notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

[Erik Garrison]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:
> > When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
> > Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
> > people that it's not going away in the field.
> 
> Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?

1) Data loss.  Teachers I met mentioned seeing bugs where the students
Journal was wiped clean, or where things went missing.  Without live
examples this is pretty hard to diagnose.  Perhaps an effect of running
on such an old build.

2) Journal startup failures borking the whole system / Journal never
completing startup but Sugar starting.  Possibly because of NAND-full.
If so we have fixed it.  Interestingly, I heard about kids resolving
this issue manually from the command-line (although their teacher didn't
know exactly what they did!  I'm guessing they removed their data
directory.).

3) "How do I share files to/from an XO?"  "I just did this work but now
where is the resultant file?"  Interface with the outside world.

4) General usability concerns; questions about why the design was
chosen.  Difficulty finding things in the produced action history.

I will try to think of more on my ride to work.

Erik