Re: [Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
So Tony suggested just using the usb-ethernet thingies for the internet-connection. USB1.1 is, what, 700kbps? What are the chances that we can supply the schools with more bandwidth than that? /Ties On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:49 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem. That's great news! I'll also be delighted to hear about what hw you find that works... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: summary of current paraguayan XO OS customisations
Awesome summary. Especially the journal-restore script will come in handy right now. The info came at exactly the right time. This reminds me about the thread started by Michael Stone about sharing info between deployments. I think we should really put this kind of technical info up on the l.o wiki, for other deployments and also as a reference for people making future releases. It's quite valuable info and there's already quite some duplication of effort going on. It's all idle talk atm from my part, but hope to find some time soon in the next week to document some of our stuff up there. /Ties On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote: Hi, I decided that it's worth sharing a summary of the customisations that we are making to OLPC OS 801 here in paraguay. Many of these things would probably be useful for other deployments too, so I'm hoping this mail makes some recent work of myself and others slightly better-known. Also I would be interested in helping OLPC include these in 8.2.1 or 8.2.2... I expect this list may grow a bit more before we finalize our image, so I may end up sending another list soon. -bundles and activities http://wiki.paraguayeduca.org/index.php/Actividades_y_contenidos - version number /boot/olpc_build customised with paraguay branding which then appears in sugar - acquire leases from the school server over standard 802.11 wireless networks http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9289 - customise browse homepage http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090219/py_home.png (screenshot is slightly outdated, latest one has non-pixellated paraguayeduca logo) (we don't have content to sit behind the 3 links yet) - make gcompris a favourite activity by default echo net.gcompris.gcomprisActivity \ ${pristine}/usr/share/sugar/data/activities.defaults - disable unintuitive first boot You should update your activities message sed -i -e 's/\.sugar-update/\.sugar-update-hackedout/g' \ ${pristine}/etc/init.d/olpc-configure - backup initial sound state, and restore on every reboot fixes a common but not completely understood problem where sound completely stops working until reflash http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9248 - hook up the Discard network history button to also unregister from the XS we're in a pickle because current builds deployed to teachers don't let us unregister easily...this may help us to avoid future pickles http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/362 - add scripts for journal restore the current XS restore web interface is sub-standard (can access everyones files) and doesnt seem like it will offer a single-click restore my entire journal any time soon http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9250 - speed up the activity updater by greatly reducing the number of requests it has to make over the internet (to 0, assuming that the user hasn't installed any extra activities) http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9259 - implement the client side of lease updates through the theft deterrence protocol http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9288 - make shutdown 15 seconds quicker http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9289 Daniel ___ 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: [Server-devel] XS-rsync: automatic .contents creation
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote: If the XS shipped olpc-contents (http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/repos/joyride/olpc-contents-2.5-1.i386.rpm) then it would be easy to make XS-rsync be able to generate the .contents file automatically from the .tar.bz2 tree file. Interesting idea. Not sure I understand it fully. It sounds to me like it'd be useful to wrap up content created or aggregated online on the XS (using Moodle, for example) -- content that you want to bundle up for download to the XOs. Yes, I'd also like this included. Martin, my guess is you're confusing concepts. The .contents or .toc file is used when updating or flashing an XO image, for example by olpc-update to verify the stuff that's now on the XO is the stuff that's expected. Or perhaps you're forseeing other uses. The way to create a .contents file right now is damn right dirty. You basically chroot into the fs tree of an XO on the server and use the contents manifest builder which is present in every standard XO. That's what we're doing now in any case, and that's what Pilgrim does. If one can believe the Pilgrim inline documentation, this was done this way because Python 2.5 (often?) wasn't available on the servers at the time. And I'm just lazy. /Ties I'm not sure that it'd help with the backups/restore workflow. AFAIK, a content bundle will appear as one entry in your journal if it's able to unpack into separate entries in your Journal, then you're hit gold with your thinking. Is it possible to include that RPM, and would such patches be considered? Anything that is useful in deployments I'm happy to include :-) - just need to flesh out how it's useful to more/most rather than a bespoke trick. Can you flesh out the use cases a bit more? cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Pilgrim pilgrim weary after long walk; seeking answers
Ok, let me yet again rephrase the question of what pilgrim setup OLPC is using for the current staging builds aka build 800, with the hope that a knowledgeable person will grace me with an answer, which, when positive, does not have to contain more than three letters. One is even enough, if it's the one to the left of the one that ends the alphabet in the language I'm now writing. We built our latest builds from packages to be found in the xs-dev staging repo, combined with the mock.laptop.org 8.2 repo and the koji olpc-3 repo. Except for our custom changes, we assume that the pilgrim setup hasn't changed, except for adding the extra staging yum repo. So my question is: is this assumption correct. If not though, I would appreciate to know what changes were made. Preferably through making the relevant (up to date) pilgrim repo public, or by copying the changes over to a public repo. And of course I'd like to see the relevant setup being made public be it yes or no, but this issue is of secondary concern. Thanks! /Ties On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Ties Stuij cjst...@gmail.com wrote: Hey dear list, we need to base a release on the latest 8.2.1 changes here in Nepal, however I can't find a public pilgrim repo that is actually configured right. I found the 8.2.1 pilgrim branch, who's only significant change is that one yum repo is changed to an alledged 8.2.1 repo, and I hoped this was all that was needed to get an up-to-date image ready. However, images built with this pilgrim, are no different from 8.2. It gets exactly the same packages. So did I choose the wrong branch, or is there a secret pilgrim-setup somewhere, with which the 8.2.1 staging images on xs-dev.l.o are built? I would really, really appreciate it if somebody can point me to the right setup! Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Testing] Wireless test results
On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 16 Feb 2009, at 05:32, Chris Ball wrote: Hi, Last I checked, it was either the firmware or the kernel changes that did it. I posted my findings to the mailing list in the past two weeks. I think your findings actually say it was either the firmware, kernel, or something else altogether. It'd be good to downgrade both at once, but still on candidate-800, so that we can check that at least *one* of the two is the problem. I should be asleep, but instead have been zigzagging through old http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xo-1/streams/staging/ staging builds testing WPA and the dialogue cancel dance for the last 4hrs: 790 working 4 working 5 working 6 working - 7 intermittent 11 intermittent 15 broken 800 broken Intermittent means it can occasionally associate with a WPA access point with no cancel dance, but usually I had to dance. Broken means I had to dance every time. One thing I noticed when testing the working 4, 5 and 6 that may help, is that if you do naughtily click an already connected WPA access point you'll get back to one round of the WPA cancel dance. If you make sure you first select 'disconnect' then click the AP again, you get correctly re-associated, no dance required. This suggests that clicking a connected AP should either do NOP, or should at least disconnect properly before trying to connect again. The sound you just heard was my head hitting the pillow :-) I reported this before with build 26 I believe, but it might be of use to point out again. Also on 800, the ability of the XO to connect to an AP have been greatly increased over 767. At the moment connecting to a WPA ap succeeds one in two times. On 767 it varied from 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 to 1 in can't be bothered to try and connect to the fr!@@n access point. I already supplied some logs, but if you'd like some more specific testing output of our setup, I'd be happy to supply it. Just tell what you want to know. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: updating activities
2009/2/10 victor victor.lazzar...@nuim.ie: Trying to update activities here, from the sugar control panel. It says it cannot access the network to check for updates, even if I have a an ethernet connection to the XO that is working (and I can ping the outside world). It prolly can't find the updater-page to check. When in the process of updating, you should see which uri it tries to check. See what it is, and see if you can open/reach the page in a browser/utility from the XO. /Ties Suggestions? Thanks Victor ___ 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
Fwd: right pilgrim setup for 8.2.1 staging builds
On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Pia Waugh gre...@olpcfriends.org wrote: Hi Ties, quote who=Ties Stuij we need to base a release on the latest 8.2.1 changes here in Nepal, however I can't find a public pilgrim repo that is actually configured right. If you wait about a day, cjb is doing a signed release based on staging version 30 of 8.2.1, which is pretty good. http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xo-1/streams/staging/ Thanks, but since we're building custom images, I need to get hold of the pilgrim setup, not the end-product. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: right pilgrim setup for 8.2.1 staging builds
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 09.02.2009, at 10:03, Ties Stuij wrote: On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 08.02.2009, at 10:49, Ties Stuij wrote: So did I choose the wrong branch, or is there a secret pilgrim-setup somewhere, with which the 8.2.1 staging images on xs-dev.l.o are built? I would really, really appreciate it if somebody can point me to the right setup! staging builds != 8.2.1 builds http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/8.2.1-pkgs.html http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/staging-pkgs.html Can we call them 'builds that are stages (or steps if you will) towards 8.2.1'? I will call them anything you want. I will also adjust my mental picture of the whole setup, if they are not what I think they are. But I DO want the setup for those staging builds. I'll do just about anything you want... I'll bake you cakes, and send them to the US, I'll fix an Etoys annoyance of your choice (on my level though), I'll brush your shoes if I ever meet you, IF,... IF you can point me to the right pilgrim setup. It's nice to see those packages of the different stage builds, but they don't point to any repo(s). Or is it a puzzle? Please people, help me out here. Sorry, I was just suggesting that whereever you found your 8.2.1 set up there may be a staging setup that better reflects the actual progress of 8.2.1. I have no idea where that is located. Sorry for the confusion. Yes indeed I'm trying to find the staging setup. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
right pilgrim setup for 8.2.1 staging builds
Hey dear list, we need to base a release on the latest 8.2.1 changes here in Nepal, however I can't find a public pilgrim repo that is actually configured right. I found the 8.2.1 pilgrim branch, who's only significant change is that one yum repo is changed to an alledged 8.2.1 repo, and I hoped this was all that was needed to get an up-to-date image ready. However, images built with this pilgrim, are no different from 8.2. It gets exactly the same packages. So did I choose the wrong branch, or is there a secret pilgrim-setup somewhere, with which the 8.2.1 staging images on xs-dev.l.o are built? I would really, really appreciate it if somebody can point me to the right setup! Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: right pilgrim setup for 8.2.1 staging builds
On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Ties Stuij cjst...@gmail.com wrote: Hey dear list, we need to base a release on the latest 8.2.1 changes here in Nepal, however I can't find a public pilgrim repo that is actually configured right. I found the 8.2.1 pilgrim branch, who's only significant change is that one yum repo is changed to an alledged 8.2.1 repo, and I hoped this was all that was needed to get an up-to-date image ready. However, images built with this pilgrim, are no different from 8.2. It gets exactly the same packages. So did I choose the wrong branch, or is there a secret pilgrim-setup somewhere, with which the 8.2.1 staging images on xs-dev.l.o are built? I would really, really appreciate it if somebody can point me to the right setup! If no-one with actual knowledge in these matters is reading this, could I perhaps have shell access to xs-dev.l.o? I'm pretty sure the setup for the staging builds is in cscott's home dir, since the familiar dir structure for the staging streams and what appear are the right repos seem to be located there. How those repos are combined is another question though. Guessing possible setups isn't working for me, and isn't such a smart idea either. And of course there's the question of staging-related changes in pilgrim itself. Again, I'd love some help on this, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Holding customize image in git
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Ben Lau xben...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I am thinking about to make a custom system image for specific region / purpose of education. So I wonder do it have any public git repository that holding the image customization / building , so that we could make our own branch based on it? If not such git repository existed, could we hold it on dev.laptop.org? As the file size is quite large , I wonder is it appropriate to hold on dev.laptop.org . the standard img builder for 8.2.x and backwards is pilgrim http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/pilgrim;a=summary I wrote down some notes on customizing pilgrim for OLE Nepal: http://tiezemans.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/customizing-the-xo-image/ Michael Stone made a successor called puritan, which handles a number of things more cleanly http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/pilgrim;a=summary Which has known to build 8.2 (767) images. Check the different heads on the summary page. And is now used I believe for rawhide, which builds images for a future release based on fedora 11. Then I believe there's an image builder based on liveusb-creator for fedora 11, and I would like to know if there is a repo for that one myself. Note that the direction of future XO builds is a bit unclear at the moment. /Ties Thanks. ___ 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: Life after 8.2.1 (was Re: Please update etoys in 8.2.1)
On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: (changing subject ...) It would seem to me that deployments will get to choose which software to install. snip/ [like] Luke's XOOS (http://lukego.livejournal.com/tag/xoos) is immature but cool Hah! Yes that would be cool indeed! Letting the children build up their own software stack, with their own, home grown, favourite programming paradigms in a fully interactive environment all the way down to the bottom. What's not to like about this approach! And it would be a great learning experience ;o) /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
some 8.2.1 questions
Hi all, We at OLE Nepal are pretty soon gonna have to finalize the build for our deployment, and since 8.2.1 seems to have a number of nice fixes, so we're gonna base it on that one. It doesn't seem however that we're able to wait for the 8.2.1 final release. So in this light I have a couple of questions I hope you can answer. I've followed all possible channels of communication meticulously, and some of my questions might seem a bit whiny of redundant -it seems like the staging builds are in good shape-, but since this build will go on a couple of thousand XO's, I'd rather be whiny now than sorry later. mostly the first two I'd like answers to: - which major bugs relevant to Nepal, if any, that are not yet addressed by the staging builds are likely to be fixed by 8.2.1 in general. And if any: are they expected to be fixed in the next couple of days? - is there anything seriously broken -any regression- atm compared to 8.2 - Is there a date set for the final build, and if so when? - And if so, what are the chances of actually making that deadline :oP Thanks! /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
control panel
We'd like to have the controlpanel updater translated to Nepali, but it seems sugar-update-control.po isn't in glucose 8.2. It is in glucose though, we're translating it right now, but my guess is that the two of them have nothing to do with each other. Is it still possible to put the .po file in 8.2? Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
olpc-update from 703 to 8.2 wipes out Journal
I updated an XO from 703 to 8.2 with the latest olpc-update, and to my disappointment the journal content was wiped. Is this to be expected? /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The new OLPC ads
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Jean, Jean Piché j...@piche.com writes: http://www2.infopresse.com/blogs/actualites/archive/2008/12/15/article-29417.aspx This article is in french - maybe you better want to send this to the french OLPC mailing list: olpc-fra...@lists.laptop.org But then the amount of people that understand some french is bigger than the amount of people signed up for the olpc-france mailing list perhaps. And it's got nothing to do with France. It's in fact a Canadian publication. Writing about a 'world-wide' campaign. I'll stop now. I thought it was kinda interesting in any case. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Some firmware Q2E24 nand blasting results
Yes, this is really nice. Will make flashing thousands of xo's a lot easier if we can't get our custom image preinstalled (not so covert plea slipped in here somehow). Worked fine over here in the tests done so far. thanks, /Ties On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 2:05 PM, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: Indeed it is excellent stuff ... I've not flawed it here in several tests. Well done Mitch. -- James Cameronmailto:qu...@us.netrek.org http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: mock.laptop.org repos repo
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 3:55 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think upgrading to a newer version of git will solve the memory errors? That was something that happened often with debian/stable-era git. Hmm, I get the same errors from dev.laptop.org which has git version 1.5.3.8. Which is a bit lower than the one on the only box here that I have access to which has a reasonable connection to the outside world. I don't know about how far back you're talking about, but perhaps it might mean dev.laptop.org should upgrade as well a bit? But since crank is Ubuntu and you use the word 'era' on top of the phrase 'debian stable' (that's three times another phrase for old in one word!) it really was an old version perhaps. I also tried to reel in a snapshot .gz, but eventually the connection timed out. Now the site can't even serve me a page anymore, so I'm pretty much out of options. How big is this repository anyways, with... what 26 thousand something package-blobs? Ah well, I don't need it THAT much. I got the packages I need local. But if someone would be willing to scp the dir over to dev.laptop or something, I wouldn't be sad... If only for the frustration I feel not being able to copy over a simple repo in this day and age (era). /Ties If you've looked at the pilgrim repo, you'll have noticed that we export via http (w/ gitweb) as well. There's a snapshot link at http://mock.laptop.org/gitweb/?p=repos;a=summary and the individual packages are available via http as well. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
mock.laptop.org repos repo
Hey, I'm making a local pilgrim and I'd like to have the repo at mock.laptop.org, which contains all rpms for the different xo builds. Git doesn't work however because I get out of memory errors, so I want to rsync it or find some other way or repository. Is it perhaps mirrored on dev.laptop.org (it's not in the projects listin in any case)? Or is there another way of getting to it? /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: [laptop.org #25711] Activation [Avash Pandit @ OLE Nepal]
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Adam Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bryan, Avash, Ties Aakash, Sorry the manual approach ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to receiving developer keys changed 2 months ago -- to a semi-automated/self-service approach at this site: https://activation.laptop.org/devkey/post/ I don't understand why you guys don't just write a script on the backend that takes a .dat file and an email address, parses the keys in the file and sends a mail with the keys attached. Seems like all the important stuff is already on the server. It's just a matter of looping through the .dat file it seems to me, and it would save a LOT of pain for people like us at deployment sites. It's easy to say for me of course... Or is there a non-technical reason for making us go though this trouble? /Ties Sorry if that wasn't made crystal clear -- the updated explanation is now here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_developer_keys#Getting_devkey_data_via_USB_stick Of course for very large numbers of Developer Keys (hundreds or more), Reuben Caron will be in touch with you later today to explain how he can help you -- thanks! --A. Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, Adam, Reuben We need an easy way to activate mass #'s of XO's. Accessing the firmware and loading unsigned builds is an important part of our deployment strategy and technical support plan. We have found the test-all feature in the firmware to be an invaluable troubleshooting tool in the field. Also, we are constantly refining our own XO image that adds particular rpms and Nepali fonts. I understand OLPC has its internal procedures but please understand this is an important requirement for Nepal. It at all feasible please ensure the XO's coming to Nepal in large quantities are all pre-activated, otherwise we will be sending you a request for several thousand developer keys :) On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 12:11 +0545, Tony Anderson wrote: Adam, To the best of my knowledge we are attempting to follow existing procedures for deploying sets of laptops documented in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_key: Getting devkey data via USB stick This requires a USB memory stick, and manual assistance from someone at OLPC. The memory stick must be set up to work as a /collection stick/ by adding code that at boot time copies information from the XO to itself. After using it, you should send the resulting file to OLPC. * Set up a collection stick http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_developer_keys#Setting_up_a_collection_stick * Plug the stick it into your laptop and power it on * It will display a pretty XO screen and then a short message like SHF nnn; Laptop data recorded successfully. After a few seconds it will power itself off or indicate it is done. * Remove the USB stick and move the file to a different computer * Email the laptops.dat file to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Please describe your problem, including the serial number (printed inside your battery compartment, visible when you remove the battery), and attach the resulting laptops.dat file. Setting up a collection stick 1. Download Actos.zip http://wiki.laptop.org/images/c/cd/Actos.zip and Runos.zip http://wiki.laptop.org/images/8/8f/Runos.zip (its source code in Forth, if you're interested, is at http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/cscott/actkey; it will only run if it's put into a signed zip file.) 2. Put these files into the */boot/* directory on a FAT-formatted or FAT32-formatted USB flash drive. * Most USB flash drives use FAT or FAT32 when you buy them (except U2 memory sticks which probably won't work; they contain their own ugly DRM stuff). 3. Your USB flash drive should contain these files (and nothing else in the boot directory): boot/ boot/Actos.zip boot/Runos.zip 4. If there is an old laptops.dat file on the USB flash drive from an earlier collection of laptops, you can delete it. However, see below : if you are gathering data from a number of laptops, *do not* delete the file in between XOs. The USB flash drive can have any other files on it that you like. Getting devkey data for many XOs at once For each laptop that you want to get a Developer Key for: 1. Repeat the above process, inserting your collection stick and powering on the laptop, for each XO in turn. * This will combine metadata for each laptop into one laptops.dat file, so do not delete the laptops.dat file in between. 2. Email the resulting file to [EMAIL PROTECTED], indicating the # of laptops you need keys for. Then wait for OLPC to send you your Developer key(s) and/or Activation key(s). This process is required because e-paat-2 which is the educational content supporting the Nepali curriculum
