[Server-devel] [OLPC-AU] OