from:"Sebastian Dziallas"

We mostly discussed features and proposals, as well as testing (Mel
sent another email on that already).

Minutes: 
http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.minutes.20100621_1502.html
Log: http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.log.20100621_1502.html

--Sebastian
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[SoaS] SoaS Meeting today at 1900 UTC in #sugar-meeting.

See you there.

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Re: [SoaS] [Testing] Tested Sugar on a Stick on HP Mini 311

[CC'ing the SoaS list, too]

Hi Tabitha!

On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Tabitha Roder  wrote:
> We tried out Sugar on a Stick on an HP Mini 311 today. Sadly the the
> Broadcom BCM4312 wireless doesn't work. This chipset seems to be supported
> but requires a binary firmware which is not normally distributed. I got it
> going in ubuntu lucid with some hair pulling (the restricted driver thing
> didn't work, had to do stuff manually), but I was unable to get it working
> in SoaS. I installed the correct firmware in /lib/firmware and when I
> modprobe b43, the module loads, but it doesn't create an wlan0 interface. I
> don't get any obvious errors either.
>
> I'll try again with regular fedora later.
>
> I'm not sure what can be done here. The firmware is available from the
> openwrt project, but it's not clear under what license it can be
> redistributed. Given that ubuntu and debian distribute an installer package
> (which downloads from openwrt) and the fedora instructions at
> http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 suggest manually downloading
> the firmware from openwrt, I'm guessing SugarLabs won't be distributing the
> firmware any time soon :-(

I think you're right. The official broadcom driver seems to be
non-free and is (at least for Fedora) not available in official
repositories. It has, however, found its way into RPM Fusion, which
provides such 
packages:http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/updates/13/i386/repoview/kmod-wl.html

In addition to the b43-fwcutter package mentioned at the link above
for Fedora, there's also a new one called b43-openfwwf available,
which is described as an "Open firmware for some Broadcom 43xx series
WLAN chips". I think we're already including this in SoaS, though, so
that your specific wifi chipset is probably not yet supported.

> Sugar displayed and functioned as expected in other respects.

I'm glad to hear that! Thanks for giving it a try! :)

--Sebastian

> Tabitha
>
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Re: [SoaS] Localized builds

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Raffael Reichelt
 wrote:
> 2010/6/19 Peter Robinson :
>> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Raffael Reichelt
>>  wrote:
>>> 2010/6/19 Peter Robinson :
> 2010/6/19 Peter Robinson :
>> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Raffael Reichelt
>>  wrote:
>>> Talking with parents and teachers about soas I realized it is
>>> mandatory to provide localized builds of soas in order to make it
>>> attractive for them to give it to their children. This localized
>>> builds should be easily available for download for example on
>>> localized pages. I am glad to volunteer for the german part. Can
>>> someone explain me how to setup this page and where to place the
>>> localized build for download?
>>
>> All the requirements to run a localized build are already present in
>> SoaS, there just needs to be an option to actually select the
>> language/keyboard on firstboot. Maybe its an option to provide when
>> you select the colour/name. I know there's been discussion on adding
>> an option to select a keyboard, adding the option to that to select
>> language and even timezone shouldn't be too hard.
>
> I know - but supporting non-it-persons with their computers I do know
> too it is much too difficult for them. Most of te parents I know are
> happy if the computer and the internet connection is working. Even
> they are interested in providing a learning plattform to their
> children  they do not really know how to change something. In fact I
> expect them to prefere the boot-helper/usbstick scenario.

 You've missed my point entirely. If they can't select from 3 drop down
 boxes their own language, keyboard layout and timezone there's a
 problem that separate images is not going to fix because they'll have
 problems working out how to make the image boot in the first place. A
 Windows or OSX setup expects you to be able to do this, even a new
 digital camera expects you to be able to select your language and
 timezone.

 Peter

 BTW Please reply from the bottom, it makes the replies easier to read
 in the context.
>>>
>>> This way? Sorry.
>>
>> Perfect :-)
>>
>>> Now I guess I  got you but as far as I can see there is no choice at
>>> the moment - would it be possible to include?
>>
>> Include the option to select the keyboard/locale/timezone? I'd love
>> to, there's been a lot of discussion about it over the time but i'm
>> not sure there was ever a consensus as to the best way to do it. We
>> have considered in the past using the Fedora firstboot util but it
>> adds extra stuff we don't really need.
>>
>> Peter
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>>
>
> May I then ask to open up again this discussion?  Just to try it for
> myself: how can I include the firstboot util in the Kickstart files?
> Just add firstboot to the packages list?

I was looking into using firstboot one or two release cycles ago.
However, it turned out that the language selection ability had been
removed from it in more recent versions
(https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507436).

I know that Walter had been working on implementing something like
this on the screen where you enter your name when you log into Sugar
for the first time. There's still a feature page out there for this
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Feature_intro_language_keyboard_options).

--Sebastian

> Raffael
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Re: [SoaS] Boot Splash-Screen

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Raffael Reichelt
 wrote:
> 2010/6/21 James Cameron :
>> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 08:12:08AM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
>>> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Raffael Reichelt
>>>  wrote:
>>> > I understood, we are now an official Fedora-Spin, but should our
>>> > bootscreen not be at least sugarized? I think I remember strawberry
>>> > booted with a nice sugarlabs logo.
>>>
>>> It is sugarized. For the SoaS boot we have a boot screen not
>>> dissimilar to the OLPC one. The difference is that we display a sugar
>>> logo at the beginning.
>>
>> Current OLPC builds display a "Sugarlabs" and a "Fedora remix" logo.
>>
>> --
>> James Cameron
>> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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>>
>
> I exactely followed Sebastians instructions for building an image from
> fedora hosted git - there is only a fedora-pre-boot screen (automatic
> Boot in 10 seconds) followed by a fedora14 progress bar on a black
> screen.

It sounds like what Raffael is talking about is the screen before the
plymouth boot screen comes up. It is indeed true that this syslinux
screen is currently Fedora branded.

Should we evaluate modifying that (I'm thinking of the sugar-logos
package) and probably put that through the feature process? Is there
anybody who'd be interested in taking this?

--Sebastian

> I just tried booting with hardware in my office - it is the same.
>
> What did I do wrong now? are there specific requirements to
> video/display to show it?
>
> Raffael
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Re: [SoaS] [PATCH] customization-guide : kickstart from the fedora13 branch

2010-06-19 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Sebastian Dziallas  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> thanks a lot for your patches: they are really appreciated! I like the
> changes; they help to keep the docs updated for users of F13.
>
> I've just committed them to the GIT repository
> (http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas-docs/repos/mainline/commits/abbe8c114e3420555b409e64090b75f1453953a4).

Before I forget, the changes should go live here soon (it might take a
day or so until they appear for you, because the mirrors need to
sync): http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/docs/customization-guide/

--Sebastian

> Thanks again! :)
> --Sebastian
>
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 12:51 AM, tom-ipp  wrote:
>> Hello one more time,
>> as a user of the guide, it wasn't clear for me if I was building a soas
>> from rawhide or from F13.
>> To clarify, I add the reference to git checkout F-13 and moved the not
>> so clear note after the reference to git clone.
>> The patch :
>>
>> diff --git a/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml b/Customization
>> Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
>> index 25b2ad6..68d01ac 100644
>> --- a/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
>> +++ b/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
>> @@ -58,14 +58,8 @@
>>                        
>>                
>>                
>> -                       The production of Sugar on a Stick usually takes 
>> place by providing
>> the build tool with a kind of configuration file. This file is called
>> kickstart file. We are going to start from the
>> currently existing files, which are available in Fedora's GIT
>> repositories, since the upcoming Sugar on a Stick version as a spin will
>> be part of Fedora's engineering process.
>> +                       The production of Sugar on a Stick usually takes 
>> place by providing
>> the build tool with a kind of configuration file. This file is called
>> kickstart file. We are going to start from the
>> currently existing files, which are available in Fedora's GIT
>> repositories, since Sugar on a Stick v3 "Mirabelle" as a spin is part of
>> Fedora's engineering process.
>>                
>> -               
>> -                       Note
>> -                       
>> -                               Make sure to pull the appropriate branch 
>> from GIT if you want to
>> build against one of the upcoming stable releases. Otherwise, you will
>> checkout the latest moving contents from the repository.
>> -                       
>> -               
>>                
>>                        
>>                        
>> @@ -73,6 +67,16 @@
>>                        
>>                        
>>                
>> +               
>> +                       Note
>> +                       
>> +                               Make sure to pull the appropriate branch 
>> from GIT if you want to
>> build against one of the stable releases. Otherwise, you will checkout
>> the latest moving contents from the repository.
>> +                       
>> +                       
>> +                               To build against the stable version fedora 
>> 13 :
>> +                               git checkout 
>> F-13
>> +                       
>> +               
>>                
>>                        You have taken the first step! You have downloaded 
>> all the required
>> components and are now ready to learn how to customize Sugar on a Stick
>> for your own purposes in the next chapter.
>>                
>>
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>>
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Re: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Meeting Minutes (2010/06/14)

2010-06-19 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Sebastian Dziallas  wrote:
> Thanks everybody for attending the SoaS meeting today. There are a
> couple of things we discussed, as outlined in the minutes here [1].
> I'm going to sum the points up quickly here, too.
>
> * The attendees voted for SoaS v.4 to be named Mangolassi. After
> consideration, it was selected from a remaining list of four names
> Lilikoi, Jambul, Mangolassi and Sequoyah. Mangolassi is therewith the
> recommended codename for v.4. However, we're looking forward to
> hearing thoughts from both the Marketing and Sugar on a Stick lists.
> We acknowledged that the chosen name can be reconsidered depending on
> feedback. The vote during the meeting was unanimous, though.

I'd like to point out that this was an *open* process. We called out
for naming suggestions on-list and moved these into a wiki table for a
better overview later on. The choice we made was a deliberate one.

--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] [PATCH] customization-guide : kickstart from the fedora13 branch

2010-06-19 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi,

thanks a lot for your patches: they are really appreciated! I like the
changes; they help to keep the docs updated for users of F13.

I've just committed them to the GIT repository
(http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas-docs/repos/mainline/commits/abbe8c114e3420555b409e64090b75f1453953a4).

Thanks again! :)
--Sebastian

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 12:51 AM, tom-ipp  wrote:
> Hello one more time,
> as a user of the guide, it wasn't clear for me if I was building a soas
> from rawhide or from F13.
> To clarify, I add the reference to git checkout F-13 and moved the not
> so clear note after the reference to git clone.
> The patch :
>
> diff --git a/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml b/Customization
> Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
> index 25b2ad6..68d01ac 100644
> --- a/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
> +++ b/Customization Guide/en-US/Preparation.xml
> @@ -58,14 +58,8 @@
>                        
>                
>                
> -                       The production of Sugar on a Stick usually takes 
> place by providing
> the build tool with a kind of configuration file. This file is called
> kickstart file. We are going to start from the
> currently existing files, which are available in Fedora's GIT
> repositories, since the upcoming Sugar on a Stick version as a spin will
> be part of Fedora's engineering process.
> +                       The production of Sugar on a Stick usually takes 
> place by providing
> the build tool with a kind of configuration file. This file is called
> kickstart file. We are going to start from the
> currently existing files, which are available in Fedora's GIT
> repositories, since Sugar on a Stick v3 "Mirabelle" as a spin is part of
> Fedora's engineering process.
>                
> -               
> -                       Note
> -                       
> -                               Make sure to pull the appropriate branch from 
> GIT if you want to
> build against one of the upcoming stable releases. Otherwise, you will
> checkout the latest moving contents from the repository.
> -                       
> -               
>                
>                        
>                        
> @@ -73,6 +67,16 @@
>                        
>                        
>                
> +               
> +                       Note
> +                       
> +                               Make sure to pull the appropriate branch from 
> GIT if you want to
> build against one of the stable releases. Otherwise, you will checkout
> the latest moving contents from the repository.
> +                       
> +                       
> +                               To build against the stable version fedora 13 
> :
> +                               git checkout 
> F-13
> +                       
> +               
>                
>                        You have taken the first step! You have downloaded all 
> the required
> components and are now ready to learn how to customize Sugar on a Stick
> for your own purposes in the next chapter.
>                
>
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Re: [SoaS] [Marketing] Fwd: next sf-olpc meeting

2010-06-16 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 2:20 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> FYI. We'll probably have Al at our next OLPC-SF meeting.

This is awesome - thanks a lot for forwarding it! Actually, I think
it's really impressive that we're being contacted about that. It looks
like this is under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If I recall
correctly, the non-commercial part was what hit us badly in the time
of the Blueberry launch preparations for a good chunk of our content,
though.

--Sebastian

> cheers,
> Sameer
>
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, Information Systems
> Director, Campus Business Solutions
> San Francisco State University
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
> http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
> http://is.sfsu.edu/
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Al Sweigart 
> Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 9:01 PM
> Subject: Fwd: next sf-olpc meeting
> To: sv3...@gmail.com
>
>
> Hello Sameer,
>
> I'd like to make my kid's book on Python programming (Invent Your Own
> Computer Games with Python) available as part of the Sugar on a Stick
> distribution. Right now the book is in HTML and PDF format. The PDF is
> about 4.5 mb and the HTML is 84 MB (but only 1 MB is actual HTML, the
> rest are images.)
>
> The book's website (http://inventwithpython.com) contains some nice
> features such as a diff tool and tracing program. I could modify them
> to be placed on Sugar on a Stick as well.
>
> I've downloaded the Sugar on a Stick iso to familiarize myself with
> it. I'll be checking the website for information on how I can include
> this book with the project.
>
> The book is also for sale on Amazon, and has over a dozen reviews:
> http://www.amazon.com/Invent-Your-Computer-Games-Python/dp/0982106017/
>
> -Al
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[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Meeting Minutes (2010/06/14)

2010-06-14 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Thanks everybody for attending the SoaS meeting today. There are a
couple of things we discussed, as outlined in the minutes here [1].
I'm going to sum the points up quickly here, too.

* The attendees voted for SoaS v.4 to be named Mangolassi. After
consideration, it was selected from a remaining list of four names
Lilikoi, Jambul, Mangolassi and Sequoyah. Mangolassi is therewith the
recommended codename for v.4. However, we're looking forward to
hearing thoughts from both the Marketing and Sugar on a Stick lists.
We acknowledged that the chosen name can be reconsidered depending on
feedback. The vote during the meeting was unanimous, though.

* The Revised Browse Page Feature (owner: Tom) [2] will be refined
until next week's meeting as part of the effort to integrate the SCK's
features.

* The Sugar 0.90 Feature (owner: Peter) [3] has been approved by the
release team.

* As part of the development test cycle discussion, Mel raised the
following points:

   (1) An agreed-upon image each week for testers to attack (the
daily build on $datetime of each week, for instance)
   (2) An agreed-upon set of test cases for them to execute (iow,
the "test plan" thing we haven't had before)
   (3) An agreed-upon place and format for the results from
running those test cases to be reported to
   (4) An agreed-upon $datetime each week by which all test
results for that week will be submitted - so that the development team
has a chance to look at those results and revise the build before the
next test image goes out.

* Peter will discuss the inclusion of maintained patches & scripts
into SoaS with Martin.

* Mel requested that people continue to talk and think about what they
want to do with their SoaS time between now and our v4 release date in
October on the soas list - and Planet Sugar Labs.

* Communication to activity developers and other parts of SL was
raised by John for discussion.

Thanks again everyone for attending!

--Sebastian

[1] http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.minutes.20100614_1502.html
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Revised_Browse_default-bookmarks.html
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Sugar_0.90
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[SoaS] Attention Activity Developers: SoaS Activity Inclusion Criteria

2010-06-07 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

at today's SoaS meeting [1], we agreed on applying the SoaS Activity
Inclusion Criteria [2] as outlined in the wiki to the activity
selection for the upcoming release of SoaS v.4. We'd like to encourage
you to work towards meeting these goals and to submit your proposals
for activities and further features following the feature process [3]
according to the release schedule [4]. The final deadline to have
features *approved* (please submit your proposals well in advance) is
July 27.

We're especially lead to this step to ensure to continued stability of
future Sugar on a Stick releases and look forward to working with you!
Please email the SoaS list or our release team with any concerns.

--Sebastian Dziallas

[1] http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.minutes.20100607_1510.html
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/SoaS_Activity_Criteria
[3] 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_release_process#Feature_process
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick#Release_schedule
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[SoaS] v4 Planning Meeting Minutes & Notes

2010-06-07 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Thanks everybody for joining this meeting and making it so productive!

--Sebastian

Here are the logs:

* logs: http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.log.20100607_1510.html
* minutes: 
http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.minutes.20100607_1510.html

A couple of things have been decided:

* naming & color decision got moved to another meeting, possibly
marketing one. 'cloudberry' might be used once more cloud-features are
implemented. 'alphonso' was not exactly well received on-list.
* the v.4 release schedule
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick#Release_schedule) has
been APPROVED
* the feature process for v.4
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_release_process#Feature_process)
has been APPROVED -- discussions about giving enabling marketing to
prioritize features will continue
** decision method: the release team (mchua, pbrobinson and sdziallas)
will discuss feature proposals at weekly meetings and announce
decisions to the lists
* the activity inclusion criteria
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/SoaS_Activity_Criteria) has been
APPROVED -- further information will be sent out
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Re: [SoaS] PDF of proposed new contents of SugarCreationKit DVD - (A rearrangement of content +)

2010-06-06 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

I'm sorry to look like the bad cop here. I'm really not! :)

Please do not call this Sugar on a Stick or SoaS until it has gone
through the feature process we're currently working on. It helps
everybody to prevent confusion in terms of what is supported and
belongs to which project. I see that you've already started writing up
a proposal -- thank you for doing so; that's awesome!

I'm certainly curious how this is going to evolve, though! Make sure
to meet with Peter -- I bet he has some ideas, too.

Looking forward to it,
--Sebastian

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Thomas C Gilliard
 wrote:
> I have a newer revision attached.
>
> Note the name change to SoasCreationKit
> (this is more accurate and avoids conflict with Sebastian's
> SugarCreationKit)
>
> Tom Gilliard
> satellit
>
> Walter Bender wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Thomas C Gilliard
>  wrote:
>
>
> John;
>
> Attached is a listing of the Contents and structure of the proposed new
> design for the SugarCreationKitDVD.
>
> I tried to incorporate the changes we discussed  on IRC today.
>
> Looking forward to your comments.
>
> Tom Gilliard
>
>
>
> There are some pretty decent pages in the wiki for Sugar activities,
> e.g, Activities/TurtleArt, which are more up to date than their FOSS
> manuals equivalents. Maybe it is worth including
> w.sl.o/go/Activities/* ?
>
> -walter
>
>
>
>                                             Soas Creation Kit 1.2
>                                                   Contents
>
>                                             (revised 06/05/2010)
>
> ASLOxo2 (140+ Sugar Activities)
>        Contains about 140.xo SugarActivity files from ASLO plus some extras
>                  These can be copied to a 12Gb USB and dragdropped into
> the sugar Journal to install them.
>        Activities IndexMirabell.ods
>                  Open Office Spreadsheet showing .xo File Compatibility with
> Mirabelle and earlier versions of Soas.
>                  Note: You can sort as it is a spreadsheet!
> Expert Install Methods
>        How to install to a 4GB USB using liveinst (ANACONDA) from SoaS.pdf
>        Use livecdisotodisk script to write a live USB.pdf
>        zyxliveinstaller Instructions.pdf
>        zyxliveinstaller0.2.41.noarch.rpm
>
> Graphic Installers
>        Liveusbcreator
>                  liveusbcreator3.9.1setup.exe  (windows)
>                  Liveusbcreator.pdf
>                  liveusbcreator screenshots.pdf
>                  liveusbcreator3.9.tar.bz2       (linux)
>        unetbootin
>                  unetbootinwindows471.exe
>                  unetbootinlinux471
>                  Unetbootin.pdf
>                  UnetbootinCommand_line.pdf  (Advanced)
>        How to create and use Live USB.pdf
> Older Soas Versions and Variations
>        How to Make a USB.pdf
>                  (How to make a usb windows/linux/Mac + Helper Boot Disks)
>        Working with Live USB's.pdf
>                  (ADVANCED) Variations of Live USB's and Install Methods
>        soas2blueberrydirectcleared3GB.pdf
>                  (Nonlive EXT3 file structured USB Image file, How to USE
> and How it was Made)
>        soas2blueberrydirectcleared3GB.img.xz
>        soas1strawberry.iso
>
>  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas1strawberry.iso
>                  380m
>                  (Burn this to a CD and Boot with it)
>        soas2blueberry.iso
>
>  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas2blueberry.iso
>                  380m
>                  (Burn this to a CD and Boot with it)
>        livecdisotodisk.sh
>        http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/livecdisotodisk.sh
>        21.k
>        (script used to write USB in linux)
>        soas1boot.iso
>                  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas1boot.iso
>                  8.4m
>                  (Use as CD to Boot strawberry v1 USB for older PC's that do
> not boot via USB)
>        soas2boot.iso
>                  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas2boot.iso
>                  14m
>                  (Use as CD to Boot Blueberry v2 USB for older PC'sthat do
> not boot via USB)
>        imagewritermac
>
>  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/imagewritermac
>                  6.8k
>                  (Intel Macuse to make a non persistent USB from an .iso
> file)
>        imagewriter
>                  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/imagewriter
>                  7.9k
>                  (use to make a non persistent USB from an .iso file)
>
> References and Floss Manuals
> (Important Manuals on how to use Sugar Applications and Features)
>        Browse.pdf
>        Chat.pdf
>        Collaboration.pdf
>        FunWithTheJournal.pdf
>        How to make your own custom iso file.pdf
>        (How this DVD was converted to an .iso file)
>        How To Sugarize a Program .pdf
>        (Instructions on how to make a program

[SoaS] Request Feature status for the Sugar-Creation-Kit DVD in the next Soas Spin.

I used a different email address before. This one should actually make
it to this list now.

--Sebastian

-- Forwarded message --
From: Sebastian Dziallas 
Date: Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [SoaS] Request Feature status for the Sugar-Creation-Kit
DVD in the next Soas Spin.
To: Sean DALY 
Cc: Development of live Sugar distributions
, Mel Chua 

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Sean DALY  wrote:
> Well, on the Sugar Labs side the Sugar Creation Kit as championed by
> yourself and John Tierney has been an excellent initiative to lower
> both the installation and unfamiliarity barriers.
>
> It seems to be more a question for Fedora which has its own rules and
> traditions relating to "official spin status".

There are indeed guidelines for the use of Fedora trademarks, which
are included in the Mirabelle image and hence (but IANAL) have to be
adhered.

Please do understand that we're working on outlining a feature process
right now through this will go once we've discussed it (first the
process, then this proposal).

--Sebastian

> Sean
>
> On Friday, June 4, 2010, Thomas C Gilliard  wrote:
>> I am requesting that  the Sugar-Creation-Kit-DVD
>>
>> be accepted formally as a "Feature" of the next version of the Soas-spin.
>>
>> Mel suggested that I start this thread to start discussion on what the
>> procedure should be to achieve this.
>>
>> (we do not seem to have a formal one at the moment)
>>
>> Tom Gilliard
>> satellit
>>
>>
>> from 5/29/2010 post to lists:
>>
>> 
>>> New DVD.iso, (WARNING 4.2GB File) Updated for Mirabelle, now available
>>> for downloading:
>>>
>>> For "sneakernet" and behind firewall installs.
>>>
>>> Only requires 1 download, can be copied locally for a complete build
>>> environment for SOAS.
>>>
>>> Contains  .iso files and instructions needed to create Soas USB's plus a
>>> majority of the  .xo files from ASLO for installing activities by
>>> drag-drop into the sugar Journal.
>>>
>>> Download:
>>> http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/Sugar-Creation-Kit-09.iso
>>>
>>> Read this first:
>>> http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/SugarCreationKit09-Contents.txt
>>>
>>> Tom Gilliard
>>> satellit
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
>>> SoaS mailing list
>>> SoaS@lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>>>
>>>
>> ___
>> SoaS mailing list
>> SoaS@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>>
>
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Re: [SoaS] [Testing] soas-i386-20100604.02.iso USB-testing

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Sascha Silbe
 wrote:
> Excerpts from Sebastian Dziallas's message of Sat Jun 05 09:50:52 + 2010:
>
>> > Control Panel:
>> > # Keyboard selection pop-up WORKS  (NEW)
>> I'm glad to hear that! From what I saw, this might be a fix that got
>> in with Sugar 0.88.1.
> Oh, so #2022 [1] was actually a dupe of #1994 [2].

Awesome, thanks! :)

>> > Presence Service works
>> > # Make friend pop-up on f1 neighborhood does not change to "remove friend"
>> > after making friend (NEW ERROR?)
>> I haven't seen this one before.
> I have: #1742. [3]
> A quick glance at the code suggests it's an easy fix; I've added the 
> sugar-love keyword.

Ah, cool! I CC'ed myself.

Thanks for the ticket links - it's good to be able to keep them in mind.

--Sebastian

>> Thanks for all the testing!
> +1, Tom rocks!
>
> Sascha
>
> [1] https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2022
> [2] https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1994
> [3] https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1742
> --
> http://sascha.silbe.org/
> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
>
> ___
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> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>
>
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Re: [SoaS] [Marketing] Possible style for upstream/downstream diagram

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 7:03 AM, John Tierney  wrote:
>> From: garycmar...@googlemail.com
>> Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 18:10:16 +0100
>> To: market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> Subject: [Marketing] Possible style for upstream/downstream diagram
>>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Spotted this info-graphic style a while back and thought it could be an
>> ideal style for a diagram clarifying upstream/downstream relationships.
>> Would likely switch it to a vertical portrait orientation, and be more
>> 'watery' in metaphor than 'foodie', but I think you'll get the gist:
>>
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/starsammy/4605760111/
>>
>> Need someone to list out the arcs/nodes, I'd only be up-to speed on a few
>> of the more obvious relationships.
>>
>> Regards,
>> --Gary
>>
>> P.S. If I could remember who raised the topic, I would go haunt them for
>> the details directly ;)
>
> May be from this thread Tues April 27th:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2010-April/002799.html
>
> Here is an excerpt that speaks to the need for visual diagrams of SoaS and
> Sugar along with Upstream and
> Downstream partners/relationships-timelines/constraints.  Marketing can help
> here but the drawing of relationships
> an the intricacies involved in different release processes would best be
> accomplished if drawn up first by those closest to them.
>
> ...I believe we are all working towards the same goal. From the
> marketing,
>
> educational outreach, not so techy side of things, I believe we need some
> help actually understanding the process of getting the activities qualified,
> the
> time frame(timeline), the upstream-downstream relationships. I along with
> the
> Teachers, Educators, University Professors outside of Computer Science have
> a hard time understanding and visualizing the process.
>
> Possibly a Workflow/Mindmap/Timeline Project Map that explains the SoaS
> Process,
> the Sugar build, the Fedora build, the connections/constraints as they
> relate to
> Upstream-Downstream, who is Upstream-Downstream, the dates when activity
> testing
> should take place, and any other tasks/constraints that relate to putting
> together this
> successful build. If you could come up with a one page visual that would be
> enormously
> helpful to our messaging and help new members of the Sugar
> Community understand the
> mechanisms and processes related to FOSS projects. Having a Big Picture view
> helps
> understand where your individual work fits in and also helps with the
> expectation aspect.
> Clear, Simple, Visual.

I'm currently travelling, so this email might turn out to be shorter
than it'd have usually been. Just sayin' in advance... :)

But I agree that making clear who's doing what at which time in the
release process is something we still need to - and will - improve.

> After this stable build with group of activities is released, what is
> process and what
> will it take to get other activities working?

Further activity downloads from activities.sugarlabs.org are supposed
to be working because Sugar on a Stick includes the Sugar Platform
libraries.

If they don't, this needs to be confirmed in a non-SoaS environment
and if the issues persist, a ticket needs to be filed against the
activity which could - if necessary - also marked as incompatible with
a certain Sugar version in question.

This is however just my understanding. If the activity works in
another environment (like a full Fedora install), it's probably a SoaS
bug that we'd need to investigate.

> Some questions:
> Is there a plan to include with the release a Guide with Screenshots for Bug
> Tracking
> (How to file bug and where for SoaS 3), Activity testing reports, USB
> Creator. For the
> Elementary teacher, College of Education individual, and the students the
> screenshot
> variety of tutorial is essential. If not I understand  with lack of
> resources, but could
> this possibly be worked on following release.(I read in the threads that
> some documentation
> is being included) Doing a little extra here by going beyond written
> instructions on the wiki
> and putting together these screenshot tutorials will help the future users
> of Sugar tremendously.

I agree this is an important part! The SoaS team (kudos to Mel here)
worked on a major overhaul of the Sugar on a Stick wiki page
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick) to which we're now
referring as a contributor portal. There's a wiki page on how to file
a ticket here (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/How_to_file_a_ticket).

> Another question would be after they receive Mirabelle and go to ASLO to get
> more activities what exactly happens?
> Do they just try and download any Activity and see if they work?
> Will they be prevented from downloading non-working activities?

I'm aware of the "experimental" tag in activities.sugarlabs.org. Also,
activities usually say with which Sugar version they are compatible.
This is obviously no entire protection against non-working activities,
but it's a start.

Re: [SoaS] [IAEP] [Marketing] Soliciting SoaS v.4 Codename & Colour Suggestions

Thanks everybody for the proposals thus far. I've converted them into
a table for a better overview [1]. Please keep in mind that Sugar has
a defined color palette for its logo, too [2].

--Sebastian

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_meetings#Agenda
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Logo#Color_Palette

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:41 PM, Outofindia  wrote:
>
> Jambul
> also known as Jamun in India and by others name in different parts of the
> world.
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jambul
>
> A medicinal fruit/plant/tree.
> Supposed to be a rich source of iron, vitamins A and C
> Besides the fruit, every part of the tree too is used.
> The bark, the  seed (dried and powdered) and even ash from the burnt leaves
> for gums.
> The wood is used to make furniture!
>
> The colour crimson.
>
> http://www.agriculturalproductsindia.com/fruits/fruits-jamun.html
>
> Regards
>
> Harriet
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Sebastian Dziallas 
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Sean,
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>> > Sebastian, I guess you want to drop the name we had chosen together
>> > previously, Cloudberry? If you remember we had wanted to underline
>> > collaboration and connectivity, and decided to postpone that name when
>> > we realized that it was too ambitious for this release.
>>
>> this is by no means the intention of this email. You will note that
>> this email is also sent to the marketing list, so this is not aimed at
>> excluded marketing, but rather at getting the conversation started.
>>
>> We're simply encouraging brainstorming here so that we don't get stuck
>> later there and have a prominent way of calling the upcoming next
>> version early in the release cycle (Fedora has already chosen its
>> codename for F14, too).
>>
>> I don't recall us already having chosen Cloudberry. It was the
>> previous codename for v.3, but as you say, we decided to go with
>> Mirabelle instead since it could have caused confusion.
>>
>> I personally believe that it only makes sense to chose a name like
>> Cloudberry if we're able to provide a sufficient amount of
>> cloud-related features, since we might get otherwise beaten up over
>> it.
>>
>> > This is a marketing discussion and should really be in the marketing
>> > meeting. Sugar on a Stick is a pillar of our marketing strategy and
>> > the name needs to fit with our strategy. That said, I wouldn't want to
>> > spoil anyone's fun choosing ice cream flavors. It could be nice to
>> > pick a non-berry flavor too as Peter and others have said in the past.
>>
>> I think this is debatable and I'm certainly not objecting to having
>> this conversation in the marketing meeting, too. However, this also
>> concerns the project itself, so I think it's also fair to raise it in
>> the Sugar on a Stick meeting.
>>
>> --Sebastian
>>
>> > Sean
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Sebastian Dziallas 
>> > wrote:
>> >> We'd like to kick off the process for the upcoming Sugar on a Stick
>> >> v.4 already, while gearing up for the SoaS PR at LinuxTag, too. And so
>> >> we're looking forward to your ideas and suggestions on the codename
>> >> and colour selections for the next release iteration. These will be
>> >> discussed at the next meeting, which is scheduled to take place on
>> >> Monday, June 7 on 1900 UTC in #sugar-meeting.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> --Sebastian
>> >> ___
>> >> Marketing mailing list
>> >> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>> >>
>> >
>> ___
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
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Re: [SoaS] [Testing] soas-i386-20100604.02.iso USB-testing

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Thomas C Gilliard
 wrote:
> soas-i386-20100604.02 testing as
> # Changes:
>
> rest same as previous report for soas20100603
>
> # 0.88.1  NEW (was 0.88.0)

Yes, this got pushed to Rawhide (which is why it's in the compose).
Thanks Peter!

> Soas 3 Mirabelle
> fedora 13 (Goddard)

While this image should have been composed from Rawhide, we'll change
this entry once we've decided on the codename for v.4.

>>script created 4 GB USB ACER Aspire One Wireless (Apple Airport Extreme 2
>> Bridged)<
>
> Activities;  * (see footnotes) All others start and stop and write to
> journal.
> Browse 115, Etoys 115, Chat 66, Write 69* (1), IRC 6, Record 66*(2), Turtle
> Blocks 88, Log 23, Terminal 31, Physics 4.
>
> Control Panel:
> # Keyboard selection pop-up WORKS  (NEW)

I'm glad to hear that! From what I saw, this might be a fix that got
in with Sugar 0.88.1.

> Presence Service works
> # Make friend pop-up on f1 neighborhood does not change to "remove friend"
> after making friend (NEW ERROR?)

I haven't seen this one before.

Thanks for all the testing!

--Sebastian

> (1) Shared Write appears on F1 Neighborhood where it is join-able (wireless)
>
> # Joined the shared Write and could edit text, collaboration appeared to
> work.
>
>
> (2) Record Photo and Video work
> # Audio has no sound on playback
>
> /var/log/dmsg:
> snip-
> hda_codec: ALC272: BIOS auto-probing.
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4358: autoconfig: line_outs=1
> (0x14/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4362:    speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4366:    hp_outs=1 (0x21/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4367:    mono: mono_out=0x0
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4378:    inputs: mic=0x12, fmic=0x18,
> line=0x0, fline=0x0, cd=0x0, aux=0x0
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1287: realtek: No valid SSID, checking
> pincfg 0x4016892d for NID 0x1d
> ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1303: realtek: Enabling init
> ASM_ID=0x892d CODEC_ID=10ec0272
> SELinux: initialized (dev binfmt_misc, type binfmt_misc), uses
> genfs_contexts
> ** (sugar-activity:1684): CRITICAL **: file gstvorbistag.c: line 592
> (gst_tag_to_vorbis_comments): should not be reached
>
> Record log:
> 1275655153.568289 ERROR record:glive.py: audio_pipe: GStreamer encountered a
> general stream error. gstoggdemux.c(3169): gst_ogg_demux_loop ():
> /GstPipeline:pipeline3/GstOggDemux:oggdemux1:
> stream stopped, reason error
> 1275655186.718810 WARNING root: No gtk.AccelGroup in the top level window.
> 1275655186.729861 WARNING root: .has_key() is deprecated, use 'in'
> 1275655190.954174 WARNING root: No gtk.AccelGroup in the top level window.
> 1275655190.954957 WARNING root: No gtk.AccelGroup in the top level window.
> 1275655190.995903 WARNING root: No gtk.AccelGroup in the top level window.
> Exited with status 0, pid 1684 data (None, ', mode 'w'
> at 0x89a1e38>, '28cee929e05bbfea070b3cf75fc664982a188ea2')
>
> Tom Gilliard
> satellit
>
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Re: [SoaS] [Marketing] Soliciting SoaS v.4 Codename & Colour Suggestions

2010-06-04 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi Sean,

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Sean DALY  wrote:
> Sebastian, I guess you want to drop the name we had chosen together
> previously, Cloudberry? If you remember we had wanted to underline
> collaboration and connectivity, and decided to postpone that name when
> we realized that it was too ambitious for this release.

this is by no means the intention of this email. You will note that
this email is also sent to the marketing list, so this is not aimed at
excluded marketing, but rather at getting the conversation started.

We're simply encouraging brainstorming here so that we don't get stuck
later there and have a prominent way of calling the upcoming next
version early in the release cycle (Fedora has already chosen its
codename for F14, too).

I don't recall us already having chosen Cloudberry. It was the
previous codename for v.3, but as you say, we decided to go with
Mirabelle instead since it could have caused confusion.

I personally believe that it only makes sense to chose a name like
Cloudberry if we're able to provide a sufficient amount of
cloud-related features, since we might get otherwise beaten up over
it.

> This is a marketing discussion and should really be in the marketing
> meeting. Sugar on a Stick is a pillar of our marketing strategy and
> the name needs to fit with our strategy. That said, I wouldn't want to
> spoil anyone's fun choosing ice cream flavors. It could be nice to
> pick a non-berry flavor too as Peter and others have said in the past.

I think this is debatable and I'm certainly not objecting to having
this conversation in the marketing meeting, too. However, this also
concerns the project itself, so I think it's also fair to raise it in
the Sugar on a Stick meeting.

--Sebastian

> Sean
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Sebastian Dziallas  wrote:
>> We'd like to kick off the process for the upcoming Sugar on a Stick
>> v.4 already, while gearing up for the SoaS PR at LinuxTag, too. And so
>> we're looking forward to your ideas and suggestions on the codename
>> and colour selections for the next release iteration. These will be
>> discussed at the next meeting, which is scheduled to take place on
>> Monday, June 7 on 1900 UTC in #sugar-meeting.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> --Sebastian
>> ___
>> Marketing mailing list
>> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
>
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[SoaS] Soliciting SoaS v.4 Codename & Colour Suggestions

2010-06-03 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

We'd like to kick off the process for the upcoming Sugar on a Stick
v.4 already, while gearing up for the SoaS PR at LinuxTag, too. And so
we're looking forward to your ideas and suggestions on the codename
and colour selections for the next release iteration. These will be
discussed at the next meeting, which is scheduled to take place on
Monday, June 7 on 1900 UTC in #sugar-meeting.

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Announcing Sugar on a Stick v.3 (Mirabelle)

2010-05-25 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Mirabelles have arrived! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/enil/3892066169/)

I am proud to announce the availability of Sugar on a Stick v.3,
code-named Mirabelle. More information about Sugar on a Stick,
including download and installation details, are available at
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/.

Changes in Sugar on a Stick since the last release (v.2 Blueberry):

Sugar version 0.88. The most recent release of the Sugar Learning
Platform features support for 3G connections, increased accessibility,
and better integration with our Activity Portal
(http://activities.sugarlabs.org) allowing students and teachers to
update their sticks with additional Activities. More information about
the 0.88 release of Sugar is available at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.88/Notes.

Customize your own remix of Sugar on a Stick. You'll notice that v.3
Mirabelle has a smaller Activity selection than its predecessors,
Blueberry and Strawberry. We realized we'll never be able to create an
Activity selection suitable for all deployments - instead, we've
chosen to include and support a core set of basic, teacher-tested
Activities in the default image, and invite deployments to use this as
a base on which to build a customized Activity selection for their
classrooms. Instructions on how to do this are available at
http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/docs/customization-guide/.

Sugar on a Stick is now a Fedora Spin. After two prior releases of
being based on the Fedora distribution, Sugar on a Stick has
recognized by the Fedora Project as an official Spin. This ties us
more closely to Fedora's release cycle and gives us resources from
their engineering and marketing teams, which extends the reach of
Sugar on a Stick and makes the project itself more sustainable. In
exchange, users of Fedora have access to an easily deployable
implementation of the Sugar Platform; it's a great example of a
mutually beneficial upstream - downstream relationship.

The biggest difference in v.3 of Sugar on a Stick has been in its
release processes and engineering sustainability; it's now much easier
for new contributors to get involved. We continue to move towards our
long-term vision of bringing stability and deployability to Sugar's
personalized learning environment, and invite all interested parties
to join us.

If you'd like to contribute to the next version, due for release in
early November, join us at our Contributors Portal at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick. All types of
contributions are welcome, from the technical to the pedagogical, and
we're happy to teach what we know and learn what you have to share.

Thank you especially to the Sugar on a Stick team and all the people
involved for their awesome work on this release!

Sebastian Dziallas
Sugar on a Stick Project Lead
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Re: [SoaS] Testing liveinst in SoaS-3

2010-05-24 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Bernie Innocenti  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> yesterday we evaluated a nightly compose of SoaS-3 on a Toshiba laptop
> of one of our teacher trainers.
>
> Hardware support was perfect and the overall impression was very good.

I'm glad to hear that. I'm really looking forward to this release.

> However, installation to hard drive with liveinst could use some tuning:
>
>
>  * installer asks for way too many technical questions such as hostname,
>   root password... Most of these should be unnecessary for SoaS.
>
>  * By default, liveinst tries to create a complicated partition layout
>   using LVM + swap + boot + root. Just root should be enough on any
>   computer which can already boot SoaS just fine from USB.

Both of these points can be swapped out by providing the liveinst
command (or was it the anaconda one? liveinst calls anaconda, so that
should work anyway) with a kickstart file in which such things might
be predefined.

If this is something we really want, I could probably look into it as
part of my GSoC, I guess.

>  * After installation, firstboot bothers the user with more silly
>   questions. The firstboot package could probably be uninstalled.

Either that or branded and made more useful - it used to provide the
ability to do the keyboard selection before logging in which I think
is pretty sane, but apparently this got ripped out by upstream because
of some regressions a couple of releases ago.

So in its current state, I guess you're right.

>  * No automatic login after installation. You get GDM and you have to
>   key-in a password, which is very un-sweet :-/

We could throw that in the kickstart file, too.

>  * After installation, sudo does not work out of the box. (this is one
>   of the major annoyances of Fedora, it should be fixed upstream too)

It doesn't work on the live image out of the box either, from what I
recall. You've got a point there, but this is indeed one of Fedora's
decisions as upstream.

> I'll follow up with additional comments as we deploy SoaS on more
> computers and collect feedback from more formadores.

Thank you! This is really appreciated! :)

--Sebastian

> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
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[SoaS] SoaS 3 (Mirabelle) release 5/25 & publicity/recruitment plans

2010-05-23 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

So I've been accepted to GSoC and will spend my summer - starting on
Monday - making Sugar on a Stick even more awesome
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Improved_Sugar_on_a_Stick).

First business: as SoaS v.3.0 Mirabelle nears its release date
(Tuesday, May 25), it's time to gear up for publicity for the release
- this is not necessarily a one-time blast thing, but a consistent
message of some sort (mostly geared towards recruitment) that will go
out throughout the month of June (and possibly afterwards as well).

Here's a short outline of what I'm thinking about writing up for the
announcement - let me know if you can think of anything that is
missing.

* overview of SoaS
** as a project (goals)
** as a product (technical)
* changes since the last release
** activity selection
** focus on sustainability
*** Fedora Spin
** focus on deployability
* next steps
** targets for v.4.0
*** activity selection criteria
*** deployment feedback loop
** how to get involved

And here's the list of people that I'm planning on sending it to when it's done.

I'd also like to brief the folks at Ars Technica and Wired, as well as
the Spiegel, in advance and ask whether they would be up for an
interview.

xconomy - wade roush
arstechnica - ryan paul
desktoplinux - eric brown
technology review - david talbot
wired - chuck lawton
spiegel online - matthias kremp
linux magazin - anika kehrer
linux.com - joe brockmeier

--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SOAS-3: Final Activity List - Attention needed!

2010-04-26 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Thomas C Gilliard
 wrote:
> Yes it has jabber.sugarlabs.org in Control Panel / Network

It looks very much like this, which seems to be pretty much a blocker,
yup: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=585413

> Tom Gilliard
> satellit
>
> Peter Robinson wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Thomas C Gilliard
>  wrote:
>
>
> Peter;
>
> I know it is not an activity, but it affects all of them:
>
> Will the presence service get fixed in time for the  release?
>
> All I am able to see is xmpp local on any of the f13 Composes of Soas
> log application has no entries
> No Jabber server access for collaboration.
>
> (Or are we waiting for tomeu to rework it for the next version)
>
>
> Is there a jabber server configured in the default config? I'm looking
> into the problem and its on my list. I'm hoping to get it fixed before
> the final release.
>
> Peter
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[SoaS] SoaS Documentation Changes

2010-03-28 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

I'd like to announce some changes to our documentation strategy for the 
upcoming Sugar on a Stick release. In an attempt to enhance our 
documentation, I've been working on creating content using Publican [1], 
which is a Fedora tool relying on Docbook files.

Here are some examples, namely the HTML output for two upcoming guides:

http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/creation-kit/
http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/customization-guide/

We'll find a better place for these in time for the release. However, 
they are already a good representation of the recommended procedures.

I went ahead and created a SOP for the process of getting changes into 
the documentation: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Documentation_SOP

Mel has kindly agreed to take care of the queue on list, and it is our 
hope that we'll be able to add more committers over time, so if you're 
interested in helping to maintain this documentation, please speak up.

--Sebastian

[1] https://fedorahosted.org/publican/
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[SoaS] Call for Testing: Duplicating SoaS via CMD

2010-03-28 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

it would be great if somebody could give this standard procedure a try 
and confirm whether it works or not, so that we can react appropriately 
upon a ticket. You'll need two USB keys for this.

(1) use Fedora's LiveUSB Creator to prepare the first key with SoaS

(2) boot the first key and apply some changes as in:

(a) change the language
(b) download a number of activities

(3) plug in the second USB key and determine its mount point

(4) run as root on the first key: yum install livecd-tools (might or 
might not be already present, depending on which SoaS version you use)

(5) execute the following command from the terminal on the first key:

livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 300 /dev/sr0 /dev/sdc1

(in which case /dev/sdc1 would be the mount point of the second key)

Does this [ ] WORK or [ ] FAIL? Please let us know!

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] What's going on with Sugar on a Stick?

2010-03-26 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

as you may have noticed, there are a couple of changes coming to Sugar 
on a Stick to keep the whole project sustainable. In the upcoming month, 
from March 28 (I'll be off starting Sunday night) to May 7, my ability 
to devote time to the project will cease. I have to prepare for my major 
A-level exams; more importantly, I have to secure a significant amount 
of funding in order to be able to attend college later this fall. (If 
you're interested in helping, see 
http://sdziallas.com/blog/sebastian/2010/03/sebastian-needs-100k.html 
for more details - any advice would be appreciated.)

This does not affect the release date. Sugar on a Stick will be released 
as a spin through Fedora's release engineering process on May 11. We are 
bound to this date and will have a working release in time. The general 
release schedule including all relevant policies is available here [1]. 
Nightly builds are also available [2] (and will contain a fixed IRC 
activity within a couple of days, as soon as [3] has been pushed to stable).

Activity authors are also advised that the final freeze date for package 
updates is April 27, so make sure to get fixes pushed well in advance to 
give package maintainers and the update system time to process.

Peter Robinson has kindly agreed to act in case something is needed. 
Please make sure to post to the appropriate lists, though, so that 
everybody is in the loop. Finally, please file bugs at 
bugs.sugarlabs.org as explained in [4] to save all of us time.

Thanks,
--Sebastian

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/Schedule
[2] http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/
[3] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/sugar-xoirc-6-4.fc13
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Sugar_on_a_Stick/Getting_Involved
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Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] soas tickets filed as sugar

2010-03-25 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm seeing several soas tickets being filed in the sugar component
> (the default one).
>
> Could someone move those to the SoaS component? Also, may be good to
> have a special form/link for filing SoaS bugs so they don't get mixed
> as often?

Sascha did this a couple of days ago - thanks! There might be some few 
tickets in the wrong category now. Anybody up for a SoaS bug triage & 
cleanup session?

--Sebastian

> Thanks,
>
> Tomeu
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Re: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction

2010-03-20 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Wow! This is an offer I can't refuse.  I'll come up with a list for you
> in a few days. One of my problems is that I am a Mac "person" and these
> would have to be made on a PC... right? I may have to try to find an
> inexpensive old Windows machine to use for this... alas. Maybe I can
> find a small used notebook that will do the trick.

Well, we can just do it and take it from there. So for now, we can take 
your list, turn it into an image and upload it for you - so there's no 
rush. Whenever you give us the list, we'll probably give you an image 
within a day or two and you can try it out and see if you like it - 
there's plenty of time. :-)

> Is there any way the sticks and CDs could be made on a Mac even if they
> won't run on it?

Yes, there's a way to do that on Macs - we'd be happy to provide 
detailed instructions there. The downside is, however, that there 
wouldn't be any persistent storage, so these sticks would simply act 
like CDs - they wouldn't store any progress or changes at all after a 
reboot.

I think the best thing here would be to start with your Activities list 
whenever you're ready, and see where we go from there. You'll be the 
first person to try the "SoaS Remix Project" (wiki page coming soon). ;-)

--Mel and Sebastian

> Caryl
>
>  > Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:35:24 +0100
>  > From: sebast...@when.com
>  > To: cbige...@hotmail.com
>  > CC: m...@melchua.com; soas@lists.sugarlabs.org
>  > Subject: Re: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
>  >
>  > Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>  > > Hi...
>  > >
>  > > This could result in having, at last, what I have been asking for for
>  > > over a year now... a stable, easy to use version that I can encourage
>  > > teachers and others to use. That would be wonderful!
>  >
>  > We think so too :-)
>  >
>  > > The ideal version would:
>  > >
>  > > Be easy to make either a usb or live cd version for Linux (both Fedora
>  > > and Ubuntu), Mac, and Windows operating systems... hopefully
> without the
>  > > need for a boot helper or virtual box... something the average teacher
>  > > or parent could create without too much trouble.
>  >
>  > We're currently working on making the instructions generally easier for
>  > v3 and are also trying to get the graphical LiveUSB Creator working on
>  > other distributions, so that everybody could use the same interface -
>  > without having trouble.
>  >
>  > Right now, the sticks should boot on most reasonably-modern computers
>  > running Windows or any variant of Linux. We can make sticks that boot on
>  > some Macs, but because of the different architecture, those sticks only
>  > work on Macs (if they work at all). The creation process for sticks to
>  > boot on Macs is also quite tricky and given the low success rate we've
>  > had, it's probably not worth recommending, other than marking it as
>  > "experimental".
>  >
>  > However, you can make the Windows/Linux sticks in any operating system -
>  > so it's "just" Mac stuff that doesn't work. We'd like to figure this out
>  > for future releases, but will need help from engineers who know about
>  > this kind of thing (and have Macs at home - we don't) - if you know
>  > anyone who'd like to help, that would be great. ;-)
>  >
>  > > On April 24 I will have another chance to distribute SoaS to a fairly
>  > > large group of teachers and parents at the LAUSD InfoTech event at the
>  > > LA Convention Center. Is there any possibility that this will be
> able to
>  > > happen in time?
>  >
>  > We'd be happy to create a custom remix for you - just tell us what
>  > Activities you'd like to have on it, and we can work on that together so
>  > you have the image a few days (or a week, or however long you need to
>  > burn media) in advance.
>  >
>  > In fact, we're happy to make a just-in-time custom demo remix (images
>  > for liveusb and/or livecd) for anyone who wants - with the understanding
>  > that these images are *demo* sticks, haven't been tested, and are *not*
>  > suitable for deployment. This is how we'd like to support folks going
>  > out to demo this at conferences and such - if you tell us the Activities
>  > you want and the date you'd like the image on, we'll spin it up the day
>  > before and you'll have the most recent code for all of the Activities on
>  > your image, instead of having to use 6-month-old code.
>  >
>  > > Caryl
>  > >
>  > > P.S. A live cd would be great because we could afford to make some in
>  > > advance and hand them out at our booth (CUELA).
>  >
>  > As Tim said, you can simply burn the .iso image onto a CD. So if we
>  > created such a remix, you could just burn it in time for the conference.
>  > Would that work for you?
>  >
>  > --Mel and Sebastian
>  >
>  > > > Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:19:00 +0100
>  > > > From: sebast...@when.com
>  > > > To: soas@lists.sugarlabs.org
>  > > > Subject: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
>  > > >
>  > > > Some of y

Re: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction

2010-03-20 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi...
>
> This could result in having, at last, what I have been asking for for
> over a year now... a stable, easy to use version that I can encourage
> teachers and others to use. That would be wonderful!

We think so too :-)

> The ideal version would:
>
> Be easy to make either a usb or live cd version for Linux (both Fedora
> and Ubuntu), Mac, and Windows operating systems... hopefully without the
> need for a boot helper or virtual box... something the average teacher
> or parent could create without too much trouble.

We're currently working on making the instructions generally easier for 
v3 and are also trying to get the graphical LiveUSB Creator working on 
other distributions, so that everybody could use the same interface - 
without having trouble.

Right now, the sticks should boot on most reasonably-modern computers 
running Windows or any variant of Linux. We can make sticks that boot on 
some Macs, but because of the different architecture, those sticks only 
work on Macs (if they work at all). The creation process for sticks to 
boot on Macs is also quite tricky and given the low success rate we've 
had, it's probably not worth recommending, other than marking it as 
"experimental".

However, you can make the Windows/Linux sticks in any operating system - 
so it's "just" Mac stuff that doesn't work. We'd like to figure this out 
for future releases, but will need help from engineers who know about 
this kind of thing (and have Macs at home - we don't) - if you know 
anyone who'd like to help, that would be great. ;-)

> On April 24 I will have another chance to distribute SoaS to a fairly
> large group of teachers and parents at the LAUSD InfoTech event at the
> LA Convention Center. Is there any possibility that this will be able to
> happen in time?

We'd be happy to create a custom remix for you - just tell us what 
Activities you'd like to have on it, and we can work on that together so 
you have the image a few days (or a week, or however long you need to 
burn media) in advance.

In fact, we're happy to make a just-in-time custom demo remix (images 
for liveusb and/or livecd) for anyone who wants - with the understanding 
that these images are *demo* sticks, haven't been tested, and are *not* 
suitable for deployment. This is how we'd like to support folks going 
out to demo this at conferences and such - if you tell us the Activities 
you want and the date you'd like the image on, we'll spin it up the day 
before and you'll have the most recent code for all of the Activities on 
your image, instead of having to use 6-month-old code.

> Caryl
>
> P.S. A live cd would be great because we could afford to make some in
> advance and hand them out at our booth (CUELA).

As Tim said, you can simply burn the .iso image onto a CD. So if we 
created such a remix, you could just burn it in time for the conference. 
Would that work for you?

--Mel and Sebastian

>  > Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:19:00 +0100
>  > From: sebast...@when.com
>  > To: soas@lists.sugarlabs.org
>  > Subject: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
>  >
>  > Some of you may have overheard activity in #sugar-meeting today
>  > discussing the upcoming beta freeze for SoaS, and the engineering
>  > capacity we have to work on things for the upcoming release (in May,
>  > since as a Fedora Spin we are tied to the Fedora release schedule).
>  >
>  > The short version is that we'd like to try something pretty drastic -
>  > prior SoaS versions have included large numbers of Activities, which
>  > weren't always maintained and didn't always work, so we propose shipping
>  > a slimmed down version of SoaS with a small number of known-to-work
>  > Activities with active upstream maintainers (that we'll have the
>  > bandwidth to thoroughly test between now and May's release, and the
>  > bandwidth to relay deployment feedback back up to) and creating
>  > resources on how to find other excellent material at
>  > http://activities.sugarlabs.org.
>  >
>  > Here's a draft kickstart file of what a slimmed-down SoaS release might
>  > look like. It includes a few core Activities that will help you get,
>  > debug, and ask questions about more Activities (Browse, Log, and IRC),
>  > as well as a few well-tested Activities with active upstreams that we
>  > think tend to "demo well" for a variety of audiences and contexts
>  > (young/adult audience, large/small audience, dev/user/teacher audience,
>  > hands-on-lab/demo-on-projector audience, etc).
>  >
>  >
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/fedora-livecd-soas.ks
>  >
>  > And here's the image it produces - we haven't had time to download and
>  > test it yet, but are working on that right now, so you may beat us to
>  > finding out whether it works or not. ;-)
>  >
>  > http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20100319.iso
>  >
>  > In comparison, here's the old kickstart file with a large number of
>

[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction

2010-03-19 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Some of you may have overheard activity in #sugar-meeting today
discussing the upcoming beta freeze for SoaS, and the engineering
capacity we have to work on things for the upcoming release (in May,
since as a Fedora Spin we are tied to the Fedora release schedule).

The short version is that we'd like to try something pretty drastic -
prior SoaS versions have included large numbers of Activities, which
weren't always maintained and didn't always work, so we propose shipping
a slimmed down version of SoaS with a small number of known-to-work
Activities with active upstream maintainers (that we'll have the
bandwidth to thoroughly test between now and May's release, and the
bandwidth to relay deployment feedback back up to) and creating
resources on how to find other excellent material at
http://activities.sugarlabs.org.

Here's a draft kickstart file of what a slimmed-down SoaS release might
look like. It includes a few core Activities that will help you get,
debug, and ask questions about more Activities (Browse, Log, and IRC),
as well as a few well-tested Activities with active upstreams that we
think tend to "demo well" for a variety of audiences and contexts
(young/adult audience, large/small audience, dev/user/teacher audience,
hands-on-lab/demo-on-projector audience, etc).

http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/fedora-livecd-soas.ks

And here's the image it produces - we haven't had time to download and
test it yet, but are working on that right now, so you may beat us to
finding out whether it works or not. ;-)

http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20100319.iso

In comparison, here's the old kickstart file with a large number of
Activities, and the image it produced - if you try it out, you'll find
that many of the Activities don't work, the quality of experience is
inconsistent, and... well, we hope you'll see why we'd like to narrow
the scope of this release's features to the amount of work we can
comfortably maintain.

http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/spin-kickstarts?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob;f=fedora-livecd-soas.ks
http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/soas-i386-20100318.17.iso

The rationale behind this is as follows:

1. Our ultimate goal is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with a
wide variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers, plus
resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
communities of other learners. This was clarified in the earlier Sugar
on a Stick Mission Statement:
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-September/008322.html

2. Since we don't currently have the resources to do this, we think a
good intermediate step is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with
a SMALL variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers,
plus resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
communities of other learners. This sets the bar for both the quality of
the Activity and maintenance, and the level of interaction that Activity
upstreams can expect from users.

3. Saving a good number of known-to-be-awesome Activities for
http://activities.sugarlabs.org and creating (kid-tested and
teacher-tested) resources on how to get stuff from ASLO sets a dynamic
of experimentation, trying-stuff-out, and user community engagement that
we want to see.

We don't know if this is a good idea or not. We think so, and we don't
have much time to decide as Beta Freeze is this upcoming Tuesday, March
23. Feedback? Questions? Comments? Firestorm?

We'll be tinkering further on this over the weekend - we can do another
kickstart on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so we have 3 drafts left to
figure this out with. Please join us (sdziallas & mchua on #sugar) and
ask questions if you have any, or join in and help if you have ideas on
how to improve this.

Thanks!

--Mel and Sebastian

PS: We're going to ask more specific questions on the marketing and
activities lists about this in a moment, for those of you following
those sections of SL as well - and send a general iaep notification that
these conversation threads are going on. One second...
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[SoaS] Fedora's Sugar on a Stick Talking Point

2010-03-11 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

I basically put a straw man here, copying the most essential parts 
together. I'll leave the implementation of the topics up to the two 
marketing teams, though. Here's the link: 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_13_Talking_Points#Sugar_on_a_Stick_Spin

Feedback & help appreciated! - Edit away, it's a wiki.

--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] [IAEP] Blueberry & Strawberry Activities Lists?

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm working on my presentation for SCaLE 8X this weekend and do not at
> the moment have access to Blueberry and Strawberry SoaS. Can someone
> give me links to lists of Activities included in each of these?
>
> Thanks,
> Caryl
> =

Sorry for seeing this a little late; trying to catch up with e-mail 
here. So for Strawberry, you might want to go with the table here [1]. 
For Blueberry, a not-so-nice-ish list is here [2]. It's what we used to 
create the image, but from looking at the names under #fructose and 
#honey, it should be pretty clear for most of them.

Cheers,
--Sebastian

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry
[2] 
http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/blueberry/soas-aslo-and-content.ks
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Re: [SoaS] Re-building Strawberry?

Martin Langhoff wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Sebastian Dziallas  
> wrote:
>> ...I'm still not sure whether Strawberry is a better choice than Blueberry
>
> Because we want to match the F11/S84 builds from OLPC ;-)

Point taken, heh.

>> /me hides. I'm planning to work on a real customization guide at some point.
>
> No need from us on that -- what you've given me below is perfect.
>
> And you used a F11 host to build it I assume...

IIRC, we used to do so back then, yup. F12 should work fine, though.

>> What you're looking for is the Strawberry branch in the SL GIT repo:
>> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/trees/strawberry
>
> Bingo! This and the other hints are exactly what we need...

Awesome! :) Let me know if there's anything else I can do...

--Sebastian

> *thanks*
>
>
>
> m
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Re: [SoaS] [IAEP] Sugar on a Stick Documentation Joins the Stage

Sebastian Dziallas wrote:
> Martin Langhoff wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Sebastian Dziallas   
>> wrote:
>>> I've taken some hours last weekend to spend some time to finally get
>>
>> Very cool. What's the build line? I perused the XML looking for "how
>> to reproduce soas builds" ;-) but it's understandably not there yet.
>
> Hehe! :)
>
> That should be: publican build --format=html --lang=en-US
>
> publican lives here: https://fedorahosted.org/publican/
>
>> The documentation I did read is very good -- but there is something
>> makes I wonder about -- what's the advantage of this over a wiki? The
>> barriers of entry to editing this guide are *very* high, specially for
>> documentation people...
>
> Yeah, I see that point clearly. I believe the major advantages for using
> this over wikis when creating guides or release notes is that we can
> create a variety of formats just by adjusting one line (i.e. try
> s/html/pdf or s/html/epub) and the ability to translate it easily.
>
> Translating stuff in the wiki sucks. Admittedly, I'm no translator nor
> have I tried it with publican, yet. But from looking at how Fedora's
> doing it, it should be pretty straight forward.
>
>> (I am a formet git developer, and have no prob with docbook... but I
>> still find wikis more inviting...)
>
> Yup, they're certainly more inviting. Heh, I'm not even really
> experienced with docbook and figured most of the stuff out last weekend.
>
> So what I think might be reasonable would be to use the wiki as the
> source for content, where thoughts are gathered and stuff, and to create
> the actual guides which are published later using publican.

...actually, kudos to quaid for this idea. :)

--Sebastian

> --Sebastian
>
>> cheers,
>>
>>
>>
>> m
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Re: [SoaS] [IAEP] Sugar on a Stick Documentation Joins the Stage

Martin Langhoff wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Sebastian Dziallas  
> wrote:
>> I've taken some hours last weekend to spend some time to finally get
>
> Very cool. What's the build line? I perused the XML looking for "how
> to reproduce soas builds" ;-) but it's understandably not there yet.

Hehe! :)

That should be: publican build --format=html --lang=en-US

publican lives here: https://fedorahosted.org/publican/

> The documentation I did read is very good -- but there is something
> makes I wonder about -- what's the advantage of this over a wiki? The
> barriers of entry to editing this guide are *very* high, specially for
> documentation people...

Yeah, I see that point clearly. I believe the major advantages for using 
this over wikis when creating guides or release notes is that we can 
create a variety of formats just by adjusting one line (i.e. try 
s/html/pdf or s/html/epub) and the ability to translate it easily.

Translating stuff in the wiki sucks. Admittedly, I'm no translator nor 
have I tried it with publican, yet. But from looking at how Fedora's 
doing it, it should be pretty straight forward.

> (I am a formet git developer, and have no prob with docbook... but I
> still find wikis more inviting...)

Yup, they're certainly more inviting. Heh, I'm not even really 
experienced with docbook and figured most of the stuff out last weekend.

So what I think might be reasonable would be to use the wiki as the 
source for content, where thoughts are gathered and stuff, and to create 
the actual guides which are published later using publican.

--Sebastian

> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
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Re: [SoaS] Re-building Strawberry?

Hi Martin,

cool to see progress on this front! :)

Martin Langhoff wrote:
> Hi Sebastian, list,
>
> I am looking for how to re-build Strawberry, so I can re-run the build
> adding a few extra RPMs and the Gnome group (background thread:
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2010-February/027420.html )

...I'm still not sure whether Strawberry is a better choice than 
Blueberry (I might have asked for the reasons in the background thread 
already, heh). But going with Strawberry should work fine, too.

> I've searched the list and sugarlabs site looking for precise
> instructions and kickstart, but nothing came up. Eventually I found
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar_on_a_Stick - which seems to be
> what I am looking for...

/me hides. I'm planning to work on a real customization guide at some 
point. I'm pretty swamped with A-level prep, so any help would be 
appreciated to get this done for v3.

>   * Is the ks file good for Strawberry? Is it versioned somewhere?

The link you came up with is v3 related - so it's currently a bit... 
bleeding edge, if you want.

What you're looking for is the Strawberry branch in the SL GIT repo: 
http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/trees/strawberry

>   * What build tool are you using? (Revisor on F11...? Any fidgeting
> with anaconda versions so that the build... builds?)

livecd-creator from the livecd-tools package... I don't think we need 
updated anaconda packages (well, unless you want to install stuff).

>   * Did you include updates repo when building? Any other repo?

Yup, updates + a sugar repo from here: 
http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/repositories/

The folder named 1 is what you want if you're rebuilding Strawberry.

>   * Do we have to worry about updates breaking things? (This is of
> course impossible to forecast, but do we know of specific bad updates,
> or has anyone done a successful update on a SoaS-started install...?)

Uh, good question. I haven't rebuilt Strawberry in a while and it has 
been some time since last June. But I'm not aware of any severe changes.

> We'd love some help in understanding these things better...

Just ping! :)

--Sebastian

> thanks!
>
>
>
> m
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[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Documentation Joins the Stage

Hi all,

I've taken some hours last weekend to spend some time to finally get 
some better documentation off the ground. I started with what is going 
to be called a Creation Kit. Note that this is far from being complete 
for now, but should do the trick as a proof of concept.

It lives here: http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/

Now the cool stuff. This is all being generated from a simple GIT 
repository with a few files. So changes will get in by patching the 
files. We can get .pdf files, as well as .epub files containing these 
docs by running one command! ...which makes it a nice target for 
distributable instructions, too.

Anyhow, the GIT repo is here: http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas-docs

Please holler if you're interested in helping to write docs, no matter 
whether that's for a customization guide, the creation kit or other things.

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] R: [Fwd: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 110]

2010-02-15 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 06:16 -0800, Carlo Falciola wrote:
>> Is it available an (end -user easy) procedure to add language packs been 
>> stripped?
>> I see a use case for teacher/volunteers/etc. that could need to have a 
>> different language available even "after" deployement...
>
> I think what matters from the user's PoV is activity translations, not
> base OS translations.

That makes some sense...

> For the system RPMs, I'd actually recommend scrapping all languages but
> en_US.UTF-8 (which is usually the "internal" language of command line
> tools, so it doesn't add any external catalog files).
>
> The Sugar packages need to be installed with all languages, though. This
> might be tricky to do because yum installs those in a single
> transaction, alongside the rest of the system.

We could use the --instLangs parameter, indeed. However, this nukes all 
locales of a language... we used that in the early days when I started 
doing SoaS composes, but stopped at some point before the Strawberry 
release to make sure not to exclude anything.

Generally, help with slimming the current image (so the nightlies) would 
be really appreciated. I gotta look into that at some point, too.

--Sebastian
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[SoaS] SoaS 2010/02/14 Snapshot

2010-02-15 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

This latest snapshot doesn't look too bad from my basic tests in a VM. 
Activities start and it boots reasonably well. If you want to give it a 
try, the link for today is here: 
http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/soas-i386-20100214.18.iso

Please report bugs to bugs.sugarlabs.org!

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar & SoaS Meeting Time

2010-02-13 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

I've a conflict coming up for the next weeks with our current meeting 
time and would need to start something like half an hour later.

If you're interested in attending, please take a second to put down when 
you're available here: http://whenisgood.net/fedora-sugar-mtg-1

Make sure to select your timezone at the top!

--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] Meeting minutes 2010-02-11

2010-02-13 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Mel Chua wrote:
> http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.minutes.20100211_1011.html and
> full log at http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.log.20100211_1011.html
>
> I wish this meeting bot output nice text formatting, but... so be it.
> Notes below.

Whoa, thanks for keeping us all in the loop! You rock. :)

--Sebastian

> LINKmchua   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar
> 10:14:21Topic: SoaS as a Fedora Spin
> 10:14:57INFOmchua   last we heard, snapshots were beginning to work,
> so we should have something testable shortly
> 10:15:27Topic: SoaS being used for Saturday's testing party in Sugar Labs
> 10:15:52LINKmchua   http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.88/Testing
> 10:16:17Topic: how close are we to upstream Sugar?
> 10:16:55ACTION  mchua   sdziallas answer 'how close are we to
> upstreams?' questions
> 10:17:02Topic: how close are we to upstream Fedora?
> 10:17:28INFOmchua   Pretty darn close, I'd think, since SoaS is a 
> Spin...
> 10:17:34Topic: deployment reports
> 10:17:54LINKmchua
> http://blog.melchua.com/2010/02/10/netbooks-have-arrived/
> 10:18:12LINKmchua   
> http://blog.melchua.com/2010/02/10/its-like-the-wii/
> 10:18:38LINKmchua
> http://blog.melchua.com/2010/02/06/soas-deployment-hardware-the-ideal-set/
> 10:18:46LINKmchua
> http://blog.melchua.com/2010/02/06/lynne-mays-soas-deployment/
> 10:19:03LINKmchua
> http://sdziallas.com/blog/sebastian/2010/02/im-excited-seriously.html
> 10:19:25LINKmchua   #link
> 10:19:31LINKmchua
> http://lmylim.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/draft-of-sugar-pilot-program-proposal-at-cfs-grade-1-room-2/
> 10:19:36INFOmchua   the last link is the teacher
> 10:19:45INFOmchua   the last link is the teacher's blog with the
> curriculum plan for the semester
> 10:20:09INFOmchua   we have hardware, need to do QA before Feb 22 
> launch
> 10:21:02Topic: backup solutions
> 10:24:36INFOmchua   it was suggested in #sugar that we write a little
> script that uses the serial number in /dev/disk/by-id to copy the
> homedir/journal-stuffs to the right kid's backup folder when the stick
> gets plugged into a computer that's being used for backup
> 10:25:21ACTION  mchua   mchua investigate potential backup solutions
> for soas deployment at cfs (blog for ideas)
> 10:25:50Topic: contributing stuff back upstream
> 10:27:09INFOmchua   CFS deployment students ave regularly scheduled
> Upstream Day with the SoaS deployment support, Mel Chua, i.e., filing
> bug reports, blog posting, and checking in with Sugar labs community.
> 10:27:37INFOmchua   Upstream Day for this deployment is every Friday,
> starting Feb 26, 2010
> 10:30:29Topic: open floor
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar Meeting (2010/02/11)

I won't be able to be around for this meeting, due to an appointment at 
a local university. If anybody wants to take it up and get this running, 
this would be awesome.

Details here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Wiki Page & Agenda

Thanks to the awesome Mel Chua, we've now a nice wiki page listing the 
recent meetings, as well as an agenda. So if there's anything you want 
to bring up, make sure to add it there.

Here it is: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar

--Sebastian
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Re: [SoaS] Using SoaS Blueberry to emulate OLPC F11 builds

Martin Langhoff wrote:
> (I am not sub'd to the soas list -- can a kind admin whitelist me?)

Your e-mail seems to have made it through to the archives, so you should 
be good. :)

> Hi OLPC, SoaS folks,
>
> we have a deployment that wants to use SoaS for early teacher training
> before they have (enough) XOs in their hands.

Cool, glad to hear this!

> Besides the obvious indications that they pre-test the hw they'll run
> it on, and the "shut down SoaS carefully" recommendation, I drafted a
> plan for them to make Blueberry more like OLPC's F11:

Mhm, I'm not entirely sure I understand why this would be needed.

>   - Take a XO (1 or 1.5) running the OLPC F11 image, get the
> package list with `rpm -qa | sort>  todos-los-paquetes.lista`
>
>   - Get a box of USB sticks -- all same make, model&  size.
>
>   - On one of the USB sticks, create a SoaS with a generous overlay.
>
>   - Start up SoaS on a machine with internet connection
>
>   - Get the package list on SoaS with the same command
>
>   - Compare the 2 lists, and on the SoaS side install anything that
> is missing (using yum)  Skip the kernel package.

The major issue you'll run into here is that the XO images contain a 
number of non-Fedora repositories. So attempting to install the packages 
these repos provide will just fail on SoaS, unless you add them manually.

Also, some of the packages might affect how SoaS works on "normal" 
machines (thinking of olpc-utils here).

>   - Restart the machine with SoaS to check that now you have the
> "swtich to gnome" option in the control panel, and the option to
> return to Sugar on the Gnome desktop. (Will this Just Work, or did we
> hardcode /home/olpc or the olpc uid?...)

I think the olpc-switch-desktop package in Fedora should do the trick. 
However, I heard some time ago (might be wrong, though) that it was 
dependent on olpc-dm, which is in the olpc-utils package and contains 
the hardcoded olpc username.

>   - Once the SoaS works as expected, restart it, switch to a VT,
> and as the root user delete /home/liveuser/.sugar and then use the
> command  `halt` to shut down the system.

This is certainly a good step to do. I'm not so sure about SSH keys and 
stuff, which might be another thing you don't necessarily want to copy 
all over.

>   - Duplicate that exact SoaS disk using the dd command on any Linux 
> machine

Yeah... well, I'd advise to try a line like this on a modified and 
rebuilt image: livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb xxx /dev/sr0 /dev/sdc1

> Will this work? Is it easy to tell liveusb creator to add a few rpms...?

It might work. But it could very well break. I'm still curious about the 
reasoning behind adding all these olpc-* packages. Instead, you might 
want to consider just adding the @gnome-desktop group and the 
olpc-switch-desktop package to the SoaS kickstart file and spin a 
rebuild (after some minor modifications), which you could reasonably 
well put on the keys, too.

I guess it's really about time to think about how to make the 
customization process easier.

Cheers,
--Sebastian

> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
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Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SoaS with Sugar 0.87.2 coming to a system near you

Art Hunkins wrote:
> This version lacks csound-python. (A simple install adds it back in.)

Ouch, looks like this got lost during a recent conversion. Thanks for 
spotting it. It should be in one of the next nightly builds.

--Sebastian

> I'd appreciate csound-python being included - both now and forever.
>
> Art Hunkins
>
> - Original Message -----
> From: "Sebastian Dziallas"
> To: "SoaS"; "Sugar Devel"
> 
> Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 3:14 PM
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] SoaS with Sugar 0.87.2 coming to a system near you
>
>
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> by popular request, there's now a Sugar on a Stick snapshot with the
>> latest Sugar development release available. Please note that this
>> snapshot is already part of our way to Sugar on a Stick v3.
>>
>> It's still based on F12 for stability reasons, though (this will change
>> in the development cycle). But it incorporates already a number of
>> significant changes which are part of the change to the SoaS v3 builds.
>>
>> The build is available here:
>>
>> http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20091228.iso
>>
>> Please follow the Blueberry instructions to put it on your flash drive.
>>
>> You can even run it on your XO-1 from a flash drive (NAND installation
>> possibilities are being evaluated) by using liveusb-creator.
>>
>> Afterwards, plug it into your XO-1 and type: "boot u:\boot\olpc.fth"
>>
>> However, a known issue is (on the XO-1 only) that the X session tends to
>> crash when trying to scroll. Help with debugging this would be very
>> welcome.
>>
>> Thanks and happy testing!
>> --Sebastian
>>
>> P.S.: Enjoy your holidays!
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[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Nightly Builds Available

2010-02-07 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

thanks to the awesome work of Kevin Fenzi and others, we've now nightly 
builds of Sugar on a Stick available. That means you can check the state 
of it on a daily basis here:

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/

Whenever there's no .iso file available, this is due to a failure in the 
build process, which we'll need to investigate then.

It also represents the current state of activities, giving me the 
opportunity to invite you to join our packaging & reviewing effort:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar_Activities

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Logs: Customizing SoaS

2010-02-07 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

I talked Simon through creating a custom SoaS build for the upcoming 
usability tests. We logged the convo, so that interested folks can give 
it a try: 
http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.log.20100207_0701.html

There used to be a wiki page here, too, but that needs some love before 
being recommendable: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Customization

--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Bug Tracking

2010-02-04 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

I'd like to share some news concerning the future SoaS bug tracker with 
you. As you may know, we've been piloting Launchpad for SL lately.

Whereas the UI proved to be nice and the answers feature attracted users 
to ask many questions, we had to suffer from a decline in people helping 
out with triaging.

Therefore, I'd like to ask you to file all future bug reports at 
bugs.sugarlabs.org, which has seen a steady performance improvement 
thanks to the work Bernie and Sascha did over the last days.

When doing so, please make sure to select SoaS as the component! This is 
important to make sure that it gets assigned properly. We'll take care 
of moving it accordingly, in case this is needed.

In case Sugar Labs decides to switch to a different bug tracking system, 
we'll always have the option to join that migration. This just marks the 
end of an reasonably extended pilot to enhance the sustainability of the 
whole project.

Thanks,
--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar Meeting Minutes (2010/02/04)

2010-02-04 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

here are the most recent meeting minutes from today's meeting:

http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.log.20100204_1008.html
http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.minutes.20100204_1008.html

A quick overview:

* cool deployment news :)
* soas rawhide composes need to be fixed, fixes apparently on the way
* packagers [1] and especially reviewers [2] are desperately needed

--Sebastian

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar_Activities
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=558617
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar Weekly Meeting 1500 UTC #fedora-olpc

2010-02-03 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

See you then [1].

--Sebastian

Please make sure to drop a line here in case you're unable to make it 
but would want to attend future meetings or just join the discussion.

=== Agenda ===

* Deployments
* Packaging
* Sugar on a Stick
* Open Floor

[1] 
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&day=3&year=2010&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar Meeting Minutes (2010/01/28)

2010-02-03 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Sorry for being late; here are the minutes and the logs:

http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.minutes.20100128_1002.html
http://me.etin.gs/fedora-olpc/fedora-olpc.log.20100128_1002.html

--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Fedora Sugar Weekly Meeting 1500 UTC #fedora-olpc

2010-01-28 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

See you then [1].

--Sebastian

=== Agenda ===

* Deployment News
* Packaging Activities
** Source Files
** Review Requests
* Open Floor

[1] 
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&day=28&year=2010&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
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Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SOAS 2 problems

2010-01-26 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-01-25 at 20:21 +0100, Sebastian Dziallas wrote:
>>> Have you tried writing to the journal until you fill up the overlay
>>> space?
>>
>> On a reasonably big usb stick (with prices dropping all day long), this
>> problem will probably not be solved, but rather appear less and less.
>
> On larger USB sticks it will take *longer* to appear, but it *will*
> certainly appear after some time. As the journal fills up with activity
> data, soon or later the overlay snapshot will run out of free pages.

Well, let's take a 4 GB USB key as an example. The SoaS base images 
should take up less than 1 GB. So you can very well allocate 2 GB to 
your overlay file and still store some other data on it.

That's if I recall correctly already the double amount of the entire 
storage the XO-1 had. You'd probably need to do a /lot/ of things to 
fill up 2 GB of storage (unless you start randomly caching things from 
mirrors or whatever). So please stop suggesting that on a reasonably 
configured USB key, the overlay will fill up all of a sudden.

>> Note that I'm not saying that we don't need to investigate here.
>>
>>> Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding how LVM snapshots work, this
>>> should systematically make the flash drive inoperable until reformatted,
>>> and all data inaccessible.
>>
>> Walter, Dave and others have been doing tests concerning the reliability
>> of our current layout in the post-Strawberry time, if I recall
>> correctly. It turned out that the compressed read-only squashfs was not
>> at all the root of the issues some people were seeing.
>
> Yes, the problem is definitely not squashfs itself, because all it does
> is store a read/only ext3 image.

Then why do we need to get rid of it, meaning the squashfs image file?

>> Rather, those were directly related to a corrupted overlay file, whether
>> it was caused by unplugging the usb stick too early or filling up the
>> overlay file quickly. Resetting the overlay file took away all these
>> issues, though.
>
> Unplugging the USB stick shouldn't be causing any major filesystem
> corruption when using ext3 directly. It may be problematic with the
> overlay, though, as it cannot guarantee the write ordering semantics
> expected by the filesystem.
>
> The corruption scenario I've seen with Caroline is much simpler to
> reproduce:
>
>   1. write normally to the filesystem (dd if=/dev/random of=foobar)
>   2. boom!

Admittedly, randomly dd'ing stuff the filesystem is not the usual 
use-case for the average Sugar user, right? As I said, others did 
testing over the time, resulting in the assumption of the overlay being 
the issue.

>> As much as it might be wrong: Upstream has a reason in doing so. And
>> we're going to stick with what upstream is doing. I used to explain a
>> major goal for this release to be increasing the sustainability of the
>> whole process. Diverging from upstream is not going to achieve this.
>
> I tried to make sense of the reasons behind the current layout by asking
> around. My impression is that it evolved in incremental steps over the
> years, without rethinking the design for USB storage at all.
>
>   1) a read-only squashfs of course made sense for the live CD
>
>   2) storing an ext3 image inside squashfs provided a bug-free
>  filesystem and probably better compression
>
>   3) transferring this ext3-within-squashfs to a DOS filesystem was
>  the most obvious way to create a bootable USB stick
>
>   4) using device-mapper snapshots was a clever way to make the
>  embedded ext3 filesystem also writable
>
> See? Every step makes perfect sense if you consider the previous
> situation.
>
> But... wait a moment... all these steps, 1 through 4, are totally
> superfluous when you have a USB stick!!!

As a matter of fact, some people who used to maintain livecd-tools don't 
work for Red Hat anymore. However, this doesn't take away the advantage 
of being widely used. The livecd-tools and the underlying framework is 
not only used to create the dozen Fedora spins, but also for virtual 
appliance creations through appliance-creator.

The current implementation has undeniably probably a lot more users than 
Sugar on a Stick will ever have.

So it might be that the current livecd-tools lacks a full-time 
maintainer. This doesn't make all the work that happens naturally 
upstream for testing and verifying go away, though.

>> OLPC went through this. And so did I. The final Blueberry build was
>> created late in the night before I was having another school exam in the
>> morning and directly afterwards rushing to the airport to catch a pla

Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SOAS 2 problems

2010-01-26 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Peter Robinson wrote:
>  > My understanding is that Fedora would also like to get this problem
>  > fixed, but the live usb tools package is currently missing a
> full-time
>  > maintainer and, thus, the fix is not happening.
>
> Bruno Wolff has proposed a feature to use a better compression for the
> live images in Fedora. This isn't going to happen for F13, but rather
> F14, it seems [1].
>
>
> I believe the reason for it not happening is that the required code is
> not in the upstream kernel yet, I don't believe it has anything to do
> with the state of the livecd-tools.
>
> Peter

Yup, right. But it indicates that Fedora's not really planning to move 
away from the use of livecd-tools, but rather works (I've noticed some 
of Bruno's status reports) on getting it improved.

--Sebastian

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Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SOAS 2 problems

2010-01-25 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 20:21, Sebastian Dziallas  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> sorry for jumping in here so late. Comments inline.
>>
>> Bernie Innocenti wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2010-01-24 at 14:34 +1200, David Leeming wrote:
>>>> I am sorry that I am a little slow on the uptake.
>>>> Blueberry SOAS2 seems to work OK. I have used LiveUSBCreator
>>>> and it's installed on a flash drive. Is this what you are
>>>> recommending? We have done this on several PCs and notebooks
>>>> and it is fine, although I admit we haven't really pushed it.
>>>>
>>>> Are you saying that there is a risk that whilst in use,
>>>> there is a chance that they could render it inoperable?
>>>> If so, no worries as it can simply be re-flashed, we can
>>>> live with that.
>>>
>>> Have you tried writing to the journal until you fill up the overlay
>>> space?
>>
>> On a reasonably big usb stick (with prices dropping all day long), this
>> problem will probably not be solved, but rather appear less and less.
>
> But the journal writes in $HOME which is in a separate partition?
>
> The overlay getting filled up is a real problem because its
> consequences, but would only affect users which write to root-owned
> places, unless I'm missing something?
>
> I think that in many SoaS scenarios, we don't need an overlay file of
> more than a hundred KBs for whatever config files daemons may write.

It depends. When creating SoaS, you've several options. You can for 
example have a separate overlay file for /home. However, just having one 
big overlay file is the most common approach by now, as that's the one 
liveusb-creator supports and the one we've been talking about lately 
when it came to livecd-iso-to-disk. So in this case, our big overlay 
file would take all changes.

--Sebastian

> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> Note that I'm not saying that we don't need to investigate here.
>>
>>> Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding how LVM snapshots work, this
>>> should systematically make the flash drive inoperable until reformatted,
>>> and all data inaccessible.
>>
>> Walter, Dave and others have been doing tests concerning the reliability
>> of our current layout in the post-Strawberry time, if I recall
>> correctly. It turned out that the compressed read-only squashfs was not
>> at all the root of the issues some people were seeing.
>>
>> Rather, those were directly related to a corrupted overlay file, whether
>> it was caused by unplugging the usb stick too early or filling up the
>> overlay file quickly. Resetting the overlay file took away all these
>> issues, though.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Hope I'm not being too technical :) The bottom line is: we shouldn't be
>>> doing this in SoaS, no matter what upstream is doing. Upstream is wrong
>>> in doing it.
>>
>> As much as it might be wrong: Upstream has a reason in doing so. And
>> we're going to stick with what upstream is doing. I used to explain a
>> major goal for this release to be increasing the sustainability of the
>> whole process. Diverging from upstream is not going to achieve this.
>>
>> OLPC went through this. And so did I. The final Blueberry build was
>> created late in the night before I was having another school exam in the
>> morning and directly afterwards rushing to the airport to catch a plane
>> to Toronto.
>>
>> Anything that diverges from upstream (let it be Fedora, Sugar, or any
>> other project) leaves us with a gap. Everything we hack up ourselves
>> will return to us when it comes to support. And we don't want our users
>> to download either a 4 GB image (or a 700 MB one, which takes them half
>> a day to uncompress), right?
>>
>>> My understanding is that Fedora would also like to get this problem
>>> fixed, but the live usb tools package is currently missing a full-time
>>> maintainer and, thus, the fix is not happening.
>>
>> Bruno Wolff has proposed a feature to use a better compression for the
>> live images in Fedora. This isn't going to happen for F13, but rather
>> F14, it seems [1].
>>
>>> The fix for us is easier, because we don't really need any of the fancy
>>> things that livecd-iso-to-disk does. All we need to do is stop
>>> mentioning it in our wiki and switch to liveinst, as Peter Robinson
>>> suggests, or any other tool that does the (rather trivial) job of
>>> transferring an

Re: [SoaS] [Sugar-devel] SOAS 2 problems

2010-01-25 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Hi all,

sorry for jumping in here so late. Comments inline.

Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-24 at 14:34 +1200, David Leeming wrote:
>> I am sorry that I am a little slow on the uptake.
>> Blueberry SOAS2 seems to work OK. I have used LiveUSBCreator
>> and it's installed on a flash drive. Is this what you are
>> recommending? We have done this on several PCs and notebooks
>> and it is fine, although I admit we haven't really pushed it.
>>
>> Are you saying that there is a risk that whilst in use,
>> there is a chance that they could render it inoperable?
>> If so, no worries as it can simply be re-flashed, we can
>> live with that.
>
> Have you tried writing to the journal until you fill up the overlay
> space?

On a reasonably big usb stick (with prices dropping all day long), this 
problem will probably not be solved, but rather appear less and less.

Note that I'm not saying that we don't need to investigate here.

> Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding how LVM snapshots work, this
> should systematically make the flash drive inoperable until reformatted,
> and all data inaccessible.

Walter, Dave and others have been doing tests concerning the reliability 
of our current layout in the post-Strawberry time, if I recall 
correctly. It turned out that the compressed read-only squashfs was not 
at all the root of the issues some people were seeing.

Rather, those were directly related to a corrupted overlay file, whether 
it was caused by unplugging the usb stick too early or filling up the 
overlay file quickly. Resetting the overlay file took away all these 
issues, though.

[...]

> Hope I'm not being too technical :) The bottom line is: we shouldn't be
> doing this in SoaS, no matter what upstream is doing. Upstream is wrong
> in doing it.

As much as it might be wrong: Upstream has a reason in doing so. And 
we're going to stick with what upstream is doing. I used to explain a 
major goal for this release to be increasing the sustainability of the 
whole process. Diverging from upstream is not going to achieve this.

OLPC went through this. And so did I. The final Blueberry build was 
created late in the night before I was having another school exam in the 
morning and directly afterwards rushing to the airport to catch a plane 
to Toronto.

Anything that diverges from upstream (let it be Fedora, Sugar, or any 
other project) leaves us with a gap. Everything we hack up ourselves 
will return to us when it comes to support. And we don't want our users 
to download either a 4 GB image (or a 700 MB one, which takes them half 
a day to uncompress), right?

> My understanding is that Fedora would also like to get this problem
> fixed, but the live usb tools package is currently missing a full-time
> maintainer and, thus, the fix is not happening.

Bruno Wolff has proposed a feature to use a better compression for the 
live images in Fedora. This isn't going to happen for F13, but rather 
F14, it seems [1].

> The fix for us is easier, because we don't really need any of the fancy
> things that livecd-iso-to-disk does. All we need to do is stop
> mentioning it in our wiki and switch to liveinst, as Peter Robinson
> suggests, or any other tool that does the (rather trivial) job of
> transferring an ext3 image onto a (flash) drive.

I don't think there's an "us" and "them" there. People from Fedora 
contribute to Sugar on a Stick, in the same way as people from Sugar 
Labs do. It's somehow what makes this project so cool, too.

So. I was talking to Sascha yesterday on IRC and we came up with some 
ideas how to proceed here. I don't think that the we should stop using 
squashfs images. Because I don't see a reason to stop doing so.

On the overlay, an approach that we came up with introduced a new 
partition (possibly ext4) for the overlay only. That would mean that the 
bootloader and the squashfs file would stay on a fat32 partition, 
allowing users even to exchange data with their windows machines. On the 
other hand, we'd reference the new overlay partition (instead of the 
overlay file) in the syslinux.cfg.

I don't know whether this is possible. But now is the time to work it 
out. It would allow us to continue to use the existing infrastructure, 
while working on the roots of relevant issues directly.

--Sebastian

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/LZMA_for_Live_Images
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Re: [SoaS] Planning towards SoaS v3

2010-01-23 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Walter Bender wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Peter Robinson  wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:28 AM, Caroline Meeks
>> wrote:

[...]

>> For example I've seen you have issues booting Apple devices with the SoaS.
>> Every single Intel based Mac uses EFI to boot and hence should work out of
>> the box with SoaS and shouldn't require the helper CD. If it doesn't work we
>> need to work out why and fix the bug, not plaster it over with an ugly hack.
>
> +1
>
>> In general it makes people's experience of using Sugar on a Stick less
>> pleasant and hence less likely to keep on using it. Its a constant confusion
>> and problem on the lists as well.
>
> Not being able to boot does make the experience less pleasant. But
> removing boot options is not the obvious fix, IMHO.

I don't think Peter's point was intended to be a "we'll nuke the boot cd 
unconditionally, leaving all people using it out in the rain no matter 
what", but was rather a "let's work on figuring out what's really wrong 
here, so that we might not need a boot cd anymore by the end of the day".

Anyway.

I like the idea of having specific test weeks or sessions, like we did 
for Blueberry with the test day (which could be extended, indeed). It 
looks like we could use a real QA team...

--Sebastian

> -walter
>
>> Peter
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Re: [SoaS] image-writer-mac, incompatible with earlier Mac OS X versions

2010-01-23 Thread Sebastian Dziallas

Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> On 30.12.2009, at 00:57, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>
>> On 30.12.2009, at 00:22, James Cameron wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 12:11:46AM +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
 The changes look okay, though I'd just remove the read-only check,
 that should make it work on both Mac OS versions.
>>>
>>> Also since it appears to be set if an ISO-9660 filesystem is present on
>>> the media.  ;-)
>>
>> Oh. Good point.
>>
 No idea where to put it - do you think a new project on git.sl.o is
 warranted?
>>>
>>> I've no opinion.  I don't know enough about git.sugarlabs.org policy.
>
> I made a repo and pushed the fix to
>
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/image-writer
>
> Would be nice if someone could upload the latest version to
>
> http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/
>
> - Bert -

Done! Thanks for working on this. :)

--Sebastian
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[SoaS] Sugar Packaging State of Art (2010/01/23)

Hi all,

here are some news on the packaging progress.

* Terminal has been updated in Rawhide to v31

* Physics still needs a reviewer [1]

* Socialcalc is now ready for review, too [2]

* Speak can't be updated to v11, unless [3] gets reviewed

So if you've a spare minute, please have a look at one of those! :)

--Sebastian

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=554090
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=557969
[3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=557948
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Re: [SoaS] 2 Major Sugar Issues

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi...
>
> Two rather huge issues:
>
> 1) Sugar Labs does not have Spanish translations available on either the
> SoaS Strawberry or Blueberry web pages. I wanted to print these out to
> take to the school in Argentina that wants to do a Sugar deployment in
> the PC lab in one of their elementary schools. There doesn't even seem
> to be an autotranslate button. We can't expect the whole world to be
> able to read and understand English.

I'm unfortunately not fluent in Spanish (in fact, not at all). If 
somebody wants to take on this and translate things, this would be very 
helpful, though. Another thing might be to put the links into Google 
Translate, but this won't necessarily result in a sensible translation.

> 2) I thought the issue with trying to burn a CD with Blueberry on it to
> take to Argentina was due to my inexperience with a Windows machine. Not
> so. My son, "the PC guru", tried to do it on his computer yesterday and
> it would not work there either. He tried twice. It stalled on the
> liveusb-creator. He was able to reboot with no serious problems like I
> had the day before on the hp netbook.

Was he trying to burn onto the CD with Blueberry? This shouldn't be 
needed, he can just use his favorite disc burning application.

> He was able to create a cd with Strawberry. Hopefully it will work. If
> all else fails, I still have a very old copy of Strawberry in a Virtual
> Box on my Mac that works fairly well.

Ah, cool! :)

> These folks are eager to get something going with Sugar in Argentina
> without waiting for a big government project that will buy XOs. We need
> to help them by solving these 2 major issues.

*nod*

--Sebastian

> Caryl
>
> =
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Re: [SoaS] Very Old SoaS Works on Mac

Hi Caryl,

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Well...

thanks a lot for your patience! :)

> I tried my very old (in software terms... 9+ months) version of
> Strawberry that is still installed on my Mac via virtual box (also an
> old version). It still works. Limited activities but if I don't get the
> newer versions figured out, at least I will have something to show the
> folks in Buenos Aires when I visit their school on Monday.

You can also always create a new Virtual Machine in VirtualBox and 
select the downloaded SoaS .iso file there. Even easier might be using 
the images Thomas and Wade have been creating. You can download a 
Blueberry Image which is currently in testing from [1] and walk through 
the process here [2].

[1] http://people.sugarlabs.org/wadeb/soas-blueberry-vmdk-1.zip
[2] 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/VirtualBox#Setup_a_Virtual_Machine_for_Sugar_on_a_Stick

> We are still trying to get the Blueberry file on a CD that people down
> there can use to make usb sticks and maybe a liveCD they can play.

Cool - please let us know how it goes! ;)

--Sebastian

> Caryl
> =
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Re: [SoaS] Small SoaS Disaster