Re: Fwd: [laptop.org #25711] Activation [Avash Pandit @ OLE Nepal]
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Adam Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bryan, Avash, Ties Aakash, Sorry the manual approach ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to receiving developer keys changed 2 months ago -- to a semi-automated/self-service approach at this site: https://activation.laptop.org/devkey/post/ I don't understand why you guys don't just write a script on the backend that takes a .dat file and an email address, parses the keys in the file and sends a mail with the keys attached. Ah sweet! It seems like you did just that! And works like a charm! When you've got a user account on activation.laptop.org. It might be nice for other deployments to know that this option is available. /Ties Seems like all the important stuff is already on the server. It's just a matter of looping through the .dat file it seems to me, and it would save a LOT of pain for people like us at deployment sites. It's easy to say for me of course... Or is there a non-technical reason for making us go though this trouble? /Ties Sorry if that wasn't made crystal clear -- the updated explanation is now here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_developer_keys#Getting_devkey_data_via_USB_stick Of course for very large numbers of Developer Keys (hundreds or more), Reuben Caron will be in touch with you later today to explain how he can help you -- thanks! --A. Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, Adam, Reuben We need an easy way to activate mass #'s of XO's. Accessing the firmware and loading unsigned builds is an important part of our deployment strategy and technical support plan. We have found the test-all feature in the firmware to be an invaluable troubleshooting tool in the field. Also, we are constantly refining our own XO image that adds particular rpms and Nepali fonts. I understand OLPC has its internal procedures but please understand this is an important requirement for Nepal. It at all feasible please ensure the XO's coming to Nepal in large quantities are all pre-activated, otherwise we will be sending you a request for several thousand developer keys :) On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 12:11 +0545, Tony Anderson wrote: Adam, To the best of my knowledge we are attempting to follow existing procedures for deploying sets of laptops documented in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_key: Getting devkey data via USB stick This requires a USB memory stick, and manual assistance from someone at OLPC. The memory stick must be set up to work as a /collection stick/ by adding code that at boot time copies information from the XO to itself. After using it, you should send the resulting file to OLPC. * Set up a collection stick http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_developer_keys#Setting_up_a_collection_stick * Plug the stick it into your laptop and power it on * It will display a pretty XO screen and then a short message like SHF nnn; Laptop data recorded successfully. After a few seconds it will power itself off or indicate it is done. * Remove the USB stick and move the file to a different computer * Email the laptops.dat file to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Please describe your problem, including the serial number (printed inside your battery compartment, visible when you remove the battery), and attach the resulting laptops.dat file. Setting up a collection stick 1. Download Actos.zip http://wiki.laptop.org/images/c/cd/Actos.zip and Runos.zip http://wiki.laptop.org/images/8/8f/Runos.zip (its source code in Forth, if you're interested, is at http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/cscott/actkey; it will only run if it's put into a signed zip file.) 2. Put these files into the */boot/* directory on a FAT-formatted or FAT32-formatted USB flash drive. * Most USB flash drives use FAT or FAT32 when you buy them (except U2 memory sticks which probably won't work; they contain their own ugly DRM stuff). 3. Your USB flash drive should contain these files (and nothing else in the boot directory): boot/ boot/Actos.zip boot/Runos.zip 4. If there is an old laptops.dat file on the USB flash drive from an earlier collection of laptops, you can delete it. However, see below : if you are gathering data from a number of laptops, *do not* delete the file in between XOs. The USB flash drive can have any other files on it that you like. Getting devkey data for many XOs at once For each laptop that you want to get a Developer Key for: 1. Repeat the above process, inserting your collection stick and powering on the laptop, for each XO in turn. * This will combine metadata for each laptop into one laptops.dat file, so do not delete the laptops.dat file in between. 2. Email
Re: Touch pads
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:40 AM, Richard A. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bryan Berry wrote: Here at 1cc we still don't have many units that have chronic symptoms to test with. Oh really? I've seen trouble with almost any machine I touched around here in Nepal. Not that it happens every time, but it's so common to perform the 4-finger salute, that I don't even think about it anymore. As we've reported before, it also seems to get worse when the machines get dusty, and fat/sweaty fingers don't seem to help either. I somehow got the notion that models from the future would be helped with this defect somehow, but apparently that's not the case. And it's really to bad, since it's sort of the primary interface to the machine, and it's not all that pretty to see children, or anybody, struggling with it. It will be helpful if people who see the problem a lot can provide a sampling of serial numbers for units that seem to be the worst. Well, we can at least give you the serial numbers of the machines that we deployed. A range might help also I guess... If you do do have laptops that have the problem consistently we might want to try and do some sort of swap. I wouldn't go there... Sorry, not to rub it in,.. but.. yea, well a bit actually. This is a very, VERY big and very known (hardware) bug. And if it's still not resolved, it needs to be addressed asap. Is what I think... /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: keyboard
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 9:07 PM, Tony Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am writing some python code which needs to interrogate the system to determine which keyboard layout is currently selected. The goal is to show an image of the keyboard for Nepali students with a US keyboard. I checked /home/olpc/.i18n but this does not change with the % x key. Anyone know how that can be determined? Hmm, I must confess I don't know what the % x key is. If no, or before, a more elegant solution surfaces, you can always grep through the 'setxkbmap -print' output, as Google told me. setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols | sed 's|.*+\([^]\+\)(.*|\1|' will print 'us' on my XO. If you've got it set to 'us' of course. /Ties Tony ___ 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
Epaati name change, and requesting account for Roshan Karki
Not sure where to send these requests to. cjb helped me before, but... Anyway, first of all I'd like to request a name change for the hosting facilities of epaati on laptop.org. Due to the meaning of epaati and some social dynamics, epaati is now the name for the laptop amongst the teachers and the students, and so we changed the name for our software suite from 'Epaati' to 'E-Paath'. Really the most important change on laptop.org would be renaming the /home/www/epaati directory, with perhaps a symbolic link to the old name for the moment, if that's not to much to ask. But if you'd like to go all the way, with username/permissions etc, that would be nice. We're not using the epaati svn repository atm, but perhaps it would be nice for the future to change it, so nobody gets confused. Then I'd like to request laptop.org ssh access and E-Paath group inclusion for Roshan Karki, who'll hopefully supply his rsa-key shortly. Thanks a lot, Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
squeak image sometimes takes very long to be responsive after XO suspend
Hey dear lists, We at OLE Nepal have some trouble with squeak images coming out of XO suspend. Basically when coming out of suspend, the Squeak process takes up lots of cpu power and can be unresponsive for about a minute on build 703 (other builds not yet tested). Also we loose sound. Which sometimes comes back after a while. Either on it's own or perhaps because another application is opened. This could be a coincidence though. Especially the unresponsiveness is a problem, because it messes up the classes. Typically a teacher will explain a concept after which the students will do an activity for a short while. After which they will close the XO again to go on with the rest of the course. The XO's can't stay open because they are to distractive and because they eat battery power, and perhaps take up to much space (the benches these children work at are tiny). Having to either wait for the activity, or restart the image (or XO, whatever the child feels comfortable with) kills the flow, and the children get very impatient. Any pointers to the cause and/or solutions would be greatly appreciated. I'll add appropriate tickets to trac shortly. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I think you used the display scaling a lot... The biggest problem with it is that it defaults to 32-bit depth Display and all artwork loaded into or created became 32-bit depth. You could look at the SketchMorphs in it and convert them to 16-bit (or even 8-bit with some loss of quality) to save the space at runtime and on disk. Good tip! Thanks. (It looks like halo is disabled in the projects. How can I get it back for debugging?) Press alt+shift+w, select 'OLE' at the top of the menu, and select author mode. One of our most pressing problems has to do with continual image growth, when opening multiple projects. After opening and closing around 20 projects on an XO, the amount of memory the vm uses (according to the vm stats), has climbed from 60 to 95 mb, and soon afterwards we get an out of memory error. First I thought that old projects were lingering around, but they do seem to be garbage-collected eventually. There is no reference or pointer to them to be found in any case. I haven't had the time to do any space profiling to see who or what could then be the cause of the trouble. I'm playing with Epaati-10 a bit. Entering Grade2/Math/Unit4/IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and coming back (the instance of Project did get collected, but the accompanying PasteUpMorph serving as its world along with all objects and players are lingering. Now, I'm (again) looking at the issue so hopefully I get to something... Thanks /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you have any particular area in eToys that you would like to see profiled, analyzed and maybe optimized? Yes! Of course ;o) Sorry for reacting so late on such an inviting mail. One of our most pressing problems has to do with continual image growth, when opening multiple projects. After opening and closing around 20 projects on an XO, the amount of memory the vm uses (according to the vm stats), has climbed from 60 to 95 mb, and soon afterwards we get an out of memory error. First I thought that old projects were lingering around, but they do seem to be garbage-collected eventually. There is no reference or pointer to them to be found in any case. I haven't had the time to do any space profiling to see who or what could then be the cause of the trouble. Furthermore we would still want to see the project loading time of projects to go down. At the moment our longest loading project still takes around 36 secs on a good day, while most take around twenty-something. The latest discussion on which was a bit back on zipping project files. But that might perhaps have less chance on huge leaps forward and easy succes, not to mention unrestrained and neverending gratitude, as might be the result of solving the image growth problem. In general what we would like to see is more animation possibilities, so anything that can make animation more efficient would be very welcome. Also anything that has got to do with more effective audio-handling would be desirable. Right now we're thinking of just referencing audio from external files, because a number of clips need to be shared, even compressed, they take up a lot of space in audio-intensive activities (not to be found in the released bundle, because of said restraints), and also because everything that needs to be loaded at project loading time prolongues the project loading. The same could be said for images, so to rattle on, it would be nice to pluck these kind of files from some kind of shared resource. That would definately be an optimization in our situation, but would perhaps be to specific of a need. I feel that the stuff we do with Etoys isn't really the stuff that Etoys was intended for which has in my mind more to do with explorating concepts in stead of delivering polished applications. But I might be wrong. Anyhow, any help on this front would of course be greatly welcomed, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
to be deployed Epaati version is out!
Well, it took us at OLE Nepal a whole lot of sweat and especially tears, but finally, after half a year of hard work, we finished the first build that is actually going to be used by actual Nepali kids, in an actual classroom setting. This build, version 10, sports a whopping 47 activities, which is why it's 105 mb in size. The loading time of individual activities has also diminished by quite a bit (sometimes loading is 3 to 4 times as fast), and memory consumption has been greatly reduced. And this is just the beginning, because there are a great many much of activities to be made in the future. get it here: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/epaati/Epaati-10.xo For you who never heard about Epaati: it's an activity suite (for now) geared towards grades 2 and 6 (roughly 8 respectively 12 year old kids) of the Nepali school system coinciding, not coincidentally, with the classes which are the focus of our pilot projects. The subjects covered are Maths and English, and we follow the official Nepali curriculum so our activities can be integrated seamlessly in regular sessions. Which is not to say of course they can not be used by others. Especially the English activities can be used practically as is by children with another mother tongue, save for the help text. Also converting the maths activities should be not a big deal, since not a lot of Nepali specific text is used, but there are some brambles to be fished out of the porridge, before we have a smooth mechanism for translation. Anyways, have fun with the new and old activities, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
how to let activities write to file without risking security
Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Korakurider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Before thinking about solution, could you explain specificaly what you want to write to disk and how that will be used? /Korakurider Well, I was wondering on a general level how Sugar handles this, because I ran into similar problems when trying DOOM last week. On a specific level I wondered how to save a Squeak image and how to deal with saving projects. I already got my answers from an earlier mail to this list from Bert: You must have the startupInUntrustedDirectory preference enabled, in which case not the image directory becomes the default directory, but rather what was passed as SQUEAK_USERDIR environment variable in the etoys-activity script. That script takes care to set it to the activity-writable location ($SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/data), see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Low-level_Activity_API#Writable_Directories; Then I got a warning about not being able to write to the changes file, and found some preference variables to toggle that'll do the work. (warnIfChangesFileReadOnly or warnIfNoChangesFile). That's enough info for me right now. But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Korakurider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. If you just want to save your work during development in Squeak, the setup procedure in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO might help. During development, making the relevant directory world writable should be sufficient I guess. I think it is no good to directly overwrite ootb image/change file on activity directory. As a general policy, no. But I just wondered about it in general. The situation seems to me to be a bit ugly. Maybe I should just go on and do practical stuff though. But it would be useful perhaps when some kids might want to start hacking on Squeak level. But maybe not... /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:16 PM, Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 07.04.2008, at 23:50, Ties Stuij wrote: Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. What directory do you think you need write access to? Specific I was thinking about the squeaklets folder and the main folder, but I got my answers from an earlier mail from you to the list. See one of my earlier mails in this thread. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: permanently changing keyboard layout for forth
On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: extremely helpful stuff / Thanks! /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: permanently changing keyboard layout for forth
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 6:25 AM, Bernardo Innocenti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: C. Scott Ananian wrote: The /home/olpc/.i18n file should provide a lighter-weight mechanism to accomplish what you want; perhaps Michael or Bernie could elaborate? I'm not certain of the details myself. To customize the keyboard, you need to either edit /etc/sysconfig/keyboard, or create /home/olpc/.kbd. The contents in both cases should be: XKB_MODEL=olpc XKB_LAYOUT=2 letter ISO country code XKB_VARIANT=olpc # usually! KEYTABLE=system console keymap See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpc-utils for further details. Yes for Linux. But I wanted to permanently change the keyboard layout for Forth. But thanks all the same. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: permanently changing keyboard layout for forth
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 3:06 AM, Richard A. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ties Stuij wrote: On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: extremely helpful stuff / Thanks! Perhaps you can create a wiki page with summarizing what you did and what your results were? Of course, of course. As it happens I've become quite a fanatic wiki updater of late. It's on the todo list. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
permanently changing keyboard layout for forth
I'm trying to permanently change my OFW keyboard layout from spanish to us. At the moment i can change the keyboard layout with: select keyboard set-keyboard ( which defaults to us ) and I guess I have to change the Keyboard ascii map (KA) value in the spi with values called or used by (set-keyboard) somehow, but this is wild speculation on my part. I couldn't really figure out the correct way, and I don't want to totally mess up my keyboard layout by guessing. Does someone know the Right Way (or some way less set in stone but with more or less guaranteed outcome)? Thanks in advance! /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
permanently changing keyboard layout for forth
-- Forwarded message -- From: Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 4:12 PM Subject: Re: permanently changing keyboard layout for forth To: Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are really, truly sure that you never want the Spanish layout, you can delete the KA tag entirely and OFW will default to US layout. ok KA $delete-tag That is doublequote space K A doublequote space i.e. one space between the first doublequote and the 'K', no space between 'A' and the second doubleqoute, one or more spaces between the second doublequote and the dollar As the author of the firmware, I am certain that is the correct solution. The likelihood of bricking your machine with this procedure is vanishingly small. However, as a dislaimer, if you should happen to brick it, I won't have time to help you recover it, because I am horribly overworked at the moment. Thanks for the help. Not sure I want to risk never to be able to get back to Spanish though. Might also not be practical for testing purposes. It seems like I found the address of something that resembles the us keymap. Unsurprisingly under 'keymap'. But it doesn't really match the description in Manufacturing_data on the wiki. If you've got the time, do you happen to know where i can find the proper address of the us layout as expected by KA, or a document/the files which enumerate(s) the correct byte-sequence for different kb-layouts? Together with a decompiled change-tag, that should be enough info to change KA. Thanks, Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
2008/1/17 Bennett Todd [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2008-01-17T15:46:31 Bryan Berry: I feel very strongly that violent games should not be associated with OLPC. Who decides? Who draws the line between appropriate and inappropriate? Does anybody with access to email and web get to ban games for being violent, according to their standards? Or is it just going to be for a special group? If the latter, what's the criterion for joining? -Bennett What's wrong with erring on the safe side with a controversial topic like video game violence in a learning setting like the OLPC project. It's easy for the majority of us in the western world who have never been in a violent conflict to take a standpoint on violence in video-games. That's however not the topic I feel. Do you know for sure how playing Doom will affect a Nepali ex child-soldier kid? And do you know for sure what the viewpoints of people from a warzone community will be on a project that 'advertises' playing Doom? I don't know. I'd say the latter might not be such a problem. But I'm not really sure, and it's certainly not an absurd thing to imagine. So why take the chance? What's there to gain? /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 17, 2008 6:37 PM, Hal Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's wrong with erring on the safe side with a controversial topic like video game violence in a learning setting like the OLPC project. That doesn't solve anything. It just pushes the decision point down the scale a bit. Instead of arguing whether something is violent, we'll be arguing about weather it's violent enough to be controversial. Just to keep on beating that dead horse: As was mentioned earlier in this thread, there are always gliding scales. The solution is not to just forget about them and just allow everything to keep things simple. To clarify my sentence above, I don't think the topic of violence in a learning setting is so controversial. There are little learning packages I know of that situate themselves in a post-apocalyptic setting with as goal to murder as many henchmen of Satan as possible. And it's not so controversial politically, or socially. The only groups who would endorse a game like this that i can think of would be the arms lobby and some extreme Christian sects. I don't want to generalize but amongst a number of nay-sayers I sense a strong cencorship fear, while I just see a pragmatic decision to not include war material in an education project. This is the default attitude in the educational world methinks. While on the other hand the chance of a wave of gripping cencorship amongst the XO activities seems pretty slim to me. Still the strongest point to be concidered should be if a certain class of children might not react well to it. How do vague conceptions about freedom stack up against that? So to me this is a no-brainer. But then again, one might argue that one shouldn't confuse a developer-wiki with an educational package. And then you would have me beat! Btw, great game, Doom. Ah the memories.. especially on the later levels when you got the hang of strafing and would comfortably slalom around the fireballs of whole armies of those doom imps. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 17, 2008 10:46 PM, Bennett Todd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip I'm asking for _some_ kind of line between the two. The recent DVD release of the first season of Sesame Street warns that it isn't appropriate for young children. That creeps me out. How do we define the line between Doom and SpaceWars? I see the Activities page currently requests no strongly violent games. Is that clear enough? I personally think you're whole post is exactly on the dot. Really. And great point about Sesame Street. For me you hit the sweet spot in this discussion. And Strongly violent sounds excellent to me. One shouldn't bog stuff down to much, and leave room for common sense. Sorry for the boring post ;o) /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel