Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Am Freitag, 18. Januar 2013 07:05:54 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi Jason, No, I don't have an account. Yes, that would be reasonable from my side. Regards, Jan Maybe ask W. Stein directly about server access. I think it should be possible to get an account. Although I made the experience that download from the washington server is rather slow (I am in Europe). If you are thinking the image is ready for broader release then I suggest to change the download section of the sagemath.org page. Atm it is just Download:: Live CD. This could be Download:: Live CD/USB images. of course this would also need some additional work in documentation and a description of the various images. The image would be distributed over the sage mirrors, so you would have good download speed. You could email H. Schilly (webmaster) about it, or the most formal way would be to create a trac ticket about it. Alternative possibility is to put it on e.g. sourceforge (like the Nicolas with the sagedebianlive project). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi This is now http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13966 Could the author of each LiveCD/USB image send a one or two-line description of it? Of when it is appropriate? Size of image, Hardware Requirements (32/64 bit, resource requirements of desktop environment), languages, whether or not automatic updates if the installation is connected to a network. Regards, Jan On 18 January 2013 11:27, Emil Widmann emil.widm...@gmail.com wrote: Am Freitag, 18. Januar 2013 07:05:54 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi Jason, No, I don't have an account. Yes, that would be reasonable from my side. Regards, Jan Maybe ask W. Stein directly about server access. I think it should be possible to get an account. Although I made the experience that download from the washington server is rather slow (I am in Europe). If you are thinking the image is ready for broader release then I suggest to change the download section of the sagemath.org page. Atm it is just Download:: Live CD. This could be Download:: Live CD/USB images. of course this would also need some additional work in documentation and a description of the various images. The image would be distributed over the sage mirrors, so you would have good download speed. You could email H. Schilly (webmaster) about it, or the most formal way would be to create a trac ticket about it. Alternative possibility is to put it on e.g. sourceforge (like the Nicolas with the sagedebianlive project). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Am Freitag, 18. Januar 2013 10:54:39 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi This is now http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13966 Could the author of each LiveCD/USB image send a one or two-line description of it? Of when it is appropriate? Size of image, Hardware Requirements (32/64 bit, resource requirements of desktop environment), languages, whether or not automatic updates if the installation is connected to a network. Regards, Jan Sage Live CD, based on Puppy: size: 595 MB iso file, min 512 MB RAM, 32 bit, basic localization/languages and 44 different keyboard maps, no automatic updates. Further info: Installer to USB, harddisk, etc included. Additional software packages available (e.g. libreoffice module, development module), Can access Ubuntu Lucid Lynx repos, ssh server and preconfigured sage server with 20 worker accounts included for local networks. Homepage: http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/doc/html/en/. Installation to harddisk with personal save-file for persistence needs min 850 MB disc space. Sage html doc included. If installed to harddisk with personal-savefile for persistence it will need 1,2 GB in frugal install mode. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
1. Sage LiveCD, based on Ubuntu 12.04.1, with Sage 5.5 Source Code, and all build and runtime dependencies size: 1.5 GB iso file, 64bit, EN+FR on image, other languages available from repos, automatic updates from aims/sagemath PPA. 2. Sage LiveCD, based on Ubuntu 12.04.1, with Sage 5.5 compiled, and with all runtime dependencies size: 1.6 GB sio file, 64bit, EN+FR on image, other languages available from repos, automatic updates from aims/sagemath PPA. Requirements for both: - 700 MHz processor (about Intel Celeron or better) - 512 MiB RAM (system memory, preferable much more, especially for the dev version to build sage from scratch) - 5 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach) - VGA capable of 1024x768 screen resolution On 18 January 2013 12:46, Emil Widmann emil.widm...@gmail.com wrote: Am Freitag, 18. Januar 2013 10:54:39 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi This is now http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_**trac/ticket/13966http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13966 Could the author of each LiveCD/USB image send a one or two-line description of it? Of when it is appropriate? Size of image, Hardware Requirements (32/64 bit, resource requirements of desktop environment), languages, whether or not automatic updates if the installation is connected to a network. Regards, Jan Sage Live CD, based on Puppy: size: 595 MB iso file, min 512 MB RAM, 32 bit, basic localization/languages and 44 different keyboard maps, no automatic updates. Further info: Installer to USB, harddisk, etc included. Additional software packages available (e.g. libreoffice module, development module), Can access Ubuntu Lucid Lynx repos, ssh server and preconfigured sage server with 20 worker accounts included for local networks. Homepage: http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/doc/html/en/. Installation to harddisk with personal save-file for persistence needs min 850 MB disc space. Sage html doc included. If installed to harddisk with personal-savefile for persistence it will need 1,2 GB in frugal install mode. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi On 15 January 2013 23:47, Jason Grout jason-s...@creativetrax.com wrote: I'm really interested in a USB image that I can hand to students that want to do development with me that: * I can modify (to include the Sage cell server, git, etc., for example) * have all the development tools installed, so that Sage can easily be upgraded, rebuilt, etc. * can have further things installed by users as needed * can be installed to a hard disk if the student is interested I have made such an image based on Ubuntu 12.04.1 using UCK. It is about 1.6G. Let me know how to get it to you. I will also investigate using ubuntu-builder which might be able to brand the resulting ISO more as Sage than Ubuntu (which might actuially be a legal requirement for re-distribution). It has /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar.README.txt # instructions /usr/src/sagemath.desktop # To create a launcher icon and depends on all development and runtime dependencies of Sage. It is standard Ubuntu LiveCD+Installer in one. It has the standard software installation options once it gets internet. If you want to include some things like sage-cell-server, that might be best done during the UCK (or ubuntu-builder, or remastersys) process. Regards, Jan -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Am Donnerstag, 17. Januar 2013 16:56:41 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi On 15 January 2013 23:47, Jason Grout jason...@creativetrax.comjavascript: wrote: I'm really interested in a USB image that I can hand to students that want to do development with me that: * I can modify (to include the Sage cell server, git, etc., for example) * have all the development tools installed, so that Sage can easily be upgraded, rebuilt, etc. * can have further things installed by users as needed * can be installed to a hard disk if the student is interested I have made such an image based on Ubuntu 12.04.1 using UCK. It is about 1.6G. Let me know how to get it to you. I will also investigate using ubuntu-builder which might be able to brand the resulting ISO more as Sage than Ubuntu (which might actuially be a legal requirement for re-distribution). It has /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar.README.txt # instructions /usr/src/sagemath.desktop # To create a launcher icon and depends on all development and runtime dependencies of Sage. It is standard Ubuntu LiveCD+Installer in one. It has the standard software installation options once it gets internet. If you want to include some things like sage-cell-server, that might be best done during the UCK (or ubuntu-builder, or remastersys) process. Regards, Jan -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ Hi! Do you have a download link? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi Emil, No, I would rather privately transfer it to someone who can host this kind of bandwidth. In Africa bandwidth is scarce, and multiple downloads will be detrimental to our institutional bandwidth. Our better bandwidth on Cape Town virtual servers cost per MB. I was hoping to get it on a Sage server, or if anyone can host this on an international server with plenty of bandwidth and 2G of space, I can give them a temporary link off-list. sage@hummingbird-lan:~$ ls -sh1 sage* 1.6G sagemath.iso # Ubuntu 12.04.1 + dist-upgrade + sagemath-upstream-binary + vim, EN+FR 1.5G sagemathdev.iso # Ubuntu 12.04.1 + dist-upgrade + sagemath-source + vim+hg+git+gedit-plugins, EN+FR 2.1G sagemathdev_texlivefull.iso # as above but texlive-full instead of texlive, texlive-pictures sagemath-source is a new package in the Sage PPA which depends on all build and runtime dependencies. Regards, Jan On 17 January 2013 20:09, Emil Widmann emil.widm...@gmail.com wrote: Am Donnerstag, 17. Januar 2013 16:56:41 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi On 15 January 2013 23:47, Jason Grout jason...@creativetrax.com wrote: I'm really interested in a USB image that I can hand to students that want to do development with me that: * I can modify (to include the Sage cell server, git, etc., for example) * have all the development tools installed, so that Sage can easily be upgraded, rebuilt, etc. * can have further things installed by users as needed * can be installed to a hard disk if the student is interested I have made such an image based on Ubuntu 12.04.1 using UCK. It is about 1.6G. Let me know how to get it to you. I will also investigate using ubuntu-builder which might be able to brand the resulting ISO more as Sage than Ubuntu (which might actuially be a legal requirement for re-distribution). It has /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar /usr/src/sage-5.5.tar.README.