Re: [UKids] [Announcement] Sugarizer v0.4 is available
This is fantastic - well done! I've been out of the OLPC/Sugar world for a while now, but just yesterday I was extolling the virtues of Sugar at a meeting in the university where I work. Our vice-chancellor has challenged us to come up with innovative learning ideas, and I was using Sugar as an example of what can be achieved through creative thinking. I'm going to point everyone to Sugarizer so that they can try it out for themselves :) Cheers, Sridhar On 21 May 2014 22:25, Lionel Laské lio...@olpc-france.org wrote: Hi all, I'm proud to announce the fourth version (0.4) of Sugarizer, a taste of Sugar for any device. http://sugarizer.org To remind you, Sugarizer reproduce main features of Sugar in HTML5/JavaScript. Sugarizer also expose these features to allow running in a browser Sugar Web activities wrote for Sugar 0.100+. Sugarizer is available from a browser or as an Android application. New in this version: - Three new activities: - Tank Operation: a Tuxmath like activity, practice math facts in an arcade game, - TurtleJS: a TurtleArt like activity. A taste of TurtleArt for any device ! - ChatPrototype: see below. - Sugar compatibility: Sugarizer could now be used as a developer platform for Sugar-Web activity. So, developers could now develop Sugar activities only with a browser and a file editor. Resulting activities will work without any change on Sugar 0.100+. - Improve Journal view: rename, delete and popup menu. - Server collaboration: Sugarizer Server now allow each user to publish local journal content to the Server. Just go to the journal view and access to your private or to the shared journal zone. Plus, if you keep in mind your user id (in settings/server), you could use the same settings (name, color, language, private storage) from different computers. - Presence API prototype: Sugarizer include a first prototype of Presence API and a Chat test activity. You could chat with all other users on the same server. - Server connectivity to Client: The Android Client has capacity to connect to a Sugarizer Server. Just go to Server settings: check the connected checkbox and set your user id. You've now capacity to start your work on your PC then update it on your tablet ! - Improved Android experience: Lot of issues related to Android environment has been solved. - API to server features: all server features are exposed as REST/JSON interfaces. So, developers could easily access to all server contents from any client (including, why not, the real Sugar journal). Hope you'll enjoy it and you could say: Yes, I want to Sugarize the world. Do not hesitate to fork and contribute. Lionel. P.S.: Thanks to Jorge (TurtleJS activity), Suraj (Presence and Chat prototype), Ignacio (Spanish translation) for their contribution to this version. P.P.S.: For a visual demonstration of Sugarizer and this new version, you could see my talk at SugarCamp Paris #3 here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rvdma_sugarcamp-3-sugarizer-what-if-sugar-could-be-on-every-device_school -- Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ http://unleashkids.org ! --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Unleash Kids group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unleashkids+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC New Zealand] Māori Macrons olpc keyboard
On 24/06/2013 9:43 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Which build are you running? In the latest Sugar builds, there is a keyboard settings control panel section. We could probably backport it to your build if it is reasonably recent. I remember that perhaps a year ago we had to remove the keyboard applet because it was causing some weird side effects. It wasn't a concern at the time because our focus was on English. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Moving on
Friends, You may already have heard the news, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I have just concluded my tenure as Engineering Manager at One Laptop per Child Australia. It's been a rewarding three and a half years. I joined the organisation as its first technical resource and established the Engineering Department. We've created some innovative solutions, and most importantly it has all been tied closely into a holistic educational solution. I'm pleased to say that we've made a difference to the lives of thousands of children. This was not a proprietary effort - far from it. The community has been the backbone of everything we have achieved, and I owe a debt of gratitude to you all. Walter Bender will be taking over many of my responsibilities, so our community roots will certainly continue. I'm not sure what adventure lies next for me, but I hope to be able to make a positive contribution to the world in whatever I do. I'll be sticking around on the lists as a lurker. My srid...@laptop.org.au address will likely stop working in the near future, but you can continue to reach me personally: e-mail: srid...@dhanapalan.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/sridhard All the best, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] Moving on
Friends, You may already have heard the news, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I have just concluded my tenure as Engineering Manager at One Laptop per Child Australia. It's been a rewarding three and a half years. I joined the organisation as its first technical resource and established the Engineering Department. We've created some innovative solutions, and most importantly it has all been tied closely into a holistic educational solution. I'm pleased to say that we've made a difference to the lives of thousands of children. This was not a proprietary effort - far from it. The community has been the backbone of everything we have achieved, and I owe a debt of gratitude to you all. Walter Bender will be taking over many of my responsibilities, so our community roots will certainly continue. I'm not sure what adventure lies next for me, but I hope to be able to make a positive contribution to the world in whatever I do. I'll be sticking around on the lists as a lurker. My srid...@laptop.org.au address will likely stop working in the near future, but you can continue to reach me personally: e-mail: srid...@dhanapalan.com LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/sridhard All the best, Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [support-gang] Customization Sticks fails on 13.1.0 12.1.0 for XO-1
On 12 March 2013 01:26, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote: On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.org wrote: Perhaps I don't understand but I don't see how OOB can work for a setup like Adam is describing in Haiti where they have laptops in the mix that are secure. Unless they first un-secure every laptop a custom OS build wth OOB would have to be signed by OLPC or Reuben would have to give them a Haiti key thats installed via keyjector. This is not a new situation for us, and the approach we have taken in the past is to help such deployments un-secure all of their laptops, or provide a keyjector to insert custom keys, upon their request. I find it worrisome that such a useful tool (customisation stick) is no longer being maintained. We've been able to achieve some very useful things with it for our schools, expanding its capability to perform tasks like bulk installing software and activities, and quickly deploying settings across many XOs. This is not an either/or question. Creating a custom build per classroom is not practical, and installing such a build is destructive. We see the customisation stick as an extremely useful complement to OOB, not a replacement. If there's no interest at OLPCA to maintain it, what we to continue it? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Playing video on Sugar startup with VMETA
We're trying to make XO-1.75s play quality video on Sugar startup. Our solution involves installing the VMETA software on 12.1.0 and then loading the video in Totem using the Welcome activity hook in Sugar. As this is for marketing/instructional purposes, we need the process to be really slick: 1. XO loads with fully graphical boot animation (no console) 2. video loads and plays, with no chrome (toolbars, sidebars, etc.), high quality, full frame rate and complete A/V sync 3. Sugar loads as normal What we've found is that Totem segfaults when invoked with --fullscreen. It doesn't crash when loaded in a window, but there's so much chrome that it looks silly. Even a simpler gstreamer-based player, gst123, crashes soon after startup. I'm of the understanding that we need to be using a gstreamer player. Is there anything that we can do to improve our present situation? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Lid switches tests confusing
When testing the XO hardware, users are frequently tripping up on the lid switches test. Right now, the text on the screen says this: Testing /switches Activate lid switch This is where our users get stumped: what is a lid switch? If they work out that they need to close the lid, when are they allowed to open it again? The next message is also problematic: Activate ebook switch What does this mean? When can the XO be taken out of e-book mode? How about we make the messages look more like this? Testing /switches Close the lid and open after 2 seconds Swivel the screen and close it into ebook mode Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Lid switches tests confusing
On 1 February 2013 12:06, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: When testing the XO hardware, users are frequently tripping up on the lid switches test. Right now, the text on the screen says this: Testing /switches Activate lid switch This is where our users get stumped: what is a lid switch? If they work out that they need to close the lid, when are they allowed to open it again? The next message is also problematic: Activate ebook switch What does this mean? When can the XO be taken out of e-book mode? How about we make the messages look more like this? Testing /switches Close the lid and open after 2 seconds Swivel the screen and close it into ebook mode I've made an upstream ticket: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12514 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
HDMI audio on XO-4
Does the micro-HDMI port on the XO-4 transmit audio? Thanks, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: gathering use cases
On 9 November 2012 09:10, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org wrote: This is my greatest concern. The ability of a server to deliver content is central. It is my understanding that your Community XS does not support a LAMP stack or Moodle. Please do not refer to the Community XS as XO-0.8 until there is a chance that it can deliver the essential capabilities of XS-0.7. My other concern is that a lot of very talented people are spending a lot of time solving a non-problem. Naturally, the network problem you mention is solved by connecting the XS-0.7 to that network as the WAN. Tony, It appears that no matter what we say, you are cemented in some strange notions about the community XS: * that it is intended to run only on XOs * that it cannot (and will not) serve content * that your personal desires from an XS are shared by every other deployment in the world I think we've been quite clear about what we're intending to achieve. If you're going to criticise, at least be civil enough to do so based on the facts: * this is a flexible design, built on Fedora * it will run anywhere where x86 or ARM Fedora will work * it can be installed on top of an existing Fedora installation using 'yum groupinstall xsce' * being designed in this way provides extreme flexibility for deployments * all current features of the XS (Moodle, etc.) will be ported, but will be optional * installation and configuration will be easy, but sysadmins will be able to treat it like any Fedora installation We've tried hard to be inclusive and constructive. I ask you to do the same. Regards, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: gathering use cases
On 9 November 2012 10:19, Tony Anderson t...@olenepal.org wrote: Hi, Sridhar Thanks for the clarification. I guess I was mislead by statements such as: The platform for the One Network server is an ARMv7-based XO, running the One Education OS (based on OLPC OS). This makes development, and deployment and support far simpler than a standalone distribution. The OS can be extended with server capabilities using a bootable USB Customisation Stick (offline) or yum. Please accept my apology if any statement I have made seemed uncivil, that was certainly not my intention. Communicating by email in certainly much more hazardous in this regard than face-to-face. Thank you, Tony. I was quite careful to take your needs into account when I wrote the design doc, so I had trouble understanding your opposition to the idea. Maybe we can make the doc clearer somehow? I structured it as: 1. context 2. Community XS design 3. One Network server The Community XS design itself is flexible enough to handle a variety of different deployments' needs. One Network server is merely one configuration of the Community XS, mentioned as an example of what can be done. Just as the deployments you are supporting have specific and urgent needs, so do the ones I am working with. I don't believe either of us is pursuing personal desires. We certainly can easily differ on which is the appropriate technical approach to solving the problems of a deployment. I think we generally want the same thing in the end. I'm happy to continue the conversation to improve the design and implementation. I sincerely believe that this design can accommodate your needs. I really appreciate this specification: * this is a flexible design, built on Fedora * it will run anywhere where x86 or ARM Fedora will work * it can be installed on top of an existing Fedora installation using 'yum groupinstall xsce' * being designed in this way provides extreme flexibility for deployments * all current features of the XS (Moodle, etc.) will be ported, but will be optional * installation and configuration will be easy, but sysadmins will be able to treat it like any Fedora installation Awesome. I hope this also satisfies your desire to have it rebased to Fedora to work on ARM systems. That's a key goal of this project, while maintaining compatibility with x86. There is clearly a great deal to be gained by a community taking responsibility for the ongoing development and maintenance of the school server as neither Daniel Drake nor Martin Langhoff are likely to have adequate time for this in the foreseeable future. Indeed. A motivating factor was to take some of the load off some of these prolific people and spread it out to the community in a sustainable way. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC New Zealand] [OLPC-AU] Auckland Testing Summary 29 September 2012
On 8 October 2012 16:56, Jerry Vonau je...@laptop.org.au wrote: On 6 October 2012 13:27, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Hmm. I thought activities.sugarlabs.org was a bit smarter than that. That said, the bundle could have come from elsewhere. Well it is if you use browse to view activities.sugarlabs.org, but I suspect the activity was downloaded to a usbkey on a different machine then auto installed by launching it from the usbkey. Think the real fix might run deep into sugar's inner workings, some discussion at http://sugardextrose.org/issues/1532 This is one of our greatest sources of technical support troubles. People install incompatible bundles, sometimes over an existing working one. If the activity is protected (which we do for our core set), it can't be removed or downgraded easily. IMHO the system should tell the user if the bundle they're installing is not compatible with the OS/Sugar version they have installed. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC-AU] Registering an XO for the second time
On 27 August 2012 20:14, vanessa ramos da cruz v.ramosdac...@gmail.com wrote: Halo Martin, I am Vanessa; I am working in Angola with this project. I am new on the project so I have a little concern. I had a server with XS 0.6, I registered on it some XO’s just for tests. Now I have a new machine on witch I installed the XS 0.7. I would like to register the XO‘s on this new Machine. How ca I register the few XO’s I already registered before? I don’t have the old Machine with the XS 0.6 installation any more… Can you please help me? Hi Vanessa, You're better off asking these questions on the server-devel list: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel Regards, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Migrating XO-1.75 to device tree - upgrade considerations
