[sugar] ISOS server

Thu Nov 15 13:55:23 EST 2007

So there are really 2 paths here that are pretty independent.

Hosted Sessions:

The first path is to provide remote access to a hosted instance of a  
full OLPC build.  Probably the right way to do this is to host full  
machine instances as mentioned on the Austrian wiki and to provide VNC  
access, probably with the Java VNC viewer component as an option, but  
regular native clients should be usable as well.  There might be an  
alternative to host individual chroot jailed instances of the sugar- 
jhbuild environment, but while this might scale better, it would have  
it's own set of issues.

There are a number of resource management concerns that go along with  
any sort of hosted operating environment that the unwashed masses of  
the Internet have access to, so some reasonable security constraints  
need to be wrapped around how much such instances are able to be  
exposed to the rest of the Internet.  And in an ideal world such  
security constraints would be bypass-able for known or trusted users.   
While an OLPC machine sitting on the end of a satellite link might not  
be a target for spammers to take over remotely, the same code sitting  
in a datacenter with full UI access is a much juicier target I have to  
imagine.

The other issue is one of resources. I don't know how many qemu  
instances it will be reasonable to run per server, but the number is  
not going to be huge.  Thus, this path will definitely need some  
gracious support from somewhere, and should also be built with  
horizontal scalability in mind.

In terms of development, this involves putting together a website that  
can manage access to the instances, probably a separate daemon to  
actually run the qemu instances so that you can scale the solution  
horizontally, and also maybe a virtualized network to mesh all the  
instances together.  These are all straight forward things that I  
think can be assembled quickly.  Unless someone beats me to it I will  
look in to doing this within the next week or so.  In the spirit of  
OLPC I suppose all the support stuff, including the website, needs to  
be done in Python, which I don't yet really know, but heh, it's just a  
language right? :)

Emulated OS:

The second path is to use Flash / Java / Jython / Ajax / etc. to  
create a client side thing that looks like Sugar, and possibly is even  
able to run arbitrary code, but basically would not really be the same  
code as what runs on the OLPC hardware.  This path requires  
significantly fewer server side resources since all you do is host the  
environment for download and all the CPU cycles come from the  
individual clients.  It also scales much better as a result.

This would be useful for evangelizing Sugar, but it's not going to be  
any use to developers or people that want to play with or demonstrate  
new software.  Plus, it's going to probably be a lot of new coding to  
get the emulated environment up and running, so there will be some lag  
from the current production build to what the emulated environment is  
doing.  Still, the scalability may make this an effective  
alternative.  If I was to tackle it I would probably look for some way  
to use the existing Python code and run it in a client side Java VM  
via Java Web Start using Jython or similar technologies.  Again, not  
knowing Python (yet!) or the internals of the Sugar UI I don't know if  
what I just said makes sense or is crazy talk.  Either way, I suspect  
the amount of work involved in this path is beyond what I could  
effectively contribute to myself.

So, in the end, for my own reasons I'll be looking into the hosted  
solution and am happy to work with others interested in that path.  I  
can probably contribute enough server resources to get a hosted system  
working in a limited fashion, but it would not be enough to set it up  
in a public facing way, so if anyone is able to help out in that  
regard let me know.

										(-: Tom ;-)

On Nov 15, 2007, at 10:30 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> it's great to see all your feedback, I really think it's a sign of  
> just
> how much potential Eduardo's idea has!
>
> I have created a sort of stub for "Project ISOS" entry on the wiki,  
> you
> can find it at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_ISOS
>
> I'd suggest we collect all of our ideas over there for now.
>
> Unfortunately I've got a big exam coming up tomorrow so I'll only be
> able to expand that wiki entry once the weekend starts! Then I'll also
> get back to you wrt the comments made here on the mailing-list... :-)
>
> Regards,
> Christoph
>
> Todd Kelsey schrieb:
>> that looks extremely wonderful -- perhaps there is a roadmap to make
>> it easier for everyday folks, maybe through some kind of
>> self-extracting package that preconfigures vncviewer, and to find a
>> "central" server where someone could set up the instance (I may be
>> able to get a dedicated server for that).
>>
>> wondering if it is possible to make it even more painless -- to  
>> launch
>> a java vnc client all from a web page, no download/install, and
>> preconfigured to point at a sugar os app server, so people would just
>> need to update/install their java software. surely sun must have
>> someone who could shepherd this.
>>
>> Ryan - I just registered sugaros.net <http://sugaros.net> and .org to
>> protect from porn pirates, bc at euronet.nl <mailto:bc at euronet.nl>
>> evidently registered .com on 11/13, don't know if he is kid friendly
>> or not. but suggest putting ISOS on the sugaros.org
>> <http://sugaros.org> url, or at least aliasing, for seo purposes.  
>> some
>> people may wander in that way. sugaros could also just frame relay to
>> a wiki.laptop.org <http://wiki.laptop.org> page, if/when you make it
>> -- or like olpcaustria, for focus and accessibility, could have its 
>> own wiki. if you need help setting that up, let me know. hostgator  
>> and
>> hostmonster make it easy to get a wikimedia instance up.
>>
>> On Nov 15, 2007 9:15 AM, Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org
>> <mailto:michael at laptop.org>> wrote:
>>
>>    On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 12:36:26AM -0600, Ryan Pavlik wrote:
>>> How feasible would it be to run "multiple Sugars" on a terminal
>>    server
>>> somewhere, and serve it up over the Java VNC client?  It would
>>    require
>>> the least Web-facing modifications.
>>>
>>> Ryan
>>
>>    Is
>>
>>     http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/Devserver
>>    <http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/Devserver>
>>
>>    similar to what you're thinking of?
>>
>>    Michael
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>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Todd Kelsey
>>
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>>
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