[Server-devel] Firstboot modules
To simplify the setup of the XS, I was thinking on creating some custom firstboot modules, for some common setup operations such as: 1 - Network Configuration (Internet Side: DHCP/Statip IP/PPPoE) 2- A domain_config wrapper 3- Squid (ON or OFF) 4- Show Moodle admin password 5- Finish Screen Any suggestions on any more things to add? PS: Once I finish the rpm, where do I push it? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Firstboot modules
Martin, On one hand, Some stuff like Network Configuration, *could* be hacked into anaconda (we'd have to push, for instance, 3G modem config, or wireless card, or pppoe into anaconda), which is a major pain, but It might get upstream. That, at least, will require some human interaction. About setting it up with Moodle... I could try to code a moodle admin module, it should not be that hard. The moodle admin module could set up: - Squid ON/OFF + maybe a squid blacklist (so some schools can blacklist potentially dangerous sites). - Every future configurable thing we can think off. Anaconda already asks for the Hostname, we could hack it to only ask for the domain name, and always add schoolserver. in front of it, and then we could set the kickstart %post to run domain_config. 2010/8/26 Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com Hi SgtPepper, I am with mixed feelings about firstboot scripts. One one hand, some kickstart %post stuff can be done much better in a non-interactive firstboot script. On the other hand, I would like to avoid interactive firstboot scripts. Many XSs are headless, and I keep pushing deployments towards headless XSs. The best rugged/embedded HW out there for XS is headless. Are you open to a combination of - non-interactive stuff in firstboot scripts - interactive stuff configurable via Moodle admin pages, which write to files monitored by incrond, which in turn invokes privileged scripts... cheers, martin On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 6:44 PM, SgtPepper ncorr...@gmail.com wrote: To simplify the setup of the XS, I was thinking on creating some custom firstboot modules, for some common setup operations such as: 1 - Network Configuration (Internet Side: DHCP/Statip IP/PPPoE) 2- A domain_config wrapper 3- Squid (ON or OFF) 4- Show Moodle admin password 5- Finish Screen Any suggestions on any more things to add? PS: Once I finish the rpm, where do I push it? ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Looking for additional hands on XS
Whoa.. .found my dreamjob.. applying... 2010/8/19 Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org El Thu, 19-08-2010 a las 15:49 -0400, Martin Langhoff escribió: http://www.laptop.org/en/utility/people/opportunities.shtml Ha! I was just about to write you about some XS requirements for Uruguay :-) -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Schoolserver development in Uruguay
Bernie, Guys: A few of my ideas are below: 2010/8/19 Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org I'm currently at Plan Ceibal. As you may know, Uruguay developed its own schoolserver based on Debian, running software developed in-house and managed with CFengine. Yesterday we briefly discussed their future plans for the school server. == Debian vs Fedora == First of all, there's no way they're going to reinstall 2500 schoolservers with Fedora or even a newer release of Debian. Online upgrades would be possible, though. There's some interest in repackaging in Debian the datastore backup server and other components of the OLPC XS. This work could be contributed back to you or whoever will become the next schoolserver architect. Whichever the distro... It should be easily maintainable and deployable. I've no problem in building the dpkg's of the XS components. I think its justified, since there is a 2500 servers base. Let me tell you that I've only worked with rpm before, but I've no problem in learning the Debian guidelines, and maybe, try to push the packages into debian testing. Perhaps we could get one of the Debian maintainers in our community to get these packages accepted. I could do the same for Fedora. As you said, recommending or supporting multiple schoolserver configurations in parallel doesn't make sense, but it wouldn't hurt if some of the underlying components were shared horizontally, especially for the configurations that are already widely deployed. == Jabber == There are two people working on Jabber. They have been using ejabberd and, quite surprisingly, they've not seen any issues of high CPU load and database corruption. Tomorrow I'll get to work more with them. I still had no time to review Prosody, the Jabber implementation recommended by Collabora. My hacker senses are telling me that switching from Erlang to Lua is a small step in the direction of sanity and simplicity. The Sugar Labs Infrastructure Team has setup new dedicated VM for collaboration, but at this time nobody has been working on it. It's an Ubuntu Lucid machine, but we could reinstall it if needed. Tomeu and Collabora overwhelmed the collaboration stack in Sugar 0.90 and seem to have plans to further evolve it. They should be consulted prior to making any long-term decision on the server side. == Backups == This is a black hole in all deployments I visited. Redundant storage is too expensive. One cheap 500GB hard-drive is typical. In one year, 3 of the 10 schoolservers in Caacupé developed a hard drive failure. Loosing all data is sadly the status quo in both Uruguay and Paraguay. I worked on implementing remote backups for a subset of /library using rsync, but 2Mbit per school and 70Mbit on the backup server are insufficient for the initial sync and probably also for nightly updates. What numbers are we talking about, in terms of size? Here are some numbers from an actual school which has been operating for over one year with 530 registered laptops: 262M backup 19Gcache 3.4M games 1.7M orug 62Mpgsql-xs 67Muploads 238G users 20Kwebcontenido 17Mxs-activation 516M xs-activity-server 827M xs-rsync 2.7G zope-var The feasibility of remote backups varies depending on how much we care to backup. In Paraguay, it was decided that the journal backups are to be considered a valuable if we are to instill the idea in teachers that the laptop is the same of a notebook with homework on it. Journal backups, however, amount to a whopping 238GB of rapidly changing, mostly uncompressible and undeltable data. Quite not the ideal case for an incremental backup. With today's available resources, we could afford to backup everything *but* the journals. Yesterday Daniel Castelo and I discussed the idea of performing cross-backups between nearby schools. This solution would probably work well in terms of bandwidth distribution, but it would bring some logistic complexity. Probably an acceptable trade-off. How about 2 500GB in RAID-1? I mean, specially in Paraguay, bandwidth is scarce. == Content management == Paraguay seems quite happy with Plone, but frankly I can't understand why. Teachers heavily use a really simple php tool called PAFM, which provides basic hierarchical file management with no access control or versioning. Oddly, I've not yet may anyone using Moodle. When I ask why, I always hear some vague comment about it being designed for higher education. Same goes for Schooltool. These more structured tools probably present an steeper learning curve and a bad fit for unsophisticated requirements of users who are being exposed to information systems for the first time. After they have functioning backups, Uruguay would like to provide a wiki. They have already looked at Dokuwiki, with which I'm not familiar. It seems to have a readable and easy to learn Creole-like syntax. I would
Re: [Server-devel] Introduction / What can I do to help?
