Re: Browse.xo performance resolution - Hulahop 200dpi vs Browse 134dpi
Martin Langhoff writes: The short version of it is that canvas (and image rendering in general) is hurting lots due to the dpi being hardcoded to 134 which forces Gecko into image scaling games. Just setting layout.css.dpi to 96 makes Browse much snappier in general, and incredibly faster in canvas painting. This was discovered when scaling was first enabled. One could write a special-case scaler for that DPI, avoiding the more generic scaling code. The XO also suffers from 5:6:5 pixel layout, which requires lots of bit shifting. It also makes pages unreadably small though. It's not just the size. The XO screen purposely smears the pixels to reduce color fringing. Questions: - I am intrigued, hulahop sources say it's hardcoded to 200dpi (and that jives with our screen) - why does it end up being 134? Should it be 200dpi? 134 puts 860x645 web pixels on the screen. We do this partly because it is enough pixels for most modern web pages, and partly because of a persistant myth that the XO screen resolution is equal to 800x600. In other words, it's an arbitrary number with feeble justification. There are at least two reasonable ways to deal with this problem. The first way is to use the hardware scaling. This involves telling the X server to change screen resolution. Sugar would need to manage this on a per-activity basis, with adjustments to the frame as needed. Besides elimination of scaling, the browser would move fewer pixels and need less memory. It'd be amazing for performance. A downside is that text would be less sharp, both from the scaler operation and more directly from having fewer pixels. The second way is to choose a scaling factor that is easy to optimize, and then do so. Easy would be 128 (3:4 ratio, 900x645 web pixels) or 144 (2:3 ratio, 800x600 web pixels). You could optimize both, along with 192 (1:2 ratio, 600x450 web pixels), and let users get a choice. Unscaled can be an option too. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Saturday 16 May 2009 01:47:49 am Chris Ball wrote: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) I would like to put in a word for KDE desktop given our long term mission, focus on kids' education, and need for small form-factor machines. My intention is not to trigger a Gnome-vs-KDE war. I help many remote rural schools in my locality work with computers and my choice of KDE was purely pragmatic. E.g. - KDE has a much wider target than Gnome including an interest group for K-12 education (see edu.kde.org). Why not work together? - KDE is highly customizable by users (no programming required). It is easy for teachers to use a restrictive profiles (themes) for young children and liberal profiles for elder children. - Sugar can be run as a container Plasmoid (see http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Vocabulary). There is no need to switch desktop sessions. Zooming and resolution independence are two bonuses. - Qt (basic toolkit for KDE) is multiplatform and is available even on mobile form factors. It already comes with support for SVG, OpenGL, multilingual support that can help keep suites like Sugar small and clean. - KDE needs lesser RAM leaving more room for apps. All our systems run on 1.6GHz/256MB RAM. Low base RAM becomes important for swapless systems. If the decision has already been locked down, please ignore this mail. Subbu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
Am Freitag, den 15.05.2009, 16:17 -0400 schrieb Chris Ball: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? After Subbu threw his head into the ring for KDE I'd like to do the same for Xfce. * First of all both Gnome and KDE are horribly slow on the XO, Xfce on the other hand is much more lightweight and therefore runs much better. * Xfce already runs on the XO and it's well documented in the OLPC wiki. * Xfce uses much less disk space. For example, with Fedora's base-x group installed the normal Xfce groupinstall will only take ~22 MB while Gnome is ~ 180MB. * Xfce has a kiosk mode to lock down certain desktop settings. This might become very useful. * Xfce has far less strings to translate than other desktop environments. Also they use transifex for translations, which enables many people participate in localization. Transifex also has a cli, so people in countries with slow internet connection don't need to run the full blown web interface. * Xfce uses gtk2, so it fits well with Sugar and killer apps like Firefox, OOo or Gimp. * Xfce 4.6 has a nice release schedule. I have to admit they are not always on time, but it's predictable and won't cause us so much work so we can focus on other things * Xfce has a short dependency chain, so the sugar users don't need to carry a big stack of libs they don't use anyway. Ok, I'll stop here. I'm sure I missed some arguments and I'm also aware of the fact that Xfce may have downsides compared to Gnome or KDE, but I think it's at least worth giving it a try. I'd like to invite all of you to try Xfce 4.6.1 in Fedora 11. Kind regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. The good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use with a simple yum command. I suspect the reason for the choice of gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also components of gnome. Some of these include empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams. Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:05 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. I have to admit that face to face conversations are often more productive than mailing lists, but the downside is that decisions are harder to comprehend. The good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use with a simple yum command. I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space left to install anything else. I suspect the reason for the choice of gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also components of gnome. Some of these include empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams. Same goes for Xfce. gstreamer for example is not a Gnome thing. It started that way but the gstreamer devs always point out that it's a generic framework. Abiword or gnumeric are not really Gnome ether, they only use some Gnome libs but don't need a Gnome desktop. So if this really was the line of thought, IMHO it's a little weak. Peter Regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. I have to admit that face to face conversations are often more productive than mailing lists, but the downside is that decisions are harder to comprehend. The good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use with a simple yum command. I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space left to install anything else. I suspect the reason for the choice of gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also components of gnome. Some of these include empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams. Same goes for Xfce. gstreamer for example is not a Gnome thing. It started that way but the gstreamer devs always point out that it's a generic framework. Abiword or gnumeric are not really Gnome ether, they only use some Gnome libs but don't need a Gnome desktop. So if this really was the line of thought, IMHO it's a little weak. I wasn't part of the discussions, nor am I interested in a flame war about the pros and cons of the various desktop environments. I'm also well aware that gstreamer is a generic framework. I have no idea what media framework XFCE uses, I know KDE doesn't use gstreamer which in the KDE case would require having 2 multimedia frameworks installed. Same goes for a word processing package etc etc. My point wasn't whether any of the packages were GNOME or not my point was that both Sugar and GNOME share a number of underlying components such as gstreamer/glib/gtk etc which means its easier to support the two platforms by not needing the time to ship/QA/deal with bugs going forward multiple underlying frameworks and libraries. But again I make the point I'm not part of the discussions of the choice, but was merely making an observation as to what might have been one of the factors of making the choice. Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert christoph.wick...@googlemail.com wrote: Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being discussed/decided here. BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in public forums. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 08:48 -0400 schrieb Walter Bender: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert christoph.wick...@googlemail.com wrote: Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being discussed/decided here. So where then? What mailing lists? What OLPC-driven process? This all sounds mysterious to me. BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in public forums. Great, but I still don't know where these forums are and how I can follow the process of decision-making. -walter Regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
I'll ask Adam, the OLPC employee who is at the meeting. He may know. -walter On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Christoph Wickert christoph.wick...@googlemail.com wrote: Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 08:48 -0400 schrieb Walter Bender: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert christoph.wick...@googlemail.com wrote: Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. If you say OLPC has decided I wonder who exactly made this decision and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever? I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being discussed/decided here. So where then? What mailing lists? What OLPC-driven process? This all sounds mysterious to me. BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in public forums. Great, but I still don't know where these forums are and how I can follow the process of decision-making. -walter Regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Christoph Wickert christoph.wick...@googlemail.com wrote: I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space left to install anything else. The DebXO Gnome install size is ~ 1.5 GB, which would leave 2.5 GB or ~ 60% free disk space. (Remember this whole discussion is about the XO 1.5) bp ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO id transfer to SD OS install
I would like to upgrade my XO to boot from an SD install of the OS. Is there a way to transfer the identity information from the original install to the SD boot so that: (1) XO colors are the same (2) Nickname is the same (3) Friends are the same (4) It stays Friends with other XOs transparently I've been using a different name, hand setting the colors and name and re-friending every time I upgrade. It is a pain for me. For other XO users, I would like to give them the upgrade in capability transparently. Thanks, Chris ...XO support for my family/friends... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Chris Ball wrote: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) I'm particularly happy about this plan because it will allow us to catch up with the awesome work present in the Sugar community's most recent release, Sugar 0.84, as well as merging the latest Fedora work and including GNOME into the mix for the first time. The new machines will have 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash, so we have enough room for both environments at once. This raises an interesting question: should we still be using a compressed filesystem? On the XO-1, an uncompressed FS was essentially not an option. There would be almost no space left for users' files after the uncompressed system files. Unfortunately, this causes tremendous slowdowns all over the system, as it causes reads from flash to (a) be CPU-limited, and (b) compete with the rest of the system for CPU time. Writes are even worse. On the 1.5, we will have more space (so less need for compression), but more system files, and also more CPU to handle it. I think we should remember to test the final images both with and without compression. Of course, this equation gets still more complicated depending on whether we have MTD or FTL flash. Choosing a filesystem will be an interesting exercise. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoO7LkACgkQUJT6e6HFtqTH/QCfYUitcwLq8bTF2E1g+rbwyfa8 t1sAoIcQ0FXXm16GlFriJ1A2n+Bv4Fe1 =v9fu -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
-- Forwarded message -- From: Tiago Marques tiago...@gmail.com Date: Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:18 PM Subject: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan. To: b...@alum.mit.edu On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Chris Ball wrote: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) I'm particularly happy about this plan because it will allow us to catch up with the awesome work present in the Sugar community's most recent release, Sugar 0.84, as well as merging the latest Fedora work and including GNOME into the mix for the first time. The new machines will have 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash, so we have enough room for both environments at once. Hi, Where does rainbow and bitfrost come in all of this? This raises an interesting question: should we still be using a compressed filesystem? On the XO-1, an uncompressed FS was essentially not an option. There would be almost no space left for users' files after the uncompressed system files. Unfortunately, this causes tremendous slowdowns all over the system, as it causes reads from flash to (a) be CPU-limited, and (b) compete with the rest of the system for CPU time. Writes are even worse. On the 1.5, we will have more space (so less need for compression), but more system files, and also more CPU to handle it. I think we should remember to test the final images both with and without compression. The 1GHz C7 is still a slow cpu, as it seems from reviews of similar netbooks: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4352 For most tasks it is slower than an 600MHz Celeron M and that's not exactly fast. Does anyone more familiar with the hardware have any idea of how fast it is when compared to the Geode? Of course, this equation gets still more complicated depending on whether we have MTD or FTL flash. Choosing a filesystem will be an interesting exercise. Is MTD still up for discussion? Wasn't it going to be FTL? Best regards, Tiago Marques - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoO7LkACgkQUJT6e6HFtqTH/QCfYUitcwLq8bTF2E1g+rbwyfa8 t1sAoIcQ0FXXm16GlFriJ1A2n+Bv4Fe1 =v9fu -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) We shall see at what age it becomes practical to introduce children to Gnome. I'm looking forward to the experiment. I'm particularly happy about this plan because it will allow us to catch up with the awesome work present in the Sugar community's most recent release, Sugar 0.84, as well as merging the latest Fedora work and including GNOME into the mix for the first time. The new machines will have 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash, so we have enough room for both environments at once. We think we'll need to use our own kernel and initrd, but the other base packages we expect to need are present in Fedora already, including Sugar; in fact, we already have an F11+Sugar+GNOME build for the XO-1 using pure Fedora packages. That build will get better as a result of this work (although OLPC's focus will be on getting the XO-1.5 running) and it will form the basis for the XO-1.5 build. If you're interested in contributing, we'd certainly love your help, and you can find us on the fedora-olpc mailing list¹, and freenode IRC's #fedora-olpc channel. Our existing F11 build images for the XO-1 are here², and we'll soon begin publishing images for the XO-1.5 too. XO-1.5 beta machines will start to be manufactured over the next few months, and will be available to contributors as part of our Contributors Program³ once the hardware's up and running. In the meantime, are there instructions anywhere for setting up these builds in VirtualBox? Finally, thanks are due to the volunteer Fedora packagers and testers who helped us get to the point of being able to commit to Fedora 11 for this new build, in particular: Fabian Affolter, Kushal Das, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Martin Dengler, Scott Douglass, Sebastian Dziallas, Mikus Grinbergs, Bryan Kearney, Gary C. Martin, Steven M. Parrish, and Peter Robinson. Thanks! +1 - Chris, for the OLPC techteam. ¹: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list ²: http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/ ³: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
The 1GHz C7 is still a slow cpu, as it seems from reviews of similar netbooks: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4352 For most tasks it is slower than an 600MHz Celeron M and that's not exactly fast. Does anyone more familiar with the hardware have any idea of how fast it is when compared to the Geode? From my measurements of the Geode and the very limited documentation of the C7 I can speculate that the integer unit can have similar speed to the Geode clock-by-clock (but can have a better branch predictor and faster movsb/movsd implementation) and probably the floating point unit is better integrated so floating point code does not block the integer unit like on the Geode. So if we do not consider the 3d unit or the probably better flash hardware (scatter-gather support) it will have exactly the same speed on similar clock speeds but of course it can go more than 2x faster. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
If you're interested in contributing, we'd certainly love your help, and you can find us on the fedora-olpc mailing list¹, and freenode IRC's #fedora-olpc channel. Our existing F11 build images for the XO-1 are here², and we'll soon begin publishing images for the XO-1.5 too. XO-1.5 beta machines will start to be manufactured over the next few months, and will be available to contributors as part of our Contributors Program³ once the hardware's up and running. In the meantime, are there instructions anywhere for setting up these builds in VirtualBox? probably the best place to start is the sugar on a stick liveCD or Chris's rawhide-xo builds. In a week or so (May 25th from memory) Fedora 11 will be out and an install of that with the gnome and sugar desktops installed will be a good start. Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
Please, always use reply-all. Answers inlined where I have an answer. Tiago Marques wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:42 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu mailto:noise...@freemail.hu wrote: The 1GHz C7 is still a slow cpu, as it seems from reviews of similar netbooks: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4352 For most tasks it is slower than an 600MHz Celeron M and that's not exactly fast. Does anyone more familiar with the hardware have any idea of how fast it is when compared to the Geode? From my measurements of the Geode and the very limited documentation of the C7 I can speculate that the integer unit can have similar speed to the Geode clock-by-clock (but can have a better branch predictor and faster movsb/movsd implementation) and probably the floating point unit is better integrated so floating point code does not block the integer unit like on the Geode. So if we do not consider the 3d unit or the probably better flash hardware (scatter-gather support) it will have exactly the same speed on similar clock speeds but of course it can go more than 2x faster. And the memory should also help, it should be enough. But still, IMHO Xfce would still be a better fit, especially since these laptops go to places where things being snappy is almost a requirement. I do not think that the memory speed is a bottleneck on the XO-1. The problem is that the Geode is an in-order processor and an uncached memory read block the processor for 25 clocks. It will be the same on the C7 unless it has a Core2 Duo category speculative memory prefetcher but of course I doubt it... BTW the faster memory will not hurt either. What about random write performance of the flash memory this time? That will be a show stopper if it's below at least 0.5MB/s. But that would be hard without cache for the flash. The 0.5 MB/s came mostly from the zlib compression code. With LZO the Geode could compress 10MB/sec so it would have been a big help in write performance but the conclusion from most of the developers was that the biggest win would be having per inode compression setting (like not compressing zip and jpeg files) but of course nothing was implemented. BTW I have a half-made asm zlib decompressor what I have left rotting since it became impossible to debug (hallowed are gcc developers and the holy UNIX command piping, gcc generates 1 line of debug info for a whole asm block). I have another half-made asm decompressor for LZO but it seems that the creator of LZO f***ed up the code and it has unused opcodes so I tried to actually document the LZO compressor but my efforts stalled since kernel developers were fired from OLPC (I will not integrate such code to the kernel that is sure). The conclusion is that if the XO 1.5 will use a normal filesystem then compression will not be supported so flash write speed will not be a bottleneck. As for Gnome/Xfce/KDE, whatever, how are you considering that older students guess where F1-12 are? Are any changes planned for the keyboard stamping to accommodate this change in direction or are you taking that as part of the learning process? I do not know so reposted to devel. Best regards, Tiago Marques ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote: If you're interested in contributing, we'd certainly love your help, and you can find us on the fedora-olpc mailing list¹, and freenode IRC's #fedora-olpc channel. Our existing F11 build images for the XO-1 are here², and we'll soon begin publishing images for the XO-1.5 too. XO-1.5 beta machines will start to be manufactured over the next few months, and will be available to contributors as part of our Contributors Program³ once the hardware's up and running. In the meantime, are there instructions anywhere for setting up these builds in VirtualBox? probably the best place to start is the sugar on a stick liveCD or Chris's rawhide-xo builds. In a week or so (May 25th from memory) Fedora 11 will be out and an install of that with the gnome and sugar desktops installed will be a good start. Peter On checking further at http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/, I saw the instructions for qemu, sudo qemu-kvm -cdrom 20090217.iso so I can start in VirtualBox in the same way. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
Tks, I keep forgetting that OLPC-Devel doesn't have the list as the default reply-to. On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:35 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu wrote: Please, always use reply-all. Answers inlined where I have an answer. Tiago Marques wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:42 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu wrote: The 1GHz C7 is still a slow cpu, as it seems from reviews of similar netbooks: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4352 For most tasks it is slower than an 600MHz Celeron M and that's not exactly fast. Does anyone more familiar with the hardware have any idea of how fast it is when compared to the Geode? From my measurements of the Geode and the very limited documentation of the C7 I can speculate that the integer unit can have similar speed to the Geode clock-by-clock (but can have a better branch predictor and faster movsb/movsd implementation) and probably the floating point unit is better integrated so floating point code does not block the integer unit like on the Geode. So if we do not consider the 3d unit or the probably better flash hardware (scatter-gather support) it will have exactly the same speed on similar clock speeds but of course it can go more than 2x faster. And the memory should also help, it should be enough. But still, IMHO Xfce would still be a better fit, especially since these laptops go to places where things being snappy is almost a requirement. I do not think that the memory speed is a bottleneck on the XO-1. The problem is that the Geode is an in-order processor and an uncached memory read block the processor for 25 clocks. It will be the same on the C7 unless it has a Core2 Duo category speculative memory prefetcher but of course I doubt it... BTW the faster memory will not hurt either. Sorry, should have explained myself better, as I was also talking about memory speed and not size, this time. What about random write performance of the flash memory this time? That will be a show stopper if it's below at least 0.5MB/s. But that would be hard without cache for the flash. The 0.5 MB/s came mostly from the zlib compression code. With LZO the Geode could compress 10MB/sec so it would have been a big help in write performance but the conclusion from most of the developers was that the biggest win would be having per inode compression setting (like not compressing zip and jpeg files) but of course nothing was implemented. BTW I have a half-made asm zlib decompressor what I have left rotting since it became impossible to debug (hallowed are gcc developers and the holy UNIX command piping, gcc generates 1 line of debug info for a whole asm block). I have another half-made asm decompressor for LZO but it seems that the creator of LZO f***ed up the code and it has unused opcodes so I tried to actually document the LZO compressor but my efforts stalled since kernel developers were fired from OLPC (I will not integrate such code to the kernel that is sure). The conclusion is that if the XO 1.5 will use a normal filesystem then compression will not be supported so flash write speed will not be a bottleneck. Thing is, most flash controller implementations are crap, and it will probably be the case with the one in Gen 1.5. I'm quoting 0.5MB/s in *random writes* to the file system, nothing to do with compression. Most decent SSDs can write at last 1MB/s with some topping 2MB/s, in random patterns, sequential is about 150MB/s+. Sequential is not the problem when using SD cards or most USB drives, random writes is, when you're trying to have an OS on it. The best drives around, from Intel, can do 20+MB/s in random writes. Most SSDs on the market are based on J-Micron controllers that can do, at most, 0.04MB/s in random writes. This causes the system to frequently stall when some app is performing heavy writes to arbitrary locations. Random reads are mostly very fast with every type of flash you can get. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531p=25 0.5MB/s in RR should be enough to avoid most stalls. Best regards As for Gnome/Xfce/KDE, whatever, how are you considering that older students guess where F1-12 are? Are any changes planned for the keyboard stamping to accommodate this change in direction or are you taking that as part of the learning process? I do not know so reposted to devel. Best regards, Tiago Marques ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
Sorry, should have explained myself better, as I was also talking about memory speed and not size, this time. Ahh, if you wrote about memory size then never mind my comments. :) Thing is, most flash controller implementations are crap, and it will probably be the case with the one in Gen 1.5. I'm quoting 0.5MB/s in *random writes* to the file system, nothing to do with compression. Most decent SSDs can write at last 1MB/s with some topping 2MB/s, in random patterns, sequential is about 150MB/s+. Sequential is not the problem when using SD cards or most USB drives, random writes is, when you're trying to have an OS on it. The best drives around, from Intel, can do 20+MB/s in random writes. Most SSDs on the market are based on J-Micron controllers that can do, at most, 0.04MB/s in random writes. This causes the system to frequently stall when some app is performing heavy writes to arbitrary locations. Random reads are mostly very fast with every type of flash you can get. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531p=25 http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531p=25 0.5MB/s in RR should be enough to avoid most stalls. I hope that Mich Bradley will educate us but it seems to me that the hidden eraseblock handling can be the problem with those devices (and if it is true then compression will not help it either). It seems to be that some tests are required with physical hardware, a paper processor will not be enough... :) Are there any plans using UBIFS? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO id transfer to SD OS install
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Chris Marshall jns-cmarsh...@comcast.net wrote: I would like to upgrade my XO to boot from an SD install of the OS. Is there a way to transfer the identity information from the original install to the SD boot so that: (1) XO colors are the same (2) Nickname is the same (3) Friends are the same (4) It stays Friends with other XOs transparently I've been using a different name, hand setting the colors and name and re-friending every time I upgrade. It is a pain for me. For other XO users, I would like to give them the upgrade in capability transparently. You should be able to copy the /home/olpc folder to an SD card or USB stick. I believe everything you need is actually in /home/olpc/.sugar , so just recursively copy (cp -r) that folder into your new home folder, and it should retain all your identity info. I don't know if you will run into datastore issues upgrading to a newer version of sugar (a Sugar dev would know better), so you might want to keep a backup copy around. bobby ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
Hi Ben, Of course, this equation gets still more complicated depending on whether we have MTD or FTL flash. Choosing a filesystem will be an interesting exercise. I think it's clear that we'll be using an FTL of some kind. (Which kind in particular will depend on more testing with the new A-Test board.) So, as a strawman, I'll suggest uncompressed ext2. Depending on the FTL, something else may be more reasonable instead. - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:14 PM, NoiseEHC noise...@freemail.hu wrote: Sorry, should have explained myself better, as I was also talking about memory speed and not size, this time. Ahh, if you wrote about memory size then never mind my comments. :) Thing is, most flash controller implementations are crap, and it will probably be the case with the one in Gen 1.5. I'm quoting 0.5MB/s in *random writes* to the file system, nothing to do with compression. Most decent SSDs can write at last 1MB/s with some topping 2MB/s, in random patterns, sequential is about 150MB/s+. Sequential is not the problem when using SD cards or most USB drives, random writes is, when you're trying to have an OS on it. The best drives around, from Intel, can do 20+MB/s in random writes. Most SSDs on the market are based on J-Micron controllers that can do, at most, 0.04MB/s in random writes. This causes the system to frequently stall when some app is performing heavy writes to arbitrary locations. Random reads are mostly very fast with every type of flash you can get. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531p=25 0.5MB/s in RR should be enough to avoid most stalls. I hope that Mich Bradley will educate us but it seems to me that the hidden eraseblock handling can be the problem with those devices (and if it is true then compression will not help it either). It seems to be that some tests are required with physical hardware, a paper processor will not be enough... :) True, I just thought it was a good idea to point this out before any decisions are made, especially when most Flash vendors completely disregard random write performance. Best regards Are there any plans using UBIFS? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Ben, Of course, this equation gets still more complicated depending on whether we have MTD or FTL flash. Choosing a filesystem will be an interesting exercise. I think it's clear that we'll be using an FTL of some kind. (Which kind in particular will depend on more testing with the new A-Test board.) So, as a strawman, I'll suggest uncompressed ext2. Depending on the FTL, something else may be more reasonable instead. This is what I've been using on SD cards, USB drives, etc, with some success. Seems stable enough, while helping out with wear. Ext3 might be used with some tweaks: http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/01/ssds-journaling-and-noatimerelatime/ From my experience XFS is more efficient for filesystems of only 4GB but would completely wear out flash a lot faster. Depending on the number of files you have, you may run out of inodes or space with ext2/3, while XFS, for instance, can make a better use of each block and dynamically allocate inodes. I had a particular Gentoo install of about 2.8GB that couldn't fit in a 4GB USB drive with ext3 due to the number of files used (especially due to portage, lack of inodes IIRC). XFS saved me about 300-400MB of space and managed to fit everything there. It was slower as it was constantly optimizing the usage of blocks and was unusable on this particular drive due to the low random writes. Had to switch to an 8GB device with ext2, which was at least an order of magnitude faster. I have no idea if ext4 or something else are a better fit for this kind of applications. My current XO is running a Gentoo install with portage read-only as a squashfs image, which takes up only 40MB, easily fitting the install in the 4GB SD card with ext2. No problems until now, haven't noticed any corruption although it does get rather slow when it needs to write many files at once. Best regards, Tiago Marques - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.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: [Sugar-devel] Browse.xo performance resolution - Hulahop 200dpi vs Browse 134dpi
This is very interesting, similar to the problem Qt used to have on Maemo. I was always surprised by report of canvas being slow on the XO, it's probably the fastest and the lowest overhead drawing technology available to JavaScript. 2009/5/15 Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: - I am intrigued, hulahop sources say it's hardcoded to 200dpi (and that jives with our screen) - why does it end up being 134? Should it be 200dpi? Would that hit the fast paths properly? (Mihai: does 200dpi make it better?) At least that part of the mystery is solved -- hulahop checks whether dpi == 200dpi, and in that case... sets the dpi to 134. See _get_layout_dpi here: http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/hulahop/diff/python/__init__.py?id=32a18dfc6da97801673dd0bf7424350489694ca0 Marco, do you remember where the magic 134 came from? Still chasing up why canvas rendering goes through the floor @ 134... 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 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Browse.xo performance resolution - Hulahop 200dpi vs Browse 134dpi
Qt on Maemo's problem was similar, but not quite the same. http://ariya.blogspot.com/2008/08/qt-44-and-maemo.html Qt used 32bit colors internally, but Maemo could only output 16bit. So Qt was forced to convert between the two all the time. The solution was to allow Qt to use 16bit internally, which was done for Qt 4.5 It is possible that Gecko has some options to allow it to draw fast at various DPI settings. Maybe we should ask the mozilla folk? 2009/5/15 Mihai Sucan mihai.su...@gmail.com: Le Fri, 15 May 2009 15:26:42 +0300, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.com a écrit: This is very interesting, similar to the problem Qt used to have on Maemo. I was always surprised by report of canvas being slow on the XO, it's probably the fastest and the lowest overhead drawing technology available to JavaScript. It's true it's the fastest and the lowest overhead drawing technology available to JavaScript - which is really the reason I picked it for the development of the paint tool. I wouldn't agree with the idea of Canvas being actually (too) slow on the XO, nor on desktops. Once I changed the DPI to 96 on the XO, I was rather amazed / very pleased by the performance of the drawing tool. It's almost as fast as on the desktop. Surely, the Canvas drawing performance should be something we all desire to improve, constantly. ;) Yet, it looks like the main performance hit on the XO comes from the DPI setting. The bilinear rescaling of the Canvas element being performed by Gecko slows things very much. We need to work around this issue somehow. Would the experience of making Qt faster on Maemo provide us with anything of use in this case? (it seems to me it's unlikely, but ... it never hurts to ask) -- Mihai Sucan http://www.robodesign.ro ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] ARM based XS ?
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:09 AM, rihowa...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like the Marvell OpenRd Client is finally shipping. http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-21-openrd-client.aspx I know Fedora now has a ARM branch. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARMHow difficult would it to be to spin an XS build for ARM? Depending on your answer I may order a Marvell OpenRd Client to experiment with. Hmmm! Merits some research - Does Fedora run well on it? Support it formally? - Does Fedora 9 support it? If the answer to the questions above is yes, then there are 2 packages you'll want to recompile. Get the ARM machine, install a vanilla F9 on it, rebuild the srpms, and then we can build the installer :-) 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
Re: [Server-devel] admin on moodle
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:04 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: I am able to get a XO to register and become a student. It logs in seamlessly. Who gets to be admin on the moodle instance on XS? You're not telling us what XS you're using :-) The _first_ user to (register and then...) login to moodle successfully gets to be a 'coursecreator'. This gives them access to some admin rights. The 'coursecreator' role means they can also assign other coursecreators :-) The name is misleading -- coursecreator is a premade role in moodle. Think about it as school staff. On XS-0.5.x - the support for this is incomplete. On the development Moodle (in olpcxs-testing repo) this works almost correctly, and I was looking yesterday at how to finish the remaining bits. At this stage, you still need to login as the real 'admin' account, so cat /etc/moodle/adminpw to find the password. 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
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
Hello Gerald, It'd be useful to hear more about - what XS version - network topology - what exact problems you are having it's hard to provide advise. I'll try however. In general, you should not change the dhcpd configuration on the XS. Give the XS 2 NICs, and let it run its own subnet. hope that helps - but do give us some more info! martin On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I need some help. I have been trying to get my XS Server running for some months now with little success. Recently, in order to alleviate some problems, our school's network guy established a new VLAN only for the XOs. The VLAN points to my server box as the DHCP server. Here's what I think I need to do: 1. Edit the DHCP config file for: 1) IP address; 2) subnet mask; 3) and IP range 2. Edit the resolv.config file to point our schoolserver to the IP address set above 3. Start the dhcpd service. Here are my questions: 1) is that right? 2) is there anything else I need to do to configure the DNS and DHCP services? Thanks. I really need to get this running! Gerald ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- 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
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
Martin, Thanks for the help. I am running version 0.5.2 (the latest stable version). The network looks like this: XOs connect to an AP AP points to server box Server box connected to VLAN The problems I am having: 1) I was told by my network guy to set the box for a static IP address and default gateway. I do this via ifconfig, but when I reboot, it is gone. 2) I was told by my network guy to configure DHCP for a bunch of parameters (subnet mask, IP range). I have references about dhcpd.conf but I was worried it was created by one of the olpc-scripts. 3) So, since the server is not set properly, the XOs can't connect to that newly created wireless network. The old problems I was having: 1) When we were all on the school's regular network, the XOs could ping the server and vice versa. But the Register function didn't work. I don't know if this is still a problem because I can't get the new chunk of things to work. Does this give you what you need? Is it possible to Skype sometime? My Skype username is gmanb5. Thanks. Gerald On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 5:45 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: Hello Gerald, It'd be useful to hear more about - what XS version - network topology - what exact problems you are having it's hard to provide advise. I'll try however. In general, you should not change the dhcpd configuration on the XS. Give the XS 2 NICs, and let it run its own subnet. hope that helps - but do give us some more info! martin On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I need some help. I have been trying to get my XS Server running for some months now with little success. Recently, in order to alleviate some problems, our school's network guy established a new VLAN only for the XOs. The VLAN points to my server box as the DHCP server. Here's what I think I need to do: 1. Edit the DHCP config file for: 1) IP address; 2) subnet mask; 3) and IP range 2. Edit the resolv.config file to point our schoolserver to the IP address set above 3. Start the dhcpd service. Here are my questions: 1) is that right? 2) is there anything else I need to do to configure the DNS and DHCP services? Thanks. I really need to get this running! Gerald ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- 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
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: I am running version 0.5.2 (the latest stable version). Good! The network looks like this: XOs connect to an AP AP points to server box Server box connected to VLAN Good. The problems I am having: 1) I was told by my network guy to set the box for a static IP address and default gateway. I do this via ifconfig, but when I reboot, it is gone. To make those settings stick, put them in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0-local -- see /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 for hints... 2) I was told by my network guy to configure DHCP for a bunch of parameters (subnet mask, IP range). I have references about dhcpd.conf but I was worried it was created by one of the olpc-scripts. Hmmm, not recommended. The XS runs its own network and there are several bits of magic there :-/ 3) So, since the server is not set properly, the XOs can't connect to that newly created wireless network. I don't understand this bit. What is not working? Did you run all the installation steps? All the 'domain_config' stuff, and the ejabberd configuration are required steps... The old problems I was having: 1) When we were all on the school's regular network, the XOs could ping the server and vice versa. But the Register function didn't work. I don't know if this is still a problem because I can't get the new chunk of things to work. Probably related to - not doing the domain_config stuff - changing the dhcpd settings Does this give you what you need? Is it possible to Skype sometime? My Skype username is gmanb5. Better to do it via the list -- others can help (not just me), and it'll help others in the future (the archives are searchable, etc) :-) 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
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: So, how do I make the server work as the DHCP server? the XS will act as DHCP server once domain_config and /etc/sysconfig/network have been set properly. Look at the initial configuration section in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software cheers, martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
Martin, I will look at the configuration section as you suggest. I have been using it. Are you saying that without doing anything else (like editing dhcpd.conf), the server will act as the DHCP server? Or do I still need to edit that file? Also, do I need 2 NICs. My network guy says no. That if I set the default gateway properly, all will be well. What do you think? Thanks again. Gerald On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: So, how do I make the server work as the DHCP server? the XS will act as DHCP server once domain_config and /etc/sysconfig/network have been set properly. Look at the initial configuration section in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software cheers, martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] admin on moodle
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:04 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: I am able to get a XO to register and become a student. It logs in seamlessly. Who gets to be admin on the moodle instance on XS? You're not telling us what XS you're using :-) XS-0.5.2, yum updated (not olpcxs-testing repo) The _first_ user to (register and then...) login to moodle successfully gets to be a 'coursecreator'. This gives them access to some admin rights. The 'coursecreator' role means they can also assign other coursecreators :-) The name is misleading -- coursecreator is a premade role in moodle. Think about it as school staff. On XS-0.5.x - the support for this is incomplete. On the development Moodle (in olpcxs-testing repo) this works almost correctly, and I was looking yesterday at how to finish the remaining bits. At this stage, you still need to login as the real 'admin' account, so cat /etc/moodle/adminpw to find the password. That helps. I was going to take one of my courses from Moodle 1.9x at SF State and restore it on the schoolserver to see how it plays out. Thanks, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: I will look at the configuration section as you suggest. I have been using it. Are you saying that without doing anything else (like editing dhcpd.conf), the server will act as the DHCP server? Or do I still need to edit that file? Editing that file is not in my instructions in the wikipage... so... no, no editing dhcp config ;-) Also, do I need 2 NICs. My network guy says no. That if I set the default gateway properly, all will be well. What do you think? You need 2 NICs to run a standard XS setup. 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
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
Hi Gerald, To expand a bit on what Martin wrote, the XS sits between the XOs and the world (rest of the network). You haven't said how the XS and AP connect to each other, but I'm assuming it is via ethernet, that is the AP is not directly attached via USB. If that is the case the XS needs two ethernet cards, one for the AP and XOs, and another for the world. In all likelihood these would attach to different VLANs. I have fiddled with manually configuring ethernet on the XS and have wasted a lot of time. If I were in your situation, I would simply reinstall the latest version of XS, especially since it is suited to your architecture and you probably don't have anything at this point that you need to preserve. Ask your network guy for a static IP address and addresses of the DNS server and gateway for the world. During the install use these values to set up eth0. Attach this ethernet port to the VLAN that includes external access (not the XOs and AP). XS install will set up eth1 with the proper IP address along with DHCP, DNS, Gateway for the XOs. Attach this ethernet port to the special VLAN created for XOs and attach the AP to the same VLAN. If the AP has a static IP address it needs to be in the subnet of eth1 and not in the range of DHCP address supplied by the XS, though letting the AP get its IP address via DHCP from the XS may also work. Eth1 addresses will probably start 172.18. It is also possible that what you think are eth0 and eth1 are reversed by the install and there is a command to switch them, but a little experimenting will also reveal what's what. My guess is that you had the XOs in the same VLAN as the XS's external port before, which is why ping worked, but nothing else. Hope this helps, Tim Message: 8 Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 06:10:07 -0400 From: Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please To: Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com Cc: Server-devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: 9403b1570905160310w678cae38w958bbdadfe634...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Martin, Thanks for the help. I am running version 0.5.2 (the latest stable version). The network looks like this: XOs connect to an AP AP points to server box Server box connected to VLAN The problems I am having: 1) I was told by my network guy to set the box for a static IP address and default gateway. I do this via ifconfig, but when I reboot, it is gone. 2) I was told by my network guy to configure DHCP for a bunch of parameters (subnet mask, IP range). I have references about dhcpd.conf but I was worried it was created by one of the olpc-scripts. 3) So, since the server is not set properly, the XOs can't connect to that newly created wireless network. The old problems I was having: 1) When we were all on the school's regular network, the XOs could ping the server and vice versa. But the Register function didn't work. I don't know if this is still a problem because I can't get the new chunk of things to work. Does this give you what you need? Is it possible to Skype sometime? My Skype username is gmanb5. Thanks. Gerald On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 5:45 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: Hello Gerald, It'd be useful to hear more about - what XS version - network topology - what exact problems you are having it's hard to provide advise. I'll try however. In general, you should not change the dhcpd configuration on the XS. Give the XS 2 NICs, and let it run its own subnet. hope that helps - but do give us some more info! martin On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Hello. I need some help. I have been trying to get my XS Server running for some months now with little success. Recently, in order to alleviate some problems, our school's network guy established a new VLAN only for the XOs. The VLAN points to my server box as the DHCP server. Here's what I think I need to do: 1. Edit the DHCP config file for: 1) IP address; 2) subnet mask; 3) and IP range 2. Edit the resolv.config file to point our schoolserver to the IP address set above 3. Start the dhcpd service. Here are my questions: 1) is that right? 2) is there anything else I need to do to configure the DNS and DHCP services? Thanks. I really need to get this running! Gerald ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- 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 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/attachments/20090516/6ea6e1ba/attachment.htm
Re: [Server-devel] XS Help, please
...@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 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/attachments/20090516/6ea6e1ba/attachment.htm -- ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel End of Server-devel Digest, Vol 25, Issue 15 ___ 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: [Server-devel] ARM based XS ?
Martin, According to the http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM there is Fedora 8 and Fedora 10 port for ARM. The OpenRD comes with Fedora 8. I mentioned this at the OLPC-SF meeting this morning and we are adding it to our projects list. I have 1 or 2 people at the meeting volunteer to help me with this. As a result of the positive responses I am going to order the ARM machine to experiment with. I am not sure when the hardware will actually ship once I place the order. A shipping delay will give me time to read some of the documentation on building Fedora for ARM. What size hard drive do you recommend for the XS? thanks /Robert H On May 16, 2009, at 2:29 AM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:09 AM, rihowa...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like the Marvell OpenRd Client is finally shipping. http:// www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-21-openrd-client.aspx I know Fedora now has a ARM branch. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ Architectures/ARMHow difficult would it to be to spin an XS build for ARM? Depending on your answer I may order a Marvell OpenRd Client to experiment with. Hmmm! Merits some research - Does Fedora run well on it? Support it formally? - Does Fedora 9 support it? If the answer to the questions above is yes, then there are 2 packages you'll want to recompile. Get the ARM machine, install a vanilla F9 on it, rebuild the srpms, and then we can build the installer :-) 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
