[olpc-help] Various thoughts

[Michael Stone]

Andrew,

First, thanks very much for contacting us with your questions. I don't
yet have a very good sense of what your end goals are (or of what your
mental picture of how the laptops will be used is) so I need to ask you
some dumb questions now in order to be able to better help you in the
future.

> 1) root passwords. 

What are you trying to protect by setting a password?

Who is supposed to know the password?

When do you want to set the passwords? (or reset them?)

> I have never heard of such a thing. Can a script (run with run
> privileges, i suppose), automatically (re)set the root password?

Certainly.

> Ideally...

Please explain why this would be your ideal situation.

> 2) I have set up a DHCP server & internet gateway that works. However,
> when the XOs boot, they do not automatically try to obtain an IP
> address from the 172.18.0.1 ("school server").  

What build are you running?

> 5) Is it possible to use an external midi input device with the TamTam
> activity, to record the midi tracks? (a normal Midi keyboard)

The CSound hackers definitely use midi keyboards with their software.
TamTam is based on top of CSound so even if TamTam doesn't support midi
keyboards today, it can probably be made to do so for a reasonable
expenditure of effort.