Jerry, Are you in the IRC? in what channel? 2010/8/11 Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca On Tue, 2010-08-10 at 17:34 -0300, SgtPepper wrote: Hi Guys! I'm Nicolas Corrarello, from Argentina. I used to be a Red Hat Technical Support Engineer, now I'm working at Symantec. I met Walter Bender, and the XO a few years ago.. and since then I've been a believer. I'm a UNIX Sysadmin and Fedora Contributor and I'd love to help with the project in any way I can. If you need to contact me you can reach me via Google Talk (ncorr...@gmail.com) or M$N messenger (nicolascorrare...@fibertel.com.ar). I generally have my ipkall number transfered to my cellphone (+1 (253) 242 8786) so you can reach me in that number at any time. Welcome aboard. I've been checking the server distribution, you've done a great job. I'd love to help in new builds. Are you using a bugzilla or something like that? Think for the most part, the discussion goes on here, on the list. I've been thinking on maybe creating a firstboot module to perform the configuration that now is done via the /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config script, or stuff like that. In any case.. let me know what can I do to help, and what tools are you using for the builds. Now that fits in really well with the proposed changes to xs-config, if your kickstart file doesn't turn off firstboot-xs, run it. The current install is more or less controlled by the xs-config rpm and the kickstart file, with the rpm providing a drop-in networking layout. We're going to split the configuration of the XS's services and networking into different packages, allowing us better use the stock OS configuration tools such as firstboot. That should allow us to present a more friendly installer. http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-config/ The tools used to spin up the installer are found at: http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-livecd/ My sandbox is at(ATM): http://24.79.179.72/pub/ Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Introduction / What can I do to help?
Jerry, The xs-livecd kickstart for f9 (from the git repo), is the same that you're using for Fedora 11? Is there anything in particular I can start working with? or shall I just build the Image, test what I like / dislike, and go ahead and fix stuff?. 2010/8/11 SgtPepper ncorr...@gmail.com Jerry, Are you in the IRC? in what channel? 2010/8/11 Jerry Vonau jvo...@shaw.ca On Tue, 2010-08-10 at 17:34 -0300, SgtPepper wrote: Hi Guys! I'm Nicolas Corrarello, from Argentina. I used to be a Red Hat Technical Support Engineer, now I'm working at Symantec. I met Walter Bender, and the XO a few years ago.. and since then I've been a believer. I'm a UNIX Sysadmin and Fedora Contributor and I'd love to help with the project in any way I can. If you need to contact me you can reach me via Google Talk (ncorr...@gmail.com) or M$N messenger (nicolascorrare...@fibertel.com.ar). I generally have my ipkall number transfered to my cellphone (+1 (253) 242 8786) so you can reach me in that number at any time. Welcome aboard. I've been checking the server distribution, you've done a great job. I'd love to help in new builds. Are you using a bugzilla or something like that? Think for the most part, the discussion goes on here, on the list. I've been thinking on maybe creating a firstboot module to perform the configuration that now is done via the /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config script, or stuff like that. In any case.. let me know what can I do to help, and what tools are you using for the builds. Now that fits in really well with the proposed changes to xs-config, if your kickstart file doesn't turn off firstboot-xs, run it. The current install is more or less controlled by the xs-config rpm and the kickstart file, with the rpm providing a drop-in networking layout. We're going to split the configuration of the XS's services and networking into different packages, allowing us better use the stock OS configuration tools such as firstboot. That should allow us to present a more friendly installer. http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-config/ The tools used to spin up the installer are found at: http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-livecd/ My sandbox is at(ATM): http://24.79.179.72/pub/ Jerry ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Introduction / What can I do to help?
Hi Guys! I'm Nicolas Corrarello, from Argentina. I used to be a Red Hat Technical Support Engineer, now I'm working at Symantec. I met Walter Bender, and the XO a few years ago.. and since then I've been a believer. I'm a UNIX Sysadmin and Fedora Contributor and I'd love to help with the project in any way I can. If you need to contact me you can reach me via Google Talk ( ncorr...@gmail.com) or M$N messenger (nicolascorrare...@fibertel.com.ar). I generally have my ipkall number transfered to my cellphone (+1 (253) 242 8786) so you can reach me in that number at any time. I've been checking the server distribution, you've done a great job. I'd love to help in new builds. Are you using a bugzilla or something like that? I've been thinking on maybe creating a firstboot module to perform the configuration that now is done via the /etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/domain_config script, or stuff like that. In any case.. let me know what can I do to help, and what tools are you using for the builds. Glad to join the Team!!! Nicolas Corrarello ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
