OFW sad face doesn't say why

[Mitch Bradley]

Truth be known, I'm not terribly keen on stirring the firmware graphics 
pot again.

When the firmware encounters a nonexistent or expired lease, there is no 
error message from the firmware.  It just boots the OS in "activation 
mode".   The OS then tries to acquire a new lease, and if it can't, the 
OS displays the graphics.

Normally, the only thing that the firmware shows is the XO and one dot 
below it.

Note that the original question was related to a bad developer key, not 
a lease.

The firmware only displays device icons in "chatty mode", i.e. when you 
hold down the check key.


Eben Eliason wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Mitch Bradley <wmb at laptop.org 
> <mailto:wmb at laptop.org>> wrote:
>
>     If you hold down the check key while booting, the firmware will
>     give additional information about the boot progress, in both
>     iconic and textual form.
>
>     I put in the sad face because I needed some way to indicate
>     failure.  The published design specified what is supposed to
>     happen when everything works but didn't give detailed guidance for
>     the myriad of possible failure scenarios.
>
>
> I see.  So this isn't the "we couldn't find a lease" screen. Its a 
> "something weird happened" screen instead? Do we still have the lock 
> icon  "couldn't find a lease" screen in place as specified?  Mitch, 
> what might actually be best is if you could write a ticket (or 
> tickets) for all of the cases you need to handle, so I can make a 
> mockup of what they should look like in the future.  (I'll assume that 
> we don't have a) access to user colors b) access to animation c) 
> access to translation in all cases unless otherwise noted.)  This 
> would include cases like "you need to plug into AC power to continue" 
> as well.  I'll see what I can do, and hopefully we can make the 
> feedback all much more meaningful and reliable.
>
>
>     Note that, in the normal (no check key) case, there is no SD icon
>     - at NN's insistence.
>
>
> Interesting, I hadn't noticed that (I guess I need to update).  What's 
> the reasoning there?  Isn't the SD card a valid place for a lease file?
>
> - Eben
>
>
>
>
>     Eben Eliason wrote:
>
>         On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Mikus Grinbergs
>         <mikus at bga.com <mailto:mikus at bga.com> <mailto:mikus at bga.com
>         <mailto:mikus at bga.com>>> wrote:
>
>            Happened to put in laptop BB a SD card copied over from
>         laptop AA.
>            Pushed power-on, laptop BB showed me a sad face and powered
>         down.
>
>            Figured out why -- that SD card had a directory on it called
>            /security, and in that directory there was a file called
>            develop.sig.  Since this file's content did not match BB's
>         identity,
>            BB powered down.  I erased that file - then BB would boot o.k.
>
>
>            If you have a cheap SD card, and an enemy with an XO, why
>         not create
>            /security/develop.sig on that SD card, and surreptitiously
>         insert
>            that SD card into his OLPC - he would be extremely UNLIKELY
>         to think
>            of examining the sd-card-slot for the cause of his XO not
>         booting.
>
>            If the OFW identified its reason for not proceeding with
>         booting,
>            this opportunity for mischief would not work.
>
>
>         Hmm, A big lock icon is supposed to appear when no lease is
>         found.  A sad face was never part of the design; I wonder if
>         that slipped in as a temporary placeholder and never got
>         fixed.  Mitch, do you know where this lives (I assume
>         firmware, but maybe not), and if it's possible to clean up
>         with little effort?
>
>         It seems to me that we should only be doing positive checks,
>         not negative, against the security info in external devices.
>          It should simply move on and illustrate that no valid key was
>         found (adding the lock icon next to the SD icon, for
>         instance). It shouldn't be possible to prevent an XO from
>         booting at all if any of the devices (including the XO itself)
>         have a valid key, right?
>
>         - Eben
>
>
>