[Server-devel] School Server installation report

[Jerry Vonau]

On Fri, 2010-07-23 at 23:21 +1200, Tom Parker wrote:
> I'm trying to install the XS on my laptop as it resembles the hardware
> we are taking to Samoa. The laptop is an HP Mini 311, an Atom N280 with
> nvidia ion chipset and a broadcom wireless adapter which requires a
> non-free driver. I'm installing on an SD card rather than the hard
> drive.
> 
> I followed
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Techniques_and_Configuration#Installing_from_USB and succeeded in making the installation USB stick on an XO (this failed on my ubuntu desktop).
> 
Yea, I wrote that with just Fedora in mind, patches welcome.

> Installation on the 16GB SD card was difficult. I had to partition it
> manually as it seems like the default layout won't fit. I couldn't see
> the default layout as after telling me that there was no room for /boot,
> it would reboot and I would have to enter everything again.
> 
The kickstart file assumes that your going to use the harddrive for the
install. Having to have a /boot partition is normal for Fedora if your
setting up LVM, the kickstart file doesn't use LVM for the system, just
for /library.   

> The SD card is very slow and I had to increase the sleep time
> in /etc/init.d/ejabberd
> 
> I moved the wired ethernet port from eth0 to eth1 by
> editing /etc/udev.d/70-persistent-net-rules manually. I looked at what
> xs-swapnics did, and I think it would have done the same thing, but I
> didn't run it since I don't want to swap the nics, I simply want to
> ignore the WAN (the school will have no uplink).
> 
Would of worked anyway.

> I spent quite some time trying to create a dummy eth0 because things
> didn't seem to be working, and that was the only thing that I'm missing.
> 
> I think the problems I had were:
> * Registering when ejabberd wasn't working.

There were updates released after the iso was, to update to the latest,
think you should try updating with yum:
yum --enablerepo=olpcxs-testing -y update

If you need to do this offline, d/l the needed rpms from the url below
on to a usbkey, get the latest versions of:
 
ejabberd-xs 
moodle-xs
xs-activation
xs-config:

http://fedora.laptop.org/xs/testing/olpc/9/i386/



Once the usbkey is mounted on the XS, cd to where the rpms are and do a:
rpm -Fv *.rpm, and the new rpms should be installed. 

> * Trying to log in to moodle without registering (you get a login prompt
> and the instructions imply that you should be automatically logged in).

Check the version of Browse.xo on the XO, you need version 102 or
greater. 

> * One laptop wouldn't register until I did ctrl-alt-erase to restart
> sugar. It had a temporary name resolution error in it's shell.log but
> that has been overwritten.
> 
> I'm not sure that this older fedora is able to take advantage of my
> laptop's power saving features -- the fan runs continuously (which is a
> character flaw of this machine, but the XS causes more of it than
> lucid).
> 
Not to sure with that one.

> Even for a linux expert, installing the XS was quite painful and took
> several evenings of work.
> 
Could of been less painful by editing the ks.cfg on the usbkey to fit
your hardware better before you boot the installer.

Jerry