Customization Sticks fails on 13.1.0 & 12.1.0 for XO-1 (Holt)

[Holt]

On 3/13/2013 4:46 AM, lionel at olpc-france.org wrote:
> I've finally fixed the issue in a strange way: enabling verbose boot with
> "change-tag TS show" command on the firmware prompt.
> See more  here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Startup_diagnosis#Enabling_Verbose_Boot_from_OFW

Verbose booting did not work on XO-1s for I and Nancie when we tried the 
above and similar last week.  Further documented @ "Test Station" under 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Manufacturing_Data#Defined_Tags

Thankfully however, we're solving most "gray dots forever" laptop 
blockages the date-fixing technique honed by Richard Smith and others.  
Extremely grateful!

> One more thing: as a guy that had more than 200 XO to update by hand in Nosy
> Komba this year. I'm very concerned and disappointed by the disappearing of
> customization key. I can't imagine how we could deployed 12.1.0 and 13.1.0
> without that!
>
> Is there any complexity to maintain the customization key?

Indeed http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customization_stick is the lifeline of 
small deployments, who just don't all have the luxury of Kevin 
Gordon/Tony Anderson-style custom Linux wizards.  Custom undocumented 
solutions for each East African village from Kenya to Madagascar to 
Lesotho also have serious sustainability risks, to put it mildly.  
Working together globally would be far more intelligent on our part, 
bringing us back to a scalable/documented microdeployment solution for 
the entire http://olpcMAP.net planet.

(As such, Release 11.3.1 + Documentation Stick + WikipediaFR etc is the 
only practical solution for Haiti today, but longer term the Haitian 
Republic sends its voodoo prayers, that we can find such an 
XO-1-and-beyond breakthrough in coming months, for once in alliance with 
France 209 years later so perhaps there's real hope at last ;-)

--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !