Re: New Synthetic Phonics Literacy Activity
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 00:33 +0430, Mike Dawson wrote: Hi All, As many of the target areas for the XOs suffer from massive illiteracy problems, and some live away from where schools will be built during the time that they grow up and could benefit from a literacy learning activity using home schooling. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SynPhony Norbert Rennert has done work on a prototype Synthetic phonics based application that can pick out appropriate words from a list according to learner's levels and the phonics being stressed. Then we have espeak that can handle text to speech. We can migrate this to using HTML 5 for it's database and built it as an offline application (which could then use any other source to update word lists etc). We can then define a means to link words to other media such as images. Looks great Mike! You could also easily migrate to using html5's audio tag instead of flash. That will make the size of the application much smaller and easier to build and manipulate. It should also improve performance as u won't have to load the flash plugin. What license is SynPhony under? I am busy for next 4 weeks polishing Karma but would like to apply Karma to this -- Bryan W. Berry Senior Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Create and sign Country specific XO image
Philip, talk to reuben caron about getting the image signed. Personally, i think you are better off unlocking your XO's and using and unsigned image. If you want to create a custom image, my best recommendation is that you contract Ties Stuij or someone at OLPC to do it for you. Reuben may or may not have the resources to do it himself. Creating a custom image is a fair amount of work and you always have to change it later. On Fri, 2009-06-26 at 11:25 +0700, Philipp Kocher wrote: Hello Cambodia is getting 1000 new XOs very soon. This are the first ones with a Khmer keyboard. To make the installation process easier, I would like to create a country specific image based on build 802, which includes Khmer keyboard support, fonts, the newest language pack with software translations, Activities and some customizations. I found just very few information about creating a country specific image (mainly from Nepal): http://tiezemans.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/customizing-the-xo-image/ http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/183 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customizing_NAND_images How can I get a country specific image file signed? Which other customizations or bugfixes are recommended to be included (e.g. like the ones from paraguay http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-March/023788.html)? Detailed instructions from other deployments about creating an image are very welcome. Thanks and best regards, Philipp ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO frequently hangs on shutdown w/ 0.82
On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 14:28 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 14:21, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: I am curious if a number of other deployments have encountered this problem or just us. We find that the XO occasionally hangs on shutdown. We are using 0.82 I have created a ticket for this http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9319 I realize that OLPC has roughly zero resources to fix problems like this. I would really appreciate it if someone could let me know how difficult a problem this is. If it is relatively easy, we could try to fix it ourselves. Maybe you are seeing the issue discussed here? http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-May/024414.html Regards, Tomeu I believe that is the same error we are encountering. Sorry for the late reply. sorry i didn't provide a more detailed message. I seem to encounter every time I am really busy attacking some other problem. This image describes my problem exactly http://wiki.laptop.org/images/8/8e/Xo_freeze_on_shutdown.png waiting for X server to shutdown . . xinit: unexpected signal 15 It looks like there are # of tickets related to this problem. Is there already a fix somewhere that I can easily apply? ;) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO frequently hangs on shutdown w/ 0.82
I am curious if a number of other deployments have encountered this problem or just us. We find that the XO occasionally hangs on shutdown. We are using 0.82 I have created a ticket for this http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9319 I realize that OLPC has roughly zero resources to fix problems like this. I would really appreciate it if someone could let me know how difficult a problem this is. If it is relatively easy, we could try to fix it ourselves. thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] touchpad problems (was Re: Questions)
From: david da...@leeming-consulting.com Daniel, Feedback from Nauru. It is very hot and very humid. I find typically that almost all the children observe the jumping cursor. The recalibration does help, but it's still a major issue. I am simply unable to use the touchpad in demonstrations. I use a USB mouse and VNCLauncher with UltraVNC to project the XO screen during trainings (works very well), but when I go round to help trainees (we have been training parents as well as students and children) i find I cannot use their touchpads - on almost all the XOs. They have better luck (maybe my fingers are sweaty more than most) and I have noticed students often wrapping cloth around their finger to use the touch pad. It remains a real problem, but people do get by. When I move to an airconditioned room the problem goes away mostly - a 4-finger salute and it's fine. We had the same problems w/ the touchpad here in Nepal. Nothing ever fixed the problem, though we never tried wrapping our fingers in cloth. That is quite novel. The new touchpad is 1 million times better. Our kids almost never have trouble w/ the new touchpad. That said, kids w/ the old touchpad are out of luck. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Occasional stuck keys on devanagari keyboard
thanks for the tip Richard, I have been testing some XO's that manifested this problem in the first place. I have isolated 6 XO's that first demonstrated the problem and tested them every morning for the last 6 days. The problem has not reappeared. I will try the new firmware in the next couple weeks but if the problem doesn't occur again then it seems like a moot point. On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 14:59 -0400, Richard A. Smith wrote: Bryan Berry wrote: consistently. For instance, w/ 5 XO's yesterday the keys were stuck on the first boot. On the second boot the problem went away. Today, I powered on the same XO's and the keys were stuck on the first boot. The problem went away on the second boot. We have firmware Q2E33 Can anyone shed some insight on this problem? Byran, Can you please try q2e40? In q2e34 I made an EC fix for certain conditions where an ack packet from the keyboard would be lost. I can't say for certain that this is what you are running into but its possible. Thanks. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Occasional stuck keys on devanagari keyboard
I have about 40 XO's out of 2000 so far that occasionally show stuck keys in the corners of the keyboard, particularly the frame, fn, and right arrow key. The keys seem to stick occasionally but not consistently. For instance, w/ 5 XO's yesterday the keys were stuck on the first boot. On the second boot the problem went away. Today, I powered on the same XO's and the keys were stuck on the first boot. The problem went away on the second boot. We have firmware Q2E33 Can anyone shed some insight on this problem? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
phantom stuck keys in XO shipment
We received 2525 XO's a week ago and have been imaging and repacking them. We have received XO 1.5's w/ Nepali keyboards. We have processed 1600 XO's so far and only found about 6 XO's DOA. I have encountered a very strange problem however. On about 50 XO's so far, the function, right arrow key, both raised hand keys, and the frame key in the upper right corner appear stuck during testing. We test the keyboards using test-all from the Forth prompt. On a second boot, the problem goes away and no keys are stuck during test keyboard or test-all. We happily move the XO from the DOA stack to the deployment stack. Hopefully this stuck key problem stays away permanently. Can anyone tell me why this happens in the first place? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] phantom USB-Ethernet problem
On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 11:16 +0200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: Please disregard my frantic e-mails about the USB-Ethernet problem. It turns out that the USB-Ethernet NIC was not at fault, even when using a USB 1.1. USB-Ethernet. However, I would not recommend using it on the LAN side, since it has much lower throughput than a USB 2.0 Interested to hear what you find to be a workable solution as secondary nic for something like an mswind. will let you know. These mini-desktop PC's are in IMHO the best option for the XS in terms of performance to cost ratio, power consumption, and extensibility. There are other super-low power PC's, but they tend to be 3x more expensive and you usually can't easily add a bigger Hard drive or more RAM later according to needs. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
problems w/ new Nepali keyboard
We just got our new XO's last night and we are having problems switching languages using the switch language key The key actually works w/ the pre-installed 767 image from OLPC but not our customized image that is also 767. What could we have screwed up? Btw, the new XO's finally have the Nepali keyboard, which we didn't have before -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: problems w/ new Nepali keyboard
but on second boot, the keyboard switching seems to work. verrry strange On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 09:51 +0545, Bryan Berry wrote: We just got our new XO's last night and we are having problems switching languages using the switch language key The key actually works w/ the pre-installed 767 image from OLPC but not our customized image that is also 767. What could we have screwed up? Btw, the new XO's finally have the Nepali keyboard, which we didn't have before -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
That isn't the problem. I believe that USB 1.1 NIC's choke when they have multiple connections. I guess the Rx polling - whatever that is - causes so many interrupts that the NIC stops serving requests friends on server-devel, I highly recommend you use the lsusb -v to find out if your usb NIC is actually USB 2.0. Apparently a number of USB NIC's on the market are advertised as USB 2.0 but are actually 1.1 On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 14:08 +0545, Ties Stuij wrote: So Tony suggested just using the usb-ethernet thingies for the internet-connection. USB1.1 is, what, 700kbps? What are the chances that we can supply the schools with more bandwidth than that? /Ties On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:49 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem. That's great news! I'll also be delighted to hear about what hw you find that works... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
Bernie and friends on the server-devel list We want to use the MSI Wind PC for the XS but it has one big problem. It only has 1 on-board NIC and no PCI slots. As you know, the XS requires 2 NIC's. We have tried several different USB NIC's and are having serious throughput problems. Is this issue one w/ the NIC or the fact that it is connected by USB? The no-name brand USB-Ethernet NIC I am using uses the pegasus: v0.6.14 (2006/09/27), Pegasus/Pegasus II USB Ethernet driver The device is: ADMtek ADM8515 Pegasus II USB-2.0 Ethernet We also have used a branded Trendnet USB NIC w/ similarly bad results. Please let us know if it is not realistic to use a USB NIC. We really want to use the MSI Wind PC because it has ample storage, Atom process, 4 GB of RAM, and only uses 65W thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Problems w/ USB-ethernet device
I am reposting this e-mail from the server-devel to the general developers list to see if I can find more kernel hackers w/ knowledge of this particular problem. We want to use the MSI Wind PC for the XS but it has one big problem. It only has 1 on-board NIC and no PCI slots. As you know, the XS requires 2 NIC's. We have tried several different USB NIC's and are having serious throughput problems. Is this issue one w/ the NIC or the fact that it is connected by USB? The no-name brand USB-Ethernet NIC I am using uses the pegasus: v0.6.14 (2006/09/27), Pegasus/Pegasus II USB Ethernet driver The device is: ADMtek ADM8515 Pegasus II USB-2.0 Ethernet We also have used a branded Trendnet USB NIC w/ similarly bad results. Please let us know if it is not realistic to use a USB NIC. We really want to use the MSI Wind PC because it has ample storage, Atom process, 4 GB of RAM, and only uses 65W -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem. BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: great, do u think I can buy a usb2 ethernet nic for under $50? budget is tight and I need these for 15 XS's Mitch_Bradley AX8817X and AX88772 are the chips BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: thanks Mitch_Bradley http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=589 BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: is there any reason that USB-Ethernet is inherently unworkable or is it just a question of getting the right usb-ethernet nic? Mitch_Bradley USB 1.1 sucks rocks for ethernet because the polling for rx packets kills the throughput cjb BryanWB: no, the others are usb2 cjb what Mitch_Bradley said BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: so usb1.1 will totally crap out w/ 20 users ? Mitch_Bradley USB2.0 has much improved bandwidth and much lower latency for polling usb1.1 will totally crap out with 1 user BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: thanks a lot guys, you are saving my bacon cjb BryanWB: the number of users won't affect it, other than by sucking proportional to load Mitch_Bradley I didn't even bother supporting USB 1.1 ethernet chips in OFW. It's just not worth it. cjb anyway, yeah. just find an asix dongle. Mitch_Bradley try to buy a name brand device. The no-name ones often just don't work. On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 15:43 +0100, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: We want to use the MSI Wind PC for the XS but it has one big problem. It only has 1 on-board NIC and no PCI slots. As you know, the XS requires 2 NIC's. We have tried several different USB NIC's and are having serious throughput problems. Is this issue one w/ the NIC or the fact that it is connected by USB? My main worry with USB-connected NICs would be reliability. If the NIC is reliable, but the throughput a bit below-par, you can still probably use it as the WAN NIC -- the throughput is likely to be constrained upstream anyway. - When you say throughput problems... what are you getting? How bad is it? Even if limited, would it be appropriate for the WAN port? - The problem may be specific to the driver or NIC hardware -- is there any discussion on the kernel dev list about it? - The problem may be with the USB bus on the MS Wind, hardware or drivers. Perhaps testing for bus throughput or interrupt handling helps? - Have you tested the reliability of the devices? This may be a larger problem. cheers, martin -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 21:51 -0700, Sameer Verma wrote: On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 09:58 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. Now you're starting to see what I've seen :-/ I also worry about your APs and networking infra -- to support 400 active users you'll want at least 8 APs. In more realistic terms, you'll probably need 12, assuming a reasonably balanced load. We will have roughly 8+ AP's. We have found that off-the-shelf AP's can handle around 60-70 users. But that doesn't still doesn't solve the problem of the XO's getting bogged down by tons of ejabberd chatter. DSD: do you have any ideas about this? We are looking at about 100-150 students per school and connecting 3-4 schools to a central XS. As I mentioned before... I am working on xs-0.6, with the moodle-ejabberd magic. That's great, but our pilot starts in a month but that doesn't fit our timeline. I don't want to send out a completely new, untested XS into rural parts of Nepal. Do you have any other suggestions fo us? What if you had a small footprint box (like a soekris or routerboard) at the school that talks to APs on one end via a switch, and does tunneling back to XS in a central location? That way you would have a fairly dumb tunnel unit at school (literally plug-and-play) and XS management back at your central shop. Sameer Thanks for the suggestion Sameer. I don't really understand what benifits the soekris or routerboard adds in this situation? Can u pls explain further? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] notes on scaling ejabberd for the XO's
Here are some notes from a short IRC conversation I had w/ Rob Mcqueen, the lead developer of Telepathy transcript of conversation on #sugar bemasc: bernie: I am concerned about the fact that in the default schoolserver set up all users are in one giant shared roster Robot101 RESOLVED, ALREADYFIXED (but not in any deployments, or in the UI) BryanWB and the resulting chatter slows down the XO/Sugar considerably? Robot101 yes Robot101 rwh the latest versions of sugar and telepathy support using an XMPP component called gadget instead of the shared roster BryanWB Robot101: so gadget fixes this? Robot101 yup Robot101 rwh you only receive push notifications about a) what Sugar has searched for/displaying on the neighborhood view, or b) your friends -- hgcphoenix (n=hc...@124.107.253.193) has joined #sugar BryanWB Robot101: neat, and does it work together w/ the XS? Robot101: which version of sugar is it in? -- hgcphoenix (n=hc...@124.107.253.193) has left #sugar Robot101 they went off on a complete tangent trying to hack shared rosters to have less mutually visible sets of people we thought of that but also decided it was the bong, so we fixed it properly with gadget. BryanWB Robot101: what is the testing status of gadget? Robot101 it's deployed on jabber.sugarlabs.org (which is on collabora.co.uk) seems to work fine, ejabberd seems to gradually leak memory though, which isn't too great maybe a little much CPU usage on gadget, but nothing you couldn't profile and I'm not familiar enough with the sugar release cycle to say where the support went in Robot101 rwh eu daytime is better to find the Sugar devs and the Collaborans who worked on Gadget (cassidy, daf) BryanWB Robot101: ok, will talk w/ them later today Robot101 gadget was always our plan, it just took us a while to get to it BryanWB Robot101: by the way last year we tested ejabberd by streaming your video talk on Telepathy to 80 XO's bemasc Robot101: I believe martin dropped the shared roster, and inside is simply using moodle to set all rosters directly. s/inside/instead/ bemasc bernie benzea Robot101 bemasc: so it's still shared as in server-enforced mutual visibility, just in smaller groups. bemasc right, but from ejabberd's perspective, it's individual rosters Robot101 that's exactly how shared rosters always work Robot101 the client thread gets a copy of the same roster at sign in bemasc oh? I thought there was a patch to ejabberd required. Robot101 yes, he's patched it to source the shared roster from moodle, I'd imagine bemasc martin seemed to say that he could use a totally stock ejabberd Robot101 oh, right. sql query or something. our patches were just extending the built-in shared roster to a) work properly (deal with dynamic additions and removals) and b) support a group of online users rather than everyone -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 09:58 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. Now you're starting to see what I've seen :-/ I also worry about your APs and networking infra -- to support 400 active users you'll want at least 8 APs. In more realistic terms, you'll probably need 12, assuming a reasonably balanced load. We will have roughly 8+ AP's. We have found that off-the-shelf AP's can handle around 60-70 users. But that doesn't still doesn't solve the problem of the XO's getting bogged down by tons of ejabberd chatter. DSD: do you have any ideas about this? We are looking at about 100-150 students per school and connecting 3-4 schools to a central XS. As I mentioned before... I am working on xs-0.6, with the moodle-ejabberd magic. That's great, but our pilot starts in a month but that doesn't fit our timeline. I don't want to send out a completely new, untested XS into rural parts of Nepal. Do you have any other suggestions fo us? This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py Well, that's 1/4 of your RAM. You need to budget for apache/php, postgres, and squid. Right now the main problem is Squid. That was 450 MB during account creation. It dropped significantly thereafter. I didn't provide much server stats last time because the XS resource usage isn't a critical problem. Thanks for the list below. Quite a few are about stuff I can't help with (roof leaks, power cords...) the others, I'm working on... That's the whole point of why I am telling you about such problems and how they make a centralized XS easier for us to maintain. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 22:36 -0400, Daniel Drake wrote: 2009/3/9 Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org: We will have roughly 8+ AP's. We have found that off-the-shelf AP's can handle around 60-70 users. But that doesn't still doesn't solve the problem of the XO's getting bogged down by tons of ejabberd chatter. DSD: do you have any ideas about this? Have only had a chance to test numbers on Linksys WRT54Gsomething routers, which stop accepting new connections after 33 users. yay. The linksys is WRT54G total crap. We don't use them. We have found that cheaper AP's do much better. We have good luck w/ random Taiwanese brands like Compex, Lantech, and AZTech. They have Atheros or RealTek chipsets I haven't seen XO's bogged down by ejabberd chatter. Ran 75 today while monitoring the TX/RX stats on the LAN interface on the XS and was impressed at how low it was. Yes, the XOs run slow when you view a busy neighborhood view, but it's fine as soon as you switch away. There was a bug where sugar updates every icon on the neighborhood view 10 times every second when you are on that screen (but only when you are on that screen), it's fixed for 0.84. I saw it drop as well when I changed out of the Network View, but it still remained fairly high w/ 200 very active users, too high to keep me from launching EToys That's great, but our pilot starts in a month but that doesn't fit our timeline. I don't want to send out a completely new, untested XS into rural parts of Nepal. I tried and didn't get any feedback from XS usage in large deployments, so we pretty much figured we'd send it into not-as-rural paraguay and find out what happens (we don't really have any other options!). Daniel I think that is because large deployments like Uruguay aren't using the XS and others like Mongolia don't have the technical expertise to monitor such things. That leaves new large deployments like Paraguay and Nepal in an unenviable position as pioneers. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 22:36 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: But 200-300 users could be online at once. I think it will be too complicated to tell some of them: Don't connect to the AP right now, you may overwhelm ejabberd Give ejabberd enough RAM and it won't be a problem. The rest of your infrastructure will, however. I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. I used the hyperactivity program and got some unscientific results. I simulated 200 users using the schoolserver constantly. The CPU of the XS was very busy, staying near 100% usage during the account creation period and then it leveled off. I didn't monitor it very closely after that b/c ejabberd is not my chief concern This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py sudo ./hyperactivity.py gabble schoolserver.schoolnet.gov.np 200 I ran hyperactivity from my regular dell laptop My XO showed 200 users in the Network View and became very sluggish. Top showed that 30-40% of CPU was taken up w/ handling the sugar-shell, the program which manages the Network View. The dbusdaemon was using roughly 15-20% of the CPU. I tried to launch one our E-Paath flash activities and it hung displaying the error message Unresponsive script. I tried to launch EToys and it failed as well. The XS is quite a complicated ensemble of software having an XS at every school magnifies the administration work. What admin work do you foresee on the XS? * Making sure that ejabberd keeps running * Making sure that the school doesn't have roof leak directly above the XS * Making sure the schools doesn't remove the power cord and use it for something else * Make sure the school doesn't repurpose the UPS for the XS for charging cell phones * make sure the XS doesn't get zapped by a sudden power surge * Making sure it is there 3 months later * Make sure that dansguardian, squid, dhcp stay up week after week We don't have any problem gettting the kids to take care of the XO's but we have a Hell of a time making sure they take care of the XS Additionally our schools only have about 8 hours of electricity per day. I am concerned about the XS losing power suddenly multiple times per day. Good point. I've been building everything with daily poweroffs in mind and every component should handle it. But haven't field-tested... Sadly, no one has and this is one of my chief concerns we can provide that (RAM) Have you go the 4GB barrier in mind? Past 4GB we get into all sorts of problems. You'll need a 64-bit machine, and you'll have to convince me or someone else to build a 64-bit XS iso rather than the vanilla 32-bit we're using now. We have a relatively low latency connection b/w the schools and the XS. Low latency, high bandwidth and everyone in the same netblock? No routers in the middle. That's what the XS assumes, in any case. the conclusion that Nepal has different requirements than some of the other pilot schools. Everybody is a little bit special. By deviating from how the XS is designed to be deployed, you will add mgmt work to workaround whatever gotchas. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XO's get bogged down w/ chatter (was Re: Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS )
I just want to reiterate the following because I have gotten several e-mails suggesting solutions to scaling the XS. The Dell server handles this problem fine. I expect the MSI wind PC will handle it fine as well. The problem is w/ the ___XO's___ NOT the servers. It is hard for the XO's to keep track of all the conversations happening The problem w/ centralization is creating a huge giant shared chatroom. It creates a ton of chatter that the XO's have to keep track of. I need to find the upper limit of how many XO's can share one roster w/out getting significantly bogged down. On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 16:57 +0545, Bryan Berry wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 22:36 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: But 200-300 users could be online at once. I think it will be too complicated to tell some of them: Don't connect to the AP right now, you may overwhelm ejabberd Give ejabberd enough RAM and it won't be a problem. The rest of your infrastructure will, however. I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. I used the hyperactivity program and got some unscientific results. I simulated 200 users using the schoolserver constantly. The CPU of the XS was very busy, staying near 100% usage during the account creation period and then it leveled off. I didn't monitor it very closely after that b/c ejabberd is not my chief concern This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py sudo ./hyperactivity.py gabble schoolserver.schoolnet.gov.np 200 I ran hyperactivity from my regular dell laptop My XO showed 200 users in the Network View and became very sluggish. Top showed that 30-40% of CPU was taken up w/ handling the sugar-shell, the program which manages the Network View. The dbusdaemon was using roughly 15-20% of the CPU. I tried to launch one our E-Paath flash activities and it hung displaying the error message Unresponsive script. I tried to launch EToys and it failed as well. The XS is quite a complicated ensemble of software having an XS at every school magnifies the administration work. What admin work do you foresee on the XS? * Making sure that ejabberd keeps running * Making sure that the school doesn't have roof leak directly above the XS * Making sure the schools doesn't remove the power cord and use it for something else * Make sure the school doesn't repurpose the UPS for the XS for charging cell phones * make sure the XS doesn't get zapped by a sudden power surge * Making sure it is there 3 months later * Make sure that dansguardian, squid, dhcp stay up week after week We don't have any problem gettting the kids to take care of the XO's but we have a Hell of a time making sure they take care of the XS Additionally our schools only have about 8 hours of electricity per day. I am concerned about the XS losing power suddenly multiple times per day. Good point. I've been building everything with daily poweroffs in mind and every component should handle it. But haven't field-tested... Sadly, no one has and this is one of my chief concerns we can provide that (RAM) Have you go the 4GB barrier in mind? Past 4GB we get into all sorts of problems. You'll need a 64-bit machine, and you'll have to convince me or someone else to build a 64-bit XS iso rather than the vanilla 32-bit we're using now. We have a relatively low latency connection b/w the schools and the XS. Low latency, high bandwidth and everyone in the same netblock? No routers in the middle. That's what the XS assumes, in any case. the conclusion that Nepal has different requirements than some of the other pilot schools. Everybody is a little bit special. By deviating from how the XS is designed to be deployed, you will add mgmt work to workaround whatever gotchas. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
We want to support 5-6 schools with a centralized XS. This XS would connect to the schools by wireless links and support 400+ students. We are planning on a pretty heavy duty server to handle this load but I am concerned that 400+ students in the @online@ group will cause havoc w/ ejabberd and the presence service. Will having 400+ XO's in the same ejabberd roster crash the the XO's networking stack and ejabberd on the server? Is there a way to configure individual ejabberd rosters w/out having to configure each XO individually at each school? tks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list server-de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
any way to display Nand full boot message in Nepali?
I am quite happy that the XO now displays a Disk full message when the nand is full and notifies the user that a number of journal entries will be deleted. Is there any way to display that same text in Nepali for our users here in Nepal? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: any way to display Nand full boot message in Nepali?
-Original Message-
From: Chris Ball c...@laptop.org
You can modify the text in /etc/init.d/diskspace{check,recover}.
It is not localized past English and Spanish, because it runs before
almost anything else on the system.
Thanks cjb, will take a look at this
--
Bryan W. Berry
Technology Director
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Deployment Training 101 course, now in moodle
http://moodle.olenepal.org/course/view.php?id=28 you can try it out by logging in as guest This is the course I am giving to Nepal's deployment vlounteers -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Deployment Training 101 course, now in moodle
http://moodle.olenepal.org/course/view.php?id=28 you can try it out by logging in as guest This is the course I am giving to Nepal's deployment vlounteers -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] ActivityTeam inaugural meeting
On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 18:17 -0500, Wade Brainerd wrote: Hi everyone, Please join us for the first Sugar Labs ActivityTeam IRC meeting this Friday, 3PM EST in #sugar-meeting on FreeNode. http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam/Meetings Wade, great idea! I would love to attend but unfortunately 3 PM EST translates to 2 AM Saturday morning. I do have an item to add to the agenda, which you and I have discussed previously. I would love for someone on the activityTeam to document how to easily add new instruments to TamTam. I have added this as a High-impact task on the ToDo List We do have a Nepali volunteer Vrishank Khanal who is trying to figure this out. Vrishank is brand-new to linux, programming, and open-source so adding instruments to TamTam may be beyond his current abilities if the task requires C Programming and/or CSound scripting. He has contacted Jean Piche. Let's hope he hears back soon. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] ActivityTeam inaugural meeting
On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 02:35 +, Aleksey Lim wrote: its(adding new intruments) already in progress :) Awesome! Zamechatelno! -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Turning off the mesh to save battery power
hey guys, here in Nepal we are deciding whether or not to turn off the mesh on our custom XO build in order to save power. We will leave on regular wifi. Any ideas on how much power we will actually save? An extra hour of battery life would be worth it -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Turning off the mesh to save battery power
On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 19:26 -0800, John Gilmore wrote: hey guys, here in Nepal we are deciding whether or not to turn off the mesh on our custom XO build in order to save power. We will leave on regular wifi. Any ideas on how much power we will actually save? An extra hour of battery life would be worth it (1) Try it and see, that's probably the easiest way. Every laptop has an instrument in the battery that you can measure its power draw with. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_power_draw Thanks gnu, this is really helpful -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
cjb wrote: I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers: How do we protect children from accessing porn or other questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC? You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access. You definitely can w/ dansguardian can filter questionable content. It can be quite effective. It does register a lot of false positives unfortunately. Dansguardian is quite tunable. DG will still allow access to most sites on the Internet. We use it in my office and it is quite effective if sometimes annoying. There are probably ways u can block kids from accessing particular irc svcs. It is interesting to me that on the #olenepal irc channel we have to refrain from bad language and adult subjects because sometimes kids from our schools come onto the channel. I really hope they are not accessing the #molestme or #child_predators_here channels but I may have to deal w/ this sooner rather than later. From a moral perspective, parents and schools have every right to screen what content their 8 year-olds have access to. There is some highly, highly toxic stuff on the Internet. We all like to talk about freedom but would you let your 6 year old daughter walk around a strip club by herself? probably not. Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to address these concerns? dansguardian and squidguard are free pieces of software that attempt to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools. You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list. How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. I am inclined to agree w/ cjb on this, at least in the short term. In the long-term there could be a lot of different solutions Like instant messaging each other during quizzes? The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the class looking for anyone doing so. If network access is not needed during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on Extreme Power Management in 8.2.0 (which turns off the wireless radio), and then the green wireless LED lights on the front of the XOs should remain visibly off for the duration of the quiz. Hope this helps, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org -- Message: 8 Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:56:53 -0500 From: Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com Subject: Re: child protection + anti-cheating To: Chris Ball c...@laptop.org Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com Message-ID: 46a038f90901102056j1d907d3fi3979509b4efdd...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. Exactly. I've been working with online tools for education for ~8 years now, and it's interesting to note - paper+pen technology does not prevent cheating either. A few times I've been confronted with this cannot possibly be used in education until there is no way of cheating with it, ignoring that books, pen and paper are *great* for cheating. And also for smuggling questionable printed materials into school too -- books and folders can hide magazines with porn or political manifestos. Ban paper, put anyone who owns a printer in jail :-) cheers, martin -- 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 -- Message: 9 Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:45:04 +0530 From: Arjun Sarwal ar...@laptop.org Subject: Re: Cerebro v3.0: File sharing and buddy management made easy! To: Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos ypo...@gmail.com Cc: Sugar Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, vi...@media.mit.edu,OLPC Developer's List de...@laptop.org Message-ID: dc942fa10901110515m42409c53sfc4eabc9f1378...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 (sugar changed to sugar-devel) 2009/1/9 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos ypo...@gmail.com: Want to exchange files between your desktop and your XO laptop? It can't get any easier! In the latest version of Cerebro (currently 3.0.3) you will find simplified file sharing and buddy management. Just click on the buddy you want to send a file to and select a file to send! Screenshots are here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Example_GUI If you are a developer, there is detailed tutorial to do file sharing from Python prompt (!) here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Buddy_management Enjoy Pol This is really fantastic! :-) Has anybody gotten the GUI to
Re: [Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 09:39 -0200, Martin Langhoff wrote: If you look for machines with VIA CPUs, they are low power dissipation, and often cheap too. We have a few samples at 1cc with heatsinks - no fans! I have found this great machine http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856107019 but no others that meet my needs. I don't really know computer shopping sites. I always use tigerdirect.com or newegg.com. Can someone suggest to me other places to look? more about the Jetway JC104B-J7F4K1G2E-LF VIA CN700 1 x 240Pin Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System $200 USD CPU Supported CPU Type VIA Eden 1.2 GHz FSB 800/400MHz Chipset North Bridge VIA CN700 South Bridge VIA VT8237RP Memory Supported Memory slot 1 x 240Pin Memory Type Supported DDR2 533/400 Max Memory Supported 1GB Has 2 ethernet ports! -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
I am shopping for some XS options to test out ahead of our spring deployment. I have looked at the MSI Wind PC, Eee Box, and the Shuttle X2700N. All have nice small form factors, low prices, and Atom chips. I am focused on Intel Atom-based PC's because they seem to be dropping in price the fastest and there are a number of different vendors selling atom-based pc's. Also, they are low-power. MSI Wind PC - cheap at roughly $350 w/ 1.6 Ghz processor and 1 GB RAM CON: looks like it has poor cooling and some customers complain it gets quite hot. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem Shuttle X2700N - slightly more expensive than the MSI at $200 but looks to have much better cooling. I can't find any customer reviews on it. Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 09:39 -0200, If you look for machines with VIA CPUs, they are low power dissipation, and often cheap too. We have a few samples at 1cc with heatsinks - no fans! Will do, tks for the heads up I definitely need at least 1 Ghz processor because we intend to host an offline E-Library on the XS. Even w/out the E-Library we want to host a lot of content cached from the broader Internet and that will require a good bit of RAM and some CPU. I have looked at the Excito and they are impressive but do not offer a fast enough processor and the price is higher than I would like. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem I talked with Asus engineers who assured there's a version of it with no fans, and a heatsink. Not sure if it's in the catalog though :-/ Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. That'll hurt if you have significant traffic. In fact, I'd recommend using the usb nic for eth0 which is guaranteed to have less traffic ;-) Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? This is very true. Small form factor isn't actually that important. Low-Power is much more important. I have to say I am still leaning towards the Shuttle X2700N. It seems to have adequate cooling features compared to other small form-factor PCs Perhaps my best option would be to purchase an Atom CPU, appropriate motherboard, and fit into a regular PC chassis . . . But I still haven't checked out the Via CPU options ;) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] OLPC XS 0.5 Released
Martin, can u provide and .md5 for this and future releases? thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Touch pads
From: David Leeming [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Touch pads To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Some feedback on touch pads. I returned to the PNG trials school of Giare last week to do some training, and noticed several of the XO-1s (received in June 08) and running version 8.2 suffering very badly from the touchpad problem. One boy's laptop was almost unusable. We tried chalk, the 4 finger salute, rebooting, etc. Despite this, he managed to do the attached with Paint in the morning when it was cooler. During the afternoon the temperature must have been 35 deg C and 90% humidity. Is this problem likely to be solved with software updates? David Leeming Solomon Islands, South Pacific We have consistently had similar problems in Nepal. I think it is a hardware problem. One important point, make sure you hit the Fn key last when you do the 4-finger salute. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Concerns about ejabberd + 767
On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 00:36 -0500, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would like to know if anyone here has seriously tested build 767 together with XS 0.4? Specifically the ejabberd and ID manager. Yes. The OLPC QA team has done lots of testing of 8.2, all against XS-0.4. Following the install instructions to the letter, they've got things going in predictable ways. It's not a perfect score -- past certain numbers, presence service and sharing get into a bit of trouble, but it's stable and predictable. Martin, I am not finding Joe's mails in the devel or server-devel lists. I have found some e-mails such as this one on testing mailing list http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/testing/2008-October/000526.html http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/testing/2008-October/000536.html and this wiki page http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests but I can't find anything with more specific information. I will keep looking. I see in this e-mail that 58 laptops were running chat Browse and connected to the XS. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/testing/2008-October/000536.html Joe, are there more detailed resources that I can look at regarding your testing of XS 0.4 and 8.2.0 (767)? thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Concerns about ejabberd + 767
On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 00:36 -0500, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would like to know if anyone here has seriously tested build 767 together with XS 0.4? Specifically the ejabberd and ID manager. Yes. The OLPC QA team has done lots of testing of 8.2, all against XS-0.4. Following the install instructions to the letter, they've got things going in predictable ways. It's not a perfect score -- past certain numbers, presence service and sharing get into a bit of trouble, but it's stable and predictable. Search for emails from [EMAIL PROTECTED] on the devel list talking about collaboration for the numbers (which I can't remember now). thanks Martin! I will definitely do that. Other than that, the main issue with ejabberd is memory usage -- with large numbers of users, it'd bound to consume lots of RAM. We're working on that towards xs-0.6. We are deploying to a new school later this week and the only loose ends right now is the idmgr and ejabberd. Prithak Sharma and Tony Anderson are working very hard on getting the XS ready for this week's deployment. I'd suggest considering xs-0.5 -- it has quite a few improvements, and more importantly, it'll be much easier to upgrade to 0.6 by skipping the larger and at points complex upgrade path from 0.4 to 0.5. Also - if you can get us enough info to diagnose specific issues with ejabberd... I'm all ears! will do -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Suggestion for presentation at Sugar Camp2
Deployment is Hard! Notes from Nepal's Deployments Summary: Bryan Berry (that's me) will talk about Nepal's deployments with help from Tony Anderson. Will talk about tough stuff like teacher training, developing local support infrastructure, managing volunteers, and particular technical needs. * 90 minutes + 30 minutes of discussion * Bryan Berry and Tony Anderson will lead the discussion * Powerpoint presentation will accompany the talk -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Suggestion for presentation at Sugar Camp2
Sorry, ;( I won't be in Boston until early January. I am referring to XO Camp2 I will be the US starting 2nd week of December until the end of January, 1) to see my long-suffering family and 2) to work closely w/ the OLPC team in the US On Thu, 2008-11-13 at 22:48 -0500, C. Scott Ananian wrote: infrastructure, managing volunteers, and particular technical needs. * 90 minutes + 30 minutes of discussion * Bryan Berry and Tony Anderson will lead the discussion * Powerpoint presentation will accompany the talk Just to make sure I'm clear: are you in town next week? We've been discussing having a content and deployment day on Tuesday; would that work for you? --scott -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] XS - XO archiving and backup (was Re: [OLPC India] Issues on the ground )
On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 11:44 +0530, JV Avadhanulu wrote: Dear Bryan, I have a question. Are children able to transfer files to the XS Server over Wi-Fi in your deployments? Our deployments are still using XS-163, which does not have the xs-backup method. We hope to migrate to a newer version of the XS later this month. To my knowledge, the XO's can back up to the XS but there still is no way for children to browse their backups or restore from them. My knowledge may be out of date though. Martin Langhoff knows much better than I. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] physical security of the XS and XO-as-XS
Martin, you make some good points. Sorry for the late reply. On Sun, 2008-10-12 at 10:56 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: [Note: this is a resend - with some better editing - the earlier email got sent prematurely...] On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 3:43 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) IMHO using the XO as XS is not a good idea. Nothing explains in your post why it's a bad idea. If you are going to setup a safe cabinet of some sort for the server, it's not very different to make an XO safe from making a tower pc safe. I just fail to see all that many advantages to using the XO. We can add a lot of value to the XS and deployments in general very quickly w/ a more powerful system. Your points about other bits of infra are very valuable. Cable theft, antenna theft are also important. Interstingly, _deployment countries_ are asking us whether the XOs can be used in the XS role. People on the ground there are asking for it. - Procurement process is complex. Once they have the govt OK to get XOs, it's relatively easier to request extra XOs for the role. Getting other hw for the XS can take months if not years. Sadly, it is very true that government's often have extremely onerous procurement procedures. This point is very true. - Very few hw makers are offering machines that are solid state, heat/dust/humidity resistant. The XO has all of that and is cheap. The few hw makers I've seen offering similar features are rather expensive. Additionally, I am convinced that school administrators would see the XO-as-XS as a spare XO and distribute to kids who don't have XO's at their school or take it home to their own child. It won't even boot to Sugar, and user education call take a part here -- I don't think the confusion will last very long. You may not want it for the Nepal deployment, but we cannot argue with the fact that there is intense interest. There are also other use cases where it's useful to be able to run the XS sw on an XO - for example, the warehouse scenarios where you take 1 XO and use it as the server that will update all the other XOs. The issue of theft is real, but is not limited to the XO hw -- and in fact, a normal tower pc is in some cases more desirable - as it's a general purpose machine. Uruguay has -- I believe -- done some interesting work in securing their school servers, though I don't know the details. This is work that needs to happen for a long list of reasons. Within the constraints we have, I aim for flexibility: give the local teams a range of options, and this is a _very_ valuable one, one that is within reach now that a vanilla Fedora boots on the XO. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] physical security of the XS and XO-as-XS
I have been discussing these issues off-list w/ Greg Smith. I will summarize some of our discussion and then reply to Sameer about physical security for the XS and to the general suggestion that the XO can serve as an XS. I have paraphrased Greg's question, don't blame him if I have bastardized his phrasings. Here is the quick gist, 1) a lot of poor schools can gather the funds to take care of the XS if shown the potential benefits and 2) IMHO using the XO as XS is not a good idea. Q: Are most of your target schools likely to have Internet and money/power to have a server? A: If the schools can afford to pay for the electricity to charge the XO's, then they can easily afford a server. Q: How did it go putting a server in schools and making sure they don't get stolen? A: This is true, it is hard to secure a server, but if a school can't provide a secure place for the server then they can't secure their copper electrical wiring, a wireless router, or any other kind networking equipment. If the school can't afford electricity, then the students who attend probably don't have electricity at home. Our requirement for working w/ a school is that the school already has electricity. A hosted solution can work as long as their is a really consistent Internet connection to the school. That can be hard in __a lot__ of developing countries. Frankly, I think it is much, much easier to secure the XS than provide a stable Internet connection to a remote school. Q: Perhaps we should focus on the poorest countries. Therefore no Internet and no server. The server can actually still add value even with no Internet but there is concern its hard to secure. A: Easy. If the school can't keep their electrical wiring from getting stolen, they can't keep the server safe. The copper in electrical wiring is quite valuable as thieves could easily repurpose it for home wiring. Q: What are some possible benefits to using a regular tower pc as XS? Virtually every Dept of Ed will want to put much more content on the XS than can fit on an XO. You can add external USB hard drives until it becomes one big kludge. Additionally, I am convinced that school administrators would see the XO-as-XS as a spare XO and distribute to kids who don't have XO's at their school or take it home to their own child. We can add a lot of value to the OLPC initiative through the XS, for relatively low investment of time and effort, but only if the XS hardware can be upgraded. The XO obviously can't be upgraded. A few examples: 1) e-mail for the teachers hosted on the XS. This gives teachers a bigger stake in OLPC deployments and in the making sure their Internet connection stays up. BTW, gmail is wy too slow across a slow Internet connection. 2) VoIP connection to the Dept of Ed., so the Dept of Ed can call the school, and vice versa. A great incentive to the school and Dept to maintain and fund that Internet connection. 3) Offline wikipedia, moodle courses, local copies of indigenous art and music resources, I could go on forever. There are drawbacks to the PC-as-XS, most notably power. However, you will have to to set up power backup anyways to maintain the Internet connection. There are some scenarios where an XS may not be feasible at all, but we must have a baseline requirement here for an XO deployment: the majority of the kids OR the school must have consistent electricity. Here in Nepal our base requirement is that a pilot school must already have electricity. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 18, Issue 6
Martin Langhoff wrote: Been ruminating on this a bit. The more I think about it, the more clear it is that DG on the XS is not a good long term solution. DG may not be a good long term solution, but the pilots need it asap and it still isn't part of the default install. Greg is right that the XS is already a production project but it lacks one of the key features that all the pilots need -- basic content filtering. The deployments that need it most are those w/ the least technical skills and least likely to complain on this mailing list. So it's a task better pushed to a proxy/filter upstream at the ISP network -- for any large deployment, we should start advising the local team to arrange with the ISP(s?) involved the co-location of 1 server. This server gives us an opportunity to perform - filtering at one central place = better scale up / scale out economies (making bayesian costs more reasonable) = larger scoring pool, so good/bad content gets flagged faster and for everyone I am not a fan of a centralized solution. 1) It sounds a way off and we need a working solution asap. 2) In Nepal we will work w/ a variety of regional ISP's to provide bandwidth to schools. I expect many, many other countries will do the same. I will trust the regional ISP's to provide bandwidth, but not content filtering as well. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Nepal XS
On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 09:18 +0545, Martin Langhoff Wrote wrote: For example, use two XOs to verify ejabberd functionality. Use browse to verify that the schoolserver link delivers the Moodle (site) home page. Use browse to verify internet connectivity. Try to access a 'forbidden' site to verify Dansguardian is working. In short, a checklist of simple tests to verify server functions. Worthtwhile idea, right now we have too many things changing, but that'd be something for a 0.9/1.0 release. I respectfully disagree, I think these tests would be more useful since many things are changing. Simple tests would save us a lot of testing time in our own lab. The tests should just be generic enough to accommodate changes in the underlying systems. Such tests would save Tony a ton of time testing a new XS install, whether it be 0.4, 0.5-0.9 I suspect they would save time for others as well. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:57 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dans can use a good bit of memory but I haven't really calculated how much. Top shows me a lot dansguardian processes, each using about 10K of RES memory, 980 of SHR, and 0.5% of Mem. What I understand about top and memory is that it doesn't really tell much at all b/c the processes are using shared memory. yeah - top is not that useful. can you try ps_mem.py? http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py great tool! DG is using 30.4 MB under a very light load. I will have to check later when school is back in session but that isn't for another 2 weeks. Is is holiday season ;) Am I right in thinking that DG is actually a custom apache or an apache with a custom config + a DG module? Umm, don't know ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. I strongly agree that, while Moodle is important, a lot of work needs to be done on ejabberd and dansguardian. Message: 1 Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:42:19 -0400 From: Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01) To: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi Martin, Thanks for the update! Its great to see all the items planned for or in 0.5: http://dev.laptop.org/query?status=assignedstatus=closedstatus=newstatus=reopenedorder=prioritycol=idcol=summarycol=statuscol=typecol=prioritycol=componentmilestone=xs-0.5 On your question of who is waiting for XS 0.5, I know of at least two deployments that are building labs and testing configurations with XS software: Paraguay Birmingham Both will need a stable XS that they can use ASAP. Whether they will go with XS 0.5 or not depends on what 0.5 includes, when 0.6 will be available and what it includes. AFAIK Moodle is not a must have item for either deployment. A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT Birmingham may start using XOs and an XS in schools in mid-Novemeber. Paraguay will probably start later but we should lock down their version ASAP as they want lead time to really flush out all issue in the lab. They may both use the backup and restore feature if they have enough disk on the server (of course they will use it whether they like it or not as you can't turn it off :-). I think there other deployments that will want to use a school server before the end of 2008. Two other features which may tip the balance for deployments are upgrade of XO images and activities via school server cache (Peru). Spending a little more time to make sure that XS 0.5 is very stable and well documented is a good idea. However, we should start to be more precise about the features and dates for each release we plan to deliver before the end of CY 08. Thanks, Greg S ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
I don't have time currently to work on this but I will ask Tony and our interns Avash and Aakash to work on this. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:37 -0400, John Watlington wrote: Perhaps you want to suggest a specific set of configuration files that provides what you consider a medium level of restriction, including blacklists ? wad On Oct 3, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Bryan Berry wrote: Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:09 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. I'm very interested in hearing about those experiences. this depends on how much progress Tony can make. Unfortunately, too much management crap and talking w/ donors keeps me from spending enough time on the XS w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. How happy are you with DanGuardian? Is it a useful filter? We use it internally w/in our office and we are happy w/ it. We use it locally to eat our own dog food. By default it blocks a lot if not most content on the Internet, including stuff that doesn't seem objectionable at all. I think dans is essential because it will keep the adults from using up all the bandwidth to look at porn. the secondary reason, to protect kids is also important ;) In terms of install we have some proposed patches to the ejabberd config issues, so it's likely to be sorted in 0.5 or 0.6. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. Right - keen on hearing your notes Tony :-) Also - as discussed with Wad, I'll be interested in suggestions on how to handle the local rulemaking both for small pilots and large deployments. cheers. m ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS_0_4 install]
I can't remember precisely, but I thought I started ejabberd after running domain_config, but I could be mistaken. Tony, did u start ejabberd before or after running domain_config on ur latest install? On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 11:13 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's more concerning to me is that ejabberd has never once worked for me out-of-box. I have always had to reinstall it before getting it to work. Has anyone out there gotten ejabberd to work consistently on new XS installs w/ reinstalling it? That sounds like you might be trying to start it before running domain_config. It's a tiny change to the installation workflow outlined in the doco, but can trip people up. We could change the init script to check for that case and refuse to start. cheers, m -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] offline moodle
On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 22:57 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: Hi, My apologies - I need to do some research on how to setup the repo.or.cz. As an immediate expedient, I have attached the relevant files to this email. When I get a little time, I will set this up properly. The readme tries to describe the files and how they are used. hey Tony, this is a good start. I have a somewhat different workflow in mind. Here is a narrative that describes what I am thinking User Story 1: Intermittent School attendance and School Server Outage Monday 1. Kid goes to class 2. Teacher directs kids Moodle site 3. Kid navigates to Moodle Module for Class 2 math for the current month 4. Kid clicks 'download' link next Moodle module 5. This action downloads a the moodle module as a .xo bundle and locally installs it to the XO 5.1 Inside the module are readings, pictures, animations, etc. all available offline 6. School ends on Monday Tuesday Kid can't go to school. Mom and little brother are sick, has to take care of them. Kid opens up XO and offline Moodle activity he downloaded the day before. He does lessons that show him basic concepts, introduce him to basic animations using activities like Etoys, and reads explanations that answer some of the things he doesn't understand. Wednesday Kid still can't go to school. Has to help out in the fields. Later that day the kid spends some time w/ the Moodle module Thursday Kid goes back to school. Kid isn't behind the other because he followed the lesson plan at home. This has social importance that shouldn't be understated. Over night there was an electrical surge that fried the school server. The teacher can still instruct using the XO because she has it installed locally as an activity and so do the kids. The key here is that we need to package each offline moodle course as an .XO Activity Bundle. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles Getting started, we only need the most basic features of Moodle. Basically page navigation and the ability to display flash animations and embedded pdfs for the supplementary readings. In time we can look at adding more dynamic stuff like access to the gradebook but that can wait. In Nepal's context, our kids have no libraries and maybe 4 small coursebooks. Hope this helps and sorry I haven't been able to provide you w/ more feedback earlier. Pls post our correspondence regarding Offline Moodle to the Server-Developers mailing list. http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] offline moodle
On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 15:10 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: good to hear we're on the same page. AIUI, the user only has to get to the initial moodle page, and GG should take care of the rest. you've reached beyond my geek lingo, what on earth does AIUI mean? :) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
need help troubleshooting possible jffs2 problem
I am having w/ one of the XO's from a pilot school. I cannot copy large files from a USB key to the local SSD. The SSD mtd0 is only 47% full. I am trying to transfer a 156 MB file. The XO crashes when I try to copy the file locally. The XO works fine otherwise. I have run test-all and seen no errors. I have reflashed the OS image (703) and still encounter the problem. The reflashing process did not display a larger than normal # of bad blocks, probably only 6-7. This leads me to think there might be an issue w/ the underlying jffs2 filesystem. Can someone help me answer the following questions? 1. When I reflash the OS using copy-nand does it reset the filesystem? 2. How can I troubleshoot filesystem issues in general on the XO? thanks Bryan OLE Nepal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Hardware Errors -- any hope?
I have what appear to be two hardware errors and I would like to know if there is any hope of fixing them short of swapping out the motherboards. Machine #1 Possible bad USB controller On this machine, I can't copy a file larger than 29 MB from a USB stick to the SSD. The machine completely hangs when I move more than 29 MB. Test-all from the firmware shows no errors. I can scp 156 MB to the local machine no problem. I figure that the problem lies in the USB controller. Any ideas? Machine #2 Bad Nand-flash The machine won't boot. OFW scans for boot disk and finds nothing. The boot device is set to \boot\olpc.fth Copy-nand returns an error the Nand Flash can't be opened. Firmware test-all: Testing pci/nandflash Self test failed Return code -1 This machine was out in the field for about 4 months. I am really surprised that the nand flash has failed. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Hardware Errors -- any hope?
On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 11:50 This sounds more like a problem with the USB key, not the motherboard. If the controller were having trouble transferring data, it wouldn't be so consistent about making it to 29 MB with no error. I will take your suggestion and try another usb key. I tried two different USB keys that could transfer 156 MB easily to other XO's. I only recorded that one failed consistently at 29 MB. I didn't record at which point the other USB key failed. I will try another USB key today to test it out. Machine #2 Bad Nand-flash The machine won't boot. OFW scans for boot disk and finds nothing. The boot device is set to \boot\olpc.fth Copy-nand returns an error the Nand Flash can't be opened. Firmware test-all: Testing pci/nandflash Self test failed Return code -1 This machine was out in the field for about 4 months. I am really surprised that the nand flash has failed. We have seen a small number of units showing this problem. I would love to get the motherboard for failure analysis... I can see about sending it to you. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
great see you guys tomorrow! On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 18:30 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: So, we are all set. In about 18hs we'll be having another meeting. The wikipage with the info is here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Conf_08_AUG_07_Meeting I've put there a draft agenda from Bryan (feel free to add/correct!) and myself. cheers, m -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 18:52 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: If we are having a regular XS meeting, I also have to consider what we are doing targetting all our other deployments, some of them with thousands of servers :-) Absolutely. We may be a small deployment but our work can benefit much larger deployments. I'll be very interested in 1, 3 and 5, wanting to see how we can make those efforts reusable elsewhere :-) -- I really hope so. WRT 3 one thing that would be great is an exporter from the fedora repo to a static representation, or to something we can search serve easily, so we don't have to carry the fedora sw itself on the XS. I've worked a bit with it, and while usually the repos hosted in it have content that is _gold_, I don't think the sw itself adds any value on the XS. The great thing about the fedora-commons software is the search functionality. Could we actually use search on a static representation of the fedora-commons repository? Ultimately, we want to put a lot of Nepali art and music on the XS. A searchable repository will be key to accessing those resources. In case David hasn't explained earlier, here is why hosting a mail server on the XS is important to us. The teachers aren't using their XO's as much as we would like them too. We are looking for applications that will appeal directly to them and compel them to use their XO's more frequently. We think e-mail is one such application. The Internet connection to our schools is not very reliable and we can only afford 64K per school due to our budget constraints and the high cost of Internet access in Nepal. E-mail is much better suited to this low-bandwidth environment. While it may not be right for every OLPC deployment, it's a good choice for us in Nepal. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
feeling better now, antibiotics really work :) How about same time this upcoming Friday? Will work on an agenda w/ David on Monday. I see the key purpose of this meeting is to let you folks what additional functionality we are working on for Nepal's XS and to make sure that our additions don't conflict w/ future changes to the underlying XS. Here is the additional stuff we are looking to build into the XS over the next 6 months: 1) Customized Nepali version of Moodle 2) Mail server using Squirrel Mail* 3) Setting up a local version of Nepal's E-Library on the XS, a copy of Nepal's current E-Library http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org which uses the open-source fedora-commons repository software. 4) and more stuff that I can't remember at the moment. 5) Connecting schools through ejabberd * Some of these changes are targeted more at the teachers than the kids. We are concerned that the teachers are using the XO's much less than the kids and thus less familiar w/ them. We think e-mail is a relatively easy way to get them to use the XO to the amount of effort to get it running consistently. VoIP would be more effective but would require much more effort. On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 20:01 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 08:48 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 3:48 AM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm OK with reschedule. How about next week at the same time? Hope you feel better soon. Same here. Postpone 7 days? Can Jim make it too next week? I think so. - Jim -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
thanks Michael, After we get our top priorities working consistently I will definitely take a closer look at voip and try to look up the folks at fedora. On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 10:47 -0400, Michael Stone wrote: On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 12:11:56PM +0545, Bryan Berry wrote: VoIP would be more effective but would require much more effort. Fedora recently set up its own VOIP system, so there may be experts lurking nearby who could be tempted into assisting you. Michael -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] not up for Friday meeting about the XS
Hey guys, I am still not feeling well and not sure I can make tomorrow's meeting. Can we postpone it until next week? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Ugly JABBER problem
I would like to use the same XO OS image for all my deployment schools, w/ no configuration change specific to an individual school. Unfortunately, there is one setting on the XO that has to be unique, the jabber setting. I have tried to use schoolserver as the Jabber ID but no joy. Need the fully qualified domain name Our schoolservers will have unique fqdn's so that we can eventually interconnect the Jabber servers for common chatrooms and sharing b/w schools. For Example: schoolserver.vishwamitra.schoolnet.gov.np schoolserver.bashuki.schoolnet.gov.np Any one have an idea how to get around this? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Time for another Server-Devel Meeting IRC or Skype?
I am sick in bed and too tired to really think. will work on a meeting agenda tomorrow On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 07:32 -0400, Greg Smith wrote: Hi Guys, I'm in for Thursday 2PM NZ, 7:45AM Nepal, 10PM US ET. On irc.freenode.net #olpc-meeting? Let's set an agenda now and keep it to one hour if we can. Thanks, Greg S PS what's up with the 15 minute Nepal offset? That's even stranger than India time ;-) Bryan Berry wrote: On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 10:54 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: Looking at suitable times, I am thinking of this Friday (NZ time, Thursday for everyone else ;-) ) - look at: http://worldtimeserver.com/meeting-planner-times.aspx?L0=NZL1=NPL2=GBL3=US-MAL4=Day=8Mon=8Y=2008 It is hard to coordinate a good time for Nepal and NZ and the American continent. It would be fantastic if Greg Smith can make it - I am thinking - 2PM - early morn for Nepal, 10pm for 1CC - 11PM - late night for me, easy for everyone else! :-/ Great, Friday, 7:45 AM is a bit early for Kathmandu but it works for us Skype will work if it is less than 7 people but gets too messy w/ more. w/ 7+ people I prefer IRC. David and I will be there -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Time for another Server-Devel Meeting IRC or Skype?
Martin, We are putting a lot of work into the XS here in Nepal after a long absence. David Van Assche is now w/ OLE nepal full-time in Kathmandu working on the XS. We want to make sure we are moving in the same direction and not waste anyone's time. How about an IRC or Skype meeting open to all those interested in the XS later this week? If it's an IRC meeting I will be happy to post it to the wiki. Regards, Bryan Berry OLE Nepal ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Any cure for a washed out keyboard
The first XO casualty at Nepal's pilot schools a few days ago. A second grader washed his XO because it had gotten too dirty. Thankfully, the display, cpu and motherboard seem to be working fine. The keyboard is non-functional and the mouse is nominally functional. Anyone know a fix for a washed out keyboard besides complete replacement? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Any cure for a washed out keyboard
It's already been two days and it is quite dry. the keys don't respond at all. The touchpad works but only responds to heavy pressure. On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 19:14 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The first XO casualty at Nepal's pilot schools a few days ago. A second grader washed his XO because it had gotten too dirty. Thankfully, the display, cpu and motherboard seem to be working fine. The keyboard is non-functional and the mouse is nominally functional. Anyone know a fix for a washed out keyboard besides complete replacement? You might still be able to remove all power and let it dry for a few days. m ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Any cure for a washed out keyboard
Thanks Yokoy! I will definitely try that out. I figured that it was the impurities in the water that screwed up the keyboard not necessarily water itself. Does it have to be a large quantity of water or just enough to fully submerge the keyboard? Perhaps I need a lot of water in order to get enough dissolution On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 13:33 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, the best thing you could do is to put the device (keyboard) into a bathtub with distilled water. No joke! after one or two days the electrolyte ingredients will be washed out. After that drip of the water and be patient one or two days. The device has to be very dry before you should activate the device. Maybe the display do not like it. I am always treating sunken electronic devices that way, including still cameras. A good alternative is ethanol (but not denatured alcohol!). Best regards, yokoy On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:44:08 +0545 Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The first XO casualty at Nepal's pilot schools a few days ago. A second grader washed his XO because it had gotten too dirty. Thankfully, the display, cpu and motherboard seem to be working fine. The keyboard is non-functional and the mouse is nominally functional. Anyone know a fix for a washed out keyboard besides complete replacement? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] More XS notes
* The olpc-scripts in /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/ are just plain confusing. * Ejabberd is extremely flaky Even the smallest changes to the ejabberd.cfg file seem to make it crash. I added and extra admin acct to the admins acl on my laptop's ejabberd install and now ejabberd won't run. Sometimes it seems that the only way to get ejabberd running properly was to reboot the machine. Perhaps this was due to funky stuff hanging out in the Mnesia database? Can anyone tell me more about this? Ejabberd can be used w/ a relational database such as postgres instead of Mnesia. Can anyone comment on the advantages, disadvantages of this? * Shorewall We have installed shorewall and using it to manage iptables. * Dansguardian and Squid up and running. Dansguardian was a bit tricky, particularly the Shorewall configuration. * Moodle Got it up and running using Postrgres, which was bit tricky Questions: 1) Easier ways to work w/ ejabberd? 2) anyone succeeded in interconnecting ejabberd b/w two schools? 3) Martin: can you comment on the use of DOOR or Fedora Commons as a local repository? 4) What is the current state of integrating fedora-commons and Moodle? Todo: 1) test out ds-backup 2) test out XS features fully w/ actual XO's 3) test the XS for performance and disaster recovery 5) Get fedora-commons running on the XS and integrate w/ Moodle (longterm project) Will send out our config notes for what we have done so far later today. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] incomplete XS install notes
h1. Schoolserver
These are the notes from XS configuration David Van Assche have been
working on this week. It is not yet complete. I will try to put them on
the wiki when they are complete. I haven't included several crucial
pieces of information such as the Shorewall configuration files.
Step 1. Install from .iso
h3. Network Configuration
* IP
** rm /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-msh*
** rm /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2-4
** vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth1 change to
static IP Addresses
** ifcfg-eth0 change to WAN address, in OLE office 192.168.5.xx,
disable ipv6 causes problems w/ ejabberd
** ifcfg-eth1 leave as default
** vi /etc/dhcpd.conf add Internet DNS under option
domain-name-servers in addition to 172.18.0.1
* DNS changes
** /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np
where sanepa is the school
** /etc/sysconfig/network change hostname to
schoolserver.sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np
** cd /var/named
** sed -i 's/random.xs.laptop.org/sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np/g' school*
** Change comments (#) and C in /var/named/school.internal.zone.db to
; and CNAME (fixed in XS_165)
h3. Squid
* -- /etc/squid/squid.conf
** at line 117 change: dns_nameservers 172.18.0.1 192.168.5.1
** acl school src 172.18.0.0/255.255.0.0 192.168.5.0/255.255.255.0 #
add external and internal networks
h3. Moodle
* yum install moodle postgresql-server
* service postgresql initdb
* sudo -u postgres createuser -D -A -P moodle
* sudo -u postgres createdb -E utf8 -O moodle moodle
* sudo -u postgres psql moodle
# ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'moodle';
# \q
* sudo nano /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf change Method for both
host entries to md5
* sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
h3. Ejabberd
* add this line to /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg
{acl, admin, {user, admin, schoolserver.sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np}}.
Don't forget the period at the end!
* cd /etc/init.d/
* chkconfig --level 345 ejabberd
* disable ipv6 by removing it from
{5280, ejabberd_http, [
ipv6,
* Logging on to http://schoolserver:5280/admin provide full username
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Create online group @online@
h3. Dansguardian
* zlib-devel pcre-devel autoconf automake gcc-c++ libtool compat-gcc-3.4
* used rpm from dries repo, add to testing.repo, or stable.repo if you
are using that repo
[dries]
name=Extra Fedora rpms dries - $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/dries.ulyssis.org/fedora/linux/$releasever/$basearch/dries/RPMS/
* yum update
* yum install dansguardian
* settings in /etc/dansguardian/dansguardian.conf
** filterport=8081 # not 8080
** loglevel =1
** loglocation = /var/log/dansguardian/access.log
** urlcachenumber = 5000
** reverseaddresslookups = on
** reverseclientiplookups = on
** maxchildren=250
** minsparechildren=8
** daemonuser=dansguardian
** daemongroup=dansguardian
* settings in bannedextensionslist
** commented out bans for UNIX archive file types
h3. Shorewall
* yum install shorewall
* settings in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf
** Startup_Enabled=Yes
** LOGFILE=/var/log/shorewall
** LOGRATE= ?
** LOGBURST = ? to be set
** BRIDGING = Yes
* /etc/shorewall/masq
** eth0 eth1 -- this bridges b/w the two
* /etc/shorewall/interfaces
** net eth0
** loc eth1
* /etc/shorewall/zones -- these changes make the interfaces use ipv4
** loc -
** fwfirewall
** net -
* Setting up policy -- /etc/shorewall/policy
* Setting up Rules -- allow access to ssh at port , ejabberd at 5280
* add to Rules
REDIRECT loc 8081TCP
h3. Todo
Dansguardian
* Need to consider adding blocks for stuff like myspace.com
* decide on naughtyness limit set in dansguardianf1.conf ?Higher or
lower? Real concern is the parents and teachers viewing inappropriate
stuff, less so the kids.
* decide which file extensions to ban
Issues:
* Ejabberd a total PITA to set up and modify. We spent 60% of install
time fighting ejabberd.
* Currently XO's seem to need a fqdn to access jabber. This means every
school needs a different XO image configuration. Major hassle
* Routing not yet working properly
* The XS wiki entries are a mess and often provide incorrect information
___
Server-devel mailing list
Server-devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] debuginfo repositories for testing not valid
fyi, There are two repos in the testing.repo that are not valid [fedora-debuginfo-testing] [updates-debuginfo-testing] -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] schoolnet activities?
Bernie, Have we configured Browse to display the Flash activities automatically? Also, have we sugarized Firefox 3? David, you can install firefox 3 as an rpm however we haven't completed sugarizing it. Currently we are launching it from the command line. We will sugarize it as we are using for the next generation of E-Paath activities. Also, check out our E-Library that we have developed http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org all built w/ open-source components and and can scale to millions of objects. May be of interest to you. On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 15:03 +1100, David Leeming wrote: You can configure the XO so it loads the SWF files rather showing a blank screen or just use firefox 3 Can you let me know how to configure it, and install firefox 3? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] out of the loop on XS work -- What's the latest?
Hey guys, I have quite out of the loop on server-devel, been focused on internal office sysadmin stuff and our e-library. Check it out http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org I would love to see it somehow work w/ Pootle. I need to set up a testbed in our office w/ the latest XS stuff. Is there a new version since 163? If not, how can I update individual parts like ds_backup and other stuff I am not up on? edublog?? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Puppet -- looks like a neat tool for managing school servers
http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/PuppetIntroduction I will probably play w/ it tomorrow. could be a neat tool for keeping xs's up-to-date ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] jabber now working
not sure exactly how it worked but I think setting the IP address listed /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 to the fqdn does the trick previously had the LAN interface followed by fqdn in /etc/hosts -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Seamless Lessons Security (commentary)
Martin's solution works for me. This kind of dialogue is good for OLPC. Substantive and really thinking about how kids and teachers will use the XO and Sugar. We intend to embed all the activities relevant to a particular course into one .xo bundle, excluding the pre-installed mainstays like Scratch and Squeak. It has to be a super simple process to install an off-line course, only two steps really. For example, geometry module for Weeks 1-4 could include 2 flash animations, two Squeak activities, and a relevant gcompris activity all in the same .xo bundle. This way the kids and teachers won't have to hunt down and install different xo bundles to cover a period of lessons. Many of our kids are absent from school for a few weeks at a time to work in the fields. We want them to be easily able to collect a period of schoolwork all in one bundle and do it in the evenings after work. How would JEB's work if the activities are installed as one .xo bundle? And does anyone have a better idea? -Original Message- From: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED], Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED], devel@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Seamless Lessons Security (commentary) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 11:54:17 -0300 2008/7/7 Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ...yields: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/launch-by-click-ie.jpg ...so perhaps I need a different understanding of launch-by-click for executables. Please accept my apologies for wasting your/others time if I've misunderstood. I think that the dialogue you captured is the seam people are talking about :-) In any case, I think this discussion has missed that what Bryan is requesting is *much* saner from a security POV than downloading putty.exe (which is as bad as it gets). Bryan wants to be able to provide links that start existing activities on the XO - a document-triggered launch (using JEBs) is good enough, and I think it can be deemed reasonably safe. We trust (and confine) the activities on the box. So I don't think there's a major problem here. cheers, m ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Beta Test
Greg Smith wrote: Now that we are making progress on your requests I want to ask for some quid pro quo :-) Can your team allocate time to beta test 8.2.0? We were intending to do this anyways but wasn't sure about when we would do it. What timelines do you have in mind? I don't have time for testing it this month, unless I can get Bernie and Pradosh to do a lot of the work. For all of July Sulochan and I are dedicated to getting Nepal's E-Library up and running. Can you write up a test plan and include kids and teachers in the test? Sure. It isn't really a test unless kids and teachers are involved :) Let me know if you are sure Nepal will deploy 8.2.0 regardless of the status of your two items (launch activity from URL and remove activity). I think the first one is not going to make 8.2 while the second has a chance but its not certain yet. As I wrote in a separate e-mail, we can't commit to deploying 8.2.0 until after testing it w/ the kids and teachers. If 8.2.0 will require significant retraining for the teachers, we might not deploy it. We also intend to deploy the new image together w/ a localized moodle on the server. Delays in setting up a localized moodle would also delay rolling out 8.2.0 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Seamless Lessons Security (commentary)
seamful approach sounds workable to me This is a very productive discussion! -Original Message- From: Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Seamless Lessons Security (commentary) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:28:03 -0400 * a _general_ seamful 'launch activities with operator-chosen permissions' facility is highly desirable and should be pursued ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features (Greg Smith)
Greg wrote: Thanks for keeping us apprised of your needs! My pleasure. I'm also not aware of any feasible design proposal which might address your request. You need a precedent or engineering level suggestion to move this forward. Is this possible in Firefox at all? Probably not. We had two evaluators spend a week at both of our pilot schools and the consistent feedback they came back w/ was 1) The teachers want lesson plans integrated w/ the activities 2) The parents don't see the learning activities as anything more than games. This was constructive feedback they gave us. I am happy to report that the kids, teachers, and parents were overwhelmingly positive about this project. We need a way to seamlessly integrate supporting materials such as readings, lesson plans, together with activities. HTML is the way to do this and the browser is what we use to display html. URI's are what we use to link to different resources. We may end up hacking Browse esp. to allow this because of the immense demand. We need to make it dead simple for teachers to use activities like EToys, E-Paath, Measure in the classroom. The easiest way to do this is to make the transition from lesson plan to activity as easy as possible. I think that having a URL launch a local application will be a fatal security hole. I don't know of any examples of that off the top of my head. I don't know squat about security but this is a very important application. My guess is that you need to re-think your Moodle - activity model and work flow. If can solve the problem from there using the currently available functionality that will be the shortest path to a solution. I have rethought it and I believe more firmly that the moodle - activity workflow is the way to go. On your second point, I think the thread has been productive. I marked the bug a blocker for 8.2.0. I think we will close it by including the remove via Journal solution unless Eben can be convinced of a better implementation. as long as we can remove activities installed w/ the customization key or by other means. BTW I stored your other request sent on the process thread in my requirement gathering folder. thank you for your attention to these important matters. You should come out to Nepal one of these days. As I told one of the developers recently: Get Thee to a Pilot site! Any Pilot site! Bryan Kathmandu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features
I know that Nepal is a small potato compared to Peru and Uruguay but there are two features that we really need. Furthermore, I think these features would immensely benefit the bigger deployments. 1. Need to be able to launch activities such as Scratch, EToys, Pippy, etc. by clicking on a hyperlink in browse. The activity wouldn't run in the browser. We need this functionality in order to effectively use Moodle in our schools. Here's the ticket I opened on the http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6958 2. Need to be able to remove activities via the GUI, including installed activities, to make room for new ones. We are working on Offline Moodle activity bundles for courses. Each course will be subdivided into weekly modules. these modules will quickly fill up the ssd. kids will need a way to remove activities themselves to make room for new ones. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7071 Our development team in Nepal is moving from developing just activities to developing entire courses that include activities, lesson plans for the teachers, and supplementary materials. This in response to feedback from the teachers at the pilots and department of education. Bryan Berry ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features
You can delete those from the Journal. Is that insufficient for some reason? yeah, if the activity comes pre-installed you can't remove it. We include a lot of activities in our custom build as I imagine Peru and Uruguay do ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features
the activities are in ~/Activities . I spoke w/ Bernie about this and he told me that you couldn't remove activities unless they had been originally installed by the user. I may have misunderstood him and be wasting your time w/ a moot issue. I will test it myself when I get into the office this morning. If I am mistaken I will apologize profusely. for the last rollout to the schools I used the customization key to build a custom image which I copy-nand'ed to the XO's. For the refresh of Sugar I will probably try to use something like Puritan to build a custom image that includes Nepal's E-Paath activities and additional rpms for gnuchess and flash player -Original Message- From: Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: OLPC Developer's List devel@lists.laptop.org, Gregsmitholpc [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 03:36:16 +0200 On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 3:34 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can delete those from the Journal. Is that insufficient for some reason? yeah, if the activity comes pre-installed you can't remove it. We include a lot of activities in our custom build as I imagine Peru and Uruguay do Where/how are these activities installed? I thought customization keys was putting them in ~/Activities like user installed activities. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Wikiserver on XS
good thing there are brighter bulbs involved in olpc than myself :) cbj I will have to look at your code for wikislice and see how it harvests the images from wikipedia. I was having the most trouble w/ that part. Perhaps wikislice can easily be reused for wiktionary we like wiktionary because it is quite small and it has audio samples that say the word. Nepali kids seem really like the latter feature. -Original Message- From: Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Wikiserver on XS Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:06:51 -0400 Hi, I tried setting up a Wiktionary server on a shared server that our pilots have access to and it was a major pain in the ass. After 3 days I couldn't get it to work. I had a lot of trouble downloading and importing the images, perhaps Chris Ball's wikislices gets this right. I will have to look at the code and ask him. Oh, you mean using the wikislice technology to build a snapshot of the dictionary data from wiktionary, rather than the wikipedia data? That's an interesting idea. The wikislices are alright but they don't allow for searching for content which I think is an essential feature. Yes, they do; when you run the Wikipedia activity, there's a search toolbar that searches against the local index. (You might be confusing the Wikipedia activity with some hand-made Wikislice HTML content bundles that SJ made quite a while ago.) - Chris. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
re: First Draft Development Process Proposal
Here in nepal, here are the key features we need listed in order of priority: 1) Be able to remove activities to free up space, including activities that come pre-installed. For example, our current E-Paath activities already use up 105 MB and that only covers 1 month of coursework! We intend to have 12 months worth of activities so it will be crucial that students can remove activities easily as necessary, including pre-installed ones like Scratch or TurtleArt 2) Need to be able to launch activities from the web browser. We are moving towards html and likely Moodle to organize our activities together w/ supplementary reading and other materials. The students will use an offline html page and click on links to launch a python or EToys activity in a separate window, and not w/in the browser. This functionality is essential in order to put the activities w/in lesson plans. 3) Stable collaboration :) I know this is a hard one. I believe Trac tickets already exist for #1 and #2, filed by me or by Bernie. 4) Longer battery life, it's ok w/ us if you turn off the mesh while the XO goes into suspend mode. hope this helps Message: 4 Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:31:06 -0400 From: Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: First Draft Development Process Proposal To: devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi All, I posted a first pass Release Process Overview. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Process_Home Its based on work done by Michael and others on this list. It needs a lot more work, but I hope we can start using it soon and improve it over time. I could use help fleshing it out and closing the open items listed in the final section. Let me know if anyone wants to work with me on that. The goals of this process are: 1 - Ensure high quality releases which meet the needs of users in a timely fashion. 2 - Maximize the participation, productivity and enthusiasm of the open source community. 3 - Create a predictable process which helps users and developers plan for the future. I want to minimize the process overhead as much as possible. If its not helping make coders life easier then its not likely to make better code. Please comment, question, augment and criticize as needed. I especially want to know if it makes sense, looks useful and meets the goals outlined above. Comments on linked pages also welcome, especially: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Releases and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Unscheduled_software_release_process Any input welcome. Thanks, Greg Smith OLPC Product Manager PS - This is my first e-mail to the list since I changed from volunteer to employee. It's truly an honor to have this chance to work for OLPC and to learn from you all! Right now, I'm 90% focused on gathering input so I'm open to a call or e-mail exchange with anyone who is contributing to the project. If you want to have a brief call, just send me an agenda and a few open times 7AM - 6PM US ET, Mon - Fri. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: First Draft Development Process Proposal
Michael, thanks for your responses. Michael wrote: Noted. Can you or Bernie supply a patch which accomplishes the desired behavior? If someone can come up with a halfway decent patch, I'm more than happy to try to see that this gets resolved. I will have to ask Bernie for help w/ this. It is beyond my current abilities and I am pretty maxed out right now working on our E-Library. Don't worry we will share back all the config and code we have come up w/. Here are two dirty hacks and a long-term project: I will have to get folks here working on it. Surprisingly, resources are pretty tight here, our developers are in a mad dash to develop enough activities for the kids at the schools. They go through them so quickly and are always clamoring for more English and math activities, esp. English. 3) Stable collaboration :) I know this is a hard one. We just put Cerebro into joyride. We think that some activities, such as Read, will be easy to modify to use it. You might try it and see. Which activities do you care about most in this regard? We care most about Write. I will have to test out Cerebro. Maybe I can get Pradosh, our new intern to work on it this week. (FYI, the configuration management scripting that Martin [and Uruguay, for that matter] have done might be of some interest to you as a labor-savor. Poke Martin or Emiliano [have you met?] for details.) Definitely interested in it, will have to check it out. 4) Longer battery life, it's ok w/ us if you turn off the mesh while the XO goes into suspend mode. This can be manually tested in the latest joyrides. Any help you can offer in testing them would be greatly appreciated, for obvious reasons. I will try to help out w/ testing but the E-Library is kicking my butt right now. thanks, Bryan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Making Updating Easier
2 releases per year is the right way to go. I can't imagine using more than two XO releases per year, barring an important security or bug fix. It is just too time consuming to test out a new release and more importantly, train the teachers about any new features or anomalies. I hope to update our XO OS images for the first time in September. @Michael: I would like to share back any important changes we made to the OS image but the changes I made were quite trivial. Primarily, my changes were customizing the order that the activities were displayed in and the installation of additional rpms. Sulochan is working on a shell script to automatically update activities when there are new versions on the school server. I will ask him to communicate his work back. Keep up the good work Bryan Berry OLE Nepal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Paper on how to improve education in Nepal with OLPC
My colleague Saurav Dev Bhatta just released a paper he wrote about implementing OLPC in Nepal. It really gives a great overview of OLPC's relevance to Nepal's education system and how best to implement OLPC in a developing country. Tackling the Problems of Quality and Disparity in Nepal’s School Education: The OLPC Model take a look at it http://www.olenepal.org/images/olpc-model-in-nepal.pdf -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
pls checkout new project management site for E-Paath activities
I have setup redmine for E-Paath and E-Pustakalaya at http://redmine.olenepal.org . Please take a tour of using the guest account, password guest and let me know what you think. We wanted to use OLPC’s Trac set up but found it did not meet our needs. We have 47+ individual activities to keep track of and Trac just got too confusing. We also couldn't set our own project milestones and roadmap using OLPC's Trac instance. We hope that redmine will make it easier for outside folks to contribute to E-Paath and E-Pustakalaya (E-Library) development. Redmine lacks a few features, notably that you can't add additional folks to a ticket w/ cc: Besides that I have been quite happy so far. Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: pls checkout new project management site for E-Paath activities
will be happy to write it up. I have the setup in my personal wiki anyways. We are working out testing process that includes teachers, software testers, and the developers. The software testers test for stuff that plain just doesn't work and teachers review our activities to evaluate whether they are good for learning. With 47 activities and counting, a good project management tool/issue tracker is essential to managing all that communication. hope to have the app globally accessible tomorrow. On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 12:39 -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote: On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 11:27 AM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Every country will need their own problem tracking and resolution system (probably more like RT than Trac). This is due to a number of reasons: language, country specific activities and content, the specific software release being used by the country, etc. That said, we *are* interested in trying to assemble best practices from countries, so that we can make good recommendations as new deployments get underway. If you are able to write up your experiences with redmine at some point (good points, bad points, setup tips, workflow, training, experiences, etc) that would be very useful. At some point in the future, it would be great to get Nepal, Peru, and the other countries together to compare notes and write up a joint recommendation for country problem tracking, including software setup, etc. --scott ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: pls checkout new project management site for E-Paath activities
thanks John btw for some annoying reason our local ISP is blocking access to http://redmine.olenpal.org will have to fix that tomorrow. On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 11:27 -0400, John Watlington wrote: Brian, Every country will need their own problem tracking and resolution system (probably more like RT than Trac). This is due to a number of reasons: language, country specific activities and content, the specific software release being used by the country, etc. The place to push issues from the countries (i.e. the problems that a country isn't able to handle themselves) is not into Trac, but into our support system (using [EMAIL PROTECTED]). From there, issues can be pushed into Trac. Adam Holt is the person who can add more detail to this brief flowchart... Too bad you missed the country meeting. This was discussed there. Cheers, wad On Jun 2, 2008, at 9:55 AM, Bryan Berry wrote: I have setup redmine for E-Paath and E-Pustakalaya at http://redmine.olenepal.org . Please take a tour of using the guest account, password guest and let me know what you think. We wanted to use OLPC’s Trac set up but found it did not meet our needs. We have 47+ individual activities to keep track of and Trac just got too confusing. We also couldn't set our own project milestones and roadmap using OLPC's Trac instance. We hope that redmine will make it easier for outside folks to contribute to E-Paath and E-Pustakalaya (E-Library) development. Redmine lacks a few features, notably that you can't add additional folks to a ticket w/ cc: Besides that I have been quite happy so far. Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
What Constructionism is - excellent article by Bill Kerr
here is an excellent article by Bill Kerr http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/tidying_up_the_const.html I highly recommend reading it. Shameless plug for my own writing: How to make open-source work for education http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/how_to_make_opensour.html -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
update on touchpad problems
sorry been out of contact on this issue and haven't responded earlier. The monsoon started last week so there is a lot less dust at Bashuki school. The touchpad problem has reduced to a point that about 3 out of 27 kids have touchpad problems at one time, down from 50% I still need to test this problem out more thoroughly, but my higher priority for Sulochan and I right now is getting an E-Library online w/ Nepali kids' literature. It should be live and Internet-accessible by July 15th, will write later the tools we are using for it. thanks for the help guys and sorry didn't write back sooner. Bryan OLE Nepal On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 23:57 -0400, Michael Stone wrote: Dear devel@, We can use Xkb/AccessX's MouseKeys accessibility feature to provide an easy work-around for many of our touchpad problems. MouseKeys is easy to enable through xmodmap where, (on a handy B4), you do something like: xmodmap -pke old_map xmodmap -e 'keycode 133 = Num_Lock Pointer_EnableKeys' xmodmap -e 'keycode 111 = Up KP_Up' xmodmap -e 'keycode 116 = Down KP_Down' xmodmap -e 'keycode 113 = Left KP_Left' xmodmap -e 'keycode 114 = Right KP_Right' xmodmap -e 'keycode 36 = Return KP_Begin' Your keycodes may vary; I figured out the right ones by using xev and pressing the appropriate buttons. I figured out the keysyms mainly by reading the xmodmap -pke output. (The Wiki scan codes diagram [1] and table [2] were not accurate for my machine according to xev.) [1]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts [2]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Scan_code_table At any rate, after you perform this remapping, MouseKeys can be turned on by pressing 'Shift-LeftGrabby' and can be used by holding Shift and pressing arrow keys (or Shift-Enter to click). All this works great except for the fact that the resulting mouse motion is very slow (being capped at 30 px/sec in the default MouseKeys configuration.) To address this, I wrote a small 'mkspeed' which is available in source form at http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/mstone/mkspeed The relevant code is http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/mstone/mkspeed;a=blob;f=mkspeed.c;hb=HEAD Unfortunately, it doesn't work and I can't tell why. (This is my first Xkb program.) Consequently, help would be greatly appreciated. If you're interested, reference documentation is available [3]; see sections 4.5, 4.6, and 16.3.5 for the important details. [3]: http://www.xfree86.org/current/XKBproto.pdf Alternately, if mkspeed proves to be difficult to complete, we can probably just raise the default speed limit in the Xkb implementation in the X server. Michael P.S. - If you know some nice Xkb folks who might like to help out, feel free to forward this email to them. Or tell me why I'm an idiot and why this is a terrible way to work around the jumpy touchpad bugs. P.P.S. - Eben - you might start thinking about how we should actually be exposing this sort of feature in the UI. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
excellent overview of the anatomy flash filesystems
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-flash-filesystems/index.html?ca=drs- w/ a really sexy flowchart for jffs2 -- Bryan Berry OLE Nepal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
excellent overview of the anatomy flash filesystems
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-flash-filesystems/index.html?ca=drs- w/ a really sexy flowchart for jffs2 -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
First week at Nepal's Test Schools
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/290 written by Rabi karmacharya, exec director OLE Nepal This is a compilation of observations from the first week of the laptop implementation at the two rural schools in Nepal — Bashuki and Bishwamitra Ganesh. After the launch of the project on April 25th, we visited the schools for the next six days, spending entire days working with the teachers and observing the classrooms. This was the second part of the teacher training program, with the first part being the 4 day residential program that was help from March 29 till April 1. Typically, the day would start with discussion of the day’s lesson plans with the teachers, and then we would proceed to observe the classes where the teachers used the learning activities developed by OLE Nepal in the daily teaching. The details of the teacher training program can be found in Dr. Bhatta’s post. Here I will write about general observations about the children and the laptops at the two schools. Bashuki School Between the two test schools, Bashuki is undoubtedly the more challenging one. The school located near a hilltop in Lakurebhanjyang serves a community of Tamang people, an indigenous group that inhabit the hilly region. Most students come from poor families that depend on agriculture and menial work to make ends meet. The literacy rate is quite low, but the teachers are determined to change this. However, they face a daunting uphill task to educate children from villages where sending kids to school means losing extra hands to work the fields. Furthermore, out of the 10 teachers, only one is from the local community, while the rest have to trek up at least 1 hour each day to reach the school. In this respect, the school is quite detached from the community. Most teachers do not speak the local Tamang language, while few understand it. Overall, it is not easy for the teachers to mix in with the local people and interact with them. We had distributed a total of 75 laptops - 39 to grade 2 students, and 36 to grade 6 students. During the first week of school, the attendance was not very encouraging. Most of the week there were between 25-30 students in grade 2, and 20-25 students in grade 6. This could be due to the fact that there was no clear indication of when classes were supposed to begin, a typical problem faced by schools all over Nepal. According the ministry, public schools across the nation were supposed to start classes on April 17th, but due to various reasons, this rarely happens in most schools. Ironically, schools are required keep admissions open till mid-May. To make things worse, textbooks had not been delivered to the schools till date. These are ground realities that teachers and school administrations have to deal with in educating children in rural areas. Nevertheless, it was quite surprising that even the lure of the cute laptops were not enough to entice the students to school. The teachers told us that full attendance is a rarity because siblings take turns between going to school and staying home to help in the fields and do household chores. The School Management Committee (SMC) and school administration had jointly decided not to send the laptops home with the students during the first week. They wanted the children to get more familiar with the laptops before they take them home with them. While we first were not happy with the plan, in retrospect, it turned out to be a good idea given the number of students that did not show up at school after the distribution day. Since the students had limited time with the XO’s during this week, they were not quite familiar with the laptops in the classroom. Grade 6 students at Bashuki Bishwamitra School This school located in a wooded area in Jyamirkot serves a mixed community consisting of Brahmin, Chhetri, Newar, Tamang and Dalit groups. The school has a core group of dedicated teachers who have been affiliated with the school for over 20 years. Three of the twelve teachers had at one time attended the school. Almost all the teachers hail from the surrounding villages, and they are very tied to the local community. They have close relation with the parents and the community. People in the community put high value on education. Hence, we see that it will be easier to successfully implement the project in this school. Students from both grades were allowed to take the laptops home from the very first day. Out of the 38 students in grade 6 and 22 in grade 2, almost all of them were present throughout the first week of classes. The teachers conducted regular classes for all grades during this period. Since the students had extra personal time at home with the XO’s they were very much familiar using the XO’s in classrooms. Even the second graders were navigating around the XO without much problem, and were able to get to the activities that the teachers were referring to. The sixth graders had tried out other activities besides the
