[Server-devel] XO 1.5 to XS-onXO1 behavior

[John Gilmore]

> > as Fall semester finishes) but I have a XS-on-XO1 running at home and when a
> > XO1 associates with it, the XO1 gets a 172.18.xxx.xxx address (school mesh
> > portal). When the XO1.5 associates with school-mesh-0 (I have to click on it
> > in the Neighborhood view) the association happens, but the XO1.5 gets
> > 169.254.xxx.xxx address, and beyond that the network is unusable.
>
> that's expected, unfortunately. The XS-on-XO runs an "active antenna"
> / "mesh gateway" in the sense of 802.11s. As the current XO-1.5
> drivers/firmware don't talk 802.11s, it won't work. In that sense, the
> XO-1.5 is the same as any other 802.11a/b/g device.
> 
> There are two paths to address this
> 
>  - get the hostap / thinfirm driver+firmware combo working again. It
> was last seen working on a 2.6.17 i think.
> 
>  - get 802.11s on XO-1.5 going. this is not trivial...

The least common denominator in the XO-1 and XO-2 clients is a
connection to an access point.  So making the XS (on any hardware)
provide a standard 802.11 access point would probably be the easiest
path forward.

As I recall there was some step in the XO-specific school
"provisioning" (antitheft DRM?) that only works over the mesh.  So if
that hasn't been fixed, either deployments would have to turn off the
DRM, or OLPC would need to revise the firmware and/or initrd to handle
this interaction via ordinary 802.11 access.  Or they could just throw
away their DRM-choked devices, as many others have had to do when the
big DRM server in the sky went away, and take a lesson from that.

	John