[sugar] ISOS server

Thu Nov 15 16:35:11 EST 2007

Beautiful.

There's a couple of different hosting entities I'm contact with which may be
open to hosting. On scalability, what i suggest is that the easier to do
serve as a means to empower the harder to do (but more useful).

Sugar OS Lite (rich web app): Lets people try it out -- get a sense of what
the user experience is, maybe a couple of the games are ported over (or
flash games that run in gnash ok), plus you get to try some of the
collaborative stuff, if some flash remote server wizard can make a faux mesh
chat, maybe tic tac toe (duh - xoxoxo), modeled on the google desktop ap of
the same name. If someone from google is paying attention maybe ajax could
work, like a sugar ajax that also happens to be able to load google widgets
-- or if eric schmidt is within a few degrees of this email list -- maybe
they'd consider a sugar themed iGoogle. Or maybe wixy or stixy would play
ball. or maybe we're on our own.
THEN: when people play, they are given the chance to help "unlock" the real
version -- so whatever it takes, server space, development, whatever it is
-- people can donate to make it happen. donate time, money, whatever. I'd
donate.

Sugar Web OS: This would rock. Thanks so much for commenting on security
issues. Perhaps the charter for this could include *ensuring* that a team of
volunteers (or a set of paid hackers) is always there trying to break into
it, in order to beat other hackers to the punch. I suppose there's no way to
vet who is friendly, so maybe it is all open from the beginning, and you
don't launch until it is rock solid -- and maybe at that point there's some
institution that might step in and host, with their staff. I think that
people would donate in order to scale it out. Yahoo groups runs adverts to
cover scalability, but you can sponsor it to run ad free. So maybe ads from
friendly partner orgs would be acceptable, and someone could always donate
the whole thing.

will wikify

this is critical -- for allowing people to "try", if the security issues can
be addressed. an open question. another reason to do simulation, to start.
for most people, adequate for getting a sense of sugar os. ajax or flash, my
instincts tell me. or a contest between adobe and google. or both.

On Nov 15, 2007 12:55 PM, Tom Seago <tom at tomseago.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>    _______________________________________________
> >>    Devel mailing list
> >>    Devel at lists.laptop.org <mailto:Devel at lists.laptop.org>
> >>    http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Todd Kelsey
> >>
> >> Good Green Fun: http://www.cftw.com/xoroids/
> >>
> >> Willy Wonka Wonderful! - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/
> >> Image:StartOfMP.jpg
> >>
> >> Love Poem for people of Middle East: http://welcome.cftw.com
> >>
> >> Tour of laptop | http://wiki.laptop.org/go/608-demo-notes
> >>
> >> About Me/CFTW |
> >> http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en
> >> <http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en>">
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en
> >> <http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en>
> >>
> >> Loving the World | http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhbxftbn_36cx4kj7
> >>
> >> "Fascinating for me to sit here and realize the interplay and
> >> influence that music can have -- it is a part of my life, yet I
> >> haven't continued as I could, partly out of thinking "there are more
> >> important things". but it has it's place. i am sitting at olpc
> >> offices, and someone is playing pink floyd, and I think music is a
> >> gift of creativity that can inspire an atmosphere of creativity, and
> >> the range of such echoes is infinite." - Me
> >>
> >> Free tunes by me: http://www.cftw.com/music
> > _______________________________________________
> > Devel mailing list
> > Devel at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>

-- 
Todd Kelsey

Good Green Fun: http://www.cftw.com/xoroids/

Willy Wonka Wonderful! - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:StartOfMP.jpg

Love Poem for people of Middle East: http://welcome.cftw.com

Tour of laptop | http://wiki.laptop.org/go/608-demo-notes

About Me/CFTW | http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en">
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46b&hl=en

Loving the World | http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhbxftbn_36cx4kj7

"Fascinating for me to sit here and realize the interplay and influence that
music can have -- it is a part of my life, yet I haven't continued as I
could, partly out of thinking "there are more important things". but it has
it's place. i am sitting at olpc offices, and someone is playing pink floyd,
and I think music is a gift of creativity that can inspire an atmosphere of
creativity, and the range of such echoes is infinite." - Me

Free tunes by me: http://www.cftw.com/music
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