[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dominique Laurain]

Thanks Dima...  :-)

rt :  usb.tar.gz is an archive (tar), not gzipped ... better name for such 
an archive file would be... "usb.tar"...for an extract with tar xvf

Dominique

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Sunday, 26 July 2015 08:04:40 UTC+1, Dominique Laurain wrote:
>
> Hi rt, no web page at your URL ( http://pan.baidu.com/s/1o6qYzgA 
> 
> ):
>
> http://pan.baidu.com/error/404.html
>
> from the main page (http://pan.baidu.com/) : I guess it is a web host ... 
> you have to log in to access your website/blog/data..
>

no, the link is OK, it's Google link forwarding that does not work. If you 
copy the link as it appears and try opening it, it works; but if you just 
click on it, it gives 404.

 

>
> Dominique.
>

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[rt.]

it's indeed a web host which provide free service to store your data online 
or share it online.
the link is an open share link, it should be no problem as I can see it 
without login, maybe it's just like that I can't access google normally. 
Or maybe, I can send the file by email, may I have your email?
 

在 2015年7月26日星期日 UTC+8下午3:04:40，Dominique Laurain写道：
>
> Hi rt, no web page at your URL ( http://pan.baidu.com/s/1o6qYzgA 
> 
> ):
>
> http://pan.baidu.com/error/404.html
>
> from the main page (http://pan.baidu.com/) : I guess it is a web host ... 
> you have to log in to access your website/blog/data..
>
> Dominique.
>

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dominique Laurain]

Hi rt, no web page at your URL ( http://pan.baidu.com/s/1o6qYzgA 

):

http://pan.baidu.com/error/404.html

from the main page (http://pan.baidu.com/) : I guess it is a web host ... 
you have to log in to access your website/blog/data..

Dominique.

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[rt.]

the grub.svgz is the illustration of the boot process, it may be a little 
hard to read...
and the configurations are uploaded to somewhere else, here is the link:  
http://pan.baidu.com/s/1o6qYzgA


在 2015年7月25日星期六 UTC+8下午8:07:10，rt.写道：
>
> my USB flash was divided into two partitions, the first one serves 
> as a normal partition for file saving and the second one is only for 
> booting purpose, all the livecd are saved in the second partition managed 
> by grub2, the configuration files are placed in the attachment, to have it 
> bootable in both legacy bios mode and uefi mode, you will have to install 
> grub2 in two ways for targets, one is the i386( called like this in 
> grub2),another is x86_64-efi, I install it with the following commands:
>
> grub-install --removable --recheck --target=x86_64-efi 
> --efi-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t 
> --boot-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t/boot/grub/x86_64-efi
> grub-install --recheck --removable --target=i386-pc 
> --boot-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t/boot/grub/i386-pc /dev/sdb
>
> before the two commands, you should already have the target 
> partition mounted on the right place( here is /run/media/root/r\&t/ ), the 
> i386-pc targets need write data to mbr, while the x86_64-efi boot from efi 
> excutable file which is loaded directly by bios with uefi support, that's a 
> feature of uefi. As for 'secure boot', it's so called but it prohibit any 
> loader unsigned or signed with a wrong key( more often the key belongs to 
> Microsoft, but for some machine you can also install your own key), about 
> how to boot with secure boot on, here is some more detailed refrence:
> www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html
> an announcement about 'secure boot' by fsf two or three years ago:
> 
> http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement
>
> the two targets share nearly the same configurations which are 
> located in /boot/grub/grub2_share/cfg, some file were removed to shrink the 
> file size, so it's not ready to boot, but the arrangement of the file can 
> be referenced.
> the main file for sagemath is placed in the same path as they are 
> arranged in the live img, here in my USB flash, it's the directory '/live', 
> the corresponding configuration is in 0_gnu_linux.cfg.
> among the files, /boot/grub/grub2_share/cfg/*.cfg and 
> /boot/grub/$target/grub/grub.cfg is what you can refer, the other files 
> were left just in case that you need.
>
>
> 在 2015年7月25日星期六 UTC+8下午7:50:01，rt.写道：
>>
>> e.. not really, I'm just a junior student now and interested in computer 
>> techniques.
>>
>> sorry to reply so late, we are having a field work and these days it 
>> seems that the ipv6 was not available or not stable enough, I was blocked 
>> and can't have access to google, so is this forum. Just now, I tried 
>> several times and finally I am lucky to send this message!
>>
>> grub2 is of course a free software, it's also made by GNU project as an 
>> update to legacy grub! As for my grub2 configuration, it seems that it will 
>> take some space to write it. I will try to conclude it here. Besides, you 
>> can find more instruction about it in the official manual.
>>
>> there is a great chance that you will have to fsck your usb flash disk, 
>> at leastfor sage live 6.5 or earlier 6.4, but that's easy to deal with and 
>> still acceptable. for the new version 6.7, I'm not sure as my laptop is now 
>> more convinient, so I haven't got to try the new version now.
>> It should be claimed that not only sagemath, but also many live cd would 
>> couase the problem, and sagemath have tried to deal with this issue through 
>> several more convenient methods, though it's not auto done now.
>>
>>
>> it is little long to say about the boot mode uefi and legacy bios, it's 
>> better that you find the explanation somewhere else, two place I recommend 
>> is the uefi official webset and tiannocore, as I first learned it from all 
>> kinds of forum, most of which were wrote in Chinese ...
>>
>> as for matlab, I just leared little, and it was already one year ago. as 
>> now I don't want to spend much time on it, I can't tell much about it, 
>> sorry. However, for matlab, there is a big problem, it's not free, not only 
>> the charge but also not open source; also, it takes lots of disk space( my 
>> hard disk is just a little inadequate to save all my files). Several weeks 
>> ago, I tried ansys under the linux, finaly got defeated and will never want 
>> to have ansys installed on linux again, there is so many troubles with it, 
>> and hardly have documents, I'm afraid that matlab would have the same 
>> circumstance, but that's just the third reason. Now sagemath is just 
>> powerful enough and script is so convenient to use. With additional tools, 
>> like a frontend( for example texmacs, with witch the formula displayed is 
>> easy to read ), it can meet nearly all what I need, there is 

