[olpc-help] Automated update

Mon Mar 17 10:30:39 EDT 2008

Hey Steve-

The Automatic update procedure is designed to allow the administrators of a
School Server  to push-out updates to some or all the registered XO's for
that school. It doesn't require the XO owner (the child) to do anything, no
developer key is required, but the caveats are:
1. you can *prevent* your XO from receiving an update by jumping through
some hoops.
2. you won't receive an automatic update until the School Server
administrator says so.
3 automatic updates will only deliver "releasesd" builds which are proven
stable (as opposed to the 'developer' or 'joyride' releases which may have
serious bugs.)

For the G1G1 program, OLPC designers are running the update for North
American XO's and they are upgrading only selective numbers of XO's (I heard
a 1 in 100 random per day among all XO's left running) while they look for
problems and such.

If you're looking to get your XO upgraded to a newer release, we can kick-it
off manually and I'll walk you through it step by step.
Or, if you're looking to get a developer key installed so you can run the
joyride releases Richard is talking about, I'll help you do that too.

On the other hand, if you're waiting to see an automatic update run, I don't
have a way to force that to happen for your XO. I could ask around and see
if I could find  out.

Let me know how you want to proceed.

-- 
Steve Holton
sph0lt0n at gmail.com

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Kay, Steve <steve.kay at capgemini.com>
wrote:

>
>  Is there anything that has to be done to facilitate the "automatic
> update" which you speak of? Does it require the developers key to be on
> the G1G1 laptop? If so is there a way to install the key which does not
> require a PHD in LINUX? So far the only command line instruction I have
> had work in terminal is su<cr>.
>

"Richard A. Smith" <richard at laptop.org> wrote:

> 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.ht
> ml<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
>

-- 
Steve Holton
sph0lt0n at gmail.com
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