Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
On Tue, 2013-08-06 at 08:23 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: 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. yup, good catch. Got a copy of that also? 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. 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 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
Thank you Tony, I'll see if I can intergrade this into the XSCE as a
optional module. More below.
On Fri, 2013-08-02 at 12:02 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:
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.
Think the attachment got scrubbed in digest mode. Can you reply to this
tread with the contents of 20-xc-generic script please?
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.
Think a sshd restart might suffice.
This enables login from an XO or other PC via ssh admin@schoolserver for
system administration.
That is part of the stock XSCE build.
The below needs the 20-xc-generic file to be present on the XS correct?
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
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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
On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Tony Anderson t...@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 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. Good point. There is a cost to Moodle if it is the landing page, because it eats up CPU cycles for PHP and postgres. In fact, when load testing XS 0.6 on the XO-1 (pages 137-148 http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/46/Testing_the_OLPC_School_Server_Benjamin_Tran_SFSU.pdf), it was the postgres cycles and swap that killed it! We could hardly get past 20 simultaneous or so. The landing page should be something less heavier than Moodle, unless of course you have hefty servers and don't care of the hits that postgres+PHP will bring. For instance, running Pathagar (python-django) on a sqlite backend on a SheevaPlug took hits upto about 500 simultaneous users (spread using a gaussian distribution over 60 seconds) before it started to fail. I suspect a XO-1 running Pathagar will outperform a XO-1 running Moodle. cheers, Sameer 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
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 75, Issue 25
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? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
