anymore with class segregation because
even with a maximum of 250 XOs potentially connecting to the server, the
server use is still not very intensive. We just set up the systems, which
run on solar power, and give some basic trouble shooting training mainly on
rebooting the server and checking the access points are on. The small
e-boxes that we use (15W, 1-2GB RAM, with BIOS set to auto power up in case
of power outage), seem to be very robust as well as the XS itself. In one
school we returned after 18 months to find it all working with the server
having run almost continuously 24/7 throughout that time with no problems.
The maintenance strategy would be - make it as reliable and simple as
possible. If it doesn't work, return it to someone who can fix it, and sorry
the "school library" will be closed for a couple of weeks. 

The only other feature we use is to enable the news and announcements so
teachers can discuss things with each other and announce to students.

It still needs someone to add new roles for XOs when the teachers are
transferred and so on, but it is a great initial compromise.

David Leeming
Solomon Islands Rural Link 
P.O.Box 652 Honiara, Solomon Islands
+677 7476396 (m) +677 24419 (h)
www.rurallink.com.sb


-Original Message-
From: server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org
[mailto:server-devel-boun...@lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Sridhar
Dhanapalan
Sent: Thursday, 12 April 2012 1:58 p.m.
To: Martin Langhoff
Cc: George Hunt; XS Devel
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardw

Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-13 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:28 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
 wrote:
> appliance runs nothing more than ejabberd. There's no moodle, dhcp,
> dns or other services.

How does the appliance get a domain name?

> Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the
> Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their
> classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way.

How do kids know what domain name to put in there? Isn't it a complex
and error-prone step?

cheers,


m
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 mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-12 Thread Sridhar Dhanapalan
On 12 April 2012 15:27, Martin Langhoff  wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
>  wrote:
>> Why is it such a bad idea?
>>
>> The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other
>> unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server.
>
> You want to run a network of federated XMPP servers? It's madness.
>
> Rather, it's not madness, but until demonstrated/automated otherwise
> it's a high-maintenance-per-classroom setup. And the federated XMPP
> stuff isn't widely used ==> widely tested.
>
> We get obvious and clear bugs in parts of the XMPP implementation that
> are used (or should be used) _everywhere_. And this is on what is
> reportedly the best XMPP implementation available. My appetite for
> putting an exotic feature into use in the _middle_ of a deployment
> plan is... just not there.
>
> In any case, what's the upside of one-XS-per-classroom? Cost,
> administration, reliance on federated-XMPP all seem downsides/risks to
> me.

Not federated - far simpler than that.

The current XS requires administration - sysadmin admin to set up and
moodle admin to manage registrations and set up segregation. This is
not workable in our school environments, and hence we have stopped
using XS schoolservers.

The scenario that I'm thinking of is that each teacher (who has no
technical skill whatsoever) receives an XS plug-and-play appliance,
consisting of an XO with XS software installed. All the teacher has to
do is to turn on the machine and connect it to the network. The
appliance runs nothing more than ejabberd. There's no moodle, dhcp,
dns or other services.

Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the
Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their
classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way.

I think this could be created with relatively little effort, as all we
are doing is scaling back an XS. There is no additional configuration
required such as federation.

We have ideas to extend this scenario. For instance, the appliances
could advertise themselves on the network, and then the children need
only click on the server they want to be on. The teacher could plug a
USB drive with content into the appliance, and have the children
download exercises and upload homework.

As I mentioned, this is just an idea right now.

Sridhar
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-12 Thread rihowa...@gmail.com


The OpenRD  has an internal sata HDD bay ad has 2 ethernet ports. The one I 
have has been on continuously for a few years with no problems.

The TonidoPlug2 has an internal sata HDD bay and 1 ethernet port and 1 
wireless.  I have not used a TonidoPlug2 but am tempted to purchase one because 
of the price point.  It uses a Marvell Armada 310 SOC.

On Apr 12, 2012, at 6:27 AM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:24 AM, Peter Robinson  wrote:
>> think the Trimslice H is going to one of the best models as you can
>> put a decent HDD in there and have a self contained unit, although I
>> would love a dual eth option.
> 
> It has a HDD bay! Yay! Wanna!
> 
> 
> 
> 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

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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-12 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:24 AM, Peter Robinson  wrote:
> think the Trimslice H is going to one of the best models as you can
> put a decent HDD in there and have a self contained unit, although I
> would love a dual eth option.

It has a HDD bay! Yay! Wanna!



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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-12 Thread Peter Robinson
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:58 PM, rihowa...@gmail.com
 wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 10, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
>>> I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
>>> pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market for
>>> another toy.
>>
>> If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
>> ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
>> "Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.
>>
>> Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
>> and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).
>
> The Kirkwood based systems such plug computers can boot both the kernel and 
> OS from a hard
> drive. I have been talking with one of he Fedora ARM team about this and am 
> going
> to send them an email about what is involved and some other things about the 
> kirkwood based devices.

I'm one of the Fedora ARM people so feel free to ask here, there's a
lot of work going on to simplify the process of creating images, there
should be some more stuff coming soon for creation of images. I would
suggest looking at ARMv7 devices as they tend to have more CPU power
and memory which would be better for the server stuff. Personally I
think the Trimslice H is going to one of the best models as you can
put a decent HDD in there and have a self contained unit, although I
would love a dual eth option.

Peter

[1] http://trimslice.com/web/models
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
 wrote:
> Why is it such a bad idea?
>
> The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other
> unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server.

You want to run a network of federated XMPP servers? It's madness.

Rather, it's not madness, but until demonstrated/automated otherwise
it's a high-maintenance-per-classroom setup. And the federated XMPP
stuff isn't widely used ==> widely tested.

We get obvious and clear bugs in parts of the XMPP implementation that
are used (or should be used) _everywhere_. And this is on what is
reportedly the best XMPP implementation available. My appetite for
putting an exotic feature into use in the _middle_ of a deployment
plan is... just not there.

In any case, what's the upside of one-XS-per-classroom? Cost,
administration, reliance on federated-XMPP all seem downsides/risks to
me.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
 - ask interesting questions
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Sridhar Dhanapalan
On 11 April 2012 22:59, Martin Langhoff  wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:29 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
>> I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are
>> thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that
>> XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate.

It's just an idea for us. We haven't actioned anything.

> One XS per classroom is a _bad_ idea for other reasons. One AP per
> classroom is a good idea, OTOH, and an XO-1.75 can probably handle a
> mid-sized school OK.

Why is it such a bad idea?

The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other
unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server.

Cheers,
Sridhar
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread rihowa...@gmail.com


On Apr 10, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
>> I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
>> pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market for
>> another toy.
> 
> If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
> ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
> "Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.
> 
> Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
> and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).

The Kirkwood based systems such plug computers can boot both the kernel and OS 
from a hard 
drive. I have been talking with one of he Fedora ARM team about this and am 
going 
to send them an email about what is involved and some other things about the 
kirkwood based devices.

> cheers,
> 
> 
> m
> -- 
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:29 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
> When I took the picture in the following url, I was focusing on what it
> would take to run off of 12V deep cycle battery:
>
> http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/xs-0-7-running-on-xo-1-5/

That's very cool!

> I'm concerned with packaging,  and physical robustness in a real school
> setting.  Maybe we could get someone with ME skills to dream up a cheap
> package for all the accessory items.

I can't speak much about ME, but I can suggest looking at some TP-LINK
and "Sapido" branded small APs that take USB power. You can have a
USB-powered HDD as well, and you still have a free USB port on the XO.

> At the fall 2011 summit, there was a general call for a turnkey XS that
> "just worked".  If we could solve the form factor problem, the XO1.75 might
> be a good solution.

I'm exploring that path with a variant of the Dreamplug, but that
won't happen overnight.

> I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are
> thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that
> XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate.

One XS per classroom is a _bad_ idea for other reasons. One AP per
classroom is a good idea, OTOH, and an XO-1.75 can probably handle a
mid-sized school OK.

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Peter Robinson
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington  wrote:
>> Why not an XO-1.75 ?
>
> Good point. And XO + AP + HDD would work fantastic.
>
> George, how many users per server? If <100, an XO-1.75 will do ok.
> Want to sign up for the Contributors Programme (search in the wiki for
> the URL).
>
> XO-1.75, Plug or Trimslice will do fine with a recent Fedora for ARM
> (from the upcoming F17 series) -- we just need to recompile the XS
> specific packages. Most of them will just work. AFAIK, ejabberd and
> xs-config will need some work, and I can help you with those.

It might be worthwhile seeing what we can get into mainline Fedora for
the XS releases so that as the new RHEL releases come along it will
just work as well as be usable on ARM platforms.

Peter
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington  wrote:
> Why not an XO-1.75 ?

Good point. And XO + AP + HDD would work fantastic.

George, how many users per server? If <100, an XO-1.75 will do ok.
Want to sign up for the Contributors Programme (search in the wiki for
the URL).

