[Server-devel] touchpad problems (was Re: Questions)
From: david da...@leeming-consulting.com Daniel, Feedback from Nauru. It is very hot and very humid. I find typically that almost all the children observe the jumping cursor. The recalibration does help, but it's still a major issue. I am simply unable to use the touchpad in demonstrations. I use a USB mouse and VNCLauncher with UltraVNC to project the XO screen during trainings (works very well), but when I go round to help trainees (we have been training parents as well as students and children) i find I cannot use their touchpads - on almost all the XOs. They have better luck (maybe my fingers are sweaty more than most) and I have noticed students often wrapping cloth around their finger to use the touch pad. It remains a real problem, but people do get by. When I move to an airconditioned room the problem goes away mostly - a 4-finger salute and it's fine. We had the same problems w/ the touchpad here in Nepal. Nothing ever fixed the problem, though we never tried wrapping our fingers in cloth. That is quite novel. The new touchpad is 1 million times better. Our kids almost never have trouble w/ the new touchpad. That said, kids w/ the old touchpad are out of luck. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] phantom USB-Ethernet problem
On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 11:16 +0200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: Please disregard my frantic e-mails about the USB-Ethernet problem. It turns out that the USB-Ethernet NIC was not at fault, even when using a USB 1.1. USB-Ethernet. However, I would not recommend using it on the LAN side, since it has much lower throughput than a USB 2.0 Interested to hear what you find to be a workable solution as secondary nic for something like an mswind. will let you know. These mini-desktop PC's are in IMHO the best option for the XS in terms of performance to cost ratio, power consumption, and extensibility. There are other super-low power PC's, but they tend to be 3x more expensive and you usually can't easily add a bigger Hard drive or more RAM later according to needs. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
That isn't the problem. I believe that USB 1.1 NIC's choke when they have multiple connections. I guess the Rx polling - whatever that is - causes so many interrupts that the NIC stops serving requests friends on server-devel, I highly recommend you use the lsusb -v to find out if your usb NIC is actually USB 2.0. Apparently a number of USB NIC's on the market are advertised as USB 2.0 but are actually 1.1 On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 14:08 +0545, Ties Stuij wrote: So Tony suggested just using the usb-ethernet thingies for the internet-connection. USB1.1 is, what, 700kbps? What are the chances that we can supply the schools with more bandwidth than that? /Ties On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:49 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem. That's great news! I'll also be delighted to hear about what hw you find that works... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Is a USB-Ethernet NIC appropriate for the XS?
The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem. BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: great, do u think I can buy a usb2 ethernet nic for under $50? budget is tight and I need these for 15 XS's Mitch_Bradley AX8817X and AX88772 are the chips BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: thanks Mitch_Bradley http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=589 BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: is there any reason that USB-Ethernet is inherently unworkable or is it just a question of getting the right usb-ethernet nic? Mitch_Bradley USB 1.1 sucks rocks for ethernet because the polling for rx packets kills the throughput cjb BryanWB: no, the others are usb2 cjb what Mitch_Bradley said BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: so usb1.1 will totally crap out w/ 20 users ? Mitch_Bradley USB2.0 has much improved bandwidth and much lower latency for polling usb1.1 will totally crap out with 1 user BryanWB Mitch_Bradley: thanks a lot guys, you are saving my bacon cjb BryanWB: the number of users won't affect it, other than by sucking proportional to load Mitch_Bradley I didn't even bother supporting USB 1.1 ethernet chips in OFW. It's just not worth it. cjb anyway, yeah. just find an asix dongle. Mitch_Bradley try to buy a name brand device. The no-name ones often just don't work. On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 15:43 +0100, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: We want to use the MSI Wind PC for the XS but it has one big problem. It only has 1 on-board NIC and no PCI slots. As you know, the XS requires 2 NIC's. We have tried several different USB NIC's and are having serious throughput problems. Is this issue one w/ the NIC or the fact that it is connected by USB? My main worry with USB-connected NICs would be reliability. If the NIC is reliable, but the throughput a bit below-par, you can still probably use it as the WAN NIC -- the throughput is likely to be constrained upstream anyway. - When you say throughput problems... what are you getting? How bad is it? Even if limited, would it be appropriate for the WAN port? - The problem may be specific to the driver or NIC hardware -- is there any discussion on the kernel dev list about it? - The problem may be with the USB bus on the MS Wind, hardware or drivers. Perhaps testing for bus throughput or interrupt handling helps? - Have you tested the reliability of the devices? This may be a larger problem. cheers, martin -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] notes on scaling ejabberd for the XO's
Here are some notes from a short IRC conversation I had w/ Rob Mcqueen, the lead developer of Telepathy transcript of conversation on #sugar bemasc: bernie: I am concerned about the fact that in the default schoolserver set up all users are in one giant shared roster Robot101 RESOLVED, ALREADYFIXED (but not in any deployments, or in the UI) BryanWB and the resulting chatter slows down the XO/Sugar considerably? Robot101 yes Robot101 rwh the latest versions of sugar and telepathy support using an XMPP component called gadget instead of the shared roster BryanWB Robot101: so gadget fixes this? Robot101 yup Robot101 rwh you only receive push notifications about a) what Sugar has searched for/displaying on the neighborhood view, or b) your friends -- hgcphoenix (n=hc...@124.107.253.193) has joined #sugar BryanWB Robot101: neat, and does it work together w/ the XS? Robot101: which version of sugar is it in? -- hgcphoenix (n=hc...@124.107.253.193) has left #sugar Robot101 they went off on a complete tangent trying to hack shared rosters to have less mutually visible sets of people we thought of that but also decided it was the bong, so we fixed it properly with gadget. BryanWB Robot101: what is the testing status of gadget? Robot101 it's deployed on jabber.sugarlabs.org (which is on collabora.co.uk) seems to work fine, ejabberd seems to gradually leak memory though, which isn't too great maybe a little much CPU usage on gadget, but nothing you couldn't profile and I'm not familiar enough with the sugar release cycle to say where the support went in Robot101 rwh eu daytime is better to find the Sugar devs and the Collaborans who worked on Gadget (cassidy, daf) BryanWB Robot101: ok, will talk w/ them later today Robot101 gadget was always our plan, it just took us a while to get to it BryanWB Robot101: by the way last year we tested ejabberd by streaming your video talk on Telepathy to 80 XO's bemasc Robot101: I believe martin dropped the shared roster, and inside is simply using moodle to set all rosters directly. s/inside/instead/ bemasc bernie benzea Robot101 bemasc: so it's still shared as in server-enforced mutual visibility, just in smaller groups. bemasc right, but from ejabberd's perspective, it's individual rosters Robot101 that's exactly how shared rosters always work Robot101 the client thread gets a copy of the same roster at sign in bemasc oh? I thought there was a patch to ejabberd required. Robot101 yes, he's patched it to source the shared roster from moodle, I'd imagine bemasc martin seemed to say that he could use a totally stock ejabberd Robot101 oh, right. sql query or something. our patches were just extending the built-in shared roster to a) work properly (deal with dynamic additions and removals) and b) support a group of online users rather than everyone -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 09:58 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. Now you're starting to see what I've seen :-/ I also worry about your APs and networking infra -- to support 400 active users you'll want at least 8 APs. In more realistic terms, you'll probably need 12, assuming a reasonably balanced load. We will have roughly 8+ AP's. We have found that off-the-shelf AP's can handle around 60-70 users. But that doesn't still doesn't solve the problem of the XO's getting bogged down by tons of ejabberd chatter. DSD: do you have any ideas about this? We are looking at about 100-150 students per school and connecting 3-4 schools to a central XS. As I mentioned before... I am working on xs-0.6, with the moodle-ejabberd magic. That's great, but our pilot starts in a month but that doesn't fit our timeline. I don't want to send out a completely new, untested XS into rural parts of Nepal. Do you have any other suggestions fo us? This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py Well, that's 1/4 of your RAM. You need to budget for apache/php, postgres, and squid. Right now the main problem is Squid. That was 450 MB during account creation. It dropped significantly thereafter. I didn't provide much server stats last time because the XS resource usage isn't a critical problem. Thanks for the list below. Quite a few are about stuff I can't help with (roof leaks, power cords...) the others, I'm working on... That's the whole point of why I am telling you about such problems and how they make a centralized XS easier for us to maintain. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 22:36 -0400, Daniel Drake wrote: 2009/3/9 Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org: We will have roughly 8+ AP's. We have found that off-the-shelf AP's can handle around 60-70 users. But that doesn't still doesn't solve the problem of the XO's getting bogged down by tons of ejabberd chatter. DSD: do you have any ideas about this? Have only had a chance to test numbers on Linksys WRT54Gsomething routers, which stop accepting new connections after 33 users. yay. The linksys is WRT54G total crap. We don't use them. We have found that cheaper AP's do much better. We have good luck w/ random Taiwanese brands like Compex, Lantech, and AZTech. They have Atheros or RealTek chipsets I haven't seen XO's bogged down by ejabberd chatter. Ran 75 today while monitoring the TX/RX stats on the LAN interface on the XS and was impressed at how low it was. Yes, the XOs run slow when you view a busy neighborhood view, but it's fine as soon as you switch away. There was a bug where sugar updates every icon on the neighborhood view 10 times every second when you are on that screen (but only when you are on that screen), it's fixed for 0.84. I saw it drop as well when I changed out of the Network View, but it still remained fairly high w/ 200 very active users, too high to keep me from launching EToys That's great, but our pilot starts in a month but that doesn't fit our timeline. I don't want to send out a completely new, untested XS into rural parts of Nepal. I tried and didn't get any feedback from XS usage in large deployments, so we pretty much figured we'd send it into not-as-rural paraguay and find out what happens (we don't really have any other options!). Daniel I think that is because large deployments like Uruguay aren't using the XS and others like Mongolia don't have the technical expertise to monitor such things. That leaves new large deployments like Paraguay and Nepal in an unenviable position as pioneers. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS - ejabberd nightmare?
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 22:36 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: But 200-300 users could be online at once. I think it will be too complicated to tell some of them: Don't connect to the AP right now, you may overwhelm ejabberd Give ejabberd enough RAM and it won't be a problem. The rest of your infrastructure will, however. I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. I used the hyperactivity program and got some unscientific results. I simulated 200 users using the schoolserver constantly. The CPU of the XS was very busy, staying near 100% usage during the account creation period and then it leveled off. I didn't monitor it very closely after that b/c ejabberd is not my chief concern This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py sudo ./hyperactivity.py gabble schoolserver.schoolnet.gov.np 200 I ran hyperactivity from my regular dell laptop My XO showed 200 users in the Network View and became very sluggish. Top showed that 30-40% of CPU was taken up w/ handling the sugar-shell, the program which manages the Network View. The dbusdaemon was using roughly 15-20% of the CPU. I tried to launch one our E-Paath flash activities and it hung displaying the error message Unresponsive script. I tried to launch EToys and it failed as well. The XS is quite a complicated ensemble of software having an XS at every school magnifies the administration work. What admin work do you foresee on the XS? * Making sure that ejabberd keeps running * Making sure that the school doesn't have roof leak directly above the XS * Making sure the schools doesn't remove the power cord and use it for something else * Make sure the school doesn't repurpose the UPS for the XS for charging cell phones * make sure the XS doesn't get zapped by a sudden power surge * Making sure it is there 3 months later * Make sure that dansguardian, squid, dhcp stay up week after week We don't have any problem gettting the kids to take care of the XO's but we have a Hell of a time making sure they take care of the XS Additionally our schools only have about 8 hours of electricity per day. I am concerned about the XS losing power suddenly multiple times per day. Good point. I've been building everything with daily poweroffs in mind and every component should handle it. But haven't field-tested... Sadly, no one has and this is one of my chief concerns we can provide that (RAM) Have you go the 4GB barrier in mind? Past 4GB we get into all sorts of problems. You'll need a 64-bit machine, and you'll have to convince me or someone else to build a 64-bit XS iso rather than the vanilla 32-bit we're using now. We have a relatively low latency connection b/w the schools and the XS. Low latency, high bandwidth and everyone in the same netblock? No routers in the middle. That's what the XS assumes, in any case. the conclusion that Nepal has different requirements than some of the other pilot schools. Everybody is a little bit special. By deviating from how the XS is designed to be deployed, you will add mgmt work to workaround whatever gotchas. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XO's get bogged down w/ chatter (was Re: Serving 400+ students w/ a single central XS )
I just want to reiterate the following because I have gotten several e-mails suggesting solutions to scaling the XS. The Dell server handles this problem fine. I expect the MSI wind PC will handle it fine as well. The problem is w/ the ___XO's___ NOT the servers. It is hard for the XO's to keep track of all the conversations happening The problem w/ centralization is creating a huge giant shared chatroom. It creates a ton of chatter that the XO's have to keep track of. I need to find the upper limit of how many XO's can share one roster w/out getting significantly bogged down. On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 16:57 +0545, Bryan Berry wrote: On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 22:36 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Bryan Berry br...@olenepal.org wrote: But 200-300 users could be online at once. I think it will be too complicated to tell some of them: Don't connect to the AP right now, you may overwhelm ejabberd Give ejabberd enough RAM and it won't be a problem. The rest of your infrastructure will, however. I am worried about the XO's and not the XS. I used the hyperactivity program and got some unscientific results. I simulated 200 users using the schoolserver constantly. The CPU of the XS was very busy, staying near 100% usage during the account creation period and then it leveled off. I didn't monitor it very closely after that b/c ejabberd is not my chief concern This dell server has a dual-core Xeon 3.0 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. RAM was fine, beam only used 450 MB according to ps_mem.py sudo ./hyperactivity.py gabble schoolserver.schoolnet.gov.np 200 I ran hyperactivity from my regular dell laptop My XO showed 200 users in the Network View and became very sluggish. Top showed that 30-40% of CPU was taken up w/ handling the sugar-shell, the program which manages the Network View. The dbusdaemon was using roughly 15-20% of the CPU. I tried to launch one our E-Paath flash activities and it hung displaying the error message Unresponsive script. I tried to launch EToys and it failed as well. The XS is quite a complicated ensemble of software having an XS at every school magnifies the administration work. What admin work do you foresee on the XS? * Making sure that ejabberd keeps running * Making sure that the school doesn't have roof leak directly above the XS * Making sure the schools doesn't remove the power cord and use it for something else * Make sure the school doesn't repurpose the UPS for the XS for charging cell phones * make sure the XS doesn't get zapped by a sudden power surge * Making sure it is there 3 months later * Make sure that dansguardian, squid, dhcp stay up week after week We don't have any problem gettting the kids to take care of the XO's but we have a Hell of a time making sure they take care of the XS Additionally our schools only have about 8 hours of electricity per day. I am concerned about the XS losing power suddenly multiple times per day. Good point. I've been building everything with daily poweroffs in mind and every component should handle it. But haven't field-tested... Sadly, no one has and this is one of my chief concerns we can provide that (RAM) Have you go the 4GB barrier in mind? Past 4GB we get into all sorts of problems. You'll need a 64-bit machine, and you'll have to convince me or someone else to build a 64-bit XS iso rather than the vanilla 32-bit we're using now. We have a relatively low latency connection b/w the schools and the XS. Low latency, high bandwidth and everyone in the same netblock? No routers in the middle. That's what the XS assumes, in any case. the conclusion that Nepal has different requirements than some of the other pilot schools. Everybody is a little bit special. By deviating from how the XS is designed to be deployed, you will add mgmt work to workaround whatever gotchas. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
I am shopping for some XS options to test out ahead of our spring deployment. I have looked at the MSI Wind PC, Eee Box, and the Shuttle X2700N. All have nice small form factors, low prices, and Atom chips. I am focused on Intel Atom-based PC's because they seem to be dropping in price the fastest and there are a number of different vendors selling atom-based pc's. Also, they are low-power. MSI Wind PC - cheap at roughly $350 w/ 1.6 Ghz processor and 1 GB RAM CON: looks like it has poor cooling and some customers complain it gets quite hot. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem Shuttle X2700N - slightly more expensive than the MSI at $200 but looks to have much better cooling. I can't find any customer reviews on it. Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] small form factor XS options?
On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 09:39 -0200, If you look for machines with VIA CPUs, they are low power dissipation, and often cheap too. We have a few samples at 1cc with heatsinks - no fans! Will do, tks for the heads up I definitely need at least 1 Ghz processor because we intend to host an offline E-Library on the XS. Even w/out the E-Library we want to host a lot of content cached from the broader Internet and that will require a good bit of RAM and some CPU. I have looked at the Excito and they are impressive but do not offer a fast enough processor and the price is higher than I would like. Eee Box - more expensive but doesn't seem to have the same cooling problem I talked with Asus engineers who assured there's a version of it with no fans, and a heatsink. Not sure if it's in the catalog though :-/ Unfortunately, none of these have a spare PCI slot that I can use for the XS's 2nd NIC card. We are considering using a USB NIC for the eth1. That'll hurt if you have significant traffic. In fact, I'd recommend using the usb nic for eth0 which is guaranteed to have less traffic ;-) Does anyone know of similar small form factor PC's that do have an extra PCI slot? Or other good XS choices? This is very true. Small form factor isn't actually that important. Low-Power is much more important. I have to say I am still leaning towards the Shuttle X2700N. It seems to have adequate cooling features compared to other small form-factor PCs Perhaps my best option would be to purchase an Atom CPU, appropriate motherboard, and fit into a regular PC chassis . . . But I still haven't checked out the Via CPU options ;) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] OLPC XS 0.5 Released
Martin, can u provide and .md5 for this and future releases? thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] XS - XO archiving and backup (was Re: [OLPC India] Issues on the ground )
On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 11:44 +0530, JV Avadhanulu wrote: Dear Bryan, I have a question. Are children able to transfer files to the XS Server over Wi-Fi in your deployments? Our deployments are still using XS-163, which does not have the xs-backup method. We hope to migrate to a newer version of the XS later this month. To my knowledge, the XO's can back up to the XS but there still is no way for children to browse their backups or restore from them. My knowledge may be out of date though. Martin Langhoff knows much better than I. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 18, Issue 6
Martin Langhoff wrote: Been ruminating on this a bit. The more I think about it, the more clear it is that DG on the XS is not a good long term solution. DG may not be a good long term solution, but the pilots need it asap and it still isn't part of the default install. Greg is right that the XS is already a production project but it lacks one of the key features that all the pilots need -- basic content filtering. The deployments that need it most are those w/ the least technical skills and least likely to complain on this mailing list. So it's a task better pushed to a proxy/filter upstream at the ISP network -- for any large deployment, we should start advising the local team to arrange with the ISP(s?) involved the co-location of 1 server. This server gives us an opportunity to perform - filtering at one central place = better scale up / scale out economies (making bayesian costs more reasonable) = larger scoring pool, so good/bad content gets flagged faster and for everyone I am not a fan of a centralized solution. 1) It sounds a way off and we need a working solution asap. 2) In Nepal we will work w/ a variety of regional ISP's to provide bandwidth to schools. I expect many, many other countries will do the same. I will trust the regional ISP's to provide bandwidth, but not content filtering as well. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Nepal XS
On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 09:18 +0545, Martin Langhoff Wrote wrote: For example, use two XOs to verify ejabberd functionality. Use browse to verify that the schoolserver link delivers the Moodle (site) home page. Use browse to verify internet connectivity. Try to access a 'forbidden' site to verify Dansguardian is working. In short, a checklist of simple tests to verify server functions. Worthtwhile idea, right now we have too many things changing, but that'd be something for a 0.9/1.0 release. I respectfully disagree, I think these tests would be more useful since many things are changing. Simple tests would save us a lot of testing time in our own lab. The tests should just be generic enough to accommodate changes in the underlying systems. Such tests would save Tony a ton of time testing a new XS install, whether it be 0.4, 0.5-0.9 I suspect they would save time for others as well. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:57 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dans can use a good bit of memory but I haven't really calculated how much. Top shows me a lot dansguardian processes, each using about 10K of RES memory, 980 of SHR, and 0.5% of Mem. What I understand about top and memory is that it doesn't really tell much at all b/c the processes are using shared memory. yeah - top is not that useful. can you try ps_mem.py? http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py great tool! DG is using 30.4 MB under a very light load. I will have to check later when school is back in session but that isn't for another 2 weeks. Is is holiday season ;) Am I right in thinking that DG is actually a custom apache or an apache with a custom config + a DG module? Umm, don't know ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. I strongly agree that, while Moodle is important, a lot of work needs to be done on ejabberd and dansguardian. Message: 1 Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:42:19 -0400 From: Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01) To: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi Martin, Thanks for the update! Its great to see all the items planned for or in 0.5: http://dev.laptop.org/query?status=assignedstatus=closedstatus=newstatus=reopenedorder=prioritycol=idcol=summarycol=statuscol=typecol=prioritycol=componentmilestone=xs-0.5 On your question of who is waiting for XS 0.5, I know of at least two deployments that are building labs and testing configurations with XS software: Paraguay Birmingham Both will need a stable XS that they can use ASAP. Whether they will go with XS 0.5 or not depends on what 0.5 includes, when 0.6 will be available and what it includes. AFAIK Moodle is not a must have item for either deployment. A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT Birmingham may start using XOs and an XS in schools in mid-Novemeber. Paraguay will probably start later but we should lock down their version ASAP as they want lead time to really flush out all issue in the lab. They may both use the backup and restore feature if they have enough disk on the server (of course they will use it whether they like it or not as you can't turn it off :-). I think there other deployments that will want to use a school server before the end of 2008. Two other features which may tip the balance for deployments are upgrade of XO images and activities via school server cache (Peru). Spending a little more time to make sure that XS 0.5 is very stable and well documented is a good idea. However, we should start to be more precise about the features and dates for each release we plan to deliver before the end of CY 08. Thanks, Greg S ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
I don't have time currently to work on this but I will ask Tony and our interns Avash and Aakash to work on this. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:37 -0400, John Watlington wrote: Perhaps you want to suggest a specific set of configuration files that provides what you consider a medium level of restriction, including blacklists ? wad On Oct 3, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Bryan Berry wrote: Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:09 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. I'm very interested in hearing about those experiences. this depends on how much progress Tony can make. Unfortunately, too much management crap and talking w/ donors keeps me from spending enough time on the XS w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. How happy are you with DanGuardian? Is it a useful filter? We use it internally w/in our office and we are happy w/ it. We use it locally to eat our own dog food. By default it blocks a lot if not most content on the Internet, including stuff that doesn't seem objectionable at all. I think dans is essential because it will keep the adults from using up all the bandwidth to look at porn. the secondary reason, to protect kids is also important ;) In terms of install we have some proposed patches to the ejabberd config issues, so it's likely to be sorted in 0.5 or 0.6. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. Right - keen on hearing your notes Tony :-) Also - as discussed with Wad, I'll be interested in suggestions on how to handle the local rulemaking both for small pilots and large deployments. cheers. m ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS_0_4 install]
I can't remember precisely, but I thought I started ejabberd after running domain_config, but I could be mistaken. Tony, did u start ejabberd before or after running domain_config on ur latest install? On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 11:13 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's more concerning to me is that ejabberd has never once worked for me out-of-box. I have always had to reinstall it before getting it to work. Has anyone out there gotten ejabberd to work consistently on new XS installs w/ reinstalling it? That sounds like you might be trying to start it before running domain_config. It's a tiny change to the installation workflow outlined in the doco, but can trip people up. We could change the init script to check for that case and refuse to start. cheers, m -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] offline moodle
On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 22:57 +0200, Tony Anderson wrote: Hi, My apologies - I need to do some research on how to setup the repo.or.cz. As an immediate expedient, I have attached the relevant files to this email. When I get a little time, I will set this up properly. The readme tries to describe the files and how they are used. hey Tony, this is a good start. I have a somewhat different workflow in mind. Here is a narrative that describes what I am thinking User Story 1: Intermittent School attendance and School Server Outage Monday 1. Kid goes to class 2. Teacher directs kids Moodle site 3. Kid navigates to Moodle Module for Class 2 math for the current month 4. Kid clicks 'download' link next Moodle module 5. This action downloads a the moodle module as a .xo bundle and locally installs it to the XO 5.1 Inside the module are readings, pictures, animations, etc. all available offline 6. School ends on Monday Tuesday Kid can't go to school. Mom and little brother are sick, has to take care of them. Kid opens up XO and offline Moodle activity he downloaded the day before. He does lessons that show him basic concepts, introduce him to basic animations using activities like Etoys, and reads explanations that answer some of the things he doesn't understand. Wednesday Kid still can't go to school. Has to help out in the fields. Later that day the kid spends some time w/ the Moodle module Thursday Kid goes back to school. Kid isn't behind the other because he followed the lesson plan at home. This has social importance that shouldn't be understated. Over night there was an electrical surge that fried the school server. The teacher can still instruct using the XO because she has it installed locally as an activity and so do the kids. The key here is that we need to package each offline moodle course as an .XO Activity Bundle. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles Getting started, we only need the most basic features of Moodle. Basically page navigation and the ability to display flash animations and embedded pdfs for the supplementary readings. In time we can look at adding more dynamic stuff like access to the gradebook but that can wait. In Nepal's context, our kids have no libraries and maybe 4 small coursebooks. Hope this helps and sorry I haven't been able to provide you w/ more feedback earlier. Pls post our correspondence regarding Offline Moodle to the Server-Developers mailing list. http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] offline moodle
On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 15:10 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: good to hear we're on the same page. AIUI, the user only has to get to the initial moodle page, and GG should take care of the rest. you've reached beyond my geek lingo, what on earth does AIUI mean? :) -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
great see you guys tomorrow! On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 18:30 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: So, we are all set. In about 18hs we'll be having another meeting. The wikipage with the info is here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Conf_08_AUG_07_Meeting I've put there a draft agenda from Bryan (feel free to add/correct!) and myself. cheers, m -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 18:52 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: If we are having a regular XS meeting, I also have to consider what we are doing targetting all our other deployments, some of them with thousands of servers :-) Absolutely. We may be a small deployment but our work can benefit much larger deployments. I'll be very interested in 1, 3 and 5, wanting to see how we can make those efforts reusable elsewhere :-) -- I really hope so. WRT 3 one thing that would be great is an exporter from the fedora repo to a static representation, or to something we can search serve easily, so we don't have to carry the fedora sw itself on the XS. I've worked a bit with it, and while usually the repos hosted in it have content that is _gold_, I don't think the sw itself adds any value on the XS. The great thing about the fedora-commons software is the search functionality. Could we actually use search on a static representation of the fedora-commons repository? Ultimately, we want to put a lot of Nepali art and music on the XS. A searchable repository will be key to accessing those resources. In case David hasn't explained earlier, here is why hosting a mail server on the XS is important to us. The teachers aren't using their XO's as much as we would like them too. We are looking for applications that will appeal directly to them and compel them to use their XO's more frequently. We think e-mail is one such application. The Internet connection to our schools is not very reliable and we can only afford 64K per school due to our budget constraints and the high cost of Internet access in Nepal. E-mail is much better suited to this low-bandwidth environment. While it may not be right for every OLPC deployment, it's a good choice for us in Nepal. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
feeling better now, antibiotics really work :) How about same time this upcoming Friday? Will work on an agenda w/ David on Monday. I see the key purpose of this meeting is to let you folks what additional functionality we are working on for Nepal's XS and to make sure that our additions don't conflict w/ future changes to the underlying XS. Here is the additional stuff we are looking to build into the XS over the next 6 months: 1) Customized Nepali version of Moodle 2) Mail server using Squirrel Mail* 3) Setting up a local version of Nepal's E-Library on the XS, a copy of Nepal's current E-Library http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org which uses the open-source fedora-commons repository software. 4) and more stuff that I can't remember at the moment. 5) Connecting schools through ejabberd * Some of these changes are targeted more at the teachers than the kids. We are concerned that the teachers are using the XO's much less than the kids and thus less familiar w/ them. We think e-mail is a relatively easy way to get them to use the XO to the amount of effort to get it running consistently. VoIP would be more effective but would require much more effort. On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 20:01 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 08:48 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 3:48 AM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm OK with reschedule. How about next week at the same time? Hope you feel better soon. Same here. Postpone 7 days? Can Jim make it too next week? I think so. - Jim -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Reschedule XS meeting for Friday Aug 15 - or 10 PM Aug 14 EST ---- was (Re: not up for Friday meeting about the XS)
thanks Michael, After we get our top priorities working consistently I will definitely take a closer look at voip and try to look up the folks at fedora. On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 10:47 -0400, Michael Stone wrote: On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 12:11:56PM +0545, Bryan Berry wrote: VoIP would be more effective but would require much more effort. Fedora recently set up its own VOIP system, so there may be experts lurking nearby who could be tempted into assisting you. Michael -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] not up for Friday meeting about the XS
Hey guys, I am still not feeling well and not sure I can make tomorrow's meeting. Can we postpone it until next week? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Time for another Server-Devel Meeting IRC or Skype?
I am sick in bed and too tired to really think. will work on a meeting agenda tomorrow On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 07:32 -0400, Greg Smith wrote: Hi Guys, I'm in for Thursday 2PM NZ, 7:45AM Nepal, 10PM US ET. On irc.freenode.net #olpc-meeting? Let's set an agenda now and keep it to one hour if we can. Thanks, Greg S PS what's up with the 15 minute Nepal offset? That's even stranger than India time ;-) Bryan Berry wrote: On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 10:54 +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote: Looking at suitable times, I am thinking of this Friday (NZ time, Thursday for everyone else ;-) ) - look at: http://worldtimeserver.com/meeting-planner-times.aspx?L0=NZL1=NPL2=GBL3=US-MAL4=Day=8Mon=8Y=2008 It is hard to coordinate a good time for Nepal and NZ and the American continent. It would be fantastic if Greg Smith can make it - I am thinking - 2PM - early morn for Nepal, 10pm for 1CC - 11PM - late night for me, easy for everyone else! :-/ Great, Friday, 7:45 AM is a bit early for Kathmandu but it works for us Skype will work if it is less than 7 people but gets too messy w/ more. w/ 7+ people I prefer IRC. David and I will be there -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Time for another Server-Devel Meeting IRC or Skype?
Martin, We are putting a lot of work into the XS here in Nepal after a long absence. David Van Assche is now w/ OLE nepal full-time in Kathmandu working on the XS. We want to make sure we are moving in the same direction and not waste anyone's time. How about an IRC or Skype meeting open to all those interested in the XS later this week? If it's an IRC meeting I will be happy to post it to the wiki. Regards, Bryan Berry OLE Nepal ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] More XS notes
* The olpc-scripts in /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/ are just plain confusing. * Ejabberd is extremely flaky Even the smallest changes to the ejabberd.cfg file seem to make it crash. I added and extra admin acct to the admins acl on my laptop's ejabberd install and now ejabberd won't run. Sometimes it seems that the only way to get ejabberd running properly was to reboot the machine. Perhaps this was due to funky stuff hanging out in the Mnesia database? Can anyone tell me more about this? Ejabberd can be used w/ a relational database such as postgres instead of Mnesia. Can anyone comment on the advantages, disadvantages of this? * Shorewall We have installed shorewall and using it to manage iptables. * Dansguardian and Squid up and running. Dansguardian was a bit tricky, particularly the Shorewall configuration. * Moodle Got it up and running using Postrgres, which was bit tricky Questions: 1) Easier ways to work w/ ejabberd? 2) anyone succeeded in interconnecting ejabberd b/w two schools? 3) Martin: can you comment on the use of DOOR or Fedora Commons as a local repository? 4) What is the current state of integrating fedora-commons and Moodle? Todo: 1) test out ds-backup 2) test out XS features fully w/ actual XO's 3) test the XS for performance and disaster recovery 5) Get fedora-commons running on the XS and integrate w/ Moodle (longterm project) Will send out our config notes for what we have done so far later today. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] incomplete XS install notes
h1. Schoolserver
These are the notes from XS configuration David Van Assche have been
working on this week. It is not yet complete. I will try to put them on
the wiki when they are complete. I haven't included several crucial
pieces of information such as the Shorewall configuration files.
Step 1. Install from .iso
h3. Network Configuration
* IP
** rm /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-msh*
** rm /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2-4
** vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth1 change to
static IP Addresses
** ifcfg-eth0 change to WAN address, in OLE office 192.168.5.xx,
disable ipv6 causes problems w/ ejabberd
** ifcfg-eth1 leave as default
** vi /etc/dhcpd.conf add Internet DNS under option
domain-name-servers in addition to 172.18.0.1
* DNS changes
** /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np
where sanepa is the school
** /etc/sysconfig/network change hostname to
schoolserver.sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np
** cd /var/named
** sed -i 's/random.xs.laptop.org/sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np/g' school*
** Change comments (#) and C in /var/named/school.internal.zone.db to
; and CNAME (fixed in XS_165)
h3. Squid
* -- /etc/squid/squid.conf
** at line 117 change: dns_nameservers 172.18.0.1 192.168.5.1
** acl school src 172.18.0.0/255.255.0.0 192.168.5.0/255.255.255.0 #
add external and internal networks
h3. Moodle
* yum install moodle postgresql-server
* service postgresql initdb
* sudo -u postgres createuser -D -A -P moodle
* sudo -u postgres createdb -E utf8 -O moodle moodle
* sudo -u postgres psql moodle
# ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'moodle';
# \q
* sudo nano /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf change Method for both
host entries to md5
* sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
h3. Ejabberd
* add this line to /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg
{acl, admin, {user, admin, schoolserver.sanepa.schoolnet.gov.np}}.
Don't forget the period at the end!
* cd /etc/init.d/
* chkconfig --level 345 ejabberd
* disable ipv6 by removing it from
{5280, ejabberd_http, [
ipv6,
* Logging on to http://schoolserver:5280/admin provide full username
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Create online group @online@
h3. Dansguardian
* zlib-devel pcre-devel autoconf automake gcc-c++ libtool compat-gcc-3.4
* used rpm from dries repo, add to testing.repo, or stable.repo if you
are using that repo
[dries]
name=Extra Fedora rpms dries - $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/dries.ulyssis.org/fedora/linux/$releasever/$basearch/dries/RPMS/
* yum update
* yum install dansguardian
* settings in /etc/dansguardian/dansguardian.conf
** filterport=8081 # not 8080
** loglevel =1
** loglocation = /var/log/dansguardian/access.log
** urlcachenumber = 5000
** reverseaddresslookups = on
** reverseclientiplookups = on
** maxchildren=250
** minsparechildren=8
** daemonuser=dansguardian
** daemongroup=dansguardian
* settings in bannedextensionslist
** commented out bans for UNIX archive file types
h3. Shorewall
* yum install shorewall
* settings in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf
** Startup_Enabled=Yes
** LOGFILE=/var/log/shorewall
** LOGRATE= ?
** LOGBURST = ? to be set
** BRIDGING = Yes
* /etc/shorewall/masq
** eth0 eth1 -- this bridges b/w the two
* /etc/shorewall/interfaces
** net eth0
** loc eth1
* /etc/shorewall/zones -- these changes make the interfaces use ipv4
** loc -
** fwfirewall
** net -
* Setting up policy -- /etc/shorewall/policy
* Setting up Rules -- allow access to ssh at port , ejabberd at 5280
* add to Rules
REDIRECT loc 8081TCP
h3. Todo
Dansguardian
* Need to consider adding blocks for stuff like myspace.com
* decide on naughtyness limit set in dansguardianf1.conf ?Higher or
lower? Real concern is the parents and teachers viewing inappropriate
stuff, less so the kids.
* decide which file extensions to ban
Issues:
* Ejabberd a total PITA to set up and modify. We spent 60% of install
time fighting ejabberd.
* Currently XO's seem to need a fqdn to access jabber. This means every
school needs a different XO image configuration. Major hassle
* Routing not yet working properly
* The XS wiki entries are a mess and often provide incorrect information
___
Server-devel mailing list
Server-devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] debuginfo repositories for testing not valid
fyi, There are two repos in the testing.repo that are not valid [fedora-debuginfo-testing] [updates-debuginfo-testing] -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] schoolnet activities?
Bernie, Have we configured Browse to display the Flash activities automatically? Also, have we sugarized Firefox 3? David, you can install firefox 3 as an rpm however we haven't completed sugarizing it. Currently we are launching it from the command line. We will sugarize it as we are using for the next generation of E-Paath activities. Also, check out our E-Library that we have developed http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org all built w/ open-source components and and can scale to millions of objects. May be of interest to you. On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 15:03 +1100, David Leeming wrote: You can configure the XO so it loads the SWF files rather showing a blank screen or just use firefox 3 Can you let me know how to configure it, and install firefox 3? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] out of the loop on XS work -- What's the latest?
Hey guys, I have quite out of the loop on server-devel, been focused on internal office sysadmin stuff and our e-library. Check it out http://pustakalaya.olenepal.org I would love to see it somehow work w/ Pootle. I need to set up a testbed in our office w/ the latest XS stuff. Is there a new version since 163? If not, how can I update individual parts like ds_backup and other stuff I am not up on? edublog?? -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Puppet -- looks like a neat tool for managing school servers
http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/PuppetIntroduction I will probably play w/ it tomorrow. could be a neat tool for keeping xs's up-to-date ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] jabber now working
not sure exactly how it worked but I think setting the IP address listed /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 to the fqdn does the trick previously had the LAN interface followed by fqdn in /etc/hosts -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Wikiserver on XS
good thing there are brighter bulbs involved in olpc than myself :) cbj I will have to look at your code for wikislice and see how it harvests the images from wikipedia. I was having the most trouble w/ that part. Perhaps wikislice can easily be reused for wiktionary we like wiktionary because it is quite small and it has audio samples that say the word. Nepali kids seem really like the latter feature. -Original Message- From: Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: server-devel@lists.laptop.org Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Wikiserver on XS Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:06:51 -0400 Hi, I tried setting up a Wiktionary server on a shared server that our pilots have access to and it was a major pain in the ass. After 3 days I couldn't get it to work. I had a lot of trouble downloading and importing the images, perhaps Chris Ball's wikislices gets this right. I will have to look at the code and ask him. Oh, you mean using the wikislice technology to build a snapshot of the dictionary data from wiktionary, rather than the wikipedia data? That's an interesting idea. The wikislices are alright but they don't allow for searching for content which I think is an essential feature. Yes, they do; when you run the Wikipedia activity, there's a search toolbar that searches against the local index. (You might be confusing the Wikipedia activity with some hand-made Wikislice HTML content bundles that SJ made quite a while ago.) - Chris. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Customizing build 703 for mass deployment
I have created a wiki page detailing the customizations Nepal has made to the 703 image, which includes installation of the gnuchess, and man page rpms, the proprietary flash player, changing the display order of activities, among other changes http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:_Testing%2C_QA% 2C_and_Configuration#Custom_XO_Build_Configuration Currently, I use an extremeley inelegant method to create standard images for Nepal's deployment and I would very much like assistance in finding a more elegant method. Michael Stone has been helping me hack jffs2 images but I still haven't found a better method than booting into an os image, loading rpms and changing settings, then using save-nand to create a custom .img file. Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] OT is there a Content or Curriculum olpc email list?
Yama wrote: Do any of you know if such a content or curriculum list exists and how I can sign up for it? To my knowledge, no. But we definitely need one. I know that Bipul, Kamana, and Saurav from our team would be very much interested. myself as well. You can start one yourself. I believe you can just send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to request one. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] reiterate need for simplified Moodle and Mediawiki UI
Hey guys, Great meeting last night. I made a point last night but I just want to reiterate it because it is quite important for us here in Nepal. The regular Moodle and Mediawiki UI's are far too complex for novice computer users. I am specifically thinking of teachers who are very literate but not used to dealing with complex UI's w/ lots of buttons and text. The kids will figure it out but we need to simplify the Moodle and Mediawiki UI's so that teachers feel comfortable w/ them. We want to use Moodle to lay out lesson plans for the teachers. These lesson plans will give the teachers a clear idea of how to use the XO's and activities in the classroom setting. W/out lesson plans many will just go back to their old ways of doing things and not integrate the XO's (and constructivism) into their regular activities. I still think Moodle and mediawiki are the right tools. We just need to make them conform to the Sugar Human Interface Guidelines. I would like to work on this but teacher training starts on Saturday and I am way behind! :) Martin, I believe you mentioned in the meeting yesterday that you will look for k-6 resources for Moodle. I look forward to seeing those. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Web-based Management Interface for the XS
Martin, have you also looked at http://ebox-platform.com/ ? I have downloaded and intend to play w/ it today. From the screenshots and reviews looks quite nice. From what I can tell it is specific to Debian. If you do intend to build a web-based interface from scratch, can you use a pretty language like Python or Ruby to do it? Perl and PHP make my eyes bleed. Both Django (Python) and Ruby on Rails seem like great frameworks for rapid development. I also like RubyonRails because there is momentum in the FedoraCommons community (E-Library) toward using Rails apps for front-end services. Then I could reuse the skills I have yet to acquire! On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 07:33 -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:17 AM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the long term, there appears to be concern that the existing administration interfaces for servers are not sufficient for our needs. I personally not worked w/ webmin or the admin interface for Centos SME Server so I cannot comment from experience. I've worked with Webmin, and the user experience is tolerable. Our security architect (Ivan) had less than noble things to say about it's implementation, dissuading us from using it. Here I am with Ivan - Webmin is the spawn of the devil ;-) - but beyond that, I've seen quite a few web admin UIs, and though some are good, none are what we are after IMHO. A custom web-based admin UI might be something we have to write custom for the XS (*rolls up sleeves*). I am hope we can discuss and sketch some plans for this in the coming days... I've slowly added scripts automating most of the configuration for small systems. We are really close to providing a file either on disk or on USB which configures the system --- it is a trivial programming task once the user experience and configuration info have been agreed upon. Cool - I'll be looking into those... Larger systems (NYC, Birmingham) are a different story, as their network configuration is radically different. We will probably fork builds to handle their case, or move to just supporting service packages. Can we encapsulate local config in a local rpm package with fancy post-inst scripts? cheers, martin ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
