Re: [support-gang] Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!

2008-12-18 Thread Daniel Bennett
Sorry I missed it, my meeting didn't end til 1:45...
Hope they were tasty!

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Henry Edward Hardy wrote:

> I asked if I could bring 10 people, they said "bring ten or as many as you
> want".
>
> The first ten responses are:
>
> 1: Tyler
> 2: Jeff
> 3: Brian
> 4: Seth
> 5: Frances
> 6: Justin
> 7: Mel
> 8: Richard
> 9: Adam
> 10. Dan B.
>
> If you still want to come and did not make the "list", be at Chipotle by 1
> and I will try to add you to the "free food". If not, the place is pretty
> cheap and we can still hang out a bit.
>
> Suggest bringing your business cards (so we can win more free food later),
> and XO's if you want to play XO games (no reliable free wireless that plays
> nice with XO in H Sq, regrettably).
>
> See you at Chipotle between 12:45 and 1.
>
> --HH.
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Bennett wrote:
>
>> I've got an 11:00 am meeting in Davis, but I can try to meet you Harvard
>> by 12:30.  Bump me off the list if you manage to fill it with Solid
>> responeses.
>> MMM,
>> -Dan
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
>> e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>>
>>> Any chance that you can FedEx me a burrito? I love Chipotle! :-)
>>>
>>> Christoph
>>>
>>> Am 18.12.2008 um 16:07 schrieb "Henry Edward Hardy" >> >:
>>>
>>> We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this
>>> afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008).
>>>
>>> So far I have the following people confirmed:
>>>
>>> 1: Tyler
>>> 2: Jeff
>>> 3: Brian
>>> 4: Seth
>>> 5: Frances
>>> 6: Justin
>>>
>>> If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open
>>> this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining.
>>>
>>> --HH.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy <
>>> he...@laptop.org> wrote:
>>>
 Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly
 drawing again!

 I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm.

 First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the
 menu but bottled drinks.

 --HH.

 --
 ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that
 the defenses of peace must be constructed.
 --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
 Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to
>>> use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
>>> --anon
>>>
>>> ___
>>> support-gang mailing list
>>> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
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>>>
>>>
>>> ___
>>> support-gang mailing list
>>> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use
> the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
> --anon
>
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New joyride build 2599

2008-12-18 Thread Build Announcer v2
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2599

Changes in build 2599 from build: 2595

Size delta: 0.00M

-sugar-update-control 0.17-1
+sugar-update-control 0.19-1

--- Changes for sugar-update-control 0.19-1 from 0.17-1 ---
  + Fix packaging problems; actually distribute translation files.
  + Trac #9044: Pick up Spanish translations for release.

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New joyride build 2599

2008-12-18 Thread Build Announcer v2
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2599

Changes in build 2599 from build: 2595

Size delta: 0.00M

-sugar-update-control 0.17-1
+sugar-update-control 0.19-1

--- Changes for sugar-update-control 0.19-1 from 0.17-1 ---
  + Fix packaging problems; actually distribute translation files.
  + Trac #9044: Pick up Spanish translations for release.

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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Hal Murray

This isn't directly related to swapping, but if anybody is curious about 
flash technology...

Al Fazio from Intel gave a good talk at Stanford EE380 last November.

He had lots of details and numbers about flash technology.  Good geek bait.

Intel is selling flash based disks for laptops.  They do the wear leveling 
and block rewriting in hardware.  No changes to the OS required.  Nice power 
savings.  (Google for >Intel SSD< gets lots of hits.)

Flash disks have real good seek times.  If you pick the right benchmark, you 
can get some impressive numbers.


You can get the slides here:
  http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/081112.html

You can get the video here.  It was on November 12, 2008
  http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
When the next quarter starts, this quarter will migrate to the archives.  
Look down below on the left column.



-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.



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Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5

2008-12-18 Thread Anna
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Martin Langhoff  wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Anna  wrote:
> > Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to
> > customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO?  And how
> would
> > networking work?
>
> It should work but I haven't explored the practicalities of it. You're
> welcome to play in this area!
>
> Networking-wise, the laptop has a libertas device that appears to the
> OS exactly like an Active Antenna, so the XS OS will spot it and
> configure it to be the 'school mesh' antenna.
>

I followed the instructions here for Fedora 9, but using the XS 0.5 install
CD instead.
http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/08/regular-linux-desktops-on-the-xo/

Also, in the kernel config file in /XO-alt-distro/kernel/2.6.25.15-XOaltF9-1
I enabled the bonding module before I ran the sd_fixup script.  At the end,
it failed to do the chroot thing, so I looked at the chroot.sh script in
/XO-alt-distro/distro/fedora-9 and then manually did:

sed -i "/VolGroup00/d" /media/disk/etc/fstab
cp olpc.fth /media/disk/boot

I didn't think I'd need the custom xorg.conf since the XS doesn't have a
GUI.

I don't have a USB to ethernet adaptor, so I downloaded and put the rpm in
/root before I disconnected the 8 GB SD card.  I booted up on an XO and did
the usual XS stuff, including installing the rpm, and got what looked like a
working XS, with the exception of failure to load the extra iptables
modules.  I booted up a regular XO, got an IP on msh0, and then successfully
registered to the XSXO.  Moodle looked like it was working on the XSXO, but
when I go to http://schoolserver/moodle, all I get on the regular XO is a
bunch of error messages related to scorm.

I haven't tried ejabberd yet, though I suspect the little XSXO might be a
little underpowered to handle that with too many users.

At any rate, this needs testing, but if all you wanted to do was serve html
content to students in a small environment without all the hardware
associated with an XS, this might be a solution.  Boa does work on a regular
XO, but I don't know if that would work within a simple mesh environment.

I bet this would even work on an XO with a broken screen if it was otherwise
going to go unused, as you could either ssh in to do stuff or simply swap
the SD card temporarily.  Using ssh might be a better idea anyway, as the
console display is very, very small.

Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham
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Re: [Techteam] Weekend reports, holiday plans, PTO reporting

2008-12-18 Thread Henry Edward Hardy
I'll be on vacation and out of town from Saturday, Dec. 20 to Monday, Dec
29, 2008.

I will have intermittent internet access during this time.

There will be no official OLPC Volunteer Infrastructure Group meeting next
week.

You may contact Reuben or Ed for *urgent* issues during this time. Otherwise
please file an rt ticket, thanks.

Happy and safe Holidays to all!!

--HH.

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Richard A. Smith wrote:

> Ed McNierney wrote:
>
> > (2) Please send email to techteam about your plans for next week and the
> > week after, so we know how to find people (or know they can't be found).
>
> I will be in Arkansas Dec 22nd - Dec 26 and return to work on the 29th.
>
> --
> Richard Smith  
> One Laptop Per Child
> ___
> Techteam mailing list
> techt...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/techteam
>



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the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Jim Gettys

On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 09:13 -1000, Mitch Bradley wrote:
> John Gilmore wrote:
> > Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It will
> > tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling software
> > (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that
> > if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the
> > laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to
> > fix it.

John, do the math: for the current chips (single level cells), life is
of order 10^5 cycles.  So you have 10^5 gigabytes of writing.  This
takes *a long* time.

Swapping is not an insane idea, once you have wear leveling.  We don't
do it now because JFFS2 cannot support swapping, and we don't have a
wear level beneath the file system.

UBI and Ubifs fix this, and it is something we can consider.

> >   
> 
> Well, maybe it's not as bad as all that.  When the NAND wears out, then 
> you can buy the SD card, thus deferring that purchase and taking 
> advantage of Moore's law in the interim.

Lots of people tend to forget, however, that warm (and/or cold) salt air
is a serious issue in many of the places we have to go.  Any connector
tends to die under these circumstances.

> 
> Note that I'm not advocating in favor of soldered NAND - in fact I've 
> been one of the leading proponents of migrating to an SD-based storage 
> solution.  I'm just pointing out that, if you're willing to buy an SD 
> card now (which is necessary for the SD-based swap solution), then you 
> are probably willing to buy one later.
> 
Soldered down SD, however may be an intermediate point; may fewer wires
than a conventional chip.

-- 
Jim Gettys 
One Laptop Per Child

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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Mitch Bradley
John Gilmore wrote:
> Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It will
> tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling software
> (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that
> if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the
> laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to
> fix it.
>   

Well, maybe it's not as bad as all that.  When the NAND wears out, then 
you can buy the SD card, thus deferring that purchase and taking 
advantage of Moore's law in the interim.

Note that I'm not advocating in favor of soldered NAND - in fact I've 
been one of the leading proponents of migrating to an SD-based storage 
solution.  I'm just pointing out that, if you're willing to buy an SD 
card now (which is necessary for the SD-based swap solution), then you 
are probably willing to buy one later.

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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread John Maloney
Hi, Eben.

Not to worry -- I did not see your email as an attack at all. You were  
just pointing out the fact that the Journal does support thumbnails  
and text info. That's a good point.

Something as innovative as Sugar simply takes time to mature, and you  
can't get everything 100% right the first time. You need to have real  
applications and real users and you need to iterate many, many times.  
Sugar is still in the "rapid-evolution" phase of its development.  
(Even more so for the Journal.) I've been working with the XO for  
about 18 months now, and over that time the software has made enormous  
progress. And rapid progress is still being made. I'm sure that things  
will continue to get easier over the next 18 months -- both for XO  
users and for those of us porting applications.

Keep up the good work!

-- John


On Dec 18, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Eben Eliason wrote:
> Thanks John!
>
> My previous comments weren't meant as an attack against you or
> Scratch, of course.  We know as well as anyone about resource
> constraints!   I just want to keep everyone honest, and make sure that
> the broader goals for Sugar and the Journal don't get lost while we
> struggle to figure out how to reach them.
>
> I wish I could say "the Journal does all of these things
> wonderfully!", but alas, I can only muster "the Journal, as
> (re)designed, would do all of these things wonderfully!"  Hopefully
> we'll get there.
>
> - Eben
>
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM, John Maloney  
>  wrote:
>> Hi, Eben.
>>
>> Yes, using the Journal would be optimal for XO users, and perhaps  
>> we will
>> make Scratch do that in the long run.
>>
>>   -- John
>>
>>
 Re:
>
> At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily
> (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand
> the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small  
> font.

 Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work,  
 but
 the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would  
 be
 done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's "open" dialog. That
 means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project  
 notes.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure this is the downside.  That's one of the benefits.  In
>>> fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description  
>>> field,
>>> so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
>>> familiar to those using Sugar.
>>>
>>> - Eben
>>
>>

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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread Eben Eliason
Thanks John!

My previous comments weren't meant as an attack against you or
Scratch, of course.  We know as well as anyone about resource
constraints!   I just want to keep everyone honest, and make sure that
the broader goals for Sugar and the Journal don't get lost while we
struggle to figure out how to reach them.

I wish I could say "the Journal does all of these things
wonderfully!", but alas, I can only muster "the Journal, as
(re)designed, would do all of these things wonderfully!"  Hopefully
we'll get there.

- Eben


On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM, John Maloney  wrote:
> Hi, Eben.
>
> Yes, using the Journal would be optimal for XO users, and perhaps we will
> make Scratch do that in the long run.
>
>-- John
>
>
>>> Re:

 At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily
 (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand
 the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font.
>>>
>>> Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but
>>> the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be
>>> done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's "open" dialog. That
>>> means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes.
>>
>> I'm not sure this is the downside.  That's one of the benefits.  In
>> fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field,
>> so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
>> familiar to those using Sugar.
>>
>> - Eben
>
>
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Carol Farlow Lerche
While the MTD layer does go to memory first, my thought about two swaps was
slightly different.  Depending on how they are managed, one of two things
might happen:  (I assume the second swap isn't used until the first is full)
1. less "busy" stuff gets migrated to the second swap or 2) The second swap
just gets the latest thing that needs swapping even if it is busy.  (1)
would be better if the second swap is on flash to minimize wear ... this is
like old time hierarchical storage management on mainframes.  Yes I did roam
the earth with the dinosaurs.  (2) would potentially allow for a graceful
OOM management by using something about  second swap usage to be a signal to
make the user pick an activity to close.

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Martin Langhoff
wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche 
> wrote:
> > Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be
> gained
> > by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash,
> > perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer.  First question is whether Linux
> treats
> > the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if
> the
> > compcache is exhausted.  If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to
> > study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash
> swap
> > be a signal to prune activities?
>
> Both Belyakov and Richard Purdie seem to compress into a large-ish
> buffer in RAM first, and only past a certain threshold actually put it
> to NAND. This is to minimise number of erase ops, and improve
> performance, so the swaponflash driver Richard's posted does exactly
> what you describe.
>
> As to treating that as a signal, I dunno.
>
> I do think Sugar could monitor some mem stats and warn the user
> _early_ when under mem pressure. If more than one activity is open, it
> could sugges to close a bg activity...
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>



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future depends on it."  -- Barack Obama
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Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Anna  wrote:
> Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to
> customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO?  And how would
> networking work?

It should work but I haven't explored the practicalities of it. You're
welcome to play in this area!

Networking-wise, the laptop has a libertas device that appears to the
OS exactly like an Active Antenna, so the XS OS will spot it and
configure it to be the 'school mesh' antenna.

That means that we're missing the WAN port, mainly. I think (and
hope!) that if you plug in a USB-ethernet adapter (any that F9
supports), it'll be taken as eth0, and you're good to go if the school
has dsl or something similar.

Most linux-supported "G3" (CDMA?) usb modems will also be autodetected
-- configure ppp with the ISP-supplied details and run. This could be
improved quite a bit to remove the need for local configuration --
take a usb stick with a predefined file with the ppp configuration,
and autoconfigure a ppp0 device to automatically come up (and stay
up).

It should do something similar with a USB ext HD - use it for /library ...



m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5

2008-12-18 Thread Anna
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Martin Langhoff  wrote:

>
> Have you got an XO? I really need someone to help me experiment with
> booting F9 off an SD card (backporting whatever cleverness has been
> applied to F10) so we can put  XS-0.6 on SD cards and say: XO + SD
> card + external USB HD = XS!
>
> (I don't think the XO will boot from an ext USB HD...)



I tried FC9 following these instructions awhile back.

http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/08/regular-linux-desktops-on-the-xo/

Would it work to install XS 0.5 to an SD card, then run that script to
customize the kernel and olpc.fth so it boots up on the XO?  And how would
networking work?

Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche  wrote:
> Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be gained
> by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash,
> perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer.  First question is whether Linux treats
> the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if the
> compcache is exhausted.  If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to
> study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash swap
> be a signal to prune activities?

Both Belyakov and Richard Purdie seem to compress into a large-ish
buffer in RAM first, and only past a certain threshold actually put it
to NAND. This is to minimise number of erase ops, and improve
performance, so the swaponflash driver Richard's posted does exactly
what you describe.

As to treating that as a signal, I dunno.

I do think Sugar could monitor some mem stats and warn the user
_early_ when under mem pressure. If more than one activity is open, it
could sugges to close a bg activity...

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Cmap tools

2008-12-18 Thread Greg Smith
Hi All,

Picking up this old thread 
(http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-September/018835.html)

I want to move this forward again.

There is a beta version of a smaller Linux implementation of CMap tools 
now. Download it from here:
http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/cmaplite.php

Does anyone have time to try running this inside of the X windows 
activity mentioned below?

While we have some traction on other concept map tools (thanks Tomeu for 
Labrynth), CMap is "incumbent" in a number of countries and I want to 
figure out how close we are to supporting it. It will affect our ability 
to get XOs and Sugar in to more schools systems so its certainly 
valuable work.

Let me know if anyone has a chance to try this out and document what it 
will take to make it work.

Thanks,

Greg S

*

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Bert Freudenberg  wrote:
 >
 > Am 04.09.2008 um 01:06 schrieb Michael Stone:
 >
 >> On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 05:33:28PM -0400, Greg Smith wrote:
 >>> Has anyone tried making the activity which is X-windows and inside
 >>> which
 >>> other activities can run?
 >>
 >> [1] and [2] seem apropos.
 >>
 >> Michael
 >>
 >> [1]: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7768#comment:8
 >> [2]: 
http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/12/run_a_nested_x11_desktop_on_th.html
 >
 > I couldn't resist making an activity for that:
 >
 >http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/X

Anybody has any idea about how to make xephyr use the clipboard of the
external X server? DND may be even harder.

Regards,

Tomeu
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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread John Maloney
Hi, Eben.

Yes, using the Journal would be optimal for XO users, and perhaps we  
will make Scratch do that in the long run.

-- John


>> Re:
>>> At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily
>>> (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand
>>> the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small  
>>> font.
>>
>> Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but
>> the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be
>> done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's "open" dialog. That
>> means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes.
>
> I'm not sure this is the downside.  That's one of the benefits.  In
> fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field,
> so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
> familiar to those using Sugar.
>
> - Eben

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Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> Sure! I have a Fujitsu P2120 (Transmeta Crusoe ~900MHz proc, 384MB
> RAM) that I've been using for testing. We use it at all the OLPC-SF
> meetings. XS 0.4 works fine on it "right out of the box", but no such
> love with 0.5, hence the concern. I've been following your thread on
> the built-in wireless card confusion and it looks like I may have the
> same issue.

Is that the only issue? What does the output of iwconfig look like? Do
you have an AA?

In other words, bugreports and/or reports to this list can give me
enough hints to fix it. I depend on you reporting it...

> We can always dig up a relatively modern P4 for testing. What
> additional hw would this be?

The machine you have is low end, but it should do for small groups -
no need for a P4. Was thinking of an AA and/or an XO if you don't have
them. Depends on what you're testing.

> Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate your efforts. On my recent
> trip to India (http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/593), I realized the
> immense importance of the school server in environs with no Internet
> backhaul. Khairat, India's first pilot, has a server, but its an old
> build (160 or 161, I think) and they recently lost their backhaul, so
> they don't use it anymore. The teacher asked for a lot of things that
> could be fixed easily with the current XS feature set.

Interesting to hear that. Do you think you could write up a brief
summary of the things that teacher asked for...? (the slides linked,
while interesting, don't seem to refer to this...)

> In other
> schools where they might consider getting XOs, the immense cost of
> backhaul will kill the effort before it gets off the ground. The XS
> fills that gap. This reminds me: We should explore sneakernet-like
> e-mail at some point, but I digress.

Have you got an XO? I really need someone to help me experiment with
booting F9 off an SD card (backporting whatever cleverness has been
applied to F10) so we can put  XS-0.6 on SD cards and say: XO + SD
card + external USB HD = XS!

(I don't think the XO will boot from an ext USB HD...)

> The offline nature of content and software (wikislice, moodle, etc.)
> is going to be instrumental in getting XOs to poorer school districts
> that cannot afford backhaul connectivity.. In fact, I think the role
> of the school server is undersold and overshadowed by the XO's
> capabilities and eye candy.

Of course I agree, the XS is the sexiest part of OLPC, and we're the
only ones that have noticed ;-) Is it feasible to make Wikislices with
cjb's toolchain for the various languages in India?

> I'm just concerned that folks like Manoocher
> (http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-December/000953.html)
> might get misled by the "stable" monkier only to find out that the 0.5
> ISO has issues.

Reasonable point. It does say stable, and it also says "0.5" ;-)

And we can also say that 0.4 is not very "stable" either -- I know
quite a few scenarios where it has significantly more trouble than
0.5.

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread Eben Eliason
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Bert Freudenberg  wrote:
> On 18.12.2008, at 17:11, Eben Eliason wrote:
>
>> In
>> fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field,
>> so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
>> familiar to those using Sugar.
>
>
> In theory, yes. In practice, you do not get a preview for downloaded
> files, not even for images. This has been known for ages:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2460

Hmm, that's too bad.  Maybe we can get that fixed.

> Besides, even if all entries had a preview, it is still cumbersome to
> find anything by preview, because the preview is hidden in the "detail
> view", and there is not even a way to move directly between detail
> views (next/previous buttons as well as page up/down keys have been

That's true.  As soon as we have some manpower to put the new Journal
design in place, we'll all be far better off here.  In addition to
improvements to the detail view itself, it will expose thumbnails in
browsable views as well.

> discussed but not implemented). Nor is there a way to navigate by
> keyboard at all in the Journal.

True, and extremely unfortunate.  I think we need to keep some
accessibility concerns on the short term agenda.

> Unfortunately "usability" is not one of the goals in the Sugar roadmap.

Your pain is my pain.  However, I still feel it necessary to keep
everyone's eye on a larger prize.  Rather than having every activity
solve these problems in a different way, I'd like to convince one or
two of the activity devs to help address the core issue so we have a
net win for everyone.  If the system is broken (and we know it is!)
then we should fix it, rather than building numerous
workarounds/substitutions.

- Eben


> - Bert -
>
>
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Re: [Server-devel] stability of XS 0.5

2008-12-18 Thread Sameer Verma
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:42 AM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>> Given that we still have issues cropping up with XS 0.5, are we still
>> going to call it "stable"?
>
> It's great news that you care about this. Do you have a spare
> (standard modernish x86) you can use to join the testing efforts?

Sure! I have a Fujitsu P2120 (Transmeta Crusoe ~900MHz proc, 384MB
RAM) that I've been using for testing. We use it at all the OLPC-SF
meetings. XS 0.4 works fine on it "right out of the box", but no such
love with 0.5, hence the concern. I've been following your thread on
the built-in wireless card confusion and it looks like I may have the
same issue.

>  It's
> much easier than with the XO, which requires special HW. If you get
> involved, I can organise shipping additional hw that'll be useful.

We can always dig up a relatively modern P4 for testing. What
additional hw would this be?

>
> I'll soon push a new 0.5.1 "candidate" build. You'll be CC'd so you
> can lend a hand.
>

OK. I'll wait for it.

> OTOH, all the reported issues have been diagnosed, and all but one
> fixed. Not bad for a milestone release in what is a fast development
> schedule towards 1.0.

Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate your efforts. On my recent
trip to India (http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/593), I realized the
immense importance of the school server in environs with no Internet
backhaul. Khairat, India's first pilot, has a server, but its an old
build (160 or 161, I think) and they recently lost their backhaul, so
they don't use it anymore. The teacher asked for a lot of things that
could be fixed easily with the current XS feature set. In other
schools where they might consider getting XOs, the immense cost of
backhaul will kill the effort before it gets off the ground. The XS
fills that gap. This reminds me: We should explore sneakernet-like
e-mail at some point, but I digress.

The offline nature of content and software (wikislice, moodle, etc.)
is going to be instrumental in getting XOs to poorer school districts
that cannot afford backhaul connectivity.. In fact, I think the role
of the school server is undersold and overshadowed by the XO's
capabilities and eye candy.

I'm just concerned that folks like Manoocher
(http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/grassroots/2008-December/000953.html)
might get misled by the "stable" monkier only to find out that the 0.5
ISO has issues.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread Bert Freudenberg
On 18.12.2008, at 17:11, Eben Eliason wrote:

> In
> fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field,
> so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
> familiar to those using Sugar.


In theory, yes. In practice, you do not get a preview for downloaded  
files, not even for images. This has been known for ages:

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2460

Besides, even if all entries had a preview, it is still cumbersome to  
find anything by preview, because the preview is hidden in the "detail  
view", and there is not even a way to move directly between detail  
views (next/previous buttons as well as page up/down keys have been  
discussed but not implemented). Nor is there a way to navigate by  
keyboard at all in the Journal.

Unfortunately "usability" is not one of the goals in the Sugar roadmap.

- Bert -


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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread Eben Eliason
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:57 AM, John Maloney  wrote:
> Hi, Phillip.
>
> Re: Do you plan a journal integration for scratch?
>
> Probably not in the near future. There has been talk about making an
> API for the Journal that looks more like a file system to application
> programs. That might be the easiest way to integrate the Journal into
> Scratch in the long run.
>
> Sugar continues to evolve. Earlier versions still allowed access to
> the file system in a way that made it fairly easy to port applications
> like Scratch. More recently, with the Rainbow security system, it
> became much more difficult to use the file system directly.
>
> I support Scratch on many different platforms. The XO is an important
> one due to the educational mission of OLPC. Still, my time is limited
> and I can only spend so much of it on the XO version of Scratch. Thus,
> I try to steer a middle path -- create a Scratch port for the XO
> without changing too much of the Scratch source code. I am hoping that
> eventually Sugar will make life easier for those porting applications
> from file-based platforms by providing some sort of virtual file
> system API. The Journal and the virtual file system could just be two
> views on the same set of files.
>
> Re:
>> At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily
>> (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand
>> the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font.
>
> Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but
> the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be
> done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's "open" dialog. That
> means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes.

I'm not sure this is the downside.  That's one of the benefits.  In
fact, the Journal itself supports thumbnails and a description field,
so a similar experience could be offered there, in a place that's
familiar to those using Sugar.

- Eben


> If project deletion is the only issue, my preference would be to add a
> way to delete projects to the Scratch open and save dialogs. (Although
> I'm not promising to do that immediately, since we're currently
> working on the release of Scratch 1.4.)
>
> Another solution (which could be more near-term) would be to increase
> the font size in the file dialog. Do you think that would help?
>
>-- John
>
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Re: [support-gang] Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!

2008-12-18 Thread Henry Edward Hardy
I asked if I could bring 10 people, they said "bring ten or as many as you
want".

The first ten responses are:

1: Tyler
2: Jeff
3: Brian
4: Seth
5: Frances
6: Justin
7: Mel
8: Richard
9: Adam
10. Dan B.

If you still want to come and did not make the "list", be at Chipotle by 1
and I will try to add you to the "free food". If not, the place is pretty
cheap and we can still hang out a bit.

Suggest bringing your business cards (so we can win more free food later),
and XO's if you want to play XO games (no reliable free wireless that plays
nice with XO in H Sq, regrettably).

See you at Chipotle between 12:45 and 1.

--HH.

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Bennett  wrote:

> I've got an 11:00 am meeting in Davis, but I can try to meet you Harvard by
> 12:30.  Bump me off the list if you manage to fill it with Solid responeses.
> MMM,
> -Dan
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
> e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>
>> Any chance that you can FedEx me a burrito? I love Chipotle! :-)
>>
>> Christoph
>>
>> Am 18.12.2008 um 16:07 schrieb "Henry Edward Hardy" :
>>
>> We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this
>> afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008).
>>
>> So far I have the following people confirmed:
>>
>> 1: Tyler
>> 2: Jeff
>> 3: Brian
>> 4: Seth
>> 5: Frances
>> 6: Justin
>>
>> If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open
>> this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining.
>>
>> --HH.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy < 
>> he...@laptop.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly drawing
>>> again!
>>>
>>> I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm.
>>>
>>> First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the
>>> menu but bottled drinks.
>>>
>>> --HH.
>>>
>>> --
>>> ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that
>>> the defenses of peace must be constructed.
>>> --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
>>> Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use
>> the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
>> --anon
>>
>> ___
>> support-gang mailing list
>> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> support-g...@lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang
>>
>>
>


-- 
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the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread John Watlington

The soldered in NAND is also 14 times slower on writes and half
the speed of a good SD card.

wad

On Dec 18, 2008, at 5:51 AM, John Gilmore wrote:

>> What about using a NAND partition as swap?  Has this ever been done?
>> Given that partition support is a recent development it seems  
>> unlikely.
>
> Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It will
> tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling software
> (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that
> if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the
> laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to
> fix it.
>
> A much more reliable scheme would be to swap to an SD card, if one is
> plugged in and contains a swap partition (or a file in its root called
> SWAPFILE).  See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8410.  Even a small,
> cheap SD card could double or triple the available virtual RAM space.
> And if an SD card gets worn out, you merely pull it out of the laptop,
> throw it away, and buy a new one (for a fraction of the original cost,
> since Moore's Law has been working in your favor in the intervening
> years).
>
> This doesn't solve the least-common-denominator problem of people  
> without
> SD cards -- but it does offer a user, or a deployment, a very  
> simple and
> relatively cheap way to solve most problems related to physical RAM  
> size.
>
> On the topic of memory overload in general:
>
> Older XO releases did much better things when they ran out of physical
> memory:  they tended to rapidly kill off some process, leaving the  
> system
> largely functional.  In 767, the system instead goes from usable to
> molasses-like in a period of seconds, then freezes totally for minutes
> or hours.  As far as I know, nobody has debugged why that changed.   
> The
> prior behavior was infinitely preferable.
>
>   John
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Carol Farlow Lerche
After reading Belyakov's paper a few questions for the experts occurred to
me:

Since Linux allows multiple swap partitions, is there anything to be gained
by using two -- the first, a compcache swap file and the second on flash,
perhaps with Belyakov's MTD layer.  First question is whether Linux treats
the two swap files in an order, such that it only uses the flash swap if the
compcache is exhausted.  If so, instrument the I/O rate to swap, first to
study the relative sizing and second -- could the I/O rate to the flash swap
be a signal to prune activities?

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:25 AM, Martin Langhoff
wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Chris Ball  wrote:
> > And see this old mail from Mitch:
> >
> >   http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-December/009030.html
> >
> > (Mitch doesn't mention how he feels about swapping in particular.
> > We could perhaps attempt to conduct some experimen
>
> Not sure if this particular patchseries ever made it, but Richard
> Purdie has been working on this area (marc lets you see all his posts
> to lkml, and it's all around mtd, compression, swap).
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117285102508455&w=2
>
> Might also be worthwhile to ping him...
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> martin-who's-reading-lkml-while-xs-reboots
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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future depends on it."  -- Barack Obama
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Re: Minutes of Power in 9.1.0 meeting

2008-12-18 Thread Greg Smith
Thanks Chris!

Could you also mention any planned GUI changes in the specification 
section? Name changes to the modes and moving the "radio off" to Network 
control panel only are two that come to mind. If you can define what it 
will look like and help close the loop with Sugar or whoever is needed 
to change the GUI that would be a big help.

Also, who is tracking the added ability to shut off power to the radio 
interface and its logic when the radio is set to off in its control 
panel (requirement 2)?

Joe,

Its over to you to write the test plan now. I added two documentation 
links to the top of the specification section to give you more 
background on how it is supposed to work.

Let me know if you have any questions. I want to have a solid test plan 
reviewed and in place early this time as I think that was a critical 
missing piece in the 8.2.0 release.

Thanks,

Greg S

Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:56:04 -0500
From: Chris Ball 
Subject: Re: Minutes of Power in 9.1.0 meeting
To: g...@laptop.org
Cc: Richard Smith , OLPC Development
,   "Joseph A. Feinstein" 
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi Greg,

>> * Chris to make some additions to requirement linking in the
>> existing documentation, including what happens when the lid is
>> closed.

> I believe Joe is waiting for Chris to update the requirements
> before he writes the test cases. I am waiting for the test cases so
> I can explain to people exactly how much longer the battery will
> last.

I've added these new sections to the requirements (added to the end of
the list in order to avoid renumbering the list).  I also added a link
to the most recent test plan we have for power management, which would
be a fine model for the new one.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap/Improved_battery_life

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- Chris Ball 
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Re: Harvard Square Chipotle One Burrito per OLPC!

2008-12-18 Thread Henry Edward Hardy
We will leave from 1cc for Harvard Square Chipotle at 12:30 sharp this
afternoon (Thurs, Dec 18, 2008).

So far I have the following people confirmed:

1: Tyler
2: Jeff
3: Brian
4: Seth
5: Frances
6: Justin

If you want to get in on this please respond asap, as I am going to open
this to volunteers now. There are at least 4 places remaining.

--HH.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Henry Edward Hardy wrote:

> Chipotle in Harvard Square called me Saturday, I won their weekly drawing
> again!
>
> I have set up lunch at Chipotle for us Thursday, Dec 18 at 1pm.
>
> First ten to respond to this email will get free food, anything on the menu
> but bottled drinks.
>
> --HH.
>
> --
> ...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the
> defenses of peace must be constructed.
> --Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
> Organization (UNESCO), 16 November, 1945
>



-- 
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the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread John Maloney
Hi, Phillip.

Re: Do you plan a journal integration for scratch?

Probably not in the near future. There has been talk about making an  
API for the Journal that looks more like a file system to application  
programs. That might be the easiest way to integrate the Journal into  
Scratch in the long run.

Sugar continues to evolve. Earlier versions still allowed access to  
the file system in a way that made it fairly easy to port applications  
like Scratch. More recently, with the Rainbow security system, it  
became much more difficult to use the file system directly.

I support Scratch on many different platforms. The XO is an important  
one due to the educational mission of OLPC. Still, my time is limited  
and I can only spend so much of it on the XO version of Scratch. Thus,  
I try to steer a middle path -- create a Scratch port for the XO  
without changing too much of the Scratch source code. I am hoping that  
eventually Sugar will make life easier for those porting applications  
from file-based platforms by providing some sort of virtual file  
system API. The Journal and the virtual file system could just be two  
views on the same set of files.

Re:
> At the moment it is not possible to delete scratch projects easily  
> (just in terminal) and our students have difficulty to understand  
> the file and folder structure in the dialog with the very small font.

Yes, I see the problem. Your solution sounds like it would work, but  
the downside is that browsing for existing Scratch projects would be  
done using the Journal, rather than Scratch's "open" dialog. That  
means the user would not see the project thumbnail and project notes.

If project deletion is the only issue, my preference would be to add a  
way to delete projects to the Scratch open and save dialogs. (Although  
I'm not promising to do that immediately, since we're currently  
working on the release of Scratch 1.4.)

Another solution (which could be more near-term) would be to increase  
the font size in the file dialog. Do you think that would help?

-- John

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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Chris Ball  wrote:
> And see this old mail from Mitch:
>
>   http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-December/009030.html
>
> (Mitch doesn't mention how he feels about swapping in particular.
> We could perhaps attempt to conduct some experimen

Not sure if this particular patchseries ever made it, but Richard
Purdie has been working on this area (marc lets you see all his posts
to lkml, and it's all around mtd, compression, swap).
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117285102508455&w=2

Might also be worthwhile to ping him...

cheers,



martin-who's-reading-lkml-while-xs-reboots
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: Downloading Scratch project to XO

2008-12-18 Thread pgf
philipp wrote:
 > Hi Bert, John
 > 
 > There is a bug in copy-from-journal, it is adding an additional dot 
 > before the file extension. Otherwise it is working.
 > 
 > [o...@localhost ~]$ copy-from-journal -o 
 > 07474cf4-4883-4ded-a994-ab5511cfc29c /tmp/test.sb
 > /home/olpc/.sugar/default/data/07474cf4-4883-4ded-a994-ab5511cfc29c -> 
 > /tmp/test..sb
 > 
 > My workaround in scratch-activity looks like this:
 > if [ -n "$object_id" ] ; then
 >  filename="$SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/instance/temp.sb"
 >  copy-from-journal -o "$object_id" "$filename"
 >  filename="$SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/instance/temp..sb"
 > else
 >  filename=""
 > fi

will you file a ticket on this?  (or perhaps at least update #5571.)

paul
=-
 paul fox, p...@laptop.org
 give one laptop, get one laptop --- http://www.laptop.com/xo
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Re: [Server-devel] Exploding wireless interfaces on your laptop

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
[Getting server-devel back on CC]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:29 PM, Jerry Vonau  wrote:
> Think the renaming fails when wlan0 already is present, and then the
> rename gets stuck at "eth1_rename".

with "present" meaning "in 70-persistent-net.rules".

Hmmm, you are right. I had removed the file, but it wasn't enough.
When testing/debugging these scripts, you have to remove it on every
reboot and plug/unplug cycle you're testing. That caught me.

Removed the file and it all works. I wonder - do we have to remove it
on 0.5.x -> 0.6 upgrades?

cheers,



m
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Chris Ball
Hi,

   >> Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It
   >> will tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling
   >> software (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the
   >> problem is that

   > While I generally agree with you,
   > 
www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf
   > does seem to talk about the mtd driver having special handling for
   > swap.

And see this old mail from Mitch:

   http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-December/009030.html

(Mitch doesn't mention how he feels about swapping in particular.
We could perhaps attempt to conduct some experiments.)

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   
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Re: Journal integration for Scratch

2008-12-18 Thread Bert Freudenberg
On 18.12.2008, at 08:08, Philipp Kocher wrote:
>
> One more thing, the scratch icon is not shown in the journal for files
> with the scratch mimetype. I think the file
> /usr/share/sugar/data/mime.defaults has to be adapted to include the
> scratch-mimetype.


It just has to be listed in the activity bundle's info file:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles#.info_File_Format

- Bert -


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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 8:51 AM, John Gilmore  wrote:
>> What about using a NAND partition as swap?  Has this ever been done?
>> Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely.
>
> Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It will
> tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling software
> (e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that

While I generally agree with you,
www.celinux.org/elc08_presentations/belyakov_elc2008_compressed_swap_final_doc.pdf
does seem to talk about the mtd driver having special handling for
swap.

cheers,


m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: No surprise on memory

2008-12-18 Thread John Gilmore
> What about using a NAND partition as swap?  Has this ever been done?
> Given that partition support is a recent development it seems unlikely.

Swapping to the soldered-in NAND chips is a very bad idea.  It will
tend to wear them out rapidly.  Even if you use load-leveling software
(e.g. swapping to a file in a jfffs2 filesystem), the problem is that
if you do start wearing out serious numbers of flash blocks, the
laptop becomes toast; it requires a soldering iron and spare chips to
fix it.

A much more reliable scheme would be to swap to an SD card, if one is
plugged in and contains a swap partition (or a file in its root called
SWAPFILE).  See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8410.  Even a small,
cheap SD card could double or triple the available virtual RAM space.
And if an SD card gets worn out, you merely pull it out of the laptop,
throw it away, and buy a new one (for a fraction of the original cost,
since Moore's Law has been working in your favor in the intervening
years).  

This doesn't solve the least-common-denominator problem of people without
SD cards -- but it does offer a user, or a deployment, a very simple and
relatively cheap way to solve most problems related to physical RAM size.

On the topic of memory overload in general:

Older XO releases did much better things when they ran out of physical
memory:  they tended to rapidly kill off some process, leaving the system
largely functional.  In 767, the system instead goes from usable to
molasses-like in a period of seconds, then freezes totally for minutes
or hours.  As far as I know, nobody has debugged why that changed.  The
prior behavior was infinitely preferable.

John
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Re: Help runnning a script after Installing an activity from .xo

2008-12-18 Thread shivaprasad javali
I am using a tool to write the application. The sound will be played by this
tool itself and it uses OSS. Sorry I cannot provide more information as to
what the tool is and what is the application.
So I cannot change the way I play sound since this would require me to
change the underlying tool.

Then is asking the user to run a shell script which does all the work for me
the only way to ask the XO to load the OSS module? Isn't there any way else
to do it so that the user doen't have to download the script, login to the
terminal and then run this script.

Thanks
Shivaprasad

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 7:08 AM, Wade Brainerd  wrote:

> One more thing-  If you are only using OSS to play sound, why not use
> pygame.mixer instead?  It's part of the core Sugar dependencies and offers
> very low latency playback and the ability to mix channels.
>
> Or, are you using some extended functionality of OSS that's not present in
> pygame.mixer?
>
> -Wade
>
>
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