**txt # instructions /usr/src/sagemath.desktop # To create a launcher icon and depends on all development and runtime dependencies of Sage. It is standard Ubuntu LiveCD+Installer in one. It has the standard software installation options once it gets internet. If you want to include some things like sage-cell-server, that might be best done during the UCK (or ubuntu-builder, or remastersys) process. Regards, Jan -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ Hi! Do you have a download link? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On 1/17/13 12:17 PM, Jan Groenewald wrote: No, I would rather privately transfer it to someone who can host this kind of bandwidth. In Africa bandwidth is scarce, and multiple downloads will be detrimental to our institutional bandwidth. Our better bandwidth on Cape Town virtual servers cost per MB. Do you have an account on the sage.math servers in Seattle? Would it be reasonable to upload it once to there and distribute that link? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi Jason, No, I don't have an account. Yes, that would be reasonable from my side. Regards, Jan On 18 January 2013 07:49, Jason Grout jason-s...@creativetrax.com wrote: On 1/17/13 12:17 PM, Jan Groenewald wrote: No, I would rather privately transfer it to someone who can host this kind of bandwidth. In Africa bandwidth is scarce, and multiple downloads will be detrimental to our institutional bandwidth. Our better bandwidth on Cape Town virtual servers cost per MB. Do you have an account on the sage.math servers in Seattle? Would it be reasonable to upload it once to there and distribute that link? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscribe@** googlegroups.com sage-devel%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/sage-devel?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en . -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2013 22:47:06 UTC+1 schrieb jason: On 1/15/13 3:08 AM, Jan Groenewald wrote: Also if there is interest, a version can be made that installs Ubuntu, the source code for Sage, and all needed developer tools to build and run Sage. I'm really interested in a USB image that I can hand to students that want to do development with me that: * I can modify (to include the Sage cell server, git, etc., for example) * have all the development tools installed, so that Sage can easily be upgraded, rebuilt, etc. * can have further things installed by users as needed * can be installed to a hard disk if the student is interested Thanks, Jason I thought much about all this and worked long in that direction. Let me write a statement and bear with me that it might be a bit lengthy... All the things you ask for are possible with the current LiveCD version, and the possibilities were there since at least 3 years when I made an first image of sage version 431. At that time I had something in mind with very similar goals of Jan Groenewald and Nicolas M. Thiéry. I wanted to create a smart scientific Linux distro for easy distribution, be it as live CD, as USB image, or hard disk install. I had in mind especially teaching situations, where the whole system could be given out to students, and also especially situation in developing countries where it is expected to have lower average computing resources and just old machines. Assuming all sciences need math it was logical to choose SAGE to be included into the base. All the features you ask for were there from the first release and the base being Puppy Linux was no accident. Reviews rate Puppy as King of the Live distros for small size, portability and hardware support from modern to very old computers. (e.g recent distrowatch reviewhttp://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20121224#review, amazing reviewhttp://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.co.at/2012/10/puppy-linux-54-precise-review-amazing.html ) Why I had the impression all the time of low interest of others, while it now seems that several people work with similar ideas on their own projects? I can just make guesses, but lets try it: * the base Puppy is different in several aspects and thats the reason why it is not perceived as serious enough as a scientific platform (see e.g. the comments of M. Thierye - first post herehttps://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/sage-devel/PnqjVmpp6bU ) * Maybe I failed in communicating my goals and by calling it Live CD nailed it and misguided people to miss the other potential (USB, hard disk install, developement, packages) of this piece of software. * I am not a member of any scientific community any more and work in a different field, so this was just a completely private and effort. I missed especially the possibility of direct feedback, opinions and testing by others. * I had time for this projects during some months in fall and winter, so there were gaps of more than half year with no development and reduced communication to interested people (I also lacked proper internet connection during that time) * During the last 2 years I concentrated on several aspects which seemed logical for me with the small base I had, especially on building virtual machine images and lobby for it here on the google.groups since I felt it is the only realistic solution to the sage on windows dilemma. In going this way I neglected the original goals of my project. * In my discussions I crossed opinions with some of the most respected sage developers (Robert Bradshaw, Volker Brown) on the matter of size. While it is true that size of the software doesn't matters in a 1st world environment with up to date powerful machines and unrestricted, super fast internet access, size is a matter on older computers and in an environment with shaky internet access, low download speeds and old, RAM and disk challenged machines. Right at the moment I see 4 projects maintained from this community with similar goals or structure: 1) Nicolas M. T's distro based on debian live 2) Jan Groenwalds distro based on Ubuntu 3) my SAGE Live CD distro based on Puppy Linux 4) the Fedora based image of Volker Braun to provide the base for the Sage virtual machine, this is maybe not geared toward a Live CD/or USB solution but still it is a complete custom linux distro including sage. Additionally there are other projects with very similar goals. E.g. an old but now dead project was the Knoppix based Quantian Live distro which still ranks high in the google list if you search for Linux Mathematic. A recent project is the MathLibre Projec http://knoppix-math.org/t which also produces a Knoppix based live DVD (INCLUDING SAGE!) - last release was 2011. In a more broader sense (and because I am technically interested in it) there are also special Linux distros for simulation and numerical computing (e.g. CAELinux
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Right at the moment I see 4 projects maintained from this community with similar goals or structure: 1) Nicolas M. T's distro based on debian live 2) Jan Groenwalds distro based on Ubuntu 3) my SAGE Live CD distro based on Puppy Linux 4) the Fedora based image of Volker Braun to provide the base for the Sage virtual machine, this is maybe not geared toward a Live CD/or USB solution but still it is a complete custom linux distro including sage. I don't see why all four of these can't have life, particularly if the download page has a nice new section for them with links to the various (third-party) pages for creating things for USBs. Presumably they each have various advantages. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi I have an ISO installer image (Ubuntu + Sage) which I'd like to make available to the Sage community. It is a 1.6G file created by UCK which I'd like to host on Sage servers, to preserve our institutional bandwidth. This can be useful to anyone hosting or teaching a Sage workshop, or willing to install Ubuntu to get Sage. The installation procedure is trivial and easy, no different from a standard Ubuntu install: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support It requires no internet to install but can get additional updates or codecs if there is internet. It can install English and French. It installs a standard Ubuntu 12.04.1 system, but with Sage installed from the Ubuntu PPA (including dependencies), which will offer updates if that system comes online. It also includes texmaker. It is easy and safe to install next to Windows, which will be the default if you boot this on a Windows laptop or desktop. Write it to to a USB disk like this: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows Then follow the installation instructions: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support If there is sufficient interest, I can brand it from Ubuntu more to Sage, and include a launcher icon, etc. Also if there is interest, a version can be made that installs Ubuntu, the source code for Sage, and all needed developer tools to build and run Sage. Regards, Jan On 4 December 2012 17:03, Jan Groenewald j...@aims.ac.za wrote: Hi I have now used UCK to make a Live CD which has sagemath-upstream-binary from the PPA. It is also Ubuntu 12.04.1 with a dist-upgrade up to the latest versions, and a few other packages I like (it is debatable what can be included here). It is a 1.6G ISO which can be written to a USB stick. It is fairly trivial to add languages, developer tools, rstudio, texmaker, etc. It can then be used to boot a system choose Try Ubuntu or to try Sage in the live environment, or Install Ubuntu to have Sage available on the final system (next to Windows). It can install entirely without network. Also, if the user ever goes on a network, update manager can prompt him that updates are available, and a fairly robust system is in place for this. What interest is there in making this ISO available on the Sage sites? What interest is there in certain packages and or language packs being available on it (versus size constraints?). I'd suggest a large system for generic use, to not duplicate effort: texmaker, scipy, many python libraries, R, rstudio, sysadm tools, dev tools, sage, some graphics apps, and general utilities, including English, French, Arabic, Amharic, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Italian, Polish, German, Romanian, Finnish, Swedish language packs for boot and install time. I'm actually trying to make a different image, currently called AIMS-desktop, but more generically an ubuntu science desktop. This would include many more packages and languages, though currently the ISO limit is 4G that may in future be overridden, and even a 4G ISO is a very large final system -- e.g. Sage is ~400M deb but 1.6G installed. I'm happy to make a separate ISO with only sagemath from the PPA though. This science desktop could serve not only as a Sage ISO, but a generic install with other tools available. It can be done offline. It can be installed next to Windows on any laptop with, say, 20G free space and 2G RAM. We can make a 32bit and 64bit version. (My only concern is how to get the codecs on afterwards. But I can put an installer in place to add those. I think a laptop should be able to play MP3s and DVDs. But I could add install-restricted-extras, for example, which will require network. We can also pre-enable the medibuntu repistory so that installation is easy.) If you had a workshop, you could arrive with a bag of 4G USB memory sticks and teach people to install Ubuntu as well. This is a fairly trivial procedure now. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support Regards, Jan On 21 November 2012 23:49, Nicolas M. Thiery nicolas.thi...@u-psud.frwrote: On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:07:50AM -0800, tom d wrote: Thanks for running this, Nicolas, and providing the detailed report! Well, for the running all the kudos should really go to the organizers. And all those who helped for the Sage sessions. All I had to do was to teach Sage to *motivated* students (ok, and fight some technical details); other than this it was vacations: lodging and food was provided. And entertainment as well with my fellow's classes! Congrats on all your ongoing work in Kenya! If I was not already going to be away from home for quite some time this Spring, I would have jumped on the occasion to come help for the workshop. Cheers,
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi I have an ISO installer image (Ubuntu + Sage) which I'd like to make available to the Sage community. It is a 1.6G file created by UCK which I'd like to host on Sage servers, to preserve our institutional bandwidth. Great! Please let us know when it's been hosted so we can try it out! This can be useful to anyone hosting or teaching a Sage workshop, or willing to install Ubuntu to get Sage. The installation procedure is trivial and easy, no different from a standard Ubuntu install: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support I assume this doesn't work as well (the alongside your OS) on Mac? Wondering... Also, just out of curiosity, what are the differences with Emil's iso? I assume they each have their advantages and disadvantages. Thanks, - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi KCrisman, I'm not sure what Emil's ISO is. Is it a LIVECD only or an installer too? (The Ubuntu one is both.) Where can it be downloaded? For Mac, you need to also use rEFIt boot manager, but you can use the same ISO for installing Ubuntu: http://lifehacker.com/5934942/how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-your-mac-and-take-back-your-powerhouse-apple-hardware This might also help: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntuprecisequantalon2011imac Regards, Jan On 15 January 2013 16:36, kcrisman kcris...@gmail.com wrote: Hi I have an ISO installer image (Ubuntu + Sage) which I'd like to make available to the Sage community. It is a 1.6G file created by UCK which I'd like to host on Sage servers, to preserve our institutional bandwidth. Great! Please let us know when it's been hosted so we can try it out! This can be useful to anyone hosting or teaching a Sage workshop, or willing to install Ubuntu to get Sage. The installation procedure is trivial and easy, no different from a standard Ubuntu install: http://www.ubuntu.com/**download/help/install-desktop-**long-term-supporthttp://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support I assume this doesn't work as well (the alongside your OS) on Mac? Wondering... Also, just out of curiosity, what are the differences with Emil's iso? I assume they each have their advantages and disadvantages. Thanks, - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2013 15:42:16 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi KCrisman, I'm not sure what Emil's ISO is. Is it a LIVECD only or an installer too? (The Ubuntu one is both.) Where can it be downloaded? It is a Live CD, but has of course an installer built in. You can download it here http://sagemath.org/download-livecd.html or maybe here http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/doc/html/en/ older versions http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/sagelive/ For Mac, you need to also use rEFIt boot manager, but you can use the same ISO for installing Ubuntu: http://lifehacker.com/5934942/how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-your-mac-and-take-back-your-powerhouse-apple-hardware This might also help: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntuprecisequantalon2011imac Regards, Jan On 15 January 2013 16:36, kcrisman kcri...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Hi I have an ISO installer image (Ubuntu + Sage) which I'd like to make available to the Sage community. It is a 1.6G file created by UCK which I'd like to host on Sage servers, to preserve our institutional bandwidth. Great! Please let us know when it's been hosted so we can try it out! This can be useful to anyone hosting or teaching a Sage workshop, or willing to install Ubuntu to get Sage. The installation procedure is trivial and easy, no different from a standard Ubuntu install: http://www.ubuntu.com/**download/help/install-desktop-** long-term-supporthttp://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support I assume this doesn't work as well (the alongside your OS) on Mac? Wondering... Also, just out of curiosity, what are the differences with Emil's iso? I assume they each have their advantages and disadvantages. This is Ubuntu, size is bigger and it should look more polished. Sage Live CD is smaller and has some customization (e.g. sage-server with 20 worker accounts). Thanks, - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com javascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On 1/15/13 3:08 AM, Jan Groenewald wrote: Also if there is interest, a version can be made that installs Ubuntu, the source code for Sage, and all needed developer tools to build and run Sage. I'm really interested in a USB image that I can hand to students that want to do development with me that: * I can modify (to include the Sage cell server, git, etc., for example) * have all the development tools installed, so that Sage can easily be upgraded, rebuilt, etc. * can have further things installed by users as needed * can be installed to a hard disk if the student is interested Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi Also, once you out the Ubuntu installation on a network, it starts prompting you for updates, automatically updating its software, including Sage. Regards, Jan On 15 January 2013 21:34, Emil Widmann emil.widm...@gmail.com wrote: Am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2013 15:42:16 UTC+1 schrieb Jan Groenewald: Hi KCrisman, I'm not sure what Emil's ISO is. Is it a LIVECD only or an installer too? (The Ubuntu one is both.) Where can it be downloaded? It is a Live CD, but has of course an installer built in. You can download it here http://sagemath.org/download-livecd.html or maybe here http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/doc/html/en/ older versions http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/sagelive/ For Mac, you need to also use rEFIt boot manager, but you can use the same ISO for installing Ubuntu: http://lifehacker.com/5934942/**how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-** your-mac-and-take-back-your-**powerhouse-apple-hardwarehttp://lifehacker.com/5934942/how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-your-mac-and-take-back-your-powerhouse-apple-hardware This might also help: https://help.ubuntu.com/**community/** ubuntuprecisequantalon2011imachttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntuprecisequantalon2011imac Regards, Jan On 15 January 2013 16:36, kcrisman kcri...@gmail.com wrote: Hi I have an ISO installer image (Ubuntu + Sage) which I'd like to make available to the Sage community. It is a 1.6G file created by UCK which I'd like to host on Sage servers, to preserve our institutional bandwidth. Great! Please let us know when it's been hosted so we can try it out! This can be useful to anyone hosting or teaching a Sage workshop, or willing to install Ubuntu to get Sage. The installation procedure is trivial and easy, no different from a standard Ubuntu install: http://www.ubuntu.com/**download**/help/install-desktop-**long-** term-supporthttp://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support I assume this doesn't work as well (the alongside your OS) on Mac? Wondering... Also, just out of curiosity, what are the differences with Emil's iso? I assume they each have their advantages and disadvantages. This is Ubuntu, size is bigger and it should look more polished. Sage Live CD is smaller and has some customization (e.g. sage-server with 20 worker accounts). Thanks, - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+...@** googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/sage-devel?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en . -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:53:34 PM UTC+8, Thierry (sage-googlesucks@xxx) wrote: I am a bit late in replying, because I do not actively follow all discussions, but since I made the Live CD I have some remarks == Windows users == - virtualbox is not a solution. People running Windows usually have the last version (not XP), which has the effect of taking all the RAM, even on some not so old laptops. Adding a layer makes things worse. Personally I had good experiences with virtual box, and I saw only 5% performance loss if sage is used in the notebook. I also spent considerable time building some virtual machines myself. I made a very small one which has lowest possible requirements (size 400 MB) http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/emil/VM/sage-lite2.ova Existing live CD installed on a USB key is a good option, but : - The .exe file that installs the live-cd on the hard disk of a windows install does not work at all (tested on various machines without success). Dang. That should work. Which file did you test (download source and md5sum)? I made several versions of the dual boot exe installer and 1 version of an installer which makes a complete virtual machine installation (including virtual box). - Moreover there is no easy way for the participants to spread it afterwards, you need a recent version of unetbootin or some knowledge of sfdisk/hdparm/mkfs/syslinux to make it bootable to some other key. There is a very easy method on the live CD. Just put in an usb-stick and run the Installer utility, (Older versions availible in the menu under Puppy Universal Installer), new version puppyinstaller in terminal. You don't need Unetbootin and defintely no tricks on the commandline. == GNU/Linux users == - People under GNU/Linux mainly run Ubuntu, but do not necessary run the last version (not even some older LTS version). Unfortunately, the only available sage binary for Ubuntu is the last LTS. - Moreover, the Ubuntu Sage binary we get from the Sage repository needs some additional packages (libgfortran3 for example). The solution of such a problem is not as easy when you have to go to some cyber-cafe to download a package and hope that is will be the last missing one (Sage tells you about another dependency only when the previous one is satisfied), especially when the university is far from downtown. - The compilation of the Ubuntu Sage binary was made on some recent hardware, at least the sse2 set of instructions is needed whereas some Pentium 3 do not know sse2 instructions. As explained by Nicolas, requiring a build which is able to run on a Pentium 3 is overkill if participants bring their laptops, it is not the case if you plan to work on a local computer room (the one of ISEA had 1/3 Pentium 3 and 2/3 Pentium 4). A possible reason for this sse2 dependency may be the following bug of the atlas package: if you set SAGE_FAT_BINARY='yes', the architecture will be Hammer (why such a choice ?), without taking the SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH variable in consideration, and atlas won't run on Pentium 3. See http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13706 - Installing GNU/Linux on the participants machines is dangerous. Participants do not have backups. Because of a problem of gparted to understand correctly windows extended partition system (at least in november 2011, gparted attributed the labels of 7 extended partitions of one participants above the four primary partitions uncorrectly, letting you erase the wrong primary partition), because we didn't have enough backup space to backup the whole disk, and because we were tired after one week of workshop, we lost the personal data (in particular some important latex files) of one participant, and spend one week at trying to recover some data between the new Linux filesystem and sage binaries. = Workarounds to still distribute sage despite all those problems = As Nicolas explained, you should consider a multiple strategies approach. Here are the remaining realistic ones. I started a wiki page with the following text to help future sage-days organisers, don't hesitate to update it : http://wiki.sagemath.org/HowToSpreadSageDuringAWorkshop == The autoclone USB live == I built a live Debian Sage USB key wich is able to clone itself on another key, indefinitely. I will make the prototype (and the source code) available when i will be back home with a good internet connection. Other features of the key are : personal data persistence, no personal data is duplicated, possibility for the user to share additional data from her key to the cloned one (pdf lecture notes, worksheets, pictures of the workshop,...), lot of softwares (geogebra, latex, editors, gimp, vlc, libreoffice,... there is no need to be small since the bandwith limit is the size
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Wednesday, December 5, 2012 6:09:34 PM UTC, Emil Widmann wrote: This is interesting. I compiled the latest live CD with SAGE_FAT_BINARIES=yes and SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH=base, but now I have a report that there are problems with sse2 instructions on an old computer. Fixed in http://trac.sagemath.org/10508. Sadly, because there is a bug on Itanium systems (only) it won't get updated any time soon. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi I have now used UCK to make a Live CD which has sagemath-upstream-binary from the PPA. It is also Ubuntu 12.04.1 with a dist-upgrade up to the latest versions, and a few other packages I like (it is debatable what can be included here). It is a 1.6G ISO which can be written to a USB stick. It is fairly trivial to add languages, developer tools, rstudio, texmaker, etc. It can then be used to boot a system choose Try Ubuntu or to try Sage in the live environment, or Install Ubuntu to have Sage available on the final system (next to Windows). It can install entirely without network. Also, if the user ever goes on a network, update manager can prompt him that updates are available, and a fairly robust system is in place for this. What interest is there in making this ISO available on the Sage sites? What interest is there in certain packages and or language packs being available on it (versus size constraints?). I'd suggest a large system for generic use, to not duplicate effort: texmaker, scipy, many python libraries, R, rstudio, sysadm tools, dev tools, sage, some graphics apps, and general utilities, including English, French, Arabic, Amharic, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Italian, Polish, German, Romanian, Finnish, Swedish language packs for boot and install time. I'm actually trying to make a different image, currently called AIMS-desktop, but more generically an ubuntu science desktop. This would include many more packages and languages, though currently the ISO limit is 4G that may in future be overridden, and even a 4G ISO is a very large final system -- e.g. Sage is ~400M deb but 1.6G installed. I'm happy to make a separate ISO with only sagemath from the PPA though. This science desktop could serve not only as a Sage ISO, but a generic install with other tools available. It can be done offline. It can be installed next to Windows on any laptop with, say, 20G free space and 2G RAM. We can make a 32bit and 64bit version. (My only concern is how to get the codecs on afterwards. But I can put an installer in place to add those. I think a laptop should be able to play MP3s and DVDs. But I could add install-restricted-extras, for example, which will require network. We can also pre-enable the medibuntu repistory so that installation is easy.) If you had a workshop, you could arrive with a bag of 4G USB memory sticks and teach people to install Ubuntu as well. This is a fairly trivial procedure now. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-desktop-long-term-support Regards, Jan On 21 November 2012 23:49, Nicolas M. Thiery nicolas.thi...@u-psud.frwrote: On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:07:50AM -0800, tom d wrote: Thanks for running this, Nicolas, and providing the detailed report! Well, for the running all the kudos should really go to the organizers. And all those who helped for the Sage sessions. All I had to do was to teach Sage to *motivated* students (ok, and fight some technical details); other than this it was vacations: lodging and food was provided. And entertainment as well with my fellow's classes! Congrats on all your ongoing work in Kenya! If I was not already going to be away from home for quite some time this Spring, I would have jumped on the occasion to come help for the workshop. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
2012/12/4 Jan Groenewald j...@aims.ac.za I have now used UCK to make a Live CD which has sagemath-upstream-binary from the PPA. It is also Ubuntu 12.04.1 with a dist-upgrade up to the latest versions, and a few other packages I like (it is debatable what can be included here). It is a 1.6G ISO which can be written to a USB stick. It is fairly trivial to add languages, developer tools, rstudio, texmaker, etc. That's great! :) I'd suggest a large system for generic use, to not duplicate effort: texmaker, scipy, many python libraries, R, rstudio, sysadm tools, dev tools, sage, some graphics apps, and general utilities, including English, French, Arabic, Amharic, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Italian, Polish, German, Romanian, Finnish, Swedish language packs for boot and install time. IIRC Sage can install links to its versions of some binaries, so you can avoid duplicating them. (My only concern is how to get the codecs on afterwards. But I can put an installer in place to add those. I think a laptop should be able to play MP3s and DVDs. But I could add install-restricted-extras, for example, which will require network. We can also pre-enable the medibuntu repistory so that installation is easy.) I suggest you don't install restricted-extras because it brings some nonfree components. You can check out my tutorial for libre-only codecs (sorry, it's in Italian): http://andrealazzarotto.com/2010/11/01/guida-installare-i-codec-su-ubuntu-per-riprodurre-tutti-i-file-multimediali-e-i-dvd/ If you need some tips about tweaking the ISO, just drop me a line and I will reply ASAP. -- *Andrea Lazzarotto* - http://andrealazzarotto.com* * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:07:50AM -0800, tom d wrote: Thanks for running this, Nicolas, and providing the detailed report! Well, for the running all the kudos should really go to the organizers. And all those who helped for the Sage sessions. All I had to do was to teach Sage to *motivated* students (ok, and fight some technical details); other than this it was vacations: lodging and food was provided. And entertainment as well with my fellow's classes! Congrats on all your ongoing work in Kenya! If I was not already going to be away from home for quite some time this Spring, I would have jumped on the occasion to come help for the workshop. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hey, all! Thanks for running this, Nicolas, and providing the detailed report! For converting people to linux: I'm working with a computer lab in Maseno, where we've now got linux dual-booting on all of the machines (about 40). Over the last couple months, we've gained a number of linux converts: windows in the developing world tends to be pirated and without regularly updating anti-virus software. So the machines 'gunk up' over the course of just a week or two of use to the point of being nigh-unusable. Providing an easily-accessible linux desktop as an option lets people decide for themselves, and once they've tried it, they're overwhelmingly preferring linux. Of course, live-usb's are a perfectly good way to provide such an experience as well. I just got a pile of 8gb usb sticks for $5 each from Canada; setting aside $250 and a bit of time could then provide live usb sticks for up to 50 participants at a sage-days event (with leftovers going towards the next event, of course). 4gb is probably a bit tight for a full installation plus sage, but could cut cost a bit. And with 8gb, we could also include open-office and a couple good text editors, making a good case for general linux use. As a last note, there's an algebraic geometry workshop happening in Mombasa, Kenya, sometime between May and June next year; I'm trying to figure out what the dates are now! We could potentially try some things out there, as well! Best, -tom On Sunday, November 11, 2012 12:00:34 PM UTC+3, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: Dear Sage devs, The fall school on Discrete Mathematics in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, aka Sage Days 43, just finished. For two weeks we had courses (combinatorics of words, dynamics, tilings, ...) interspersed with on-hands tutorials using Sage. The public consisted mostly from graduate students, from subsaharian Africa and some further away countries. That was a good occasion for a real-life evaluation of a claim I have been desiring to make for a long time: �Sage, being open-source, is well adapted for universities in developing countries�. Let's see about this. A couple words of context: -- - 70 participants total; in average 40-50 were there. - Most participants had a laptop (or netbook for a few of them): - 90%: windows, 5% mac, 5% Linux Ubuntu (usually in double-boot with Windows) - Laptop age ranging from 2003 to 2012; 4 years on average - RAM: 500k-6Gb; 1Gb on average? - Network: one ADSL line for 60 persons in the conference center Well, when it actually worked, which was not that often. We finished using a cell-phone shared over wifi. The local wireless network itself was down quite often. No network at the university itself or nearby - Among the organizers were Sage devs with good experience on running Sage workshops and doing system/network administration, ... - Sam had brought a big bunch of power cables. I screwed up not bringing my own wireless router to at least guarantee a reliable local network. Strategies we tried or considered: -- (a) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac with the binaries from Sagemath.org (b) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac from sources (c) Installing Sage on Linux from a custom built fat binary (d) Installing Sage on Windows with the virtual machine (e) Running a Sage server on my laptop (8 cores, 8Gb) (f) Using a remote Sage server (g) Installing Linux and reducing the problem to (a-c) (h) Booting on a live Debian USB key, custom-build by Thierry Monteil with Sage, self-cloning and persistence. (i) Using a local PC lab after installing Sage on them I would like to use the occasion to send my kudos to all those who strive hard at making Sage easier to use one way or the other. How it went: (a) Went smoothly on Mac when appropriate binaries were available. We had to recompile a few of those binaries. (a) failed most of the time on Linux by lack of gfortran. Since we did not have a reasonable network, apt-get install was not an option. We did not have iso's of all the Ubuntu versions that were in use. 3D plotting was usually not available (by lack of appropriate Java plug-ins). (b) Compiling from source was not a viable option on Linux for the same reason as above: build-essentials was usually not there. On Mac that was ok, provided we had under hand the appropriate version of XCode. (c) This fat binary was built by Thierry Monteil on an old pentium 3 (!) with a minimal Debian install. Installation and usage went smoothly, except that 3D plotting was usually not available. (d) Virtual machine: Installation went smoothly on about 20 machines (with close guidance). It failed on 2-3 machines due to resource limitations (disk, ...). However, except for about
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hey, all; So the Mombasa algebraic geometry workshop is set for 6-28 July, 2013. Which is really long! They're interested in having some sage sessions; if anyone's interested in coming out I can plan to be there for an overlapping time and co-hosting the Sage sessions. (However, the first week I'll be in Ethiopia.) Basically, drop me a line and we can talk about scope and further details that should be nailed down. Best, -tom On Sunday, November 11, 2012 12:00:34 PM UTC+3, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: Dear Sage devs, The fall school on Discrete Mathematics in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, aka Sage Days 43, just finished. For two weeks we had courses (combinatorics of words, dynamics, tilings, ...) interspersed with on-hands tutorials using Sage. The public consisted mostly from graduate students, from subsaharian Africa and some further away countries. That was a good occasion for a real-life evaluation of a claim I have been desiring to make for a long time: �Sage, being open-source, is well adapted for universities in developing countries�. Let's see about this. A couple words of context: -- - 70 participants total; in average 40-50 were there. - Most participants had a laptop (or netbook for a few of them): - 90%: windows, 5% mac, 5% Linux Ubuntu (usually in double-boot with Windows) - Laptop age ranging from 2003 to 2012; 4 years on average - RAM: 500k-6Gb; 1Gb on average? - Network: one ADSL line for 60 persons in the conference center Well, when it actually worked, which was not that often. We finished using a cell-phone shared over wifi. The local wireless network itself was down quite often. No network at the university itself or nearby - Among the organizers were Sage devs with good experience on running Sage workshops and doing system/network administration, ... - Sam had brought a big bunch of power cables. I screwed up not bringing my own wireless router to at least guarantee a reliable local network. Strategies we tried or considered: -- (a) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac with the binaries from Sagemath.org (b) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac from sources (c) Installing Sage on Linux from a custom built fat binary (d) Installing Sage on Windows with the virtual machine (e) Running a Sage server on my laptop (8 cores, 8Gb) (f) Using a remote Sage server (g) Installing Linux and reducing the problem to (a-c) (h) Booting on a live Debian USB key, custom-build by Thierry Monteil with Sage, self-cloning and persistence. (i) Using a local PC lab after installing Sage on them I would like to use the occasion to send my kudos to all those who strive hard at making Sage easier to use one way or the other. How it went: (a) Went smoothly on Mac when appropriate binaries were available. We had to recompile a few of those binaries. (a) failed most of the time on Linux by lack of gfortran. Since we did not have a reasonable network, apt-get install was not an option. We did not have iso's of all the Ubuntu versions that were in use. 3D plotting was usually not available (by lack of appropriate Java plug-ins). (b) Compiling from source was not a viable option on Linux for the same reason as above: build-essentials was usually not there. On Mac that was ok, provided we had under hand the appropriate version of XCode. (c) This fat binary was built by Thierry Monteil on an old pentium 3 (!) with a minimal Debian install. Installation and usage went smoothly, except that 3D plotting was usually not available. (d) Virtual machine: Installation went smoothly on about 20 machines (with close guidance). It failed on 2-3 machines due to resource limitations (disk, ...). However, except for about five recent machines, the memory footprint was just too high: any non trivial calculation or plot made the laptop swap and become simply too slow to use. The french keyboard was not properly self-detected. Due to the network, we could not look up on the web for help. We ended up finding how to configure it from a shell. I'll create a ticket. The Sage version available was a bit old (5.1) though that was not an issue for us this time (but it could have been). The usage was on the complex side for most participants. They typically tended to reclick on the ova, creating a new virtual machine each time. Also uploading worksheets was tricky; it would be much simpler if the virtual machine was setup to access the user directory on the host machine or if the web client was running on the host. (e) Running a local Sage server: This is a priori good short term solution, except that participants don't leave with Sage running on their machine. My
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi Tom, Do you have a link to a workshop web page? Regards, Jan On 20 November 2012 15:35, tom d sdent...@gmail.com wrote: Hey, all; So the Mombasa algebraic geometry workshop is set for 6-28 July, 2013. Which is really long! They're interested in having some sage sessions; if anyone's interested in coming out I can plan to be there for an overlapping time and co-hosting the Sage sessions. (However, the first week I'll be in Ethiopia.) Basically, drop me a line and we can talk about scope and further details that should be nailed down. Best, -tom On Sunday, November 11, 2012 12:00:34 PM UTC+3, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: Dear Sage devs, The fall school on Discrete Mathematics in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, aka Sage Days 43, just finished. For two weeks we had courses (combinatorics of words, dynamics, tilings, ...) interspersed with on-hands tutorials using Sage. The public consisted mostly from graduate students, from subsaharian Africa and some further away countries. That was a good occasion for a real-life evaluation of a claim I have been desiring to make for a long time: �Sage, being open-source, is well adapted for universities in developing countries�. Let's see about this. A couple words of context: -- - 70 participants total; in average 40-50 were there. - Most participants had a laptop (or netbook for a few of them): - 90%: windows, 5% mac, 5% Linux Ubuntu (usually in double-boot with Windows) - Laptop age ranging from 2003 to 2012; 4 years on average - RAM: 500k-6Gb; 1Gb on average? - Network: one ADSL line for 60 persons in the conference center Well, when it actually worked, which was not that often. We finished using a cell-phone shared over wifi. The local wireless network itself was down quite often. No network at the university itself or nearby - Among the organizers were Sage devs with good experience on running Sage workshops and doing system/network administration, ... - Sam had brought a big bunch of power cables. I screwed up not bringing my own wireless router to at least guarantee a reliable local network. Strategies we tried or considered: --** (a) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac with the binaries from Sagemath.org (b) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac from sources (c) Installing Sage on Linux from a custom built fat binary (d) Installing Sage on Windows with the virtual machine (e) Running a Sage server on my laptop (8 cores, 8Gb) (f) Using a remote Sage server (g) Installing Linux and reducing the problem to (a-c) (h) Booting on a live Debian USB key, custom-build by Thierry Monteil with Sage, self-cloning and persistence. (i) Using a local PC lab after installing Sage on them I would like to use the occasion to send my kudos to all those who strive hard at making Sage easier to use one way or the other. How it went: (a) Went smoothly on Mac when appropriate binaries were available. We had to recompile a few of those binaries. (a) failed most of the time on Linux by lack of gfortran. Since we did not have a reasonable network, apt-get install was not an option. We did not have iso's of all the Ubuntu versions that were in use. 3D plotting was usually not available (by lack of appropriate Java plug-ins). (b) Compiling from source was not a viable option on Linux for the same reason as above: build-essentials was usually not there. On Mac that was ok, provided we had under hand the appropriate version of XCode. (c) This fat binary was built by Thierry Monteil on an old pentium 3 (!) with a minimal Debian install. Installation and usage went smoothly, except that 3D plotting was usually not available. (d) Virtual machine: Installation went smoothly on about 20 machines (with close guidance). It failed on 2-3 machines due to resource limitations (disk, ...). However, except for about five recent machines, the memory footprint was just too high: any non trivial calculation or plot made the laptop swap and become simply too slow to use. The french keyboard was not properly self-detected. Due to the network, we could not look up on the web for help. We ended up finding how to configure it from a shell. I'll create a ticket. The Sage version available was a bit old (5.1) though that was not an issue for us this time (but it could have been). The usage was on the complex side for most participants. They typically tended to reclick on the ova, creating a new virtual machine each time. Also uploading worksheets was tricky; it would be much simpler if the virtual machine was setup to access the user directory on the host machine or if the web client was running on the host. (e) Running a local Sage server: This is a priori good short term solution, except that
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
For information, I will give a short course (one day) about Sage in Algeria next January. There is a joint French-Maghreb CNRS research unit in Maths; the idea is to help develop computing, all sorts of computing in Maghreb. The Algerian (the others too) are very enthusiastic. As the course will not be held in a large city, but in a sea resort, there will be very very few internet access. We are preparing virtual ubuntu machines, as everybody there as a Win** machine. This is a one day course among 5 others, about numerics, building a parallel cluster and so on... t.d. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en. attachment: tdumont.vcf
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Sunday, November 11, 2012 10:00:42 AM UTC+1, Nicolas M. Thiéry wrote: - Having more Sage mirrors in Africa (although the network issues were more in the last kilometer). Hi, thank's for this detailed report and the discussion. I'm somewhat responsible for the mirror network, and I have heard reports about those bad network conditions from several places for some time now. I've tried to find more mirrors, but it's usually hard to get in contact with the right persons or even find a suitable institution. For example, to day I've added a second mirror for south america, which is probably an equally important continent. Does anyone have contacts to some suitable institutions in, let's say, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Ghana, ... ? Also, I try to make downloads work better by essentially to techniques: * torrent/metalink files. they basically tell a download-helper or web-browser to check for all sources in parallel and they also allow to resume partially downloaded files and checking them when they have finished. E.g. transmission is pre-installed on ubuntu and should be the #1 option for downloading sage tarballs or disk images. * compressing with lzma for those linux distributions where lzma/7z is installed by default. In the beginning, I got some reports that it is confusing, but for one reason or another this stopped. Probably, because right-click extract just works. Also, it would be possible - on more modern distributions - to squeeze out even more bytes by using lrztar + lzma/zpaq. Has anyone objections or some experience with that? H -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Le dimanche 11 novembre 2012 10:00:42 UTC+1, Nicolas M. Thiéry a écrit : That was a good occasion for a real-life evaluation of a claim I have been desiring to make for a long time: �Sage, being open-source, is well adapted for universities in developing countries�. http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ Very interesting report. I'm however a little bit worried that your audience could have the feeling that math open-source software requires installing linux or/and recent hardware, while this is not mandatory at all outside of a few research fields. But perhaps I'm wrong and you also spread the word that some good open-source math softwares run on say Windows XP (or even Windows 98). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
2012/11/15 parisse bernard.pari...@ujf-grenoble.fr But perhaps I'm wrong and you also spread the word that some good open-source math softwares run on say Windows XP (or even Windows 98). But then why should developing countries use an old, buggy and proprietary software when they can get for free modern, top class open source operating systems? :) -- *Andrea Lazzarotto* - http://andrealazzarotto.com* * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
2012/11/14 Jason Grout jason-s...@creativetrax.com I'm curious: how does the software selection compare to, for example, mathbuntu (http://www.mathbuntu.org/), particularly the math packages? I just tried, that distro does NOT contain Sage, just a link to the Sage Notebook. -- *Andrea Lazzarotto* - http://andrealazzarotto.com* * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
But then why should developing countries use an old, buggy and proprietary software when they can get for free modern, top class open source operating systems? :) Because they are used to work with windows, they don't know linux and they don't know someone who can explain how to use it. And their PC works well with windows : think of the nightmare it can be sometimes to make your hardware work with linux, some popular linux distros have dropped support for old hardware: I'm writing on a PC with 442Mo of RAM where I could install xubuntu LTS 12.04 but I keep running on an older version because it swaps too much, on a more recent Acer this same xubuntu does not recognize the 3-d opengl card acceleration while older xubuntu did. And I'm afraid there are a lot of mathematicians who don't use linux, even in the open-source software developers community in OCDE countries, think of Mac users for example :-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On 11/15/12 3:22 PM, Andrea Lazzarotto wrote: 2012/11/14 Jason Grout jason-s...@creativetrax.com mailto:jason-s...@creativetrax.com I'm curious: how does the software selection compare to, for example, mathbuntu (http://www.mathbuntu.org/ http://www.mathbuntu.org/), particularly the math packages? I just tried, that distro does NOT contain Sage, just a link to the Sage Notebook. Hmm, interesting. The webpage led me to believe that it does include Sage. Thanks for checking. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On 11/13/12 8:49 AM, Thierry wrote: I built a live Debian Sage USB key wich is able to clone itself on another key, indefinitely. I will make the prototype (and the source code) available when i will be back home with a good internet connection. Other features of the key are : personal data persistence, no personal data is duplicated, possibility for the user to share additional data from her key to the cloned one (pdf lecture notes, worksheets, pictures of the workshop,...), lot of softwares (geogebra, latex, editors, gimp, vlc, libreoffice,... there is no need to be small since the bandwith limit is the size of the key). I'm intrigued by the idea of using this to distribute Sage to students as well. I'm curious: how does the software selection compare to, for example, mathbuntu (http://www.mathbuntu.org/), particularly the math packages? Also, is it possible to easily do Sage development with this key? I keep running into somewhat frustrating problems getting students up to speed with a linux/sage development environment, and having a USB key I can keep up to date and hand them would be wonderful. Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
I could hope for 4-5 that will use Sage in the long run, and 20 that definitely see the point but will get stuck by lack of infrastructure and expertise. These sound like great numbers. I think to break the barrier and make a true sage days really productive, I think that you would need to partner with some organization like OLPC (one laptop per child) or arrange to minimize the problems with your hardware. Well, I have a good contact for that: dad :-) We actually already used Sage on our home OLPC, although only through a remote Sage server. I I just mentioned OLPC because that was an organization I had heard of. I didn't know your dad was associated, but what an awesome contact to have. I don't yet see how to overcome infrastructure problems. I would summarize my experience as: 1. don't use the internet (you can't count on it anyway) 2. most computers have some old version of Windows 3. a few students will have their own laptops 4. Most students will have little or no computer experience 5. Most want to learn computers and see the point, a few choose to be luddites and can afford to because the infrastructure is so unreliable Of course, the real thing would be to integrate a resource-optimized version of Sage within the Sugar activities. This probably won't be a priority for OLPC, since their main target population is children of age 6-12, but as you say we could explore other organizations as well. At the events I have been involved with, our highest priority was to minimize the infrastructure difficulties. AIMS in South Africa sounds like it might be a good place to organize an event since you could potentially rely on computer access. -Mike On Monday, 12 November 2012 04:52:27 UTC-5, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 08:07:06PM -0800, Mike Zabrocki wrote: Wow! Nicolas fantastic report. That was a challenge to do. Thanks :-) I hope you managed a convert or two in Africa. My experience with computer classes as part of a summer school (in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar) is similar except I never had a wifi network and most of my students didn't have regular computer access. Most of my students were complete novices to the computer, but willing to learn. Installing sage was several steps beyond what we tried. I would say that most of the infrastructure that we had access to would not support sage (most computers were dated pre-python, though I did not have the expertise to make this work). I could hope for 4-5 that will use Sage in the long run, and 20 that definitely see the point but will get stuck by lack of infrastructure and expertise. But as you said: �if our problem was only network, we were in pretty good shape to start with�. We had a selection of students that were definitely computer-literate (somehow, the main difficulty was to prevent them from running to facebookall and eat up all the bandwidth whenever the network was working :-) ), even though most did not have programming experience. I think to break the barrier and make a true sage days really productive, I think that you would need to partner with some organization like OLPC (one laptop per child) or arrange to minimize the problems with your hardware. Well, I have a good contact for that: dad :-) We actually already used Sage on our home OLPC, although only through a remote Sage server. I doubt the old models can support running Sage locally, but for the upcoming models we certainly will have a shot (at least running in a terminal). Of course, the real thing would be to integrate a resource-optimized version of Sage within the Sugar activities. This probably won't be a priority for OLPC, since their main target population is children of age 6-12, but as you say we could explore other organizations as well. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thi�ry Isil nth...@users.sf.net javascript: http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi, thanks Nicolas for this exhaustive report. I would like to witness this adventure it in a more pessimistic way, so that people willing to host such a sage days know what kind of problems will appear, and which workarounds are realistic. Being free software is definitely not a sufficient condition for being usable in developping countries. The main reason is that free software and internet are closely interdependent (none could have been developped without the other). Compare http://www.ipligence.com/worldmap/ and http://sagemath.org/development-map.html If you plan to have a workshop in a place with no onternet connection nor recent machines, you will experience a lot of problems. We had a preparatory workshop at the same place one year ago (with only 20 local participants) that went much less smoothly (one could even say catastrophic) than that one. A small report was done on the page http://wiki.sagemath.org/days34.5#line-19 = Feedback = == Windows users == - virtualbox is not a solution. People running Windows usually have the last version (not XP), which has the effect of taking all the RAM, even on some not so old laptops. Adding a layer makes things worse. - the existing live CD installed on a USB key is a good option, but : - The .exe file that installs the live-cd on the hard disk of a windows install does not work at all (tested on various machines without success). - Moreover there is no easy way for the participants to spread it afterwards, you need a recent version of unetbootin or some knowledge of sfdisk/hdparm/mkfs/syslinux to make it bootable to some other key. == GNU/Linux users == - People under GNU/Linux mainly run Ubuntu, but do not necessary run the last version (not even some older LTS version). Unfortunately, the only available sage binary for Ubuntu is the last LTS. - Moreover, the Ubuntu Sage binary we get from the Sage repository needs some additional packages (libgfortran3 for example). The solution of such a problem is not as easy when you have to go to some cyber-cafe to download a package and hope that is will be the last missing one (Sage tells you about another dependency only when the previous one is satisfied), especially when the university is far from downtown. - The compilation of the Ubuntu Sage binary was made on some recent hardware, at least the sse2 set of instructions is needed whereas some Pentium 3 do not know sse2 instructions. As explained by Nicolas, requiring a build which is able to run on a Pentium 3 is overkill if participants bring their laptops, it is not the case if you plan to work on a local computer room (the one of ISEA had 1/3 Pentium 3 and 2/3 Pentium 4). A possible reason for this sse2 dependency may be the following bug of the atlas package: if you set SAGE_FAT_BINARY='yes', the architecture will be Hammer (why such a choice ?), without taking the SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH variable in consideration, and atlas won't run on Pentium 3. See http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/13706 - Installing GNU/Linux on the participants machines is dangerous. Participants do not have backups. Because of a problem of gparted to understand correctly windows extended partition system (at least in november 2011, gparted attributed the labels of 7 extended partitions of one participants above the four primary partitions uncorrectly, letting you erase the wrong primary partition), because we didn't have enough backup space to backup the whole disk, and because we were tired after one week of workshop, we lost the personal data (in particular some important latex files) of one participant, and spend one week at trying to recover some data between the new Linux filesystem and sage binaries. = Workarounds to still distribute sage despite all those problems = As Nicolas explained, you should consider a multiple strategies approach. Here are the remaining realistic ones. I started a wiki page with the following text to help future sage-days organisers, don't hesitate to update it : http://wiki.sagemath.org/HowToSpreadSageDuringAWorkshop == The autoclone USB live == I built a live Debian Sage USB key wich is able to clone itself on another key, indefinitely. I will make the prototype (and the source code) available when i will be back home with a good internet connection. Other features of the key are : personal data persistence, no personal data is duplicated, possibility for the user to share additional data from her key to the cloned one (pdf lecture notes, worksheets, pictures of the workshop,...), lot of softwares (geogebra, latex, editors, gimp, vlc, libreoffice,... there is no need to be small since the bandwith limit is the size of the key). If you have 200 euros to spend, buy one USB key of = 4GB for each participant plus 10% to saturate the market (some people will have to bring one back to their boss/friend/other). Build a few keys and let the participants clone the
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:53:34 AM UTC-5, sage-goo...@lma.metelu.net wrote: Hi, thanks Nicolas for this exhaustive report. I would like to witness this adventure it in a more pessimistic way, so that people willing to host such a sage days know what kind of problems will appear, and which workarounds are realistic. I know very little about all the technicalities of these reports but want to echo that it is VERY valuable to have these real-life experiences - what a great thread. I recommend that several of these analyses be put on a wiki page linked to http://wiki.sagemath.org/#Hosting_a_workshop - maybe How to host a Sage Days with older hardware and limited bandwidth, since that could even obtain in certain developed world locales outside of universities, and then people wouldn't have to search sage-devel for this information. - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
I know very little about all the technicalities of these reports but want to echo that it is VERY valuable to have these real-life experiences - what a great thread. I recommend that several of these analyses be put on a wiki page linked to http://wiki.sagemath.org/#Hosting_a_workshop - maybe How to host a Sage Days with older hardware and limited bandwidth, since that could even obtain in certain developed world locales outside of universities, and then people wouldn't have to search sage-devel for this information. Actually, I guess some of what Thierry said is at http://wiki.sagemath.org/HowToSpreadSageDuringAWorkshop so that's a good start :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
The openssl and gfortran issues should be solved in sage-5.4, they are no longer needed. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Thierry, I find your message to be great in all parts, but I would like to point out a thing... 2012/11/13 Thierry sage-googlesu...@lma.metelu.net bios not able to boot on USB Again, this is not a big problem. :P You can build a CD or even a floppy disk with PLOP boot manager and even boot a Pentium II from USB. :D I did this a lot of times. Yes, to be honest it's not free software, it's just a freeware tool... but better than nothing. :) Best regards, -- *Andrea Lazzarotto* - http://andrealazzarotto.com* * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 08:07:06PM -0800, Mike Zabrocki wrote: Wow! Nicolas fantastic report. That was a challenge to do. Thanks :-) I hope you managed a convert or two in Africa. My experience with computer classes as part of a summer school (in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar) is similar except I never had a wifi network and most of my students didn't have regular computer access. Most of my students were complete novices to the computer, but willing to learn. Installing sage was several steps beyond what we tried. I would say that most of the infrastructure that we had access to would not support sage (most computers were dated pre-python, though I did not have the expertise to make this work). I could hope for 4-5 that will use Sage in the long run, and 20 that definitely see the point but will get stuck by lack of infrastructure and expertise. But as you said: «if our problem was only network, we were in pretty good shape to start with». We had a selection of students that were definitely computer-literate (somehow, the main difficulty was to prevent them from running to facebookall and eat up all the bandwidth whenever the network was working :-) ), even though most did not have programming experience. I think to break the barrier and make a true sage days really productive, I think that you would need to partner with some organization like OLPC (one laptop per child) or arrange to minimize the problems with your hardware. Well, I have a good contact for that: dad :-) We actually already used Sage on our home OLPC, although only through a remote Sage server. I doubt the old models can support running Sage locally, but for the upcoming models we certainly will have a shot (at least running in a terminal). Of course, the real thing would be to integrate a resource-optimized version of Sage within the Sugar activities. This probably won't be a priority for OLPC, since their main target population is children of age 6-12, but as you say we could explore other organizations as well. Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi Jan, Thanks for all the information and all your work making Sage easier to install! On the next similar occasion, we should also investigate aims-desktop, either through DVD installs or by running a local Ubuntu + PPA mirror. There still is the problem that installing a dual boot requires some resources (disk space) and can take some time to be done in a safe way (when the notion of backup is weak). One fine point as well, for the many older laptops, is to run Ubuntu with a light window manager. On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 07:22:12AM +0200, Jan Groenewald wrote: In the meantime speak to me about hosting sage days at an AIMS centre, where you will arrive with Sage already installed on all computers, and the most reliable internet you can find in an African university. If someone knows where to get the funding, I would look forward to a July 2014 Sage days in Cape Town. Hmm, I don't have ideas on the top of my head for funding, but this sounds attracting :-) Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas M. Thiéry Isil nthi...@users.sf.net http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups sage-devel group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
[sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Wow! Nicolas fantastic report. That was a challenge to do. I hope you managed a convert or two in Africa. My experience with computer classes as part of a summer school (in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar) is similar except I never had a wifi network and most of my students didn't have regular computer access. Most of my students were complete novices to the computer, but willing to learn. Installing sage was several steps beyond what we tried. I would say that most of the infrastructure that we had access to would not support sage (most computers were dated pre-python, though I did not have the expertise to make this work). I think to break the barrier and make a true sage days really productive, I think that you would need to partner with some organization like OLPC (one laptop per child) or arrange to minimize the problems with your hardware. -Mike On Sunday, 11 November 2012 04:00:34 UTC-5, Nicolas M. Thiery wrote: Dear Sage devs, The fall school on Discrete Mathematics in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, aka Sage Days 43, just finished. For two weeks we had courses (combinatorics of words, dynamics, tilings, ...) interspersed with on-hands tutorials using Sage. The public consisted mostly from graduate students, from subsaharian Africa and some further away countries. That was a good occasion for a real-life evaluation of a claim I have been desiring to make for a long time: �Sage, being open-source, is well adapted for universities in developing countries�. Let's see about this. A couple words of context: -- - 70 participants total; in average 40-50 were there. - Most participants had a laptop (or netbook for a few of them): - 90%: windows, 5% mac, 5% Linux Ubuntu (usually in double-boot with Windows) - Laptop age ranging from 2003 to 2012; 4 years on average - RAM: 500k-6Gb; 1Gb on average? - Network: one ADSL line for 60 persons in the conference center Well, when it actually worked, which was not that often. We finished using a cell-phone shared over wifi. The local wireless network itself was down quite often. No network at the university itself or nearby - Among the organizers were Sage devs with good experience on running Sage workshops and doing system/network administration, ... - Sam had brought a big bunch of power cables. I screwed up not bringing my own wireless router to at least guarantee a reliable local network. Strategies we tried or considered: -- (a) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac with the binaries from Sagemath.org (b) Installing Sage on Linux/Mac from sources (c) Installing Sage on Linux from a custom built fat binary (d) Installing Sage on Windows with the virtual machine (e) Running a Sage server on my laptop (8 cores, 8Gb) (f) Using a remote Sage server (g) Installing Linux and reducing the problem to (a-c) (h) Booting on a live Debian USB key, custom-build by Thierry Monteil with Sage, self-cloning and persistence. (i) Using a local PC lab after installing Sage on them I would like to use the occasion to send my kudos to all those who strive hard at making Sage easier to use one way or the other. How it went: (a) Went smoothly on Mac when appropriate binaries were available. We had to recompile a few of those binaries. (a) failed most of the time on Linux by lack of gfortran. Since we did not have a reasonable network, apt-get install was not an option. We did not have iso's of all the Ubuntu versions that were in use. 3D plotting was usually not available (by lack of appropriate Java plug-ins). (b) Compiling from source was not a viable option on Linux for the same reason as above: build-essentials was usually not there. On Mac that was ok, provided we had under hand the appropriate version of XCode. (c) This fat binary was built by Thierry Monteil on an old pentium 3 (!) with a minimal Debian install. Installation and usage went smoothly, except that 3D plotting was usually not available. (d) Virtual machine: Installation went smoothly on about 20 machines (with close guidance). It failed on 2-3 machines due to resource limitations (disk, ...). However, except for about five recent machines, the memory footprint was just too high: any non trivial calculation or plot made the laptop swap and become simply too slow to use. The french keyboard was not properly self-detected. Due to the network, we could not look up on the web for help. We ended up finding how to configure it from a shell. I'll create a ticket. The Sage version available was a bit old (5.1) though that was not an issue for us this time (but it could have been). The usage was on the complex side for most participants. They typically tended to
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Sage Days in Bobo-Dioulasso debriefing; Sage in developping countries
Hi I also work in Science in many countries in Africa [1]. My preferred single solution is a standalone Ubuntu desktop (laptop) installation. As it dual boots, it is minimally invasive. The procedure is simple. AIMS-desktop currently only needs network for the install, and if it reaches network afterwards it can updated through the usual graphical means [2]. This method overcomes the problems with system administration by simplifying everything to one system [3] and overcomes problems with regular electricity and network outages, as each user has a laptop battery. A small UPS for the data projector is advisable to minimise frustration. It is also non-negotiable to me that each participant leaves the workshop with the software in working order. On the road to this the main obstacles were PPAs for rstudio, sage, and casapy (another huge python-based source-tree-cum-kitchen-sink piece of science software, like Sage!), which is now done simply by repacking upstream debs or binaries -- while debian-ugly it really turned out to be by far the easiest. Future work on aims-desktop becoming a standalone installer include perhaps rebranding to something generic like science-desktop (brought to you by AIMS ;) and refactoring it so that science-desktop-minimal fits into 4G, in order to use relinux (or remastersys) [4] to make an install CD which includes Ubuntu (2G), Sage (1.6G), and dependencies like tex (1+G). We may have a different flavour or install method to overcome this 4G limitation as we really want the science-desktop-minimal to inlcude scipy, gedit-plugins-extra, rstudio-desktop, texlive-full, texmaker, openjdk, and barring licensing/distribution problems, non-free codecs as well, or separately. science-desktop-standard is currently around 12G and science-desktop-extra around 20G. The eventual aim would be an easily maintained (minimal variation from, mostly just metapackages with dependencies) science flavour of Ubuntu, like kubuntu, xubuntu, etc. I'm not sure of the technical details yet, but this might be a 16G USB installer, with the usual 1-2G installer and all the extra packages loaded onto that memory stick. As I am working on this alone, and mostly because my day job keeps me busy, it's taken years! to get this far. I'll have time within the next quarter or so to update aims-desktop from 12.04 to 12.10, or to decide to support LTS only; and to build a sage buildbot slave for 12.10, or to build a LXC/KVM machine to provide builbot slaves for many Ubuntu versions. It does look like this is becoming more part of my day-job, officially; it doesn't mean other administrative work is reduced though... If anyone wants to help out, do let me know though. Two opportunities now include 1) investigating a minimal install with ubuntu + sage PPA for relinux, which will produce a downloadable ISO (though with the username/pass already set) and 2) writing a script to download a few packages onto a standard Ubuntu USB installer so that sage, gfortran, and a few other things can be installed after an Ubuntu install by a one-liner. AIMS centres can also act as regional hubs. Unfortunately due to bandwidth costs, public mirror hosting is unlikely, but hosting for internal use is likely; proxies are commonly deployed. At AIMS South Africa we install hundreds of laptops annually for our students and regional students who heard about it. AIMS Ghana and AIMS Senegal is poised to do the same. In the meantime speak to me about hosting sage days at an AIMS centre, where you will arrive with Sage already installed on all computers, and the most reliable internet you can find in an African university. If someone knows where to get the funding, I would look forward to a July 2014 Sage days in Cape Town. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/education-africa-s-counting-house-1.11757 [2] https://launchpad.net/aims-desktop [3] http://hplgit.github.com/edu/uiopy/uiopy.html [4] http://relinuxkit.org/, http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/ubuntu.html Regards, Jan On 12 November 2012 06:07, Mike Zabrocki mike.zabro...@gmail.com wrote: Wow! Nicolas fantastic report. That was a challenge to do. I hope you managed a convert or two in Africa. My experience with computer classes as part of a summer school (in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar) is similar except I never had a wifi network and most of my students didn't have regular computer access. Most of my students were complete novices to the computer, but willing to learn. Installing sage was several steps beyond what we tried. I would say that most of the infrastructure that we had access to would not support sage (most computers were dated pre-python, though I did not have the expertise to make this work). I think to break the barrier and make a true sage days really productive, I think that you would need to partner with some organization like OLPC (one laptop per child) or arrange to minimize the problems with your hardware. -Mike On Sunday,
