[Server-devel] Nepal Project Management Updates and Questions

[Bryan Berry]

Hey Greg, great questions. I will do my best to answer them

Quick update on what Sulo, Dev, and i did this week. We spent much of our time
trying to understand how the various services on the XS work and how they work
together w/ the XO. We learned a lot but didn't get that much accomplished in 
terms of building a working XS. We struggled w/ getting Moodle to run on the 
XS, couldn't pass traffic b/w our 2 active antennas, and couldn't get XO's 
to pass traffic for other XO's.

1. Nope, I need to add URL's to the content

2. The target deployment image for the XO will be the image loaded w/ activities
for each grade. For example, we need to load the EPaati Nepali
activities and activities more appropriate to the grades we are piloting
at (2 and 6). There are far more activities than can fit on a single XO.
We will create a custom image w/ the activities we think are
class-appropriate, like GCompris and SimCity for the younger kids.
SocialCalc, Measure, etc. for the older kids

We should probably have our own tree w/ our custom images

3. I need to make a fuller list of test cases.

4. Decisions on redundancy. Will try to get to this later this week.

5. Nepali script should be part of the stock xo image. I will need to
check w/ Sulo on this.

6. We need a tree on dev.laptop.org for the XS config. I am quite
confident that our dansguardian, Squid, and backup settings will differ
from what Proyecto Ceibal is doing.

7. Don't know the status of Squid. will have to check w/ Sulochan.

8. The mesh is running but not doing some of the things we would like it
to, such as pass traffic b/w mesh antennas and XO's pass traffic for
other. 

Frankly, XS team here is pretty behind. We aren't super linux admins and
it is taking us some time to come up to speed on the XS and the XO's.
We'll get there though and thanks for pushing us.

Also, thanks to Wad and others at OLPC for their never-ending patience
w/ our many questions.

Finally, here are the two areas Tony can really help us w/

1. Backup scripts for the XO's and the XS
  a. backup the student's data to the server. There is some stuff in 
  b. backup the XS across the network, possibly w/ rsync or rdiffbackup
2. Installation and configuration for dansguardian. We haven't gotten
around to working w/ this yet.

Hope life is good in Newton. Kathmandu is beautiful but we only have 14 hours of
electricity per day! it is very annoying.

On Sat, 2008-02-23 at 12:00 -0500, server-devel-request at lists.laptop.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:40:46 -0500
> From: "Greg Smith (gregmsmi)" <gregmsmi at cisco.com>
> Subject: [Server-devel] Nepal Project Management Updates and Questions
> To: <server-devel at lists.laptop.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<B02C78B842B89E448937F82241C96A2B0484F6C1 at xmb-rtp-20c.amer.cisco.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> Hi All,
>  
> Catching up with the flow, I have the following comments. Sorry for
> breaking the threading but I'm replying to all in one pass.
>  
> >From Tony 2/14 Subject: Spreadsheet, Active Antenna, and this weekend
> > As for backing up the /home directory from the XO to the XS, I was
> envisioning a PHP page on the server that the student could navigate to,
> and this would perform the file upload. It would require the students to
> take action to cause this to happen. It sounds like an automated
> solution would be better, but how did you want this to be kicked off,
> once per day? 
> 
> GS - I think this is a phase 2 item (unless Sulochan and Bryan think its
> critical for first deployment...) I added it to the phase 2 design
> requirements at:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:School_Server_Specification#XO_Backup_Re
> quirements
> Maybe we should just do this automatically. Its helpful for kids to
> understand what backup is but I don't know that its necessary they be
> required to learn it. Also this may generate a lot of traffic and it may
> be lower priority traffic other activities (e.g. web browsing). One
> design would have XS watch for low traffic periods and then backup a few
> Xos at a time, keeping  track of all Xos and ensuring that they get done
> in order. Maybe that's over designed and not reliable enough. We should
> get feedback from the trial before coding this one. 
> 
> Short term it would be nice to have a backup option and a copy to server
> option (clears space on XO but allows access to files on XS) prototype
> available for users to try out and comment on. Maybe we can try out your
> PHP page idea with a few test classes/students and see how it flies....
> 
> >From Stefan re: [Server-devel] Deployment mailing list - The 'real (US)
> world' -	server user /	admin interface and the like
> 
> GS - Stefan, where is your deployment happening? We're trying to put
> together a school server design for Nepal but its nothing like a GUI
> administered box. See the notes, experiences and ideas on Nepal at:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Nepal#Planning
> 
> I don't think that we will have a copy and paste config and set of
> install instructions by April, but you can watch that page and this list
> to see how close we get :-)
> 
> Open questions for Nepal deployment:
> 1 - Do we have public URLs for all content listed
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:School_Server_Specification_-_Phase_1_De
> sign#Content
> 
> 2 - What is the target XO deployment image?
> 
> 3 - I saw several open questions on the tests. Didn't have time to edit
> Google XLS (saw Tony's comment that its easy :) so I copied all tests to
> OLPC phase 1 design page at:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:School_Server_Specification_-_Phase_1_De
> sign#XS_Tests
> I embedded the test questions there. I think anyone can write up a
> fuller test description if they have time. This can become our
> regression test definition.
> 
> 4 - Do we have a decision on server redundancy model? I added the new
> N+1 design to the failure cases page at:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:Redundancy
> 
> 5 - Is something special needed to make Nepali script show on the XO?
> 
> 6 - How do we share the full config on the XS? Do we need a tree at
> dev.laptop.org?
> 
> 7 - Did we get any takers to help Adrian fix Squid memory problems?
> Maybe if we post the request to Squid lists and say its for help making
> One Laptop deployments more accessible we can find some takers.
> 
> 8 - Did Sulochan get his Mesh up and running? Keep the questions coming
> if its not solved yet...
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Greg S
> 
> 
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