XO-1.75, Plug or Trimslice will do fine with a recent Fedora for ARM
(from the upcoming F17 series) -- we just need to recompile the XS
specific packages. Most of them will just work. AFAIK, ejabberd and
xs-config will need some work, and I can help you with those.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread Abhishek Singh
On 04/11/2012 04:52 PM, James Cameron wrote:
> G'day George,
>
> The trouble with a full mechanical engineering treatment of this is that
> there's no telling what size each of the parts will be.
>
> For something similar I used a kitchen vegetable rack.  This is a
> plastic shelf, with feet, with a square grid pattern.  It is often
> used for potatos and onions in food storage here, since these two
> vegetables are best stored without light.
>
> The grid pattern allows equipment to be anchored using cable ties.  It
> also has good airflow.  Equipment can be anchored above and below the
> floor of the rack.  Cables can be threaded through widened holes.
>
> You may be able to simplify your design a bit:
>
> 1.  move from a USB HDD to a fast high spec SD card, saves one port,
> enough saving to avoid the USB hub and DC/DC inverter,
>
> 2.  locate a USB hub that takes a 12V input,
>
> 3.  decide on only one Ethernet interface.
>
> A minor thing; I would not have the input USB cable beyond the
> baseboard.  It may be hit.
>
We have been using MSI Windbox DE-220 at Nepal and it is performing good
at deployment sites.

-- 
Abhishek Singh
System Engineer
Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal
साझा शिक्षा ई-पाटी
http://www.olenepal.org
Tel: +977-1-551 ext. 102




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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread James Cameron
G'day George,

The trouble with a full mechanical engineering treatment of this is that
there's no telling what size each of the parts will be.

For something similar I used a kitchen vegetable rack.  This is a
plastic shelf, with feet, with a square grid pattern.  It is often
used for potatos and onions in food storage here, since these two
vegetables are best stored without light.

The grid pattern allows equipment to be anchored using cable ties.  It
also has good airflow.  Equipment can be anchored above and below the
floor of the rack.  Cables can be threaded through widened holes.

You may be able to simplify your design a bit:

1.  move from a USB HDD to a fast high spec SD card, saves one port,
enough saving to avoid the USB hub and DC/DC inverter,

2.  locate a USB hub that takes a 12V input,

3.  decide on only one Ethernet interface.

A minor thing; I would not have the input USB cable beyond the
baseboard.  It may be hit.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-11 Thread George Hunt
When I took the picture in the following url, I was focusing on what it
would take to run off of 12V deep cycle battery:

http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/xs-0-7-running-on-xo-1-5/

I'm concerned with packaging,  and physical robustness in a real school
setting.  Maybe we could get someone with ME skills to dream up a cheap
package for all the accessory items.

We probably don't need the DC to DC inverter and the usb hub.  But then we
don't have an extra port for sneaker-net, or an adult sized usb keyboard.

At the fall 2011 summit, there was a general call for a turnkey XS that
"just worked".  If we could solve the form factor problem, the XO1.75 might
be a good solution.

I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are
thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that
XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate.

George

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:55 PM, John Watlington  wrote:

>
> Why not an XO-1.75 ?
>
> On Apr 10, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt 
> wrote:
> >> I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would
> be
> >> pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the
> market for
> >> another toy.
> >
> > If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
> > ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
> > "Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.
> >
> > Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
> > and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> >
> > m
> > --
> >  martin.langh...@gmail.com
> >  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
> >  - ask interesting questions
> >  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
> >  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
> > ___
> > Server-devel mailing list
> > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
> >
>
>
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-10 Thread John Watlington

Why not an XO-1.75 ?

On Apr 10, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
>> I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
>> pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market for
>> another toy.
> 
> If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
> ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
> "Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.
> 
> Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
> and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> m
> -- 
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
> ___
> Server-devel mailing list
> Server-devel@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
> 

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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-10 Thread George Hunt
I'd love to be involved in getting an arm server going.  I have a
dreamplug.  Which distro are you thinking would be a good base?

What sort of hitches? If there's discussion in the archives, I'll do
reading to get up to speed.  I might help if I knew when or who.

George

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Martin Langhoff
wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
> > I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
> > pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market
> for
> > another toy.
>
> If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
> ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
> "Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.
>
> Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
> and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).
>
> cheers,
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>
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Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-10 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:03 AM, George Hunt  wrote:
> I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
> pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market for
> another toy.

If you have time towork with us through some hitches, I'd recommend an
ARM server. At this stage I'd say one of the Marvell/Globalscale
"Plug" servers (dreamplug for example), or a trimslice.

Either option will need a combination of the OS on internal SD/eMMC
and the storage on an ext HDD (via USB probably).

cheers,


m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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[Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

2012-04-01 Thread George Hunt
Hi everyone,

I left my fitpc2 and msi servers in the Philippines, hoping they would be
pressed into service in a classroom situation.  So now I'm in the market
for another toy.

I remember Sameer saying somewhere in the email compost that he had found
new interesting server hardware, but a google search of my email heap was
not successful.

Does anyone have proposals for hardware that fills the XS requirements on
the low power end of the spectrum?

I've blogged about  my school server experiences at
http://schoolserver.wordpress.com.

George
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