<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Jim Gettys</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jg@laptop.org">jg@laptop.org</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 12:09 PM<br>
Subject: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-11-10)<br>To: Community News <<a href="mailto:community-news@laptop.org">community-news@laptop.org</a>><br><br><br>Community News<br>
<br>
A weekly update of One Laptop per Child November 9, 2008<br>
<br>
G1G1 has gone global. Nicholas announced to delegates at the World of<br>
Health IT conference in Copenhagen last week that all 27 EU member<br>
states would take part this year. More exact details will be in future<br>
Community News; as 2. below indicates, the details are non-trivial.<br>
<br>
Technology<br>
<br>
G1G1 Support:<br>
<br>
1. This was the week to deliver final content for the new website, and<br>
to start getting approvals for the Amazon storefront. We aren't quite<br>
there, but we hope to have beta versions for both on Wednesday or<br>
Thursday of next week, and to go live on Friday. Christian Schmidt, Kim<br>
Quirk, Seth Woodworth, Stefan Unterhauser, Eben Eliaison, and SJ Klein<br>
are trying to pull together the loose ends to get to a beta version on<br>
Wednesday. C. Scott Ananian has also joined the effort. Henry Hardy, and<br>
Ed McNierney will help out with the server updates that need to be ready<br>
for November 17th.<br>
<br>
2. The G1G1 team also has revisited the idea of an international Amazon<br>
site for order taking, with the hope of using Brightstar for delivery<br>
outside the US. Issues to be resolved include international banking,<br>
certifications for the laptop in various countries, recycling program<br>
for Europe, and fulfillment warehouses with the ability to ship to end<br>
users and to receive and process returns.<br>
<br>
Testing:<br>
<br>
3. The QA team is testing connectivity and collaboration among more than<br>
50 laptops, simulating the environment of a school that lacks a server.<br>
The machines have been communicating over an access point. So far,<br>
results are mixed. Testing and investigation will continue.<br>
<br>
4. Joe Feinstein and Frances Hopkins have run tests against the new<br>
firmware, q2e21, which is needed to support the new touchpad. A problem<br>
with restarting/shutting down some of the production laptops with new<br>
touchpads is under investigation. Reuben Caron has created a script to<br>
automate the process of de-registering a laptop from the school server,<br>
which is working well. Mel Chua is looking into dsh<br>
(<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Dsh" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Dsh</a>) for remote access to the laptops. Thanks<br>
to Michael Stone for the idea.<br>
<br>
5. Reuben Caron continued testing with XS 0.5 dev-7 and looks forward to<br>
testing the final release next week. He began exploring ways to attach<br>
multiple ejabberd services to alternate IP addresses to avoid the<br>
overhead of fully virtualized servers. He also continued working with<br>
the QA team on automation and troubleshooting the XO backup to XS<br>
routine.<br>
<br>
6. Mel reports that you can get full notes and logs of the community<br>
test meetings at<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing_meetings/2008-11-06" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing_meetings/2008-11-06</a>.<br>
Interested people are welcome to join! Greg DeKoenigsberg and Brian<br>
Jordan are trying out the process for "Testing an Activity" on Speak and<br>
Paint. Marco notes that Mel is a great meeting chair.<br>
<br>
We have a (very ugly, please help fix!) portal page,<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing</a>, and a meetings portal page,<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing_meetings" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_testing_meetings</a>.<br>
<br>
Greg and Brian are trying out (on Speak and Paint respectively) our<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_test_an_Activity" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_test_an_Activity</a> instructions, which<br>
are under severe amounts of construction are there any volunteers here<br>
with exploratory test experience that can help write up this guide?<br>
<br>
How can we encourage smart testers to take ownership of specific<br>
Activities and do "deep" testing on them, and come up with their own<br>
criteria for and metrics of quality? (As opposed to having community<br>
testers spending their time being/recruiting drones to run through<br>
scripts.) Greg quoted Patton: "Don't tell people how to do things. Tell<br>
them what needs to be done, and let the surprise you with their<br>
ingenuity." (Seriously, this was a great discussion - please do read the<br>
logs to get the full blast - it starts around 17:28:29.)<br>
<br>
It was generally agreed that automation was a good idea for reducing<br>
drone-ness, which is boring. Ben and Mel will be dreaming up designs<br>
over the next week, and welcome help. Basically, "I'm a tester. I want<br>
to automate this boring thing. What is my ideal interface to do so / the<br>
most beautiful tool I could imagine for it?" One possible source of<br>
inspiration: Sugarbot.<br>
<br>
Everybody likes Joe's design which was the basis of our current<br>
semantic-mediawiki-based test case management system<br>
(<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Test_cases_8.2.0" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Test_cases_8.2.0</a>).<br>
<br>
Marco brought up some great questions about the tester/developer<br>
relationship. We need to make sure that good bugs get filed when a test<br>
fails, and that developers know about the testing going on for the<br>
things they're working on (actually, this should be a "people are using<br>
my work, yay!" motivation.)<br>
<br>
internal QA: We've been looking for a way to manage our large testbeds<br>
from a central machine, so Mel sat down and played with dsh (thanks to<br>
Michael Stone for the suggestion) this morning, and...<br>
<br>
<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Dsh" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Dsh</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Why is this cool? Well, say you wanted to run the ps command on all the<br>
machines in your /etc/dsh/machines file, which looks like this...<br>
<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a><br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a><br>
<br>
All you have to do is this:<br>
<br>
mchua@tumtum-tree:~$ dsh -Ma ps<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: PID TTY TIME CMD<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: 1166 ? 00:00:00 startx<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: 1185 ? 00:00:00 xinit<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: 1211 ? 00:00:02 ck-xinit-sessio<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: 1240 ? 00:00:40 python<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.113">olpc@18.85.49.113</a>: 1244 ? 00:00:00 dbus-launch<br>
<...more entries from <a href="http://18.85.49.113" target="_blank">18.85.49.113</a> go here><br>
<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a>: PID TTY TIME CMD<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a>: 1549 ? 00:00:00 startx<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a>: 1566 ? 00:00:00 xinit<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a>: 1577 ? 00:01:31 python<br>
<a href="mailto:olpc@18.85.49.114">olpc@18.85.49.114</a>: 1585 ? 00:00:16 dbus-daemon<br>
<...more entries from <a href="http://18.85.49.114" target="_blank">18.85.49.114</a> go here><br>
<br>
<br>
Systems Administration:<br>
<br>
7. Henry Edward Hardy reports that we have seen a significant increase<br>
in activity on <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org</a>, which is causing slow performance and<br>
periods of limited access during weekdays that affect a number of<br>
critical services. The extreme load has also caused some emails to be<br>
temporarily delayed.<br>
<br>
Country Support:<br>
<br>
8. This week Reuben worked with the deployments in Perú, Paraguay,<br>
Mongolia and Lebanon. He is working with the international operations<br>
team on a visit to Lebanon to help with some tech support issues. We<br>
also hope that a visit to Birmingham in the near future will help us do<br>
some live testing with a large laptop and school server deployment.<br>
<br>
Software Development:<br>
<br>
9. Greg Smith is collecting all well-formed ideas for future development<br>
at:<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap</a>. Add your suggestions to<br>
that page. In the near future we will start prioritizing them and<br>
choosing the target set for inclusion in the next release, <a href="http://9.1.0." target="_blank">9.1.0.</a> The<br>
agenda for a technical conference in January is being set at<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2</a>. The first review of all proposals<br>
should be done by next week. We then will create detailed materials and<br>
pick lead presenters for each session.<br>
<br>
10. Eben spent this week scrambling to get everything needed for the<br>
website refresh together. This included copy-editing, updating the<br>
timeline, creating new screenshots for all 28 activities included in the<br>
G1G1(2) set, exporting activity icons, creating a google map which<br>
indicates quantity of laptops shipped, collecting photos for the people<br>
page, improving the loading logic for the dynamic slideshows, revising<br>
the software vision movie, and writing a narration script for that<br>
movie.<br>
<br>
Eben also spent some time discussing plans for fleshing out a Sugar<br>
notification system, and planning some enhancements to the scalability<br>
of the zoom level views.<br>
<br>
XO OS Software:<br>
<br>
11. Michael and Chris Ball departed for a 10-day trip to Montevideo to<br>
better understand and support the deployment model and technology<br>
strategy being used in Uruguay.<br>
<br>
12. C. Scott Ananian fixed a number of issues with Pippy localization,<br>
and wrote some proof-of-concept code using the new Pippy physics<br>
library. He also looked at libcanberra and PackageKit for possible use<br>
in 9.1 (and pyv8 for *far* future use). The latter half of his week was<br>
hijacked by infrastructure issues; he overhauled the squid reverse proxy<br>
in front of <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org</a> to better match the configuration used by<br>
<a href="http://wikipedia.org" target="_blank">wikipedia.org</a>, and began moving <a href="http://www.laptop.org" target="_blank">www.laptop.org</a> off <a href="http://pedal.laptop.org" target="_blank">pedal.laptop.org</a>,<br>
anticipating G1G1 loads.<br>
<br>
13. Paul Fox worked on some bugs that may or may not be related to the<br>
new touchpad (#8901, #8887), implemented a new final powerdown LED<br>
flicker in the EC firmware (to remove ambiguity when forcing a poweroff<br>
by holding the power button in), and began writing up an EC firmware<br>
regression test plan.<br>
<br>
14. Early in the week, Erik Garrison ported compcache 0.4 into the<br>
olpc-2.6 series (<a href="http://code.google.com/p/compcache/" target="_blank">http://code.google.com/p/compcache/</a>) kernel and tested<br>
that it didn't break builds. Then Erik built the development version of<br>
the awesome window manager (<a href="http://awesome.naquadah.org/" target="_blank">http://awesome.naquadah.org/</a>) on an XO<br>
running debxo and has been testing configuration changes which make it<br>
work better in that environment.<br>
<br>
15. Jim Gettys finished investigating OpenGL support in Gen-2 for one of<br>
our processor options, and then wrote a memo on the implementation<br>
options. This topic is much more complex than it would have been in the<br>
past, since the drivers for X11/OpenGL are in a major state of flux, to<br>
enable long term competitive performance relative to other platforms.<br>
<br>
XS School Server Software:<br>
<br>
16. Martin Langhoff and Douglas Bagnall focused on testing installations<br>
and upgrades so we can release XS-0.5. This revealed that the key<br>
importation process had unfinished aspects, so he worked on fixing that.<br>
Early in the week Douglas wrote up some ejabberd tests and resolved<br>
compilation problems with the pam_sotp rpm. To support large<br>
installations and generally give better presence service, Martin and<br>
Douglas have mapped out a plan to make ejabberd show presence for users<br>
in the same group/course rather than everyone.<br>
<br>
Sugar / Activity Software:<br>
<br>
17. Sayamindu Dasgupta worked on SCIM integration and proposed a set of<br>
packages to be included into Joyride (#8934). He also resolved problems<br>
with the interaction between SCIM and Rainbow's activity isolation (due<br>
to isolation a separate scim daemon was being needed for each activity,<br>
which had serious memory and CPU usage implications, especially for<br>
complicated input mechanisms). He also worked on RTL (mirrored) icon<br>
support in Sugar, and in the process came up with support for specifying<br>
stock-ids for Sugar icons. He is preparing patches for review. In the<br>
localization department, Sayamindu acted as a go -between for the team<br>
at Mongolia and the developer community to integrate several<br>
translations done by Mongolian teachers from the field. He also helped<br>
Pablo Saratxaga get started with translations of Sugar into Walloon -<br>
many thanks to Pablo for the initiative.<br>
<br>
18. Marco Pesenti Gritti started looking into activity startup<br>
performance. From the first measurements it looks like import time, if<br>
done more lazily could be pretty good. The feeling is that we are doing<br>
more slow/sync things at startup then importing modules. I also suspect<br>
the launcher animation is slowing things down a lot, but needs to<br>
verify.<br>
<br>
Marco added debug logging for activity startup time, should be helpful<br>
for the performance work. * Tried to split up better the<br>
distribution/release work the Sugar team is doing, to avoid too much<br>
costly focus switching. Tomeu is now our joyride master, while Simon<br>
keeps leading the release team. Marco spent quite a bit of time to think<br>
and discussing how to handle activity upstream releases better. Thanks<br>
to garycmartin and gregdek in particular for feedback and idea. Made<br>
also a bit of concrete progress with the Analyze release by Eduardo.<br>
Several people made progress on the <a href="http://sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">sugarlabs.org</a> reorg. Marco trimmed<br>
down the review queue, feel better now. Dear contributors, we will not<br>
suck so much in the future, please keep sending good stuff. Marco had<br>
more icon cache discussions with Tomeu and Benzea, made some progress<br>
but it's pretty difficult to measure conclusively the memory/graphics<br>
performance effects.Marco did lots of sugar 0.83 packaging/refining<br>
work, we are getting there but progress on joyride has been pretty slow.<br>
It would be nice if the whole team would contribute more actively,<br>
especially given we decided to port to F10. dsd is rocking as usual, no<br>
surprise there.<br>
<br>
19. Tomeu Vizoso has been working this week in bringing the last Sugar<br>
code into the joyride builds, added a way for activities to override the<br>
default "View source" behavior, packaged and tested Benjamin Berg's<br>
proposal for a new icon cache, added a way for activities to request a<br>
notification to be shown in the shell and gave this capability to XoIRC<br>
and has started a port of a mind-mapping application: Labyrinth. He has<br>
also restarted to keep a TODO list in his wiki page and welcomes<br>
comments about it: <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Tomeu" target="_blank">http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Tomeu</a><br>
<br>
20. Simon Schampijer kept on working on the integration of NM 0.7 in<br>
Sugar. He finished the loading and saving of the connections. We still<br>
use the old profile format but will later probably switch to gconf and<br>
gnme-keyring, and the WPA part. Morgan Collett started documenting API<br>
changes in 8.2.0 at <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/API_changes" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/API_changes</a> - please<br>
contribute. He worked on API improvements in Sugar and activities,<br>
including reduction in boilerplate code required for collaboration.<br>
<br>
21. Richard Smith worked with Henry Hardy to install a new virtual<br>
machine on weka for firmware builds. Toward the end of the configuration<br>
and setup he discovered he had installed a 64-bit copy of the OS, which<br>
causes a few build issues. Henry will re-install and replace it with a<br>
32-bit OS.<br>
<br>
Laptop Power:<br>
<br>
22: Richard dug ever deeper into the power measurements. He previously<br>
reported that newer builds used .5W more power than the previous builds,<br>
but based on the data he has acquired since then that claim is under<br>
suspicion. The variability of the data is enough that .5W difference is<br>
in noise. Further data are needed to pinpoint all the variables.<br>
<br>
Firmware:<br>
<br>
23. Mitch Bradley released Q2E22 firmware with some bug fixes, solid<br>
firmware support for the new touchpads, and an enhanced diagnostic for<br>
the old touchpads. He also released q2e22a, a developer test build with<br>
XO-to-XO multicast NAND update support and much-improved USB<br>
performance. The NAND update feature lets you "clone" one XO's NAND OS<br>
image onto any number of other XOs at the same time, without needing an<br>
access point. The performance exceeds the original goal. In a recent<br>
test, Mitch cloned a 368 MB OS image in fewer than seven minutes. The<br>
network throughput for this tool exceeds the highest XO wireless rate<br>
that has ever been measured using Linux.<br>
<br>
Deployment Workbook:<br>
<br>
24. With the help of the learning team, Richard, John Watlington,<br>
Reuben, Carla Gòmez Monroy and Joshua Seals continued to refine the<br>
deployment workbook to better understand the costs of deploying the<br>
laptop. They are achieving important insights, especially in areas such<br>
as the power adapter where it appears that a slight increase in the cost<br>
of the laptop might greatly reduce the deployment expense.<br>
<br>
Wireless:<br>
<br>
25. Deepak Saxena primarilly worked on understanding some odd behaviour<br>
with the new Touchpad (#8901, #8894, #8942, #8491). Deepak also moved<br>
the OLPC kernel moved forward to <a href="http://2.6.27.4" target="_blank">2.6.27.4</a> and rolled up a new UBIFS test<br>
image with the latest bugfixes.<br>
<br>
26. Marvell released wireless firmware version 5.110.22.p22, which<br>
rearranges some internal buffers to deal with marginal cases discovered<br>
during WPA association testing, adds a diagnostic debug event for those<br>
cases, addresses WOL filter input issues and provides an API to get/set<br>
the probe response retry limit. Ricardo Carrano continued tests with the<br>
new dirver implementation of the signature based wake-on-lan filter,<br>
that fixed minor issues observed last week, and started tests with<br>
latest wireless firmware release 5.110.22.p22 which fixes some wpa<br>
related issues (#8666 and #8667) and corrects some minor controls over<br>
management traffic and the wol filter.<br>
<br>
27. Javier and Colin at Cozybit identified the root causes of WPA<br>
association failures. Colin has written a Network Manager patch that<br>
resolves some of the failures and Javier is working on a driver patch to<br>
work around wpa_supplicant's tendency to set the BSSID to all zeros<br>
prior to any association request (a very loose interpretation of the<br>
standard, since an all-zeros BSSID is a valid address - the 00:00:00<br>
prefix is assigned to Xerox Corp.)<br>
<br>
Links of the week:<br>
<br>
28. User link of the week (Spanish):<br>
<a href="http://ceibalflorida.blogspot.com/search/label/etoys" target="_blank">http://ceibalflorida.blogspot.com/search/label/etoys</a> Shows eToys<br>
presentations built in Uruguay. See also the "Blogósfera" link on the<br>
right. Blog posts by XOs in Uruguay have taken off again in the last<br>
month!<br>
<br>
29. User link of the week (English):<br>
<a href="http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/321" target="_blank">http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/321</a> US University-style<br>
evaluation of the XO deployment in Nepal.<br>
<br>
30. Walter Bender's Sugar Digests:<br>
<a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-November/002459.html" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-November/002459.html</a> and<br>
<a href="http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-November/009727.html" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-November/009727.html</a><br>
<br>
Development<br>
<br>
Ghana: The country has signed an agreement with OLPC to purchase 10,000<br>
XOs, scheduled for delivery in five shipments through June 2009. The ten<br>
member Ghana core team will be in Cambridge the week of November 17 for<br>
a technical and learning workshop. The team is currently pulling<br>
together detailed information on the first-phase launch schools. We<br>
anticipate a significant need for infrastructure accessories, including<br>
solar panels, servers and access points. Power will again be a vital<br>
concern, as it is throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Also, schools in Ghana<br>
generally are not large – the average size is about 300 students – which<br>
will mean increased on-the-ground deployment effort and expense.<br>
<br>
The big news in Colombia was the symbolically important delivery of 650<br>
laptops to La Macarena in central Colombia, a former FARC stronghold,<br>
where the children were enchanted with their new machines.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Jim Gettys <<a href="mailto:jg@laptop.org">jg@laptop.org</a>><br>
One Laptop Per Child<br>
</font><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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