Re: [Olpc-open] jumpy cursor problem and sugar issue
thanks, will try this out On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 16:01 -0400, Samuel Klein wrote: Advice from the field : try dusting a jumpy touchpad with chalkdust. --SJ, who is looking for a cite... On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 7:50 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Day 3 of the pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki and couple of issues have come up 1. We are having a lot of trouble w/ jumpy cursors. You know where the touchpad behaves erratically. Is there an easy fix to this problem? we are using build 703, MP machines, and firmware Q2d14. We have the kids hold down the 4 corner buttons as recommended in the XO user guide but that doesn't seem to consistently fix the problem. Dust is an issue at the schools but that can't explain the high rate of jumpy cursors. Please assist Suggestions? 2. For future reference: In general the kids and teachers find it quite confusing when they move the cursor to the corners of the screen and the Sugar frame pops up. The kids have learned the top row keys very quickly - faster than I thought - and they find the frame popping up quite confusing. They have learned to use the frame button already. pictures to come and a full write-up, I promise! Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Olpc-open mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Teacher Preparation Program for the OLPC Project in Nepal — Part II , Onsite training
Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta posted the review of the second week of teacher training, which took place on-site at the schools http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/283 We have just completed Part II of our teacher preparation program. The complete teacher training consisted of two segments: Part I) A 4 day intensive residential, out-of-school training that focuses on integrating digitial educational materials and ICT-based teaching approaches in the regular classroom instruction process. This was completed on April 1, 2008. An earlier blog post has details about this segment of the training. Part II) A 4 day training in the teachers’ regular classrooms where they get hand-on experience in developing, implementing, and fine-tuning child-centric, interactive, ICT-integrated lesson plans. This was completed on Friday, May 2, 2008. The current post is about this segment only. Training location For Bashuki teachers, the training was held at Bashuki Lower Secondary School itself. Similarly, for Bishwamitra teachers, it was held at Bishwamitra Lower Secondary School. Why in-school training? Important fact: TEACHING THE KIDS HOW TO USE THE LAPTOPS IS A RELATIVELY EASY TASK. THEY PICK IT UP IN NO TIME (within a few hours!!). Even more important fact: THE REAL CHALLENGE IS INTEGRATING THE LAPTOP AND THE AVAILABLE DIGITAL CONTENT IN THE REGULAR CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION PROCESS. The residential portion of the training did give the teachers some experience in integrating E-Paati in the classroom process (apart from making them completely familiar with the use of the laptop). But the simulated classroom environment in any residential training is a far cry from the actual setting in their own schools. Furthermore, since each school is very different in terms of physical infrastructure, student composition, community involvement and other resources, there are unique practical challenges associated with each school. So we felt that it would be very useful to give teachers hands-on experience in integrating E-Paati in their regular classrooms. There is another important reason why in-school training is important in this case. In most teacher training programs, it is possible for teachers to learn about new approaches to teaching outside their school (for example, through practice teaching in another school) and they can take this knowledge to their own classrooms later. But in the present context, successful implementation in the classroom also requires the students themselves to learn about the new approach to learning and teaching. And this can only happen in the school where the laptop program is being implemented. Structure of the training Each day of the training was divided into four major segments: 1. Lesson plan review and revision * Content: group review of lesson plan for the day. * Participants: all the teachers in the schools + facilitators from OLE Nepal * Time allocated: 1 hour (before the start of classes) 2. Classroom instruction and observation * Content: classroom teaching according to the lesson plan * Participants: teachers (one teacher teaches the students; the rest are observers) + OLE Nepal observers + students * Time allocated: 3 to 4 full class periods (one period = 45 minutes in Bashuki; one period = 40 minutes in Bishwamitra) 3. Feedback * Content: discussion on the day’s experience (strengths, weaknesses, recommendations for improvement) * Participants: all teachers + OLE Nepal facilitators * Time allocated: 1-1.5 hours 4. Lesson planning for the next day * Content: development of a detailed lesson plans for each class * Participants: teachers delivering the lectures in these classes * Time allocated: 1 hour On the first day of the training (Saturday, April 26), the teachers focused on teaching the students how to use the laptop and the E-Paati activities in the laptop. This was done in two 1.5 hour long sessions. During the remaining four days, the teachers conducted regular math and English classes in grades two and six according to the ICT-integrated lesson plans they developed. At Bishwamitra the ICT-integrated classes were held on Sunday (April 27) , Monday (April 28), Tuesday (April 29) and Wednesday (April 30). Bashuki conducted similar classes starting Monday (April 29). But since they had decided to keep the laptops in school for this first week of classes, they set aside Wednesday (April 30) for giving students more practice on how to use the laptops. They had a break on Thursday and completed the training program on Friday (May 2). Overview of content covered in the training Lesson planning: Integrating ICT-based educational materials in the classroom requires teachers to carefully plan their lessons. We wanted to give the teachers a very simple framework for developing lesson plans so that they would continue to use it even after the training. If they were to
Re: Teacher Preparation Program for the OLPC Project in Nepal — Part II , Onsite training
The stuff that needs to be translated is the 65 page teacher training guide. I believe that Prabhas Pokharel is interested in working on it but I don't know how much time he has had for it as of late. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:OLENepal_Trainer%27s_Manual.pdf I still need to post it in Word format to the wiki. That's my fault It's a pretty amazing document, takes lots of Constructionist examples from Piaget and Vygotsky that kids learn differently than we traditionally expect them to. Then takes those examples and explains how XO's can be used to help kids in the manner they naturally do. On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 22:00 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: This is all excellent. It becomes iven more urgent to have this material translated to English. Whom do we know who can help? Can others here ask for help through their networks on LinkedIn and other sites, or just their accumulated contacts in their address books, or any appropriate mailing lists? On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta posted the review of the second week of teacher training, which took place on-site at the schools http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/283 We have just completed Part II of our teacher preparation program. The complete teacher training consisted of two segments: Part I) A 4 day intensive residential, out-of-school training that focuses on integrating digitial educational materials and ICT-based teaching approaches in the regular classroom instruction process. This was completed on April 1, 2008. An earlier blog post has details about this segment of the training. Part II) A 4 day training in the teachers' regular classrooms where they get hand-on experience in developing, implementing, and fine-tuning child-centric, interactive, ICT-integrated lesson plans. This was completed on Friday, May 2, 2008. The current post is about this segment only. Training location For Bashuki teachers, the training was held at Bashuki Lower Secondary School itself. Similarly, for Bishwamitra teachers, it was held at Bishwamitra Lower Secondary School. Why in-school training? Important fact: TEACHING THE KIDS HOW TO USE THE LAPTOPS IS A RELATIVELY EASY TASK. THEY PICK IT UP IN NO TIME (within a few hours!!). Even more important fact: THE REAL CHALLENGE IS INTEGRATING THE LAPTOP AND THE AVAILABLE DIGITAL CONTENT IN THE REGULAR CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION PROCESS. The residential portion of the training did give the teachers some experience in integrating E-Paati in the classroom process (apart from making them completely familiar with the use of the laptop). But the simulated classroom environment in any residential training is a far cry from the actual setting in their own schools. Furthermore, since each school is very different in terms of physical infrastructure, student composition, community involvement and other resources, there are unique practical challenges associated with each school. So we felt that it would be very useful to give teachers hands-on experience in integrating E-Paati in their regular classrooms. There is another important reason why in-school training is important in this case. In most teacher training programs, it is possible for teachers to learn about new approaches to teaching outside their school (for example, through practice teaching in another school) and they can take this knowledge to their own classrooms later. But in the present context, successful implementation in the classroom also requires the students themselves to learn about the new approach to learning and teaching. And this can only happen in the school where the laptop program is being implemented. Structure of the training Each day of the training was divided into four major segments: 1. Lesson plan review and revision * Content: group review of lesson plan for the day. * Participants: all the teachers in the schools + facilitators from OLE Nepal * Time allocated: 1 hour (before the start of classes) 2. Classroom instruction and observation * Content: classroom teaching according to the lesson plan * Participants: teachers (one teacher teaches the students; the rest are observers) + OLE Nepal observers + students * Time allocated: 3 to 4 full class periods (one period = 45 minutes in Bashuki; one period = 40 minutes in Bishwamitra) 3. Feedback * Content: discussion on the day's experience (strengths, weaknesses, recommendations for improvement) * Participants: all teachers + OLE Nepal facilitators * Time allocated: 1-1.5 hours 4. Lesson planning for the next day * Content: development of a detailed lesson plans for each class * Participants: teachers delivering
Re: notes from first few days at Bashuki and Bishwamitra
thanks! all credit goes to the designer Ram Singh. It is working quite well so far. On Sat, 2008-05-03 at 11:14 -0700, Ixo X oxI wrote: Bryan, Glancing through the OLE Nepal Wordpress blog, I saw an impressive implementation of a home-grown solution to the XO charging rack. http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/254 Wow! Very well done. Love to see more of this type of work in the U.S. ! :) -iXo 2008/5/1 Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: what Rabi has put together http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/282 Bryan Kathmandu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: If you need to customize an XO automatically, you should use the Action usb stick
thanks giannis and mstone, I look forward to playing w/ this On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 20:41 -0400, Giannis Galanis wrote: **this mail was sent a couple of times, due to devel bounces The action USB key offers the capability to customize the XOs nand image automatically. It is also possible to set certain function perform at every boot. It is a very usefull tool to customize quickly many XOs, collect information to the usb, transfer files to the XO etc.. The required can be found here: http://wiki.laptop.org/images/a/a9/Actionkey.tar.gz To prepare the key: 1) Edit the action script with commands to be executed once. This could involve copying files, collecting data 2) Edit the rc.tweaks script with commands to be executed at every boot. This could involve setting variables, running testing tools etc.. 3) Copy all files(boot dir, bzimage, action, tc.tweaks) to the root, along with any other file you need to perform your customization To install the key: 1) Turn the XO off 2) Boot the XO with the usb stick plugged in without holding any game key 3) Wait until you see no job control in the shell, and you are done! 4) To turnoff type exit, or simply hold the power button. Remove the stick before you boot again Notes: * The key only works in activated machines with developer keys * The path to the usb stick would be /mnt/usb * Dont erase the export PATH=.. line from the action key * If you copy files back to he usb, make sure you type sync, or exit before removing the stick * If you wanna install an rpm, you should first copy it locally with the action script. Then set it to install with the rc.tweaks script, and clear the instruction so it doesnt install the nest time. * When booting with the action script, the wireless firmware is not loaded * Thank mstone for creating this amazing tool! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: jumpy cursor problem and sugar issue
hey guys, thanks to all who have replied to my issue w/ the jumpy cursor. I haven't been able to test out the responses I have gotten because I have been sick in bed for the last couple days. Will reply once I am coherent enough to read the e-mails. On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 11:39 +0200, Bernie Innocenti wrote: Tomeu Vizoso wrote: We plan to work on this soon. The plan is to have a delay since the mouse enters in the corner and before the frame is brought up. This delay will be configurable with an slide in the control panel. That seems like a great idea to improve usability. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
