Getting bored and answering some of my own email (I can't sleep)... On 17 Dec 2009, at 08:21, Gary C Martin wrote:
> Hi Wade, > > On 13 Dec 2009, at 22:23, Wade Brainerd wrote: > >> On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Gary C Martin <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Fab, thanks. Just given it a quick run though and it's booting fine here in >>> a VM on the Mac. Some quick notes (not aimed at you Wade, just of use to >>> other that may try this route): >>> >>> - Sound quality is more than a little crusty, but I think that is already a >>> known distro issue. >> >> I managed to fix it in my F11 VM by tweaking a config file. I'll see >> if the same fix applies to the VM. > > Cool, happy to give it a test here as well if you have any luck. > >>> - Default collaboration server is set to jabber.sugarlabs.org, but not sure >>> how maintained it is, or what version it is running. The neighbourhood >>> shows many buddies with identical colours to me, indicating something is >>> broken (your owner colours are used by default on icons that are not >>> getting the correct colour information). >> >> Is there a better server to use? I think we would just need to throw >> a gconf line in the kickstart file. > > FWIW: Lately I've just been blanking it out and testing locally via Salut, > the server has just been too unpredictable for me (sorry folks). > >>> - Without some VM hacking, VirtualBox displays Sugar in an 800x600 window. >>> The interface scales reasonably well, all things considered, but toolbars >>> often have missing widgets, or widgets in drop down overflow menus. Fonts >>> are also very large for an 800x600 view. >> >> Anyone know how to bake in the VirtualBox Guest Tools? Is there an >> RPM I can just add in? In my experience, they have to be compiled >> locally against whatever kernel you're running. > > No, I've always had to follow the VB documentation to compile them each time. > > However, I did stumble over a VirtualBox trick today I didn't think would > work (well it didn't quite, but...). If you hit F12 you can get to fiddle > with the kernel boot parameters, in my ignorance I tried adding vga=0x117 > hoping to get a 1024x768x16. It came back with an error about unknown video > mode, and then provided me an option to see a list of them to choose from. I > managed to boot it into a 1024x768x32 display (with no guest additions). It > booted all the way to X starting, at which point it switched itself back to > 800x600. So I'm guessing there is some other X setting, or some trick to tell > X to use the current resolution. On stopping Sugar the display resized back > up to 1024x768x32 just before closing, so pretty sure it's something X. I really don't know what I'm doing here, so this is likely not the right way, but after booting with the kernel parameters set to vga=0x345 for a 1280x1024 display (a choice close to the XO default of 1200x900), I then did: sudo Xorg -configure :1 cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf [there's no xorg.conf by default, and I couldn't fathom how else to get X to use a higher resolution] ...and rebooted. On subsequent boots (I'm still manually hitting F12 and adding a kernel vga parameter) Sugar now shows up in 1200x900, all without installing any VB guest additions :-) I'm fiddling with the ~/.Xresources dpi value to try and get the font size right for this resolution; I also needed to bump SUGAR_SCALING up from 72 to 100 so that the frames/widget layouts are a decent size (hacking /usr/bin/sugar just now as I can't find what is launching it forcing a "--scaling 72" value). Regards, --Gary > No idea how to add the vga without going through the 12 boot menu each time, > but I'm sure that's just my kernel parameter ignorance :-) > >>> So, it is usable and testable for Sugar geeks/hackers with Macs, but I'd >>> not recommend it for real use by children as is. >> >> Yeah, definitely. I'll keep working on it though and hopefully these >> issues can be resolved. > > FWIW, there's lots of VBoxManage Terminal commands that are installed on the > host operating system. I made a quick Applescript earlier this year to use > one of them to launch a named VM so that Mac folks just had a nice shiny > Sugar icon to click. Technically you could have an Applescript bundle > containing the Sugar VM; on double click the script could check if VB is > installed, then check if VB is already set-up with the image, and if not auto > configure VB using VBoxManage commands. If the script finds the VM already > set-up, or after the auto configure, it can simply start the guest VM. That > would give Mac users a single 'file' to download and run just like any other > application they use. The VM image would be inside the bundle, so they could > delete it or move it to their application folder (or where ever) as needed. > The only pre-requisit would be for them to download VirtualBox first (and we > could have a dialogue pointing them there, if it's missing). > > It would be a fair chunk of work and testing, but would be a reusable wrapper > that new VMs could be dropped in for each new release. Are there enough Mac > users to make this worth taking a shot at? > > Regards, > --Gary > > _______________________________________________ > SoaS mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas _______________________________________________ SoaS mailing list [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