[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[rt.]

my USB flash was divided into two partitions, the first one serves 
as a normal partition for file saving and the second one is only for 
booting purpose, all the livecd are saved in the second partition managed 
by grub2, the configuration files are placed in the attachment, to have it 
bootable in both legacy bios mode and uefi mode, you will have to install 
grub2 in two ways for targets, one is the i386( called like this in 
grub2),another is x86_64-efi, I install it with the following commands:

grub-install --removable --recheck --target=x86_64-efi 
--efi-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t 
--boot-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t/boot/grub/x86_64-efi
grub-install --recheck --removable --target=i386-pc 
--boot-directory=/run/media/root/r\&t/boot/grub/i386-pc /dev/sdb

before the two commands, you should already have the target 
partition mounted on the right place( here is /run/media/root/r\&t/ ), the 
i386-pc targets need write data to mbr, while the x86_64-efi boot from efi 
excutable file which is loaded directly by bios with uefi support, that's a 
feature of uefi. As for 'secure boot', it's so called but it prohibit any 
loader unsigned or signed with a wrong key( more often the key belongs to 
Microsoft, but for some machine you can also install your own key), about 
how to boot with secure boot on, here is some more detailed refrence:
www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html
an announcement about 'secure boot' by fsf two or three years ago:

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement

the two targets share nearly the same configurations which are 
located in /boot/grub/grub2_share/cfg, some file were removed to shrink the 
file size, so it's not ready to boot, but the arrangement of the file can 
be referenced.
the main file for sagemath is placed in the same path as they are 
arranged in the live img, here in my USB flash, it's the directory '/live', 
the corresponding configuration is in 0_gnu_linux.cfg.
among the files, /boot/grub/grub2_share/cfg/*.cfg and 
/boot/grub/$target/grub/grub.cfg is what you can refer, the other files 
were left just in case that you need.


在 2015年7月25日星期六 UTC+8下午7:50:01，rt.写道：
>
> e.. not really, I'm just a junior student now and interested in computer 
> techniques.
>
> sorry to reply so late, we are having a field work and these days it seems 
> that the ipv6 was not available or not stable enough, I was blocked and 
> can't have access to google, so is this forum. Just now, I tried several 
> times and finally I am lucky to send this message!
>
> grub2 is of course a free software, it's also made by GNU project as an 
> update to legacy grub! As for my grub2 configuration, it seems that it will 
> take some space to write it. I will try to conclude it here. Besides, you 
> can find more instruction about it in the official manual.
>
> there is a great chance that you will have to fsck your usb flash disk, at 
> leastfor sage live 6.5 or earlier 6.4, but that's easy to deal with and 
> still acceptable. for the new version 6.7, I'm not sure as my laptop is now 
> more convinient, so I haven't got to try the new version now.
> It should be claimed that not only sagemath, but also many live cd would 
> couase the problem, and sagemath have tried to deal with this issue through 
> several more convenient methods, though it's not auto done now.
>
>
> it is little long to say about the boot mode uefi and legacy bios, it's 
> better that you find the explanation somewhere else, two place I recommend 
> is the uefi official webset and tiannocore, as I first learned it from all 
> kinds of forum, most of which were wrote in Chinese ...
>
> as for matlab, I just leared little, and it was already one year ago. as 
> now I don't want to spend much time on it, I can't tell much about it, 
> sorry. However, for matlab, there is a big problem, it's not free, not only 
> the charge but also not open source; also, it takes lots of disk space( my 
> hard disk is just a little inadequate to save all my files). Several weeks 
> ago, I tried ansys under the linux, finaly got defeated and will never want 
> to have ansys installed on linux again, there is so many troubles with it, 
> and hardly have documents, I'm afraid that matlab would have the same 
> circumstance, but that's just the third reason. Now sagemath is just 
> powerful enough and script is so convenient to use. With additional tools, 
> like a frontend( for example texmacs, with witch the formula displayed is 
> easy to read ), it can meet nearly all what I need, there is no reason for 
> me to try matlab again.
>
> maybe later I will try to add a map to illustrate how the grub2 works for 
my USB flash, hoping the net will hold on ...

it seems it's no easy to upload files here, I will try to make it later..
 

>
> 在 2015年7月22日星期三 UTC+8上午3:35:08，Dominique Laurain写道：
>>
>> Hi rt,
>>
>> you are advanced student, aren't you

[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[rt.]

e.. not really, I'm just a junior student now and interested in computer 
techniques.

sorry to reply so late, we are having a field work and these days it seems 
that the ipv6 was not available or not stable enough, I was blocked and 
can't have access to google, so is this forum. Just now, I tried several 
times and finally I am lucky to send this message!

grub2 is of course a free software, it's also made by GNU project as an 
update to legacy grub! As for my grub2 configuration, it seems that it will 
take some space to write it. I will try to conclude it here. Besides, you 
can find more instruction about it in the official manual.

there is a great chance that you will have to fsck your usb flash disk, at 
leastfor sage live 6.5 or earlier 6.4, but that's easy to deal with and 
still acceptable. for the new version 6.7, I'm not sure as my laptop is now 
more convinient, so I haven't got to try the new version now.
It should be claimed that not only sagemath, but also many live cd would 
couase the problem, and sagemath have tried to deal with this issue through 
several more convenient methods, though it's not auto done now.


it is little long to say about the boot mode uefi and legacy bios, it's 
better that you find the explanation somewhere else, two place I recommend 
is the uefi official webset and tiannocore, as I first learned it from all 
kinds of forum, most of which were wrote in Chinese ...

as for matlab, I just leared little, and it was already one year ago. as 
now I don't want to spend much time on it, I can't tell much about it, 
sorry. However, for matlab, there is a big problem, it's not free, not only 
the charge but also not open source; also, it takes lots of disk space( my 
hard disk is just a little inadequate to save all my files). Several weeks 
ago, I tried ansys under the linux, finaly got defeated and will never want 
to have ansys installed on linux again, there is so many troubles with it, 
and hardly have documents, I'm afraid that matlab would have the same 
circumstance, but that's just the third reason. Now sagemath is just 
powerful enough and script is so convenient to use. With additional tools, 
like a frontend( for example texmacs, with witch the formula displayed is 
easy to read ), it can meet nearly all what I need, there is no reason for 
me to try matlab again.


在 2015年7月22日星期三 UTC+8上午3:35:08，Dominique Laurain写道：
>
> Hi rt,
>
> you are advanced student, aren't you ? ... :-)
>
> yes, it will be good to share about grub2 like Thierry did/does for his 
> technical data...either in your own blog or you post it for some interested 
> sage users or dev.
>
> I know only "grub" at my job, but maybe grub2 is more up to date. I guess 
> many "details" are very important : how did you partition disk to handle 
> the boot process from the grub to the chosen ISO file ? is grub2 free (no 
> money to pay to install it) ? ...
>
> I don't know just now, what it means "uefi" or "secure boot is off" ... 
> you can write short explanation (or reference websites) about what you did 
> (no need to mention what you have not tried yourself).
>
> MATLAB can have advantages too : if you have the chance (for example usage 
> free with school) to use MATLAB, do it...you will understand you didn't 
> miss opportunity later,... you can compare and explain better your ideas 
> why SAGE is very good. Keep written notes about good or bad experiences.
>
> Dominique.
>

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[kcrisman]

I just want to thank everyone in this thread for offering their very useful 
thoughts.  Is there a possibility of making it slightly easier to find than 
by happening upon these kinds of threads?  I hesitate to suggest the wiki 
since wikis have their known pitfalls.

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dominique Laurain]

Hi rt,

you are advanced student, aren't you ? ... :-)

yes, it will be good to share about grub2 like Thierry did/does for his 
technical data...either in your own blog or you post it for some interested 
sage users or dev.

I know only "grub" at my job, but maybe grub2 is more up to date. I guess 
many "details" are very important : how did you partition disk to handle 
the boot process from the grub to the chosen ISO file ? is grub2 free (no 
money to pay to install it) ? ...

I don't know just now, what it means "uefi" or "secure boot is off" ... you 
can write short explanation (or reference websites) about what you did (no 
need to mention what you have not tried yourself).

MATLAB can have advantages too : if you have the chance (for example usage 
free with school) to use MATLAB, do it...you will understand you didn't 
miss opportunity later,... you can compare and explain better your ideas 
why SAGE is very good. Keep written notes about good or bad experiences.

Dominique.

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[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[rt.]

Hearing the class for students about using sage, I'm a little excited. As 
I'm also a student, and got to know sage by accident at the begining of 
last year, I am just expecting for a more widely usage of sage on 
educational teaching class in China, as now here in the Univercities of 
China, more often matlab was introduced or even tought to students rather 
than haveing it as an alternative subject that students can choose if they 
want. For me, I don't like these commercial software about science and math 
related. However, most students just don't even know more alternative free 
and powerful software in these fields, and there is nearly no related 
reference for sagemath and so kind software. I don't think this case is ok 
for us students. And so I'm really hoping that you can make a big hit for 
sagemath applied to education.
Thierry is still so warmhearted, he has helped a lot for me to have a 
better accese to sage, and now the main OS I'm using is gentoo, it's very 
convenient to use sage and sage have been working very well when applied to 
several subjects that I am learning. Just in last week I tried to use sage 
to do a test over a possibility problem that my classmate
asked, sage did a good job!

As for the problem you referred, I agree with Thierry that the live boot 
media is the best way to have a quick access to sage also with almost all 
the features included.
now I'm having a usb stick with a lot live isos stored and managed by 
grub2, sagemath is of course included, it can be boot with either legacy 
bios or uefi so long as the secure boot is turned of or a more complicated 
method should be applied to handle the case. Grub2 is very flexible and can 
be used to boot sagemath directly from the squashfs file in spite of the 
position where the file is located, so the squashfs can be placed in the 
hard disk and the usb stick is only needed to load the boot process, thus 
the speed and stability should be of no problem, and the demand for more 
USB sticks is also sovled( when install grub2 to the hard disk, it's of no 
need for USB stick).
If needed, I'm happy to share the grub2 configuration.



在 2015年7月18日星期六 UTC+8上午2:00:49，Viviane Pons写道：
>
> Dear all,
>
> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along 
> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was 
> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on 
> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
>
> Conditions;
>
> - around 30 students
> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to 
> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the 
> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, 
> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> - most students had very limited computer skills
>
> Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone 
> to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup 
> options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
>
> Sage installation:
>
> Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon 
> was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes 
> had issues:
> * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + 
> Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in 
> weird ways and the program partition was full)
> * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which 
> makes it seem broken)
>
> Using Sage on the VM:
>
> Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test 
> and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying: 
>
> * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash 
> on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their 
> computers were running out of memory)
>
> * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at all, 
> the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the 
> usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the 
> idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once
>
> * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because 
> the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to 
> share notebooks with them!! (except on SMC)
>
> * pdflatex wasn't installed by default which for me was a real problem as 
> I use it a lot to print combinatorial objects (thank you Jean-Baptiste for 
> the ascii art on binary trees, it saved me a bit!). And because of internet 
> limitations and the lack of Ubuntu knowledge from my students, it was not 
> really possible to install it on all their machines (I mean the VM)
>
> * I couldn't get the VM to show multiple windows and not even multiple 
> tabs. This was so annoying... Sometimes a student would click on a link 

Re: [sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Thierry]

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 01:01:40AM -0700, Dominique Laurain wrote:
> Hello Viviane & Thierry,
> 
> Very interesting feedbacks, thanks for sharing :-)
> 
> Yes simple to go with USB keys, because now we can buy one 4Go at low
> price.  I am only worried about 1) how to boot on it for old computers
> (and new ones too because for example my tablet don't have..only USB
> port for electricity power) 2) data transfer speed from key to computer

For a tablet without USB port, well i guess there is nothing to do, or
perhaps if it is able to boot from a SD card.

For old computers that have a USB port but for which the BIOS is not able
to boot on it, there is an small CD iso image with plopkexec on it in the
live/ directory of the key. You can burn it from the live USB by inserting
an empty writeable cdrom and clicking on the "Create a bootloader CD-ROM"
icon. Then you can boot from the CD, ant it will be able to boot on the
USB key. I did not test the "Create a bootloader CD-ROM" option for a
while since it uses a new CDROM each time, so if you try it, please tell
if it still works.

This feature was suggested at
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mathematics.sage.devel/62520
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/X1tZa6qyaQE/1N9qDY7UdvIJ

Concerning the data transfer, with a decent USB drive, you can clone the
key (3.1GB pf compressed data for version 6.7) in about 10 minutes (USB
2). Concerning the data transfer when the key is working, if you do not
select "home persistence" option at boot, then everything is written in
RAM, so there is no write access to the USB key. If you boot with the
"home persistence" option, only the personal data (the one on /home/user/
directory) is actually written, so this is usually only about some small
worksheets, or huge files downloaded from the internet which will be the
bottleneck anyway. If you want to write something outside the home
directory (e.g. install a Debian package), you should have a look at the
"keep" module which can make custom snapshots. If you need huge fast data
transfers, you should look for USB 3, note that external hard disk will
work as well, or perhaps consider installing GNU/Linux on your machine.

About reading the data from the key (e.g. when launching a new software),
there is a possibility to copy its whole content to RAM at startup, but i
did not enable this feature since the menu is quite big already and it
wastes 3.1 GB of RAM. It is doable however.
 
> For "switch" I do not mean a big one..I mean only one about 15cm x 10cm
> x 5cm, you can easily store in bag.
> 
> I defnitiely have to put in my to-do-list,practicing how to make a
> booting SAGE USB key and collecting instructions for that..  Thierry, do
> you have blog or github or internet web site where you have written USB
> tips ?

Yes, you can have a look at: http://sagedebianlive.metelu.net/

There are 4 levels of documentation:
- Use the USB key you got from a friend : how to duplicate a key that
  works already
- Download and install a USB key from an iso file : how to make a first
  key from the iso image found on the mirrors
- Build and customize your own key : how to compile your own custom key
  with the software you want
- Development : how to share your custom modules if they are of general
  interest

I do not have much feedback on whether those texts are precise enough, so
please do not hesitate to comment if there is something unclear.

Ciao,
Thierry


> 
> Dominique 
> 
> 
>  On Friday, 17 Jul 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along 
> > with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was 
> > combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on 
> > Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
> >
> > Conditions;
> >
> > - around 30 students
> > - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to 
> > work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the 
> > data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> > - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, 
> > 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> > - most students had very limited computer skills
> >
> > Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone 
> > to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup 
> > options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
> >
> > Sage installation:
> >
> > Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon 
> > was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes 
> > had issues:
> > * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + 
> > Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in 
> > weird ways and the program partition was full)
> > * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which 
> 

[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dominique Laurain]

Hello Viviane & Thierry,

Very interesting feedbacks, thanks for sharing :-)

Yes simple to go with USB keys, because now we can buy one 4Go at low 
price.  I am only worried about 1) how to boot on it for old computers (and 
new ones too because for example my tablet don't have..only USB port for 
electricity power) 2) data transfer speed from key to computer

For "switch" I do not mean a big one..I mean only one about 15cm x 10cm x 
5cm, you can easily store in bag.

I defnitiely have to put in my to-do-list,practicing how to make a booting 
SAGE USB key and collecting instructions for that..
Thierry, do you have blog or github or internet web site where you have 
written USB tips ?

Dominique 


 On Friday, 17 Jul 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along 
> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was 
> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on 
> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
>
> Conditions;
>
> - around 30 students
> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to 
> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the 
> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, 
> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> - most students had very limited computer skills
>
> Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone 
> to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup 
> options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
>
> Sage installation:
>
> Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon 
> was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes 
> had issues:
> * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + 
> Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in 
> weird ways and the program partition was full)
> * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which 
> makes it seem broken)
>
> Using Sage on the VM:
>
> Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test 
> and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying: 
>
> * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash 
> on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their 
> computers were running out of memory)
>
> * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at all, 
> the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the 
> usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the 
> idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once
>
> * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because 
> the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to 
> share notebooks with them!! (except on SMC)
>
> * pdflatex wasn't installed by default which for me was a real problem as 
> I use it a lot to print combinatorial objects (thank you Jean-Baptiste for 
> the ascii art on binary trees, it saved me a bit!). And because of internet 
> limitations and the lack of Ubuntu knowledge from my students, it was not 
> really possible to install it on all their machines (I mean the VM)
>
> * I couldn't get the VM to show multiple windows and not even multiple 
> tabs. This was so annoying... Sometimes a student would click on a link on 
> a notebook and there was no way of going back to where it was before... Or 
> to open Internet on the VM to download the notebooks or something...
>
> To finish, one very good thing that we need to keep: the Help link on the 
> notebook was great, the students were navigating on the different tutorials 
> and this worked very well.
>
> Anyway, this list is here to remind us what we could do better. I don't 
> mean to push anybody but now that we'll have full time developers, I 
> figured this real life experience was very useful for us non-Windows-users 
> to have (at the end, what's the point of having open source softwares if 
> the people who really need it can't use it properly?)
>
> Also I want to say that despite all of this, the school went really well. 
> The students were really happy to learn about Sage, they were the most 
> enthusiastic and motivated students I ever had. Both Jennifer and I were 
> able to do great mathematics and we had a wonderful time! 
>
> If ever you're interested, my class material on combinatorics is here:
>
> https://www.lri.fr/~pons/en/eaump.php
>
> and the whole summer school material (including the previous week) is 
> there:
>
> http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgks/EAUMP/
>
> Best,
>
> Vivi
>

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Re: [sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Thierry]

Hi,

On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 10:07:56AM +0300, Viviane Pons wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> To answer Thierry: I do remember your feedbacks from Burkina from a few
> years ago. I was actually planning to bring live USB keys, the only reason
> I didn't is because I didn't have the time to setup all those keys before
> leaving. I'm still curious on how you do this: do you buy a bunch of keys
> before and then give them to the students? Do you you require them to bring
> their own USB key?

It depends on the available budget. In Senegal, we used the USB drives
that were given to the participants for the proceedings (note that the USB
drive should be at least 4GB), with the "upgrade" option you can keep the
existing content if there is enough free space on the key (the "clone"
options formats the key). In Burkina Faso, we got the USB keys from the
gdr-im, for the EJICIM, the participants were asked to bring their own,
though i brought some with me just in case. I am more and more favorable
to that last option since most people have an unused USB drive somewhere,
so it helps avoiding waste.

In any case, i clone a small amount of them to bootstrap and i let the
participants to clone the other keys on their computer, it has the benefit
to be much faster (distributed) and also to let them play with the key for
when they will be back to their home.
 
> Also, have you ever tried this on Windows 8? Because I know from past
> experience that the boot is very different and Windows8 is very reluctant
> on booting on anything else than itself.

Yes, windows 8 has the bad habit to prevent the user to access the BIOS
(in the name of "secure boot"), so you have to boot on windows first, and
look for the quite hidden place to disable it (some sequence like : PC
settings > Advanced startup > Troobleshoot > Advanced options > UEFI
firmware settings > restart). Then you go to the BIOS and reorder the boot
sequence to have the USB drive appearing before the hard drive, without
the secure boot and UEFI stuff.

Ciao,
Thierry



> As to install Linux on their machine, it would have taken too much of my
> time and energy. Our goal was to sort out most technical issues on the
> first day (which we did), and then, leave the rest of the week for math and
> experimentation. As I said, it wasn't Sage days per say but really a school
> with lectures and all.
> 
> To answer Dominique: "when you go teaching in far away places" --> It was
> actually my first time doing such a thing. And I have very little
> experience on setting up a sage cloud, so I didn't want to use this week to
> experiment on this... Also, it was complicated for me to bring any
> material, I'm quite on a long trip here involving different conferences,
> continents and also holidays: my bags are quite full already. The only
> thing I bring with me is my very light (but powerful) laptop. And last but
> not least: with this solution, they have a working Sage during the week but
> nothing to bring back home (and even nothing for homework in the evening).
> The VM, despite its limitation, is still a program that they can keep
> using. And I know they will.
> 
> Anyway, I have no doubt that for now Thierry's solutions are probably the
> best. Also, the VM were not too bad and, in our case, it mostly did the
> work. But still, it would be nice to work toward a better Windows interface
> that doesn't require to install Linux at all (on USB key, partition or
> whatever). Especially when ones wants to be a teacher for the week and not
> a sys adm...
> 
> Best
> 
> Viviane
> 
> 2015-07-18 9:02 GMT+03:00 Dominique Laurain :
> 
> > Interesting feedbacks for SAGE,maths,teaching,using VM... but I have  a
> > question :
> >
> > when you go teaching in far away places, why you don't go with a small
> > equipement for a local area network (switch, Ethernet wires) ?
> >
> > because after installing the network, you can use your computer (for
> > example Ubuntu OS) with a sage cloud, and all students only need an
> > internet browser
> >
> > no need Internet, no need VM, ...
> >
> > If no need for sharing files, you have USB live SAGE too
> >
> > PS: at my job, I was told that VM working better on same native OS,
> >
> >
> > On Friday, 17 July 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along
> >> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was
> >> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on
> >> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
> >>
> >> Conditions;
> >>
> >> - around 30 students
> >> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to
> >> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the
> >> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> >> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows,
> >> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> >> - most students had 

Re: [sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Thierry]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 11:02:12PM -0700, Dominique Laurain wrote:
> Interesting feedbacks for SAGE,maths,teaching,using VM... but I have  a 
> question :
> 
> when you go teaching in far away places, why you don't go with a small 
> equipement for a local area network (switch, Ethernet wires) ?

We did that in the organisation of some workshops, however you can not
really do this if you travel aboard and want to travel light.
 
> because after installing the network, you can use your computer (for 
> example Ubuntu OS) with a sage cloud, and all students only need an 
> internet browser

The local installation of a notebook is a good fallback for few special
cases were other solutions did not work, but i doubt it could be the main
solution, at least my 5 years old laptop is definitely not able to serve
notebooks for 60 participants.

> no need Internet, no need VM, ...
> 
> If no need for sharing files, you have USB live SAGE too

Note that, if your teaching material is ready before the workshop, you can
put the files in the share/ folder of the seeder USB key and those will be
transfered during the clones (the other personal data will not).

Ciao,
Thierry



> PS: at my job, I was told that VM working better on same native OS,
> 
> On Friday, 17 July 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along 
> > with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was 
> > combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on 
> > Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
> >
> > Conditions;
> >
> > - around 30 students
> > - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to 
> > work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the 
> > data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> > - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, 
> > 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> > - most students had very limited computer skills
> >
> > Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone 
> > to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup 
> > options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
> >
> > Sage installation:
> >
> > Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon 
> > was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes 
> > had issues:
> > * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + 
> > Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in 
> > weird ways and the program partition was full)
> > * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which 
> > makes it seem broken)
> >
> > Using Sage on the VM:
> >
> > Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test 
> > and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying: 
> >
> > * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash 
> > on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their 
> > computers were running out of memory)
> >
> > * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at all, 
> > the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the 
> > usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the 
> > idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once
> >
> > * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because 
> > the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to 
> > share notebooks with them!! (except on SMC)
> >
> > * pdflatex wasn't installed by default which for me was a real problem as 
> > I use it a lot to print combinatorial objects (thank you Jean-Baptiste for 
> > the ascii art on binary trees, it saved me a bit!). And because of internet 
> > limitations and the lack of Ubuntu knowledge from my students, it was not 
> > really possible to install it on all their machines (I mean the VM)
> >
> > * I couldn't get the VM to show multiple windows and not even multiple 
> > tabs. This was so annoying... Sometimes a student would click on a link on 
> > a notebook and there was no way of going back to where it was before... Or 
> > to open Internet on the VM to download the notebooks or something...
> >
> > To finish, one very good thing that we need to keep: the Help link on the 
> > notebook was great, the students were navigating on the different tutorials 
> > and this worked very well.
> >
> > Anyway, this list is here to remind us what we could do better. I don't 
> > mean to push anybody but now that we'll have full time developers, I 
> > figured this real life experience was very useful for us non-Windows-users 
> > to have (at the end, what's the point of having open source softwares if 
> > the people who really need it can't use it properly?)
> >
> > Also I want to say that desp

Re: [sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Viviane Pons]

Hi,

To answer Thierry: I do remember your feedbacks from Burkina from a few
years ago. I was actually planning to bring live USB keys, the only reason
I didn't is because I didn't have the time to setup all those keys before
leaving. I'm still curious on how you do this: do you buy a bunch of keys
before and then give them to the students? Do you you require them to bring
their own USB key?

Also, have you ever tried this on Windows 8? Because I know from past
experience that the boot is very different and Windows8 is very reluctant
on booting on anything else than itself.

As to install Linux on their machine, it would have taken too much of my
time and energy. Our goal was to sort out most technical issues on the
first day (which we did), and then, leave the rest of the week for math and
experimentation. As I said, it wasn't Sage days per say but really a school
with lectures and all.

To answer Dominique: "when you go teaching in far away places" --> It was
actually my first time doing such a thing. And I have very little
experience on setting up a sage cloud, so I didn't want to use this week to
experiment on this... Also, it was complicated for me to bring any
material, I'm quite on a long trip here involving different conferences,
continents and also holidays: my bags are quite full already. The only
thing I bring with me is my very light (but powerful) laptop. And last but
not least: with this solution, they have a working Sage during the week but
nothing to bring back home (and even nothing for homework in the evening).
The VM, despite its limitation, is still a program that they can keep
using. And I know they will.

Anyway, I have no doubt that for now Thierry's solutions are probably the
best. Also, the VM were not too bad and, in our case, it mostly did the
work. But still, it would be nice to work toward a better Windows interface
that doesn't require to install Linux at all (on USB key, partition or
whatever). Especially when ones wants to be a teacher for the week and not
a sys adm...

Best

Viviane

2015-07-18 9:02 GMT+03:00 Dominique Laurain :

> Interesting feedbacks for SAGE,maths,teaching,using VM... but I have  a
> question :
>
> when you go teaching in far away places, why you don't go with a small
> equipement for a local area network (switch, Ethernet wires) ?
>
> because after installing the network, you can use your computer (for
> example Ubuntu OS) with a sage cloud, and all students only need an
> internet browser
>
> no need Internet, no need VM, ...
>
> If no need for sharing files, you have USB live SAGE too
>
> PS: at my job, I was told that VM working better on same native OS,
>
>
> On Friday, 17 July 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along
>> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was
>> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on
>> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
>>
>> Conditions;
>>
>> - around 30 students
>> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to
>> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the
>> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
>> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows,
>> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
>> - most students had very limited computer skills
>>
>> Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone
>> to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup
>> options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
>>
>> Sage installation:
>>
>> Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon
>> was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes
>> had issues:
>> * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM +
>> Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in
>> weird ways and the program partition was full)
>> * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which
>> makes it seem broken)
>>
>> Using Sage on the VM:
>>
>> Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test
>> and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying:
>>
>> * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash
>> on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their
>> computers were running out of memory)
>>
>> * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at
>> all, the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the
>> usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the
>> idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once
>>
>> * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because
>> the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to
>> share notebooks with

[sage-devel] Re: Uganda teaching feedback

[Dominique Laurain]

Interesting feedbacks for SAGE,maths,teaching,using VM... but I have  a 
question :

when you go teaching in far away places, why you don't go with a small 
equipement for a local area network (switch, Ethernet wires) ?

because after installing the network, you can use your computer (for 
example Ubuntu OS) with a sage cloud, and all students only need an 
internet browser

no need Internet, no need VM, ...

If no need for sharing files, you have USB live SAGE too

PS: at my job, I was told that VM working better on same native OS,

On Friday, 17 July 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along 
> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was 
> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on 
> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here.
>
> Conditions;
>
> - around 30 students
> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to 
> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the 
> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week)
> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, 
> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu)
> - most students had very limited computer skills
>
> Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone 
> to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup 
> options for the students who couldn't get Sage running.
>
> Sage installation:
>
> Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon 
> was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes 
> had issues:
> * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + 
> Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in 
> weird ways and the program partition was full)
> * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which 
> makes it seem broken)
>
> Using Sage on the VM:
>
> Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test 
> and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying: 
>
> * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash 
> on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their 
> computers were running out of memory)
>
> * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at all, 
> the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the 
> usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the 
> idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once
>
> * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because 
> the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to 
> share notebooks with them!! (except on SMC)
>
> * pdflatex wasn't installed by default which for me was a real problem as 
> I use it a lot to print combinatorial objects (thank you Jean-Baptiste for 
> the ascii art on binary trees, it saved me a bit!). And because of internet 
> limitations and the lack of Ubuntu knowledge from my students, it was not 
> really possible to install it on all their machines (I mean the VM)
>
> * I couldn't get the VM to show multiple windows and not even multiple 
> tabs. This was so annoying... Sometimes a student would click on a link on 
> a notebook and there was no way of going back to where it was before... Or 
> to open Internet on the VM to download the notebooks or something...
>
> To finish, one very good thing that we need to keep: the Help link on the 
> notebook was great, the students were navigating on the different tutorials 
> and this worked very well.
>
> Anyway, this list is here to remind us what we could do better. I don't 
> mean to push anybody but now that we'll have full time developers, I 
> figured this real life experience was very useful for us non-Windows-users 
> to have (at the end, what's the point of having open source softwares if 
> the people who really need it can't use it properly?)
>
> Also I want to say that despite all of this, the school went really well. 
> The students were really happy to learn about Sage, they were the most 
> enthusiastic and motivated students I ever had. Both Jennifer and I were 
> able to do great mathematics and we had a wonderful time! 
>
> If ever you're interested, my class material on combinatorics is here:
>
> https://www.lri.fr/~pons/en/eaump.php
>
> and the whole summer school material (including the previous week) is 
> there:
>
> http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgks/EAUMP/
>
> Best,
>
> Viviane
>

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