[olpc-help] SOFTWARE UPDATE QUESTION

[Richard A. Smith]

Steve Holton wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:02 PM, JOSEPH L ANELLO <nubicular1 at msn.com 
> <mailto:nubicular1 at msn.com>> wrote:
> 
>     *I'VE READ RECENTLY THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A SOFTWARE UPDATE
>     THAT EXTENDED THE BATTERY LIFE OF MY NEW OLPC UP TO 10 HOURS. THAT
>     WOULD BE GREAT!*
>     *WHERE DO I FIND UPDATE INFORMATION SUCH AS THIS. I'D LIKE TO HAVE
>     THE LATEST SOFTWARE ALL THE TIME.*
>     ** 
>     *HOW DO I DO IT?*
>     *THERE'S SO MUCH TO LEARN.....*
>     ** 
>     ** 
>     *THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOU HELP/INPUT.*
>     ** 
>     ** 
>     *J.ANELLO*
> 

I have a brief discussion of updating and the various trees you can 
update from here:

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-support/2008-March/001783.html

The extended battery life you are referring to is from the agressive 
power management scheme that we will eventually deploy.

Under this scheme the default state of the CPU (and other components) 
will be off. ie. powered off.  Not just in sleep or low power but off. 
The only components powered up are the display (in freeze mode), 
embedded controller, touchpad/keybard and the wireless device.

When the user does something, (mouse or keyboard) or when a wireless 
packet arrives that is for the laptop the embedded controller wakes up 
the host CPU, the display unfreezes and the CPU processes the 
outstanding requests, then it gets shut back down.  We call this low 
power mode "suspened".

Using this scheme we can reduce the power consumption of the laptop and 
extend the battery life.

BUT, Its not magic.  It only works when there is idle time for the CPU 
to be turned off.  If you are heavily using the laptop, such as running 
the camera, or some other activity that requires constant CPU usage then 
this aggressive power management will never have a chance to save power.
In this case you won't ever get more than 3 to 4 hours of runtime.

In Update.1 we enabled the _beginnings_ of this scheme.  Update.1 would 
  shut off the CPU after 30 seconds of idleness.  However, over the last 
2 weeks we have decided to have this feature disabled by default.  Its 
just not ready yet.  Update.1 testing has uncovered a lot of areas where 
this aggressive scheme causes applications to fail in various ways.  If 
the user chooses then it can be turned back on by a simple config 
setting change.

I believe that it will stay enabled in Joyride so that we can continue 
to test and have it ready for update.2

A special note about Update.1:

Update.1 is nearing completion.  We just completed release candidate 2. 
  In Update.1 there are a _lot_ of changes.  One change in particular 
needs to be noted for all the G1G1 laptops.  In update.1 we have 
separated the core operating system and the activities.  They are no 
longer distributed as a single image.  This allows for installs to be 
customized at install time which was a requirement in many of our 
deployment countries.

Update.1 is intended to be used from USB disk with a complete re-flash 
of the NAND flash followed by a special "customization" script that 
installs activities.  Deployment countries will update the laptops from 
the factory image to update.1 as they are distributed in country.

Because of the separation of operating system and activities if a G1G1 
user blindly installs update.1 via olpc-update they will find that they 
no longer have any activities.  They aren't deleted but you have to do 
some special commands to make them show back up.

Therefore update.1 (as released) will _not_ be automatically pushed to 
G1G1 users.  Soon after update.1 is released we will prepare some sort 
of merged image that is the equivalent to what is in ship.2 series (ie 
656) that G1G1 people can use to upgrade.

So the key item is that G1G1 users who hear about all the cool new stuff 
in update.1 and want to manually use olpc-update _before_ we prepare the 
merged (OS+activities) image must READ THE RELEASE NOTES (currently 
under preparation).  They must understand what they are doing or they 
will boot up to find zero activities in sugar.

G1G1 users who just let the automatic update happen don't have to worry 
about it since we will push the update only after we have a merged image 
ready.

-- 
Richard Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child