On 23 August 2012 09:00, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Wed, 2012-08-22 at 09:53 -0600, Daniel Drake wrote: Either way, I don't quite understand the situation involving the firmware here. (Maybe until now) there has been no driving need to upgrade firmware when upgrading OS releases - it can be done before, after, 3 weeks after, doesn't make a big difference. Yes it did at one point, way back when sparse support was first added to the .zd files in order to gain the speed advantage offered the required firmware must be installed first. We also wanted an easy way to get NANDblaster-compatible firmware out to all of our XOs in the field. As the first adopters of the XO-1.5, we had many units that could not receive a NANDblaster signal. We don't issue firmware updates very often at all. Or is there a reason I'm missing for why you go to special lengths to make sure the firmware upgrade is done first? After an OS upgrade we can't expect a teacher to boot each XO with an AC adapter plugged-in when there maybe only one adaptor available for the class or no AC at all because of the use of alternate charging methods. I wonder how this is handled in other deployments that are using solar-panels or hand cranks because there is no AC available. We have chosen to have the firmware installed from a USB drive as we can disable the AC check, and use the charge level of the battery to ensure there is enough power present to ensure success with the updating processes with our olpc.fth script. We use charging racks for classroom sets, not individual AC adapters. It is not practical to boot/use the XO while it is plugged in. Hence, firmware updates cannot occur if AC is required. Our workaround is to remove the AC check and institute a battery check. We understand that there are risks involved in this (e.g. the reported battery state may be different from the actual state), we decided that the benefits outweigh the risks. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC New Zealand] OLPC testing summary Auckland 18 August 2012
Thanks for testing the teacher training customisations. This allows us to modify the standard OLPC OS 10.1.3 into something that is similar to our 10.1.3-au series, and is hence compatible with our One Education programme. If you examine the Training Pack files, you'll see that we upgrade Browse, MusicPainter, Scratch and Speak. Other activities are untouched. We install the Adobe Flash Player, although I suspect that performance will be poor on XO-1 hardware. The Favourites view is also changed. See the training.sh file for details on what modifications the Training Pack makes. Cheers, Sridhar On 18 August 2012 15:22, Tom Parker t...@carrott.org wrote: OLPC testing summary Auckland 18 August 2012 Who: Fabiana, John, Tabitha, Tom Today we tested XO-1s build 860 Sugar 0.84.31 with a bunch of customizations for NZ teacher training and XO-1.5s on 12.1.0 build 20. Tux, XO-1, build 860 + customisations: Touchpad drove me crazy during the following list of tests; no collaboration testing done today except for chat and distance. By default set to UTC time, need to go into settings and change to Pacific/Auckland time and restart. Switch to gnome and back to Sugar works. Maze works Speak main speak part works but not robot Record took a photo, low quality video, audio - all viewable/playable Paint tested most functions, all working Musicpainter works Moon works Implode works Memorize played all preloaded games with all sizes, worked, created a text game and played it Read opens but had nothing to read Write works Turtleart basic test works Scratch basic test works Tamtam mini tried a few options, all worked Tamtam edit basic test works Tamtam jam works Tamtam synthlab basic test works Jukebox works Help works Measure basic test works Image viewer works Log works Etoys tutorial works Calculate basic test worked Pippy tried a few options, all played Browse works, connected to local wireless network and browsed net as well as trying some of the links on the homepage Distance on local wireless network worked with Anna, looks pretty accurate distance calculation Chat worked with Anna on local wireless network Anna, XO-1, build 860 + customisations: Memorise 3 grids ok - created game ok Record pix ok. Timer seems to work ok. Video low res 2 min ok, playback ok. Video hi not available - on the icon there is an arrow suggesting it will bring up a drop down menu but there does not appear to be one. Measure: starts ok - there is a single channel active, but refresh is such that one sees two overlapping waves - this could be confusing. Gain and time controls appear to work ok. V(t) and FFT seem to be ok. Capture every 30 sec seems ok - trigger does not seem to work. Tab that displays the trace is named ‘sound’ - which is kind of true when it is capturing from a microphone, but it is really voltage and distinguishing this might be important if one is to bring a signal in from a different source through the microphone input. Paint: Slow! Became frustrated and moved Ivy, XO-1.5, 12.1.0 build 20: Write, Wikipedia EN, Record, Tamtam mini, Browse, Getbooks and Read. Quality of photos quite good regardless of low or high quality. Tamtam Synthlab works and is really good. We didn't see any video anomalies in this build. Rosella, XO-1.5, 12.1.0 build 20: The very small text on this laptop is now fixed! ___ OLPC-NZ mailing list olpc...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-nz ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC New Zealand] OLPC testing summary Auckland 18 August 2012
I've written some release notes for the Training Pack: https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/XO-1_Training_Pack_release_notes On 18 August 2012 16:19, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Thanks for testing the teacher training customisations. This allows us to modify the standard OLPC OS 10.1.3 into something that is similar to our 10.1.3-au series, and is hence compatible with our One Education programme. If you examine the Training Pack files, you'll see that we upgrade Browse, MusicPainter, Scratch and Speak. Other activities are untouched. We install the Adobe Flash Player, although I suspect that performance will be poor on XO-1 hardware. The Favourites view is also changed. See the training.sh file for details on what modifications the Training Pack makes. Cheers, Sridhar On 18 August 2012 15:22, Tom Parker t...@carrott.org wrote: OLPC testing summary Auckland 18 August 2012 Who: Fabiana, John, Tabitha, Tom Today we tested XO-1s build 860 Sugar 0.84.31 with a bunch of customizations for NZ teacher training and XO-1.5s on 12.1.0 build 20. Tux, XO-1, build 860 + customisations: Touchpad drove me crazy during the following list of tests; no collaboration testing done today except for chat and distance. By default set to UTC time, need to go into settings and change to Pacific/Auckland time and restart. Switch to gnome and back to Sugar works. Maze works Speak main speak part works but not robot Record took a photo, low quality video, audio - all viewable/playable Paint tested most functions, all working Musicpainter works Moon works Implode works Memorize played all preloaded games with all sizes, worked, created a text game and played it Read opens but had nothing to read Write works Turtleart basic test works Scratch basic test works Tamtam mini tried a few options, all worked Tamtam edit basic test works Tamtam jam works Tamtam synthlab basic test works Jukebox works Help works Measure basic test works Image viewer works Log works Etoys tutorial works Calculate basic test worked Pippy tried a few options, all played Browse works, connected to local wireless network and browsed net as well as trying some of the links on the homepage Distance on local wireless network worked with Anna, looks pretty accurate distance calculation Chat worked with Anna on local wireless network Anna, XO-1, build 860 + customisations: Memorise 3 grids ok - created game ok Record pix ok. Timer seems to work ok. Video low res 2 min ok, playback ok. Video hi not available - on the icon there is an arrow suggesting it will bring up a drop down menu but there does not appear to be one. Measure: starts ok - there is a single channel active, but refresh is such that one sees two overlapping waves - this could be confusing. Gain and time controls appear to work ok. V(t) and FFT seem to be ok. Capture every 30 sec seems ok - trigger does not seem to work. Tab that displays the trace is named ‘sound’ - which is kind of true when it is capturing from a microphone, but it is really voltage and distinguishing this might be important if one is to bring a signal in from a different source through the microphone input. Paint: Slow! Became frustrated and moved Ivy, XO-1.5, 12.1.0 build 20: Write, Wikipedia EN, Record, Tamtam mini, Browse, Getbooks and Read. Quality of photos quite good regardless of low or high quality. Tamtam Synthlab works and is really good. We didn't see any video anomalies in this build. Rosella, XO-1.5, 12.1.0 build 20: The very small text on this laptop is now fixed! ___ OLPC-NZ mailing list olpc...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-nz ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Proposal: Contol-Panel packaging
On 11 August 2012 08:28, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: We have no control over the network environment what so ever and need to work within the confines of what is available. This is our primary constraint: we cannot install servers or proxies. Schools in remote areas have latent/slow/expensive Internet links. You'd think that a caching proxy is common sense. Unfortunately not :( Furthermore, the newer wireless networks treat every client as potentially hostile and hence prevent them from communicating with each other. This also means that no collaboration can take place. You *are* sending them XO's or at least XO software loads, yes? Fix the XO software with a simple control panel checkbox to make it a cacheing proxy access point. Tell them to configure one of the XOs as a cacheing proxy, stick it in a corner on permanent power with its ears up, and have the rest connect to that one, not to the provided base station. They'll be one radio hop further away from the Internet (unless you send 'em a USB Ethernet dongle for that XO), but they'll be able to collaborate and share, and get much faster access to things that more than one of them need. If there isn't enough storage on those XOs to make a decent cache, send 'em a 16GB USB stick or a similar SD card too. The key is simplicity for the end user. Nothing can require technical expertise. We have a solution for manual updates [1]. This is a fallback if the automated updates mechanism is not appropriate. The automated updates mechanism (which uses yum) is great for schools as no expertise is required to set anything up. If you don't make it automatic (or at very least, extremely easy), it won't happen. But back on topic, it would benefit everyone if Sugar packaging was more modular, to give deployments greater control over that they distribute and to keep updates sizes to a minimum. We're happy to help make that happen - we aren't just criticising from the sidelines. Sridhar [1] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/873 Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Proposal: Contol-Panel packaging
On 2 August 2012 21:06, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Thu, 2012-08-02 at 09:53 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote: Do you have any form of proxy? A local transparent proxy would mean 400 XOs still only download 800Kb over the link. There's lots of ways to skin a cat. We have no control over the network environment what so ever and need to work within the confines of what is available. This is our primary constraint: we cannot install servers or proxies. Schools in remote areas have latent/slow/expensive Internet links. You'd think that a caching proxy is common sense. Unfortunately not :( Furthermore, the newer wireless networks treat every client as potentially hostile and hence prevent them from communicating with each other. This also means that no collaboration can take place. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Is a Community Edition of XS happening? or should it?
Hello everyone, Building upon some of George's statements, we are are currently in what might be called a product development stage. This involves an analysis of the needs of our stakeholders (schools, teachers, local communities, etc.) and an evaluation of what we can do to solve these needs. We have also consulted with some key OLPC/Sugar community members in order to ascertain what is feasible in the technical realm. We feel that taking such an approach is important before we can develop a project plan and get stuck into writing code (we're writing some now, but it's not a core focus). I don't think we're far off from that. Also important is considering how this fits within the overall engineering and educational strategy of OLPC Australia (that's not to say that we're ignoring other deployments). Some things that we know already about the XS and aim to address in our project: 1. it is too monolithic 2. it can be slimmed down and made more modular 3. it can be installed as a set of packages (a repo) on top of Fedora 4. it can be installed on an XO 5. building on #3 and #4, it can be installed as packages on an XO's OS 6. we can make it easy for a novice to install server components to an existing instance of Fedora or OLPC OS 7. we can automate much of the complication and make it easy to configure 8. building on #6 and #7, it should be totally installable and manageable by a non-technical person (e.g. a teacher) 9. by installing on an XO, we can leverage some of the features (and features we'd like to add) of Sugar too If you'd like to participate, we're happy to have you. Our tracker and code repo are open. More to come... Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia On 30 July 2012 03:27, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I just got the included message from Adam Holt, after his on the ground experiences installing a school server in Madagascar, and apparently struggling to get ejabberd working. It points up a situation which I think we should think about. A lot of people I've talked to, think the School Server status quo is not good enough. It is not meeting the needs of schools, teachers, and students. Many are beginning to go their own way. The centrifugal force is building: OLPC Australia is looking to simplify the XS, to include just ejabberd for collaboration and have it run on the XO-1.75. Eliminate dhcp in favor of avahi, eliminate Moodle, Squid, Named. Sridhar Dhanapalan wants to get to the point where the individual teacher in the classroom can set it up. Jerry Vonau has been hired to muscle up support for the upcoming deployment of 50,000 XO's with one XS in each classroom. In the Philippines, through bad advice, the local technicians started trying to use the Australia version of the XS. They didn't have the local sysadmin skills to add back in named and dhcpd, which had been removed for Australian deployment. They're looking for a better solution. Adam Holt has been soliciting ideas from the support gang for finding a XS solution that just works. Jamaca is making Moodle central to its deployment strategy, but it needs some predictability in terms of school server depoyment. Tony Anderson and Abhishek Singh,in the Nepal deployment, have their own XS image tailored to their own needs. But I also think that the support that Boston has given to the XS has been essential. Daniel Drake's XS-0.7 brought together many of the improvements that have accumulated over the last few years. Maybe we're at the point where Red Hat was, when it split the Enterprise Linux from Fedora Core. EL would have a slower release cycle, and pick up the features that had been well tested via the six month Fedora release cycle. Sridhar seems to have the energy, resources, and management skills to make the stripped down XO-XS happen. Tony Anderson, Sameer Verma, Abhishek Singh have all expressed to me their willingness to contribute to some joint effort. From my point of view, the challenge is to keep it simple, and to start working towards a structure where all of us can take a small piece, work on it, and contribute it back to the common effort. George -- Forwarded message -- From: Adam Holt h...@laptop.org Date: Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 8:03 AM Subject: fix at last? changing XS hostname dilemmas To: Mitchell Seaton meaton...@gmail.com, Craig A. Perue craig.pe...@gmail.com, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com, Xavier Carcelle xavier.carce...@gmail.com Cc: Alex Kleider aklei...@sonic.net, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca Skype excerpt :) [7:39:35 AM] Jerry Vonau: Sorry I haven't gotten back to you earlier, think I know what the issue is with ejabberd if you change the hostname. [7:40:01 AM] Canoe Berry: Really?? [7:40:49 AM] Jerry Vonau: ejabberd creates a pem.cert based on the hostname when first installed, change the hostname
Re: [Server-devel] Is a Community Edition of XS happening? or should it?
I'm also pleased to see how much XS 0.7 has borrowed from our XS-AU builds. It's great validation of our work thus far and encouragement for us to take things further. It's clear that XS development has not been able to receive enough resources to maintain ongoing development at the pace that is needed. I think that improvements can be made at a faster rate, and the user adoption rate increased, if the XS is a set of packages on top of Fedora (and, by extension, the OLPC OS). Sridhar On 2 August 2012 22:58, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Hello everyone, Building upon some of George's statements, we are are currently in what might be called a product development stage. This involves an analysis of the needs of our stakeholders (schools, teachers, local communities, etc.) and an evaluation of what we can do to solve these needs. We have also consulted with some key OLPC/Sugar community members in order to ascertain what is feasible in the technical realm. We feel that taking such an approach is important before we can develop a project plan and get stuck into writing code (we're writing some now, but it's not a core focus). I don't think we're far off from that. Also important is considering how this fits within the overall engineering and educational strategy of OLPC Australia (that's not to say that we're ignoring other deployments). Some things that we know already about the XS and aim to address in our project: 1. it is too monolithic 2. it can be slimmed down and made more modular 3. it can be installed as a set of packages (a repo) on top of Fedora 4. it can be installed on an XO 5. building on #3 and #4, it can be installed as packages on an XO's OS 6. we can make it easy for a novice to install server components to an existing instance of Fedora or OLPC OS 7. we can automate much of the complication and make it easy to configure 8. building on #6 and #7, it should be totally installable and manageable by a non-technical person (e.g. a teacher) 9. by installing on an XO, we can leverage some of the features (and features we'd like to add) of Sugar too If you'd like to participate, we're happy to have you. Our tracker and code repo are open. More to come... Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia On 30 July 2012 03:27, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I just got the included message from Adam Holt, after his on the ground experiences installing a school server in Madagascar, and apparently struggling to get ejabberd working. It points up a situation which I think we should think about. A lot of people I've talked to, think the School Server status quo is not good enough. It is not meeting the needs of schools, teachers, and students. Many are beginning to go their own way. The centrifugal force is building: OLPC Australia is looking to simplify the XS, to include just ejabberd for collaboration and have it run on the XO-1.75. Eliminate dhcp in favor of avahi, eliminate Moodle, Squid, Named. Sridhar Dhanapalan wants to get to the point where the individual teacher in the classroom can set it up. Jerry Vonau has been hired to muscle up support for the upcoming deployment of 50,000 XO's with one XS in each classroom. In the Philippines, through bad advice, the local technicians started trying to use the Australia version of the XS. They didn't have the local sysadmin skills to add back in named and dhcpd, which had been removed for Australian deployment. They're looking for a better solution. Adam Holt has been soliciting ideas from the support gang for finding a XS solution that just works. Jamaca is making Moodle central to its deployment strategy, but it needs some predictability in terms of school server depoyment. Tony Anderson and Abhishek Singh,in the Nepal deployment, have their own XS image tailored to their own needs. But I also think that the support that Boston has given to the XS has been essential. Daniel Drake's XS-0.7 brought together many of the improvements that have accumulated over the last few years. Maybe we're at the point where Red Hat was, when it split the Enterprise Linux from Fedora Core. EL would have a slower release cycle, and pick up the features that had been well tested via the six month Fedora release cycle. Sridhar seems to have the energy, resources, and management skills to make the stripped down XO-XS happen. Tony Anderson, Sameer Verma, Abhishek Singh have all expressed to me their willingness to contribute to some joint effort. From my point of view, the challenge is to keep it simple, and to start working towards a structure where all of us can take a small piece, work on it, and contribute it back to the common effort. George -- Forwarded message -- From: Adam Holt h...@laptop.org Date: Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 8:03 AM Subject: fix at last? changing XS
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Proposal: Contol-Panel packaging
On 30 July 2012 23:26, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: The idea works well for users of Dextrose where OLPC-AU as a deployment could omit features that are still under development and not show the icon the control-panel at all. I'm not asking for anything to be removed, just packaged and made available separately. Once the spec file is altered OOB users would state which of the applets to install or substitute their own. The one rub would be having to alter the sugar-desktop group definition available from fedora's repos. Just trying to ease the burden on some of us deployments. This feature would make maintenance of code and updates in the field much easier for us. As a deployment, we would like the choice of which CP applets to include, or even make substitutions if need be. We don't want to be making unnecessary patches or building our own Sugar RPM just for this. That would in effect be a fork of Sugar and become a maintenance burden for us. We use yum to provide automatic updates to our XOs in the field, and we must be mindful that large RPMs can have an impact on the school's Internet connection. If 400 XOs need to download a ~800KB Sugar RPM, that's 320MB being downloaded, potentially at the same time. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Retina display
The phrase retina display is being used a lot these days. My reading indicates that the vendor uses this term quite loosely [1]. There you can see that the definition currently ranges from 326 to 220 ppi. The resolution of the XO's display is listed as 200 dpi [2], which is not far off. If I have understood correctly, dpi in the context of display technologies is the same thing as ppi [3]. Without infringing any trademarks, how closely could we say that the XO's display is a retina one? Sridhar [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Technical_information [2] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display [3] http://www.andrewdaceyphotography.com/articles/dpi/ Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC-AU] Retina display
On 28 July 2012 13:51, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 09:45:04PM -0400, Chris Leonard wrote: IANAL, but the term Retina in reference to computers and mobile devices is an Apple trademark, so any such use (referring to anything but an Apple device) would be violating their rights to that mark. IANAL too (although I Am Known As Legalist fits me) ... and any bid specification from a purchaser that uses the trademark would be effectively saying we want an Apple. Just to be clear, my question was not based on any external request. It was just an instance of curiosity from yours truly :) Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: On XO-1.5 with 11.3.0/11.3.1 -- hang during shutdown?
Deepak is in India. I have also been able to replicate the problem using XOs manufactured in the same week (SN SHC037x). It's probably easiest if I send my SD cards to James. James, I'll contact you separately about this. Regards, Sridhar On 14 July 2012 03:32, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote: Hi folks, where is Deepak Muddhaa based? Any reason his failing XO and SD card can't be traded for good ones, and the failing units shipped to James, Miami or Boston, where we can look at things at a lower level? We'll gladly provide a replacement unit. I appreciate all the analysis, but it' is apparent that it is being done on rather poor data. Hands-on debugging wins. cheers, m On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 11:32 PM, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: Thanks for your reply! On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:16:26AM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On 21 June 2012 16:14, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 02:37:35PM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On 16 June 2012 17:08, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: That means the hang should not exceed 15 seconds. ?Is this what you find? ?If not, then this casts doubt on your solution. I'm going to propose something extremely hackish: [...] Just to remind you that I'm still interested to know if the hang you observe exceeds 15 seconds or not. ?I've not had the time to reproduce this hang yet. ?Building a mental model of the problem is important to me, because I can sometimes resolve a problem if I have a good model. Yes; we have left it for several minutes and no shutdown has occurred. Ooh, I'm surprised. This observation, and the statistical results from your temporary solution (a delay), implies a combination effect, of both the processes not yet terminated, and the umount, leading to a process hang of umount. I can't think of a hack that would meet the requirements: - survive the process deletion steps, and - detect the stalled umount process. I guess you might try remounting the filesystem -o sync, just to further shift the timing. The problem needs a kernel developer to reproduce it. Do you have a way to encourage the problem to occur? If it can be made to occur on a higher percentage of shutdowns, it becomes easier to debug. For instance, there is a two second delay in the code, so does the hang occur more frequently if this is reduced to zero? The XO-1.75 CPU has a hardware watchdog that could be used for this, but you aren't likely to ever have a heat problem with XO-1.75. That is interesting. Why is that? I take it you mean why won't you have a heat problem with XO-1.75. There are two new characteristics of the XO-1.75 over the XO-1.5: 1. the maximum power draw of the XO-1.75 at full utilisation is a long way below that of the XO-1.5. In a scenario where the laptop is powered on and insulated from cooling air flow, this means: 1.a. the temperature rise toward equilibrium will be slower, 1.b. the equilibrium temperature will be lower for a given level of insulation, (stacking, or cloth covers, or both), 1.c. the insulation will have to be far greater to achieve the same equilibrium temperature. 2. the XO-1.75 has a thermal protection feature that forces the power off if the temperature of the CPU exceeds 85 degrees C, rather than slowing or stopping the CPU as on XO-1.5. In a scenario where the laptop is powered on and insulated from cooling air flow, this means: 2.a. the temperature rise will be interrupted by a sudden loss of input heat, rather than be slowed by a gradual loss of input heat, 2.b. the insulation will have to be far far greater to achieve the same equilibrium temperature. In this scenario, the heat spreader has very little bearing on the matter. The heat spreader relies on cooling air flow to the top of the case. If there is no air flow, the heat spreader is ineffective. The new thermal protection feature isn't a perfect protection; the battery charge circuit remains powered. So a laptop held between very good insulation (e.g. thick polystyrene with sealed edges) with a flat battery will still heat up, but not nearly as much as one with an active CPU. (Please, test this yourselves with an IR thermometer. If you don't have one, the closest in Sydney to you would be at the Jaycar store at 127 York St.) -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ -- mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: On XO-1.5 with 11.3.0/11.3.1 -- hang during shutdown?
On 21 June 2012 16:14, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 02:37:35PM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On 16 June 2012 17:08, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: That means the hang should not exceed 15 seconds. ?Is this what you find? ?If not, then this casts doubt on your solution. I'm going to propose something extremely hackish: [...] Just to remind you that I'm still interested to know if the hang you observe exceeds 15 seconds or not. I've not had the time to reproduce this hang yet. Building a mental model of the problem is important to me, because I can sometimes resolve a problem if I have a good model. Yes; we have left it for several minutes and no shutdown has occurred. If you disable the boot/shutdown animation, the shutdown sequence stops at this: http://dev.laptop.org.au/attachments/download/914/hang-on-shutdown.jpg That image is an attachment on the main issue: http://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/1033 The XO-1.75 CPU has a hardware watchdog that could be used for this, but you aren't likely to ever have a heat problem with XO-1.75. That is interesting. Why is that? Thanks, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: On XO-1.5 with 11.3.0/11.3.1 -- hang during shutdown?
On 16 June 2012 17:08, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: That means the hang should not exceed 15 seconds. Is this what you find? If not, then this casts doubt on your solution. I'm going to propose something extremely hackish: can we have the XO perform a hard power-off if the software shutdown sequence does not complete within 30 seconds? Ideally this would be managed by some kind of hardware watchdog, but maybe there's a cheap-and-nasty version we can implement in software. The problem we want to eliminate is that XOs are being told to shutdown and are then closed and placed in an XOP charging rack. If an XO does not actually turn off and remains on while in the rack and charging, it has the potential to overheat. We have seen cases where XOs get so hot that the plastic on the touchpad and even on the outer casing becomes warped. If a problem like that becomes widespread, it can be *major* for us. I understand that it's not the most elegant solution, but from a deployment perspective we need a failsafe to protect the hardware. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: olpc.fth question
Building upon Jerry's message, you may be interested in our One Education USB (formerly called XO-AU USB): https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/ The idea is to have a single USB stick with many tools that may be needed in the field. It is designed for use by (non-technical) teachers to manage their classroom deployments. You can download a working version from http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/olpc-au/XO/OE-USB/1.1/ The base version contains no OS, but the xo15 version contains OLPC Australia's latest XO-1.5 image. To use, extract the zip file directly to the root of a USB drive. Then insert into a developer-unlocked XO-1.5 and boot. You should get a boot menu from the stick. Sridhar On 13 June 2012 21:23, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote: Jerry, James and Martin: Adam and I thank you all ... a lot We are now 100% operational using 1 USB stick to update all versions of XO. We will add some more exception handling and 1.75 specifics to the procedures once we return to Canada, but the combination of OOB 4.1 and the olpc.fth boot are making the frequent process of updating/enhancing things while here in Kenya just fly!!! Cheers, KG On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 8:00 PM, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 11:08:29AM -0400, Kevin Gordon wrote: Disclaimer: Newbie Forth question :-) Always welcome. We are trying to create a consolidated unsecured update stick. I worked on a secured update drive last week, so the techniques are on my mind. [...] So for those coming from a non-Forth background, we have hit a road block. Is there perhaps a way to store a 'possible' command into a variable then execute that 'variable' as a command, thereby perhaps bypassing any of the apparent syntax error checking? Unexpected end-of-line is the most common result from attempting to call within an if statement. Or, we get copy-nand? on the 1.5 or fs-update? on the 1.0 when the command exists in the source - whether it will actually get 'called' or not ,based on the variable containing the machine type.. evaluate or eval is a word that expects a string descriptor on the stack, and then executes the string as if it were typed. : eval ( adr len -- ) ... ; For example: ok 8 . eval 8 ok or : install-xo-1 copy-nand u:\fs.img eval ; The string can be assembled from pieces rather than from literals. You may find an example of that in the power log collector on the wiki, which assembles filenames. If there is a possibility that the evaluated command may fail, you should catch the exception and handle it. Use catch for that. Good reference for catch and throw: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef98/milendorf98.pdf For example: : install-xo-1 copy-nand u:\fs.img ( adr len ) ['] eval ( adr len 'eval ) catch ( ??? ??? exception# | 0 ) if ( ??? ??? ) 2drop ( ) . copy-nand failed, press any key key drop then ( ) ; You might also place the exception handler higher up. We also have $fs-update in later XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 versions, so that eval is not needed. There is no $copy-nand . -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ 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: en_GB in OLPC OS 12.1.0
On 25 May 2012 03:05, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 8:06 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: OLPC OS 12.1.0 is looking good! I noticed that en_US and en_AU are available. We have our language fallbacks set to en_AU;en_GB;en_US to overcome the lack of strings in en_AU. Would it be possible to have en_GB included by default as well? I assume you'll be building a custom OS image, no? Yes, which admittedly makes this discussion redundant for those who use our builds. I am only really asking because you have gone to the trouble (thanks!) of including en_AU, which in its current state is only useful if there's an en_GB fallback. This actually makes sense, since en_AU and en_GB are probably 99% identical. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: en_GB in OLPC OS 12.1.0
On 25 May 2012 08:00, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On behalf of the kids that I test with ... I'd prefer that we not include en_AU at all if we can't also include en_GB, but I don't know if we have the ability to configure fallbacks in Sugar. If we can't configure fallbacks, we should exclude en_AU and languages for which a specified fallback is necessary. Sugar allegedly supports fallbacks, but they are not working properly for us right now: https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/999 Our fallback for now is to use en_GB as the primary language. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
en_GB in OLPC OS 12.1.0
OLPC OS 12.1.0 is looking good! I noticed that en_US and en_AU are available. We have our language fallbacks set to en_AU;en_GB;en_US to overcome the lack of strings in en_AU. Would it be possible to have en_GB included by default as well? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 17 April 2012 23:39, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for your notes. On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: But you have some economies of scale :-) do once per school vs do it on every machine in the school. The school XS can be shipped preconfigured, sidestepping the local configuration barrier. Thanks for those answers, they clarify a few things for me. I'm with you on the show an XS icon in the network neighbourhood part, but I don't see the configure XMPP server on _every_ XO as a good tradeoff, if I can prep an XS once (maybe in a central location). It's relatively easy to prep an XS + switch + APs + cat 5 cabling, label all the RJ-45 connectors, and ship it all in a big box. The hardest part is guessing the cat 5 lengths right ;-) -- much better to ship a crimping tool, cable, RJ-45s. Our deployment methodology appears to be different from the others I've seen in other countries. We are trying to scale *down*, not up. I have a rule here that no technology is introduced unless it can be deployed and managed by a non-technical person with minimal training. Shipping pre-configured servers and other infrastructure builds a dependency that will cause problems later down the track, and creates a burden on us. We generally do not have any support and only begrudging permission from education departments. We are working around this by building/configuring the technology so that the teachers and communities can totally own the deployment for themselves. Unfortunately the XS in its current state does not allow for this. Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Lesotho project network server: obstacles needs
On 17 April 2012 06:56, David Leeming da...@leeming-consulting.com wrote: Hi Janissa Your programme sounds very worthwhile and I wish you all the best with it! Maybe I was not clear, but my point is that for us, the XS (we are using v0.6) installed on a low power e-box such as the EPC-AT270 (I can send you the spec sheet, it is available in Australia not sure where you are) has proven exactly what you seem to be looking for. Very low power, running at 15W or less on 12V DC solar power, with auto-power on enabled so even if there is a power outage the locals don't need to intervene. At one site it ran 187 months continuously and no problems. The access points all using DC power via PoE too. The approach that we have taken in Australia is to only introduce technology that can be installed and maintained by a non-technical user. Only that will give you proper sustainability. The XS is far too complicated, so we don't use it. We are investigating options to create a plug-and-play appliance version. Our schools in PNG only theoretically have Internet access in some locations as the quality of service is insufficient. Even if it were, it's only for the teachers due to cost. But the teachers do have some limited options with 3G dongles if they wish to sign up to the OLPC-Australia XO-Certification programme (extended to Pacific) laptop.moodle.com.au and so we spent time training them to do so. The One Education programme is explained at http://www.one-education.org/ You can fill in the form at the bottom of that page if you want to know more. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 14 April 2012 01:37, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:28 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: appliance runs nothing more than ejabberd. There's no moodle, dhcp, dns or other services. How does the appliance get a domain name? IP addresses will suffice to begin with. Ideally, I think we'd want to have the servers be auto-detected on the network and available to select by the XO. Ideas to implement this include making them show in the Neighbourhood View and a selector in the Network CP applet. Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way. How do kids know what domain name to put in there? Isn't it a complex and error-prone step? Typing an IP address into the client is far less complicated than setting up and maintaining an XS server. Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 12 April 2012 15:27, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Why is it such a bad idea? The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server. You want to run a network of federated XMPP servers? It's madness. Rather, it's not madness, but until demonstrated/automated otherwise it's a high-maintenance-per-classroom setup. And the federated XMPP stuff isn't widely used == widely tested. We get obvious and clear bugs in parts of the XMPP implementation that are used (or should be used) _everywhere_. And this is on what is reportedly the best XMPP implementation available. My appetite for putting an exotic feature into use in the _middle_ of a deployment plan is... just not there. In any case, what's the upside of one-XS-per-classroom? Cost, administration, reliance on federated-XMPP all seem downsides/risks to me. Not federated - far simpler than that. The current XS requires administration - sysadmin admin to set up and moodle admin to manage registrations and set up segregation. This is not workable in our school environments, and hence we have stopped using XS schoolservers. The scenario that I'm thinking of is that each teacher (who has no technical skill whatsoever) receives an XS plug-and-play appliance, consisting of an XO with XS software installed. All the teacher has to do is to turn on the machine and connect it to the network. The appliance runs nothing more than ejabberd. There's no moodle, dhcp, dns or other services. Then the children just set a collaboration server to connect to in the Network CP applet. They use the address of the appliance for their classroom. This achieves a segregation effect in a simple way. I think this could be created with relatively little effort, as all we are doing is scaling back an XS. There is no additional configuration required such as federation. We have ideas to extend this scenario. For instance, the appliances could advertise themselves on the network, and then the children need only click on the server they want to be on. The teacher could plug a USB drive with content into the appliance, and have the children download exercises and upload homework. As I mentioned, this is just an idea right now. Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: Announcing Q3C05 for XO-1.5
On 9 April 2012 13:25, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: - add new fs-save command [1] for preparing an image copy of internal storage, [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q4d09/fs-save How useful is this for a layperson to clone an XO's setup across a school/classroom? Is this a replacement for http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Imaging_for_XO-1.5 ? Do we still need to manually mitigate the side effects? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Imaging/Side_effects Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO still bootable with incomplete fs-update
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought that fs-update had been modified to make the XO unbootable unless the process was allowed to complete. I think this was achieved by blanking the first block and only writing it properly at the end. I am finding that XOs that have received an incomplete fs-update (e.g. if power was cut in the middle) still proceed to the boot process. Given that the OS hasn't been completely written, the behaviour after that is unpredictable. This can result in countless problems in the field. Is there a transparent and foolproof way to ensure that the XO will only boot if the OS writing is allowed to complete? This applies to a NANDblaster receive as well. Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate
On 11 April 2012 22:59, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:29 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: I think it was Sameer who was telling me that in Australia, they are thinking about one XS per classroom. In that setting, seems to me that XO1.75 (even with only 512MB memory) would be more than adequate. It's just an idea for us. We haven't actioned anything. One XS per classroom is a _bad_ idea for other reasons. One AP per classroom is a good idea, OTOH, and an XO-1.75 can probably handle a mid-sized school OK. Why is it such a bad idea? The thought was to do away with registration, moodle and other unnecessary services and focus only on the XMPP server. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Dextrose] latest test image for testing
Thanks to you and the rest of the team for your hard work on this. On 28 February 2012 21:22, Jerry Vonau je...@laptop.org.au wrote: -- auto shutdown after five minutes I don't think this is a good idea - it can be very disruptive. Suspend is much better as it saves a lot of power and still provides quick recovery. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
lid close while shutting down
What happens if the XO's lid is closed after the shutdown option is selected in Sugar? Is there a chance that the XO does not shut down - e.g. suspends or gets stuck in some limbo state? Is there a possibility for them to get damaged? I'd think that a powered-on XO would get very hot if the lid was shut. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC-AU] lid close while shutting down
On 14 February 2012 22:09, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: For example, because of an episode of damage that happened when a stack of laptops was left on and their lid sensors interacted, and because of the use of early prototypes with an incomplete heat spreader, no doubt a myth has developed that the thermal design of the laptop is bad. Not a myth, just a concern and a need on my part to understand the implementation better. You can verify from power logs whether the users have properly shutdown their laptops. Please ensure this logging works well, as it will give you good data. Obtain the logs whenever there is a report of laptop thermal issues. Require that the logging is implemented as part of any remedial action. Agreed. We are working on a means to more easily collect this information from the field. I don't think a powered-on XO gets very hot at all if the lid is shut. It merely grows slightly warmer. What about if it's also charging in an XOP rack? Thanks, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC-AU] lid close while shutting down
On 15 February 2012 02:30, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: What about if it's also charging in an XOP rack? Tell people your actual adventure, all details. The time of the OLPC team is valuable; we try to help you, but we have a lot of other things on our table. Help us help you. I'm dealing directly with OLPCA on this. You'll see the messages :) Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 10 February 2012 10:56, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: On Thu, 2012-02-09 at 17:47 -0600, Daniel Drake wrote: On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:02 PM, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: Well, we're testing this combination, someone has to take the lead. Without doing anything the XOs will never use the full potential of power saving that maybe available. This seems like a bit of change of direction from the mail that opened this thread. Are you looking for stability (as the original mail asked), or are you looking for maximum power saving? Unfortunately the two are quite opposite in the present day, with respect to this topic. Looking for the happy middle ground that doesn't interfere with collaboration. Emphasis on collaboration stability, but we would prefer not to have massive battery drain while doing so. We understand that there are trade-offs. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
limits on ad-hoc connections
Ad-hoc connections only scale to a limited number of participants before problems begin to occur. What would be the maximum number of participants that an ad-hoc network can reliably handle? Can we impose a hard limit on the number of clients to prevent too many XOs connecting to a single ad-hoc session? Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 5 February 2012 10:12, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: On 5 February 2012 02:35, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Samuel Greenfeld greenf...@laptop.org wrote: Disabling suspend during collaboration was discussed a year ago, but as far as I know this has not made it into any 11.3.x build: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10363 Thanks for that! I had forgotten ~ Sridhar, Jerry -- that bug has a patch that implements exactly the Sugar change I was proposing. We later dropped it for a change to powerd that we thought would cover all the bases by relying on using wake-on-LAN on the wlan... which we later learned is somewhat buggy. Please test with this patch and let us know whether it helps. Thanks! We'll add this to our next dev build. In our next build, we will be doing two things [1]: 1. enabling the patch 2. disabling wake-on-LAN It seems to me that this is the preferred solution. I think we only need to inhibit power management when collaboration is active, not for any LAN traffic. Living up to its name, wake-on-LAN keeps the XOs awake whenever a network connection is active, even when you don't really need it to be. Assuming that it always works as intended (which as you have explained, it does not), the patch won't be very testable when it is active. erikos reckons that the patch won't do much [2], but the testing performed so far seems to be small-scale. Hopefully we'll get some feedback on this after we put out our build. Sridhar [1] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/1049 [2] http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10363#comment:21 Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: limits on ad-hoc connections
On 8 February 2012 23:23, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:16 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Ad-hoc connections only scale to a limited number of participants before problems begin to occur. The technically correct answer is it depends. And it is true, it depends on a ton of factors. As a rule of thumb, I've seen it work for groups of 5~6 units, physically close and without interference sources or reflective materials. I would not aim higher than that -- 5~6 units in a channel. You have 3 channels, so 3 groups of 5~6 units. Great, that's what I was thinking. To clarify: keep any other laptops and cordless phones in the vicinity _off_, to allow these 18 users to work. In practice, it won't work in a school, but if you invite a few schoolmates home after school, or in the park, you're fine. No warranties expressed or implied. There's a long laundry list of things that can interfere, and make things not fine. For example, professional TV cameras from that friendly news crew transmit in the 2.4GHz band. That battery pack feeds a powerful antenna to get the signal back to the van that has the uplink, and it paves over consumer-grade wifi. So don't count in wifi (of any kind!) to work for a demo or show-and-tell when you get TV coverage at a school :-) Interesting - definitely worth knowing! Can we impose a hard limit on the number of clients to prevent too many XOs connecting to a single ad-hoc session? As James says... unfortunately no. This is possible on many wireless access points. Why isn't it possible on the XO's ad-hoc? Is it because WAPs do it by limiting DHCP leases, whereas ad-hoc uses link-local? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: limits on ad-hoc connections
On 9 February 2012 14:59, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: More generally, when you have a central node (the AP) there's a node that can carry the accounting, and has the authority to say who's welcome and who's not. I don't know if 802.11a/b/g/n has a mechanism to reject association, or if it's a dirty hack with only giving a liminted number of DHCP leases. Either way, ad-hoc peer model isn't well equipped for this limitation. Hmm I am thinking that my understanding of the ad-hoc implementation might be incorrect. I was under the assumption that one XO acts as the ad-hoc host, and the others connect to it. That made me wonder whether that host could limit how many clients connect to it. What I gather from what you're saying is that there's more of a peer-to-peer connection happening, similar to the old mesh on the XO-1s. Or am I confusing my network layers? Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Notes on touchpad testing @ wiki
On 4 February 2012 20:16, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:21 AM, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Touchpad_testing Looks like we have a final recommended configuration, known as 5F. Please this olpc-fsp-regs script: http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/olpc-utils/plain/usr/bin/olpc-fsp-regs?h=v1.3 # report the version stored on the tp itself -- 1 covers 2F/3F/4F olpc-fsp-regs version # load the 5F configuration olpc-fsp-regs set Please test and let us know how it goes - thanks! Thanks Martin. We'll roll this into our next build for testing. Tabitha and Tom, hopefully we'll have this available in time for you to test next week. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 2 February 2012 09:09, Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.org wrote: Sirdhar: Unfortunately theres no way we can answer your question ( or even make a SWAG) without known how much idleness is in your normal workload. Automatic Power Management only makes a big difference if there is a lot of time spent idle. If you are running Tam-Tam the entire time then turning off aggressive suspend/resume will make zero difference. powerd tracks this though so if you can collect some powerd logs from some of your users then we can make a guess at figuring out what your impact will be. powerd logs are located in the ~olcp/power-logs directory. Copy all the files in there off of several machines that have been used in the classroom and send them to me and we can take a look at what sort of profile you have. What build are you basing your images off of? We're building from Dextrose 3, which is in turn based on 11.3.0. This version is still in development and hence isn't used in the field. I'm not sure how useful data from the currently-deployed OS (10.1.3) would be. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 2 February 2012 14:42, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:11 PM, Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.org wrote: While I understand the frustration, this is going to wrong direction. We need to hunt down the problems and fix them. I think we have the root problem well isolated -- dsd has done a good job of that. Getting it fixed is taking longer than we thought, and it got better, but not fixed, in the 11.x.y cycle. Our next stab at fixed is in the 12.1.0 timeframe, mid-2012. A workaround of this kind _is_ the right thing now for the 11.x.y platform. Let's _not_ include it in the development builds, so developers and testers suffer (and fix). end users need not suffer. +1 for this. This is negatively impacting classrooms. Teachers are shying away from using collaboration. We don't have time to wait for a 'perfect' solution. 3G is a separate problem. We don't know yet what USB modems we'll be using, so we can't inhibit their USB IDs. Doing it through NM would be preferable. I've updated the tracker: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10708 Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 1 February 2012 16:09, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: On 1 Feb 2012, at 04:43, Paul Fox wrote: would it help to disable automatic power management only when specific Activities are running? only when certain kinds of collaboration are in effect? only when certain drivers are active? Thanks Paul, yes excellent point. With my Activity Team hat on, Sridhar if you could please expand a little on the test cases you are hitting Activity collaboration issues with, so that we can try and resolve or minimise issue from Automatic Power Management kicking in. There are already a number of Activities that programatically keep the machine awake – a simple example is Clock, who wants the clock display to continuously keep stopping as if there's sand stuck in the gears ;) We've found it really difficult to diagnose and replicate reliably - the problems can be random. I made an OLPC bug report [1], which is also in our tracker [2]. The workaround for us (and several other deployments, I hear) is to disable automatic power management. I didn't realise that activities could suspend power management. How does this work, and which activities use it? We see problems with just about any activity that engages in collaboration. Maybe it should be standard to suspend power management for any collaboration session? That would be smarter than turning it off entirely. Sridhar [1] http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10878 [2] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/636 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
We are considering disabling Automatic Power Management because of its impact on collaboration and 3G connectivity. What kind of battery life can we expect from an XO-1.5 with Automatic Power Management disabled as opposed to enabled? I understand that this can vary wildly with usage, but is there an average estimate? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [IAEP] [x-post] GNU Project renews focus on free software in education
Brilliant! What can we do to have Sugar more formally recognised by the FSF? I think it should be their desktop of choice for primary school education. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia On 31 January 2012 23:28, Anish Mangal an...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hi, Just received a message on the fsf-info list about FSF relaunching the GNU education project: Links: [1] http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-education-website-relaunch [blog post] [2] http://www.gnu.org/education/ [GNU Education website] -- Anish * * * BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Monday, January 30, 2012 -- The GNU Project today announced the relaunch of its worldwide volunteer-led effort to bring free software to educational institutions of all levels. The new effort is based at http://www.gnu.org/education. The newly formed GNU Education Team is being led by Dora Scilipoti, an Italian free software activist and teacher. Under her leadership, the Team has developed a list of specific goals to guide their work: Present cases of educational institutions around the world who are successfully using and teaching free software. Show examples of how free programs are being used by educational institutions to improve the learning and teaching processes. Publish articles on the various aspects involved in the use of free software by educational institutions. Maintain a dialogue with teachers, students and administrators of educational institutions to listen to their difficulties and provide support. Keep in contact with other groups around the world committed to the promotion of free software in education. GNU and its host organization, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), emphasize that free software principles are a prerequisite for any educational environment that uses computers: Educational institutions of all levels should use and teach free software because it is the only software that allows them to accomplish their essential missions: to disseminate human knowledge and to prepare students to be good members of their community. The source code and the methods of free software are part of human knowledge. On the contrary, proprietary software is secret, restricted knowledge, which is the opposite of the mission of educational institutions. Free software supports education, proprietary software forbids education. In an article at http://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-education-website-relaunch, Scilipoti adds insights about the project's organizing philosophy, current contributors, and progress so far. Of her basic motivation for being involved, she says, As a free software advocate and a teacher, I always felt that the GNU Project needed to address the subject specifically and in depth, for it is in the education field that its ethical principles find the most fertile ground for achieving the goal of building a better society. In her article, Scilipoti also highlights some of the free software success stories from around the world, especially Kerala, India, where the government has migrated over 2,600 of its public schools to free software. While the Education Team has already compiled a collection of useful materials, they are also looking for more volunteer contributors. People who want to help, or who have information about instructive examples of existing use of free software in schools, should contact educat...@gnu.org. Education really is one of the most fundamental areas we need to focus on to achieve real social change, said Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan. We need to be acknowledging and assisting schools that are doing the right thing, and helping those who aren't yet on board understand why those giveaway Microsoft Office, iPad, and Kindle deals aren't so great for classrooms after all. We're very thankful to all of the Team members for stepping up to meet this challenge. I hope others will be inspired by their work and join the effort. The Education Team has also been working closely with GNU's Translation Team to make the new materials available in as many languages as possible. People interested in helping with the translation component of the project should see the information at http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.translations.html. About the Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support
Re: Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management
On 1 February 2012 15:43, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: sridhar wrote: We are considering disabling Automatic Power Management because of its impact on collaboration and 3G connectivity. What kind of battery life can we expect from an XO-1.5 with Automatic Power Management disabled as opposed to enabled? I understand that this can vary wildly with usage, but is there an average estimate? he's on a very long plane flight, but i'll try and channel richard: it depends. how did i do? :-) I was trying to head that off with my I understand that... statement :) you're probably in as good a position to answer this as we are, since you have a better idea of your system activity load. with automatic power management turned off, a 1.5 is good for several hours of use, where several is intentionally vague. backlight on full? wireless on? continuous cpu activity? etc. would it help to disable automatic power management only when specific Activities are running? only when certain kinds of collaboration are in effect? only when certain drivers are active? We've been thinking of doing this for when 3G connections are active [1]. It might be interesting to also tie this into Sugar's collaboration mechanism and disable power management when a session is active. Sridhar [1] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/1029 Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
optimal font rendering settings for XO display
What are the optimal font rendering settings for the XO's display? More specifically, if I ran gnome-appearance-properties and clicked the Fonts tab, what should be in the Rendering section? Should I set subpixel smoothing and hinting? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Run OFW heat spreader test
On 24 January 2012 02:36, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Richard A. Smith rich...@laptop.org wrote: Hmmm... Something else is the problem here. You can't damage the processor via thermal overload because it has an automatic clock back off. If you have motherboards that are failing its not due to a bad heat spreader. At worst all you would get would be hangs. Agreed with Richard -- Sridhar, if you are seeing permanent mb failures, let's get SNs of those motherboards into Reuben's hands for more in-depth diagnostics. I've addressed this matter off-list. We are thinking of forcing a heat spreader test based on the XO's manufacturing date: https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/1026 Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Run OFW heat spreader test
We are using a custom olpc.fth to present a boot menu so that users can easily flash their XOs. As a precaution, we run a lid switches test before the OS installation begins. Some of our XOs have older, less effective heat spreaders, and we would like to catch these before they get burnt-out by the flashing process. The automatic lid switches test is confusing some teachers. Ideally we only want to run the heat spreader test part of it, so that the test is transparent and the user doesn't need to close the lid. Is this possible? Further to this, is it possible to reliably parse the result and halt the OS flashing if the test fails? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Run OFW heat spreader test
On 23 January 2012 17:20, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: I thought you were doing this test to detect early units that may have a failed heat spreader, and you were doing it at the time of reflashing because that's when you had some control. Yes, that's the primary reason. Our initial batch of XO-1.5s have an inefficient heat spreader. They've been burning out, and replacing the motherboards is getting expensive and time consuming. We'd like to detect potentially faulty units early, and recommend a heat spreader change for them. As a thought - maybe we should be identifying the serial number as well? I don't think it is worth doing this test for the purposes of flashing the XOs. The built in throttling will work fine. If the heat spreader is dodgy, you'll either get a hang during fs-update or it will take much longer. Hangs are annoying and don't provide any useful feedback to the user. It might be true that the XO can't get damaged from flashing, but the symptoms at runtime are random and are difficult to diagnose. I think that forcing a heat spreader test can provide a warning to the user and allow them to do something before any damage or annoying behaviour can begin. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] New F14-arm build os21
On 22 December 2011 11:23, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: It's a recognition that no software is bug-free, and that users (especially children) will always find a way to make a system difficult to use. For example, children often load activities without closing previous ones. We can educate them to not do this, but it still happens on occasion. That's exactly the feedback I was looking for, thanks. That's a UI bug in Sugar. I would strongly prefer the Sugar environment to behave more like Android, where any app/activity that is in the bg may get an instruction from the shell / OS to cleanup and exit. Good that we're on the same wavelength - I had a similar thought! The annoying thing about Android, however, is that for an app to continue to work in the background it needs to be coded in that way. I suppose that if we were to treat Sugar as an 'appliance' UI (which is how I tend to think about it), this isn't such a bad idea. A quick hack would be to limit the number of activities that can run simultaneously. Our next OS will likely have the Dextrose resource monitor [1]. I don't think we should be expecting children to be managing their system resources, though. It should 'just work'. Do you have any other end-user use cases that have Ctrl-Alt-Erase as a solution? I'll check with our education team and get back to you. This is a very valuable discussion to have! Sridhar [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Dextrose_resource_monitoring.png ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] New F14-arm build os21
On 22 December 2011 11:32, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: On 22 December 2011 11:23, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: Do you have any other end-user use cases that have Ctrl-Alt-Erase as a solution? I'll check with our education team and get back to you. This is a very valuable discussion to have! Some scenarios from our Education Manager: - When an activity freezes - When an activity stalls during loading - When an activity does something strange - e.g. sound doesn't work, journal entry doesn't load properly - During collaboration (this is a big one!). e.g. one person sees interactions but the other isn't able to - just never completely loads, or connection is never properly established, or it's just behaving unpredictably I think the goal should be to make Sugar more robust so that these scenarios don't happen. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
enabling tap-to-click
Is it possible to enable tap-to-click on an XO-1.5 using 11.3.0? While I certainly wouldn't recommend it for children, the teachers are all used to Windows/Mac laptops that have this feature. We've this question from teachers quite a few times. Can it be a GUI toggle, or does it require some kind of manual system configuration? In terms of hardware, most of our XO-1.5s have Synaptics pads but our most recent batch have the AVC ones. Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] New F14-arm build os21
On 20 December 2011 05:34, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote:
On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 12:05 PM, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote:
Ctrl+Alt+Erase doesn't work on XO-1.5s.
You are going to build your own OS image, right? We can give you a
quick recipe to re-enable it.
Here you go. Can be used to monumentally shoot yourself in the foot,
so pull trigger with care:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_Builder/Edit_a_config_file
{ I know one day Reuben will want to kill me for having published this
recipe in the wiki. And he'll be justified. At least we live in
different cities. }
Cool - thanks.
This feature is used by teachers in the field, and by us in testing.
Its removal is a regression for us.
Can you explain the use by teachers in the field? Use during testing
and debugging is fine, but we all work for our end users :-)
I am still very interested in your teacher use case here...
It's a recognition that no software is bug-free, and that users
(especially children) will always find a way to make a system
difficult to use. For example, children often load activities without
closing previous ones. We can educate them to not do this, but it
still happens on occasion.
The 'solution' is to quickly restart Sugar with a Ctrl+Alt+Erase. It
solves most problems, and it's faster than rebooting.
Sridhar
Sridhar Dhanapalan
Engineering Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia
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Re: 11.3.0 build 7 released, for XO-1.75, XO-1.5 and XO-1
On 27 September 2011 22:31, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote: The Come as you are? Oh Nevermind release. We're into Activity freeze so no major changes. Download from: http://build.laptop.org/11.3.0/os7/ Bugz fixed: Tap-to-click on AVC touchpads disabled XO-1.75 RenderAccel disabled for increased graphics stability How stable is RenderAccel on XO-1.5s? Is it worth activating? Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] New F14-arm build os21
On 31 August 2011 18:53, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 08:22:42AM +1000, James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 06:40:55AM -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: Once they learn that a particular key combination finishes runin earlier, accidents can happen with surprising frequency. How is the power button being prevented? If the problem is that an early termination is indistinguishable from a test success, why not change runin accordingly? I'm happy to do that if needed. I didn't get an answer to my question. This has come up ... Bert has noticed that Ctrl-Alt-Erase doesn't work any more. #11202. The installed base obviously got used to it. Withdrawing a useful feature, even if undocumented, will cause an increase in support costs. So I've investigated the effect of Ctrl-Alt-Erase on runin. When manufacturing tag TS is set to RUNIN, runin-main will be run on boot, which will start the X server and execute runin-tests within it. On normal successful completion, the preserve function in runin-tests replaces /boot/olpc.fth with one that changes the TS tag to SHIP, in inject-tags. When the X server is terminated by Ctrl-Alt-Erase, runin-tests aborts immediately, and so the preserve function is not executed, and the system is then rebooted. On the next boot, with TS still set to RUNIN, the tests are restarted. The same thing happens with a battery removal or power button hold. So, when you say that this key combination finishes runin earlier, can you explain your observations further? If this was the only justification for removing the feature, then I urge you to reconsider, and restore the feature. We're currently evaluating 11.3.0, and I recently discovered that Ctrl+Alt+Erase doesn't work on XO-1.5s. This feature is used by teachers in the field, and by us in testing. Its removal is a regression for us. I've updated #11202. Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] khan academy videos
On 10 December 2011 10:33, Samuel Klein s...@laptop.org wrote: There have been various requests to make khan academy videos more widely availalbe via school servers. Ceibal has been making a push to localize them into Spanish; on many occasions people have suggested finding a way to ensure the videos are available to offline schools. Has anyone done this so far, independently? Is there a spanish-language snapshot yet? I'm talking with people at Khan Academy interested in making this possible for OLPC to do formally in our builds. (the current NC-SA license makes this non-trivia). If you have been using these or similar videos on your own schoolservers, please share your experiences so far. I've been told that a key benefit of Khan Academy is the tools for individual monitoring of student progress. They seem to offer the chance to give individually targeted interventions to each student based on their personal needs. Apparently a lot of 'later' maths difficulties have been shown to start with gaps in foundation concepts. If informatics built into the teaching platform can pinpoint those gaps for each student, that should have much the same effect as smaller class sizes. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Ad-hoc networking - automatically selecting the best channel
My understanding is the Sugar's ad-hoc automatically defaults to channel 1. Would it be possible for the client (XO or otherwise) to automatically pick the best channel (1, 6 or 11) based on prevailing interference levels? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
csound sources for XO-1.75
Are there any sources for csound for the XO-1.75? While we can find the source for csound in i386i-F14 at: http://mock.laptop.org/cgit/koji.dist-f14-i686/tree/SRPMS There appears to be no source for ARM available in: http://mock.laptop.org/cgit/koji.dist-f14-armv5tel/tree/SRPMS http://mock.laptop.org/cgit/koji.dist-f14-armv5tel-updates-11.3.0/tree/SRPMS http://mock.laptop.org/cgit/koji.dist-f14-armv5tel-updates-11.3.1/tree/SRPMS http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14-arm/ http://rpmdropbox.laptop.org/f14-xo1.75/ Is csound yet to be ported to ARM? Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Raspberry Pi as development platform for XO-1.75
How useful could a Raspberry Pi be as a development platform for the XO-1.75? It looks like the Pi is ARM11 based (v6 arch) and the XO has a v7 arch. Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO-1.75 relative performance
I am trying to get some idea of the performance of the XO-1.75 relative to other devices on the market. For instance, how would it compare against an iPad 1/2 and iPhone 4/4S? My guess is that the Armada 610 SoC that we use would come out somewhere in between the A4 chip used in the original iPad and iPhone 4, and the A5 chip used in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Do we have any more accurate figures? How does the state of our software (quality of drivers, etc.) affect this? There's a cool demo online showing the graphics capabilities of the Armada 610[0]. Is this achievable on the XO-1.75? Thanks, Sridhar [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s17KwfzTFY ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Potential volunteer offering technical writing
On 30 September 2011 19:51, Tabitha Roder tabi...@tabitha.net.nz wrote: Hi If we had a volunteer (English Native language) professional technical writer, what writing would be of most use to OLPC or Sugar that we can point her in the direction of? She currently works with developers to write end user documentation. Thanks Tabitha - NZ volunteers I think the most important thing is to identify and focus on the target audience - is the documentation meant for technical users, end users, teachers, children...? We (OLPC Australia) would be happy to suggest ways in which the documentation can be improved, using our experience from working directly with teachers and communities. Our online course (http://laptop.moodle.com.au/ - you can log in as a guest) might provide some inspiration. Our Education Manager has some advice, based on her experiences with reading the publicly-available documentation: - Make sure the Sugar and XO Floss manuals are up-to-date, easily readable and have all the necessary information. - Externally available documentation: It’s imperative that minimal knowledge is assumed, which I think is the hardest part. Pages need to have less information rather than more, good user interfaces, lots of useful images, clear headings and language that is simple and precise. My concern with a lot of the external documentation is that it is sometimes overwhelming, difficult to navigate (both between pages and within them) and written for a technical audience rather than a basic user. Trying to target both a technical audience and a basic user in the same documentation means you are more likely to lose the basic user. Perhaps some of this documentation needs to be separate out. The main issue I see with the Wiki is that it’s difficult to navigate and find information from the menus. This isn’t, per say, the role of a technical writer, but tidying up navigation in the Wiki would make it more accessible. - Someone to simply document the activities available (purpose of the activity, how to use it, any tips that are not easily discoverable, and what you can DO with it- exemplars of use) - There are lesson ideas and examples of practice all over the place. It would be amazing to synthesise this as much as possible, so they are not so difficult and time consuming to find, and to put them in a uniform format. I’m not sure what the best way to approach this is, but from an educational perspective, knowing not just HOW to use the XOs but WHAT to do with them is far more important. Making these ideas easily accessible, in my mind, is quite important. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Host AP on XO-1.75 and XO-3
On 13 October 2011 02:03, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Just wondering whether the XO-1.75 and XO-3 will be capable of hosting a wireless network. I'm asking because we are interested in using an XO as a lightweight XS server. There is a very early implementation of hostap code (based on a thinfirm) for the Libertas chip. Your current options are - add a usb-ethernet + AP - add a usb-wlan that is known to run well in hostap mode getting hostap to work (and to work well and reliably!) is a long road. If I understand correctly, the XS-on-XO sets the internal WLAN to ad-hoc mode and runs dhcpd on the interface to simulate an infrastructure network. Given the capabilities of the WLAN card present in both the XO-1.5 and XO-1.75, could such a setup reliably manage collaboration for a class of 30 children? This configuration would eliminate the need for us to connect external wireless hardware. Thanks, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Host AP on XO-1.75 and XO-3
On 13 October 2011 02:03, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Just wondering whether the XO-1.75 and XO-3 will be capable of hosting a wireless network. I'm asking because we are interested in using an XO as a lightweight XS server. There is a very early implementation of hostap code (based on a thinfirm) for the Libertas chip. Your current options are - add a usb-ethernet + AP - add a usb-wlan that is known to run well in hostap mode getting hostap to work (and to work well and reliably!) is a long road. If I understand correctly, the XS-on-XO sets the internal WLAN to ad-hoc mode and runs dhcpd on the interface to simulate an infrastructure network. Given the capabilities of the WLAN card present in both the XO-1.5 and XO-1.75, could such a setup reliably manage collaboration for a class of 30 children? This configuration would eliminate the need for us to connect external wireless hardware. Thanks, Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
serial numbers on new motherboards
I'm wondering what is the recommended process for changing an XO motherboard. The hardware side is relatively straightforward. However, new motherboards come with blank serial numbers. What is the impact of leaving the SN# in the mfg-data blank? My understanding is that parts of the XO OS first-boot setup and interactions with an XS are derived from the serial number. We have devised a method (using an olpc.fth script) to write the serial number of the XO chassis to the mfg-data on the board. What is the method used in other deployments? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Host AP on XO-1.75 and XO-3
Just wondering whether the XO-1.75 and XO-3 will be capable of hosting a wireless network. I'm asking because we are interested in using an XO as a lightweight XS server. Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
ANNOUNCEMENT: XO-AU USB Upgrade 3
Users of XO operating system builds from OLPC Australia can now upgrade to our latest release without losing their files and settings. If you have an OLPC Australia release made this year (10.1.3-au3, 10.1.3-au2, 10.1.3-au2-xo1 or 10.1.3-au1), you are eligible to upgrade. The process will check your installed build and only proceed if it meets that criteria. For details, see the announcement[0]. The Upgrade Stick is a derivation of our XO-AU USB technology[1]. Sridhar [0] http://dev.laptop.org.au/news/20 [1] http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO-1.75 B1 units - this is how they look
On 1 August 2011 23:51, Martin Langhoff mar...@laptop.org wrote: We are doing some background work to improve the membrane kb -- mechanical engineering is hard and can't be rushed (not with good results anyway). So it's hard to know whether it'll make the cut. Keep your eyes open for C1 stage units -- :-) Improvements to the membrane keyboard would be greatly welcomed. The biggest problem that our teachers deal with are keyboards that have been ripped out. Is there anything being done to reduce the likelihood/impact of this? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Rapid DHCP
Here's an article that tries to explain why Mac OS is so much faster at connecting to networks than Linux and Windows: http://cafbit.com/entry/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do Could such an implementation be considered for the OLPC OS? XOs go on and off the network all the time, as power management kicks in and the machines move in and out of AP range (or switch to a different AP). This is a disruptive process, and speeding it up would be welcome. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Reassembled XOs fail heat spreader test
We are currently engaged in changing the motherboards in over a hundred XO-1.5s. In many cases, the XOs are failing the heat spreader test afterwards. However, we can get the test to pass if we press down on the lid, behind the screen. This suggests to me that the heat spreader is not in proper contact with the chips. Without the lid plastic affixed (heat spreader exposed), we can see that the spreader is not touching the chips properly. We have tried bending the metal slightly near the screw points, but the contact doesn't last. Is there any way that we can deal with this better? We are changing the motherboards in these XOs because they have succumbed to overheating. I want to avoid that from happening again. Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Reassembled XOs fail heat spreader test
Thanks Samuel. I'll be talking in more depth with OLPCA about this. Any suggestions on how to deal with this in the meanwhile are welcome :) I have found that it can help to bend the spreader near the screw points to make it slightly concave. However, I agree with you that this is not a good recommendation for deployments. Sridhar On 23 July 2011 12:18, Samuel Greenfeld greenf...@laptop.org wrote: The unused hole actually is filled by one of the screws which holds in the rear plastic panel. That's why the screw holes which only secure the heat spreader have arrows pointed at them. The fanciest (newest?) XO-1.5 heat spreader design I've seen adds a support bar up to the green screw hole above near your area of concern, again filled by a screw used to secure the back cover. I'm not certain though if this is the design John is referring to, but I have seen a few XO-1.5s with it. It may be possible to bend the existing heat spreader in a certain manner which solves the problem. But I would *not* be someone who could recommend this approach for deployments. Some of OLPC's hardware engineers may be traveling this weekend, so I'm just trying to provide you with a quick explanation in the meantime. On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: All of the XOs I've seen have three screws on their heat spreaders. I've attached an annotated image. Hopefully the lists don't strip it out. There is an unanchored screw point in the bottom-left. However, the danger area is at the top, particularly in the top-left. This affects contact between the heat spreader and the Companion Chip, and might also be affecting contact with the CPU. Do the four-screw versions of the heat spreader address this problem? Thanks, Sridhar On 23 July 2011 01:21, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: Do your heat spreaders have four screws or three ? The final heat spreader for XO-1.5 production had four screws holding it down, to ensure a good fit. If your heat spreaders only have three, OLPCA should be able to get proper replacements from Quanta. Regards, wad On Jul 22, 2011, at 10:35 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: We are currently engaged in changing the motherboards in over a hundred XO-1.5s. In many cases, the XOs are failing the heat spreader test afterwards. However, we can get the test to pass if we press down on the lid, behind the screen. This suggests to me that the heat spreader is not in proper contact with the chips. Without the lid plastic affixed (heat spreader exposed), we can see that the spreader is not touching the chips properly. We have tried bending the metal slightly near the screw points, but the contact doesn't last. Is there any way that we can deal with this better? We are changing the motherboards in these XOs because they have succumbed to overheating. I want to avoid that from happening again. Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Avoid losing your screws
I've found that inverted side bumpers make nice little holding containers for your screws. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Melbourne testing group, RC4 (au868)
Thanks Tony. On 16 July 2011 18:09, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: * gtk-recordmysesktop in GNOME [#564] Unable to stop the recording session, the app disappears, maybe we are missing the obvious It's hard to spot - it becomes an icon in the notification area, next to the clock. In this way, you can control it without it taking over what you're trying to record. * camorama in GNOME [#558] runs ok but on some scenes AGC is unstable giving a beat effect, was natural lighting I couldn't replicate, but I was using artificial lighting. * Firefox default paper is not A4 [803] page setup =A4, print page setup =undefined Thanks - I've updated the issue. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC-AU release candidate RC3 (au867)
The Melbourne XO Club meets on 16 July, as part of the LUV Beginners' Workshop: http://lists.luv.asn.au/wws/arc/luv-announce/2011-07/msg1.html http://luv.asn.au/2011/07/16 We need to have a release out by 25 July, which is the start of Term 3 in Northern Territory schools. This release won't be directly available for XO-1s (we're phasing those out). You can install our last (and latest stable) release (10.1.3-au2) and run the upgrade routine. Your feedback on this would be very valuable, as this is our intended method of getting our XO-1s onto 10.1.3-au3. Installing 10.1.3-au2[0] can be done by directly writing the image to the XO, or through our XO-AU USB 2[1]. Once your XO is flashed and working, you can run the upgrade routine as already outlined. To repeat: 1. extract the ZIP file[3] to a USB drive 2. plug into the XO 3. turn on Once the upgrade stick verifies that you have a 10.1.3-au release installed, it will upgrade the OS to 10.1.3-au3. Cheers, Sridhar [0] http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/1013-au2_release_notes [1] http://download.laptop.org.au/XO/USB/2/xo-au-usb-2-xo1.zip [3] http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/repository/revisions/delta/raw/key/delta.zip On 8 July 2011 09:25, Andrew van der Stock vande...@gmail.com wrote: Are you going to have a test day for this image? I'm working in Melbourne CBD now, and although I have XO-1's, I'd be happy to help test the image if you're going to have a day I can come in and bash away at the things that I know bug me about some of the trial builds. thanks, Andrew On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 9:14 AM, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 06:07:12PM -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote: Need to use what the download url is in redmine, this should be correct: https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/repository/revisions/delta/raw/key/delta.zip Thanks. Looks neat, well done. Please upstream any useful stuff. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ 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: OLPC-AU release candidate RC3 (au867)
On 8 July 2011 00:39, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: Hi all: There is a new image to be tested: http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/RC3/ The release notes, including links to the changes, is online at: https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/1013-au3_release_notes In addition, we have developed an method for users of 10.1.3-au1 and 10.1.3-au2 to quickly, easily and losslessly upgrade to 10.1.3-au3. The RC (36.1MB) is available at https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/repository/revisions/delta/changes/key/delta.zip Instructions are simple: 1. extract the ZIP file to a USB drive 2. plug into the XO 3. turn on If you want the firmware to upgrade, you'll also need the XO plugged into mains power with a full battery. Enjoy, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC-AU release candidate RC3 (au867)
On 8 July 2011 08:58, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: On Fri, Jul 08, 2011 at 08:54:10AM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/repository/revisions/delta/changes/key/delta.zip wget gives me an 8615 byte file. That can't be right. My bad - thanks for telling me. That link points to the revisions page. The file itself is at http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au-usb/repository/revisions/delta/raw/key/delta.zip Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC-AU
The release notes, including links to the changes, is online at https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/1013-au3_release_notes Some things that have changed (with their issues numbers in our system) that we need testing are: * flashing is faster with our sparse build [#594] * Browse activity [#654] * Speak activity with english_rp voice [#718] * Screencast activity [#692] * gnome-screenshot in GNOME [#563] * gtk-recordmysesktop in GNOME [#564] * camorama in GNOME [#558] * Firefox now loads with the OLPC Library as the home page [#555] Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au On 1 July 2011 08:43, Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca wrote: Hi All: This is to announce that we may have a Release Candidate with the latest OLPC-AU build for the XO-1.5 featuring sparse file support[1], is now available for testing[2]. This build has q3a65 firmware in the payload, so you might get an upgrade if your firmware is not up to that level. The upload is in progress, please be patient. Thanks for testing, Jerry [1]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Quozl/fs-update-skip-unused-blocks [2]http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/RC1 ___ olpc mailing list o...@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/olpc ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC-AU] Testing sprase file support for 10.1.3
Could this be due to http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10930 ? Sridhar On 24 June 2011 16:43, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: Thanks Tony. Logged at https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/773 Sridhar On 12 June 2011 16:19, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Thanks Jerry Testing au77 ctrl v will not paste image to Write, no error logged, paste from tool bar works ok but does log a warning got plain filename ... in UT_go_file_open Think I have seen this before in other OS images image in clipboard was sourced from Browse using right mouse copy image Tony Quoting Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca: Hi All: This is to announce the latest OLPC-AU build for the XO-1.5 for testing featuring sparse file support [1], Browse-122, and Musicpainter-9 is available for testing [2]. With this release if you don't upgrade the firmware prior to testing you will receive a harmless warning at the end of fs-update about writing 1 block, this is resolved with q3a65 firmware. This newer firmware is not part of the build as not to trigger an auto firmware update on boot for those who don't want the latest firmware. For those who wish to use the latest firmware this is available from [3] and and the install instructions from [4]. If you want to test this newer firmware but with out going though the above routine, you could inject the OLPC-AU security keys using our olpc.fth script and install OLPC-AU signed firmware. Download and unzip [5] to / on your upgrade media (SD or USB) Download olpc.fth [6] to /boot on your upgrade media and place bootfw.zip from [7] into the same directory. The upgrade will occur when you boot with your media inserted, ensure you have the power adaptor plugged in. If you plan to use the 4 button upgrade or NandBlaster (need keys installed as above), download to your upgrade media from [2] au77.zd and au77.zd.zsp.fs.zip, then rename au77.zd.zsp.fs.zip to fs.zip. The OLPC-AU menu expects the new image to be named fs.zd. Once you transfer au77.zd to your upgrade media, rename it to fs.zd to be able to use option 1 or 2 on the menu. The installation of keys and firmware is optional, you can use option 1 to install your image, just skip unzipping the keys and adding the firmware. The first boot will install the security keys then reboot, second boot will install the newer firmware then reboot, third boot you should have the menu screen. Pressing 1 at the menu screen should start flashing the XO. Pressing 2 will start NandBlaster, this requires fs.zip to be present. Happy testing, Jerry ps, If I missed a list please forward this email. [1]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Quozl/fs-update-skip-unused-blocks [2]http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/sparse/ [3]http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/q3a65/ [4]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q3a65#fs-update_sparse_.zd_files [5]http://download.laptop.org.au/XO/F11/10.1.3/keys/pubkeys.zip [6]https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/repository/revisions/master/raw/xo-release/olpc.fth [7]http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/q3a65/bootfw.zip ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ OLPC-AU mailing list olpc...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Updates for OLPC English Keyboard mappings table
On 27 June 2011 00:11, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: I have been consulting http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_English_Keyboard and performing some of my own tests with an external US-style keyboard (Logitech Internet 350) on an XO-1.5 running XO-AU OS 10.1.3-au2. So far I have determined that: * F1-F4 changes views (Neighbourhood/Friends/Home/Activity) * F5 switches to the journal * F6 shows the frame * F11/F12 controls volume (also, volume controls on most keyboards work) * right Alt behaves as AltGr * Windows key acts as Hand/Grab (hold this button and move on the track pad to scroll) * my additional volume keys also work It looks to me that the function/modifier keys for frame, volume and grab are not mapped in the table on that wiki page. I didn't want to edit it unless I was sure about it. Can someone knowledgeable please confirm and/or update the page? Also, is there a way to change the screen brightness via an external keyboard? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Updates for OLPC English Keyboard mappings table
I have been consulting http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_English_Keyboard and performing some of my own tests with an external US-style keyboard (Logitech Internet 350) on an XO-1.5 running XO-AU OS 10.1.3-au2. So far I have determined that: * F1-F4 changes views (Neighbourhood/Friends/Home/Activity) * F5 switches to the journal * F6 shows the frame * F11/F12 controls volume (also, volume controls on most keyboards work) * right Alt behaves as AltGr * Windows key acts as Hand/Grab (hold this button and move on the track pad to scroll) * my additional volume keys also work It looks to me that the function/modifier keys for frame, volume and grab are not mapped in the table on that wiki page. I didn't want to edit it unless I was sure about it. Can someone knowledgeable please confirm and/or update the page? Thanks, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC-AU] Testing sprase file support for 10.1.3
Thanks Tony. Logged at https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/773 Sridhar On 12 June 2011 16:19, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: Thanks Jerry Testing au77 ctrl v will not paste image to Write, no error logged, paste from tool bar works ok but does log a warning got plain filename ... in UT_go_file_open Think I have seen this before in other OS images image in clipboard was sourced from Browse using right mouse copy image Tony Quoting Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca: Hi All: This is to announce the latest OLPC-AU build for the XO-1.5 for testing featuring sparse file support [1], Browse-122, and Musicpainter-9 is available for testing [2]. With this release if you don't upgrade the firmware prior to testing you will receive a harmless warning at the end of fs-update about writing 1 block, this is resolved with q3a65 firmware. This newer firmware is not part of the build as not to trigger an auto firmware update on boot for those who don't want the latest firmware. For those who wish to use the latest firmware this is available from [3] and and the install instructions from [4]. If you want to test this newer firmware but with out going though the above routine, you could inject the OLPC-AU security keys using our olpc.fth script and install OLPC-AU signed firmware. Download and unzip [5] to / on your upgrade media (SD or USB) Download olpc.fth [6] to /boot on your upgrade media and place bootfw.zip from [7] into the same directory. The upgrade will occur when you boot with your media inserted, ensure you have the power adaptor plugged in. If you plan to use the 4 button upgrade or NandBlaster (need keys installed as above), download to your upgrade media from [2] au77.zd and au77.zd.zsp.fs.zip, then rename au77.zd.zsp.fs.zip to fs.zip. The OLPC-AU menu expects the new image to be named fs.zd. Once you transfer au77.zd to your upgrade media, rename it to fs.zd to be able to use option 1 or 2 on the menu. The installation of keys and firmware is optional, you can use option 1 to install your image, just skip unzipping the keys and adding the firmware. The first boot will install the security keys then reboot, second boot will install the newer firmware then reboot, third boot you should have the menu screen. Pressing 1 at the menu screen should start flashing the XO. Pressing 2 will start NandBlaster, this requires fs.zip to be present. Happy testing, Jerry ps, If I missed a list please forward this email. [1]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Quozl/fs-update-skip-unused-blocks [2]http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/sparse/ [3]http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/q3a65/ [4]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q3a65#fs-update_sparse_.zd_files [5]http://download.laptop.org.au/XO/F11/10.1.3/keys/pubkeys.zip [6]https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/repository/revisions/master/raw/xo-release/olpc.fth [7]http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/10.1.3/xo-1.5/q3a65/bootfw.zip ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ OLPC-AU mailing list olpc...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
More 'human' voice synth (TTS)
I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to make TTS sound more 'human'. We'd like to be able to use the XOs to teach English literacy, but the espeak voices are very robotic. My understanding is that espeak is optimised for low-power devices (great for XOs) and clear (if robotic) speech. Would it be feasible to switch to something else, like festival? This is some food for thought: http://braille.uwo.ca/pipermail/speakup/2008-July/046755.html Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Potential data loss problem in collaboration
Done: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11012 So far we have tested with with Write, but I'd expect similar results with any other activity. On 21 June 2011 00:43, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Sridhar, Simon is doing a lot of work in this area -- please do file this in dev.l.o. The steps to repro are good, just add precise versions of the OS and the affected activities. cheers, m On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: We have found a problem that could lead to data loss in the field. General summary: A shares an activity B connects to A's shared instance Collaborative work is done by A and B A closes the activity B continues to work on the activity (maybe they didn't realise that A has left) A shares again B connects Everything B has worked on since A left the first time is lost This example uses the Write activity, but it can happen with any activity: A begins activity A types something (text is “AA” now) A shares the activity B joins activity B types something (text is “AABB” now) A closes activity (Text saved in A’s journal is AABB) B continues to write something (text is “AABBCC” now) B also closes activity (Text saved in B’s journal is AABBCC) Now B opens the same activity from B’s journal. B is able to see the text AABBCC now. B closes the activity. Now A opens the activity from journal. Text is AABB now. A shares the activity again. B joins the activity from the neighbourhood view since it is shared. Text in B’s XO is AABB now. A and B close the activity. Now when B opens the activity from the journal again, only AABB is seen (text CC is lost). Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal files
On 20 June 2011 00:30, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote: I presume this doesn't do what you are looking for? Doesn't scale particulary elegantly, but I find it useful http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Copy_to_and_from_the_Journal It does the basic job of copying to/from the Journal. However, it needs to be an easy GUI feature. Anything that requires a terminal is far beyond what we can expect a teacher or child to do. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Journal files
On 20 June 2011 03:27, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@laptop.org.au wrote: On 20 June 2011 00:30, Kevin Gordon kgordon...@gmail.com wrote: I presume this doesn't do what you are looking for? Doesn't scale particulary elegantly, but I find it useful http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Copy_to_and_from_the_Journal It does the basic job of copying to/from the Journal. However, it needs to be an easy GUI feature. Anything that requires a terminal is far beyond what we can expect a teacher or child to do. Well, there is this: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-May/03.html Yes, I've been following the discussions around this feature. I think this is what we need, and am keen to see it in action. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] FUSE for Journal?
On 18 June 2011 04:58, Martin Abente martin.abente.lah...@gmail.com wrote: Not 100% sure, but the conditions changed a little bit since then: * The journal integrates a better with external storage devices. * There are good bindings for fuse (even in python). I think that a fuse-based-network-file-system could be a pretty flexible and valid option for entry-level backup in XS over LAN (for that particular scope). I am not talking about running an OS on top of it, or using it to replace the local storage over the internet. Is just my opinion though based on what I have tested so far. +1 This is a priority for us. We get requests from teachers all the time about being able to access a files server, and sharing files between Sugar and GNOME. Cheers, Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] e: Regarding my OLPC XS Wishlist (Abhishek Singh)
On 8 June 2011 04:44, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 3:40 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 12:30 PM, TONY ANDERSON tony_ander...@usa.net wrote: Meanwhile I have posted my version of the wish list as a wiki page: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/School_Server_Wish_List Ntoe that people go to our wiki in search for documentation. That is your _personal_ wishlist. Please move it to a personal page. I really like where this discussion is going and the fact that we have two other XS related efforts in Nepal and Australia. Should we then make this a community wishlist that encompasses several wishes? Perhaps, but it must be clear that this is an opinions page and is not official. So far I have counted at least six school server types: * OLPC XS * XS-AU (Australia) * NEXS (Nepal) * Paraguay Educa server * Plan Ceibal server (Uruguay) * Sugar Server (Activity Central) I am keen to have some consolidation, to avoid parallel development and splintering of the community. I am open to discussion on how we can achieve this. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC-AU] e: Regarding my OLPC XS Wishlist (Abhishek Singh)
On 10 June 2011 00:49, Aleksey Lim alsr...@activitycentral.org wrote: On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 12:24:45AM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: So far I have counted at least six school server types: * OLPC XS * XS-AU (Australia) * NEXS (Nepal) * Paraguay Educa server * Plan Ceibal server (Uruguay) * Sugar Server (Activity Central) One but critical change, it is: * Sugar Server project (Sugar Labs) * Dextrose Server, Sugar Server based, product (Activity Central) (I'm composing an announce for Sugar Server launch) Okay, now I'm really confused :S That makes seven school server types. I'm not convinced why there should be more than one or two. I'm happy to co-operate with others to make this happen, provided that our deployment needs are met. Looking forward to the announcement. Cheers, Sridhar ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] OLPC Australia XS concerns
I think my biggest technical concerns in XS-land are twofold: * we need the XS to behave well on an *existing* network (i.e. single interface), without trying to be a gateway or duplicating core network services (DNS, DHCP, etc.) * while other XS efforts are keen to add features, we want to be as trim as possible We started the XS-AU when it had become clear that XS development had slowed. We could find no alternative that satisfied our needs, and I felt it better to go our own way rather than complaining that the XS didn't meet our particular use case (which seems to be quite different from other deployments). It's been working very well, and it's quite low-maintenance for us. We'll need a good reason to jump ship. We've been working on a prototype XS Lite, which is essentially an XS-AU with everything except ejabberd stripped away. Our deployments are done at the classroom-level; a teacher receives XOs for the children in their class once they have completed the necessary training. We would like to provide a simple server with that allocation of XOs. This means that the server needs to be low-cost and easy to implement (plug-and-play). We are assuming that there is *no* technical expertise available at the school. The server doesn't have to be very capable. Anything that requires registration won't work for us as the turnover of teachers and students is too high. We don't need Moodle or anything similar, since such services are already provided on the state education network. Since it's based on the XS-AU, it can be 'upgraded' to a full XS with some yum commands. Given the modest requirements, I think an XO would be suitable hardware. They are cheap and reliable, and we already have them in stock. As a standalone collaboration server, the XO's WLAN can be the AP. If we need to connect to the school network, we can use a USB2Ethernet adapter. This will also allow the server to leverage the other APs in the school. What's important is that we need to be tolerant of multiple schoolservers on the network, potentially one per class. Sridhar Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Dextrose] Support for Firefox 3.5 is ending
On 5 June 2011 17:02, Bernie Innocenti ber...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Fedora 14 is still shipping xulrunner 1.9.2, which is roughly equivalent to the version used by Firefox 3.6. Backporting things from Fedora 15 is going to be a royal pain in the ass, since they have switched everything to Gnome 3. Does that mean that with FF4 installed, Browse is still working because it is (equivalently) using FF3.6 as the backend? Would that mean that if we were to upgrade to FF4, we would have a disparity in rendering between GNOME and Sugar? Thanks, Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Dextrose] Support for Firefox 3.5 is ending
On 5 June 2011 12:07, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Would that mean that if we were to upgrade to FF4, we would have a disparity in rendering between GNOME and Sugar? The issues becomes one of cost benefit. What is the cost of OLPC, AC, or individual deployments supporting a version of xulrunner which is not supported or QAed by fedora vs. the benefit of having ff4 in the os. My guess is that the cost will exceed the benefit. So AC will not back port, QA, or support ff4 on DX12 unless someone else takes the lead. But the beauty of a community project is that if anyone else thinks that benefit is greater than the cost they are welcome and encouraged to 'make it happen.' From AC's point of view. The biggest request is for stability and predictable over features and performance. I've been doing more thinking about it, and I came to the same conclusion. We've got enough to chew on in our development, so let's stick with what the Fedora Project have already tested and released. We need that stable base to build on. Sridhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Support for Firefox 3.5 is ending
(sorry - sending again because I had the wrong address for the olpc devel list) Firefox 3.5 is being EOLed by Mozilla[0] and Google is dropping support for it[1]. In 10.1.3 this is default Web browser in GNOME and the backend of the Browse activity, so we should be thinking of what that means for us. The plan for Australia is to have a Fedora 14 build (based on DX12) ready by January. F14 comes with Firefox 3.6, which is the oldest version supported by Mozilla and Google. What would be even better is to have Firefox 4 available. By January, Firefox 3.6 will be quite old and close to EOL. Firefox 4 is a fair bit faster than 3.6, allowing us to squeeze extra performance out of our XOs. There is a yum repository for F14[2]. I use this on my F14 work machine (albeit in x86_64), and I've had no problem. Browse continues to work in Sugar. Are there any thoughts/plans about including Firefox 4 in the OLPC/DX OS? Sridhar [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/3.5_EOL [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13639875 [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_4 Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Regarding my OLPC XS Wishlist
On 28 May 2011 08:31, Aleksey Lim alsr...@activitycentral.org wrote: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 11:39:54AM -0400, Bernie Innocenti wrote: On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 21:14 +0545, Abhishek Singh wrote: Dear All, I've put down my OLPC XS wishlist at http://asingh.com.np/blog/olpc-xs-my-wishlist/ . Please comment upon it. Thank You. Thank you! Forwarding this to the Dextrose list as well. I've also CCed guys who do XS work in .au Abhishek: thanks for sharing your wishlist. From my side, I see the whole picture in case of school server like having: * sugar-server[1], the base of any school server. it doesn't provide stuff like moodle (too complicated to be basic) or puppet (useless on this level, since configuring sugar-server should be just install packages/iso and do some automatic work, the higher levels might user puppet or so) * any additional services that might be useful in some deployments but are not basic, eg, moodle or wiki. sugar-server should provide needed info via reliable API for these services. in my mind, such services might be formed as separate projects (like sugar-server-moodle) to make it possible to attach it on purpose (there might be useful configuration tool that is being used in sugar-server, mace[2]). * final products that include components on purpose (but sugar-server is a required one). It is entirely depends on local needs. We are looking to make our XS-AU[0] more modular to suit different use cases. Our initial goal (completed over a year ago) was to make it work on a single interface to integrate well into existing networks. Installation is via USB and fully scriptable via kickstart files. The current XS is very monolithic and bureaucratic. It requires moderate sysadmin skills to install and maintain. Maintaining the presence service is cumbersome and impractical in our schools. The turnover of teachers and students is far too high to ensure that anything gets managed properly. We're looking to slim down the XS-AU such that we can have a simple collaboration server (which we currently call XS Lite) that is installable in a classroom as a drop-in appliance. All we really need is an ejabberd. Registration, Moodle, Squid, backups and so on are unnecessary. Each teacher can run their own server for their own class. Conveniently, this could easily run on an XO (XS-on-XO). My own running though your wishlist keeping in mind sugar-server plans: 1) Porting XS to new version of Fedora sugar-server will be build on OBS[3] for distros that are being used in the field (deb or/and rpm based). So, downstream can just use these packages, add new one and create the final product (there is an idea to teach OBS to create isos for not only SUSE, obs is designed originally) You're using SuSE as a base? That sounds like an awful lot of work porting to a distribution that isn't widely used. Why not stick with the current platform, which benefits from Red Hat engineering and has a much larger developer, installation and user base? Not to mention that the XOs use the same platform, meaning that skills can be shared across client and server. The XS-AU has been working pretty well on Fedora 11 for quite some time. We've reconfigured it so that it runs as a set of packages on top of Fedora 11[1] rather than being a fork. We're quire confident that it'll work on Fedora 13 without much effort. Fedora 14 will need a bit of work since it has a newer version of Python. Sridhar [0] http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xs-au/wiki [1] http://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xs-au/wiki/Install_on_an_existing_Fedora_installation Sridhar Dhanapalan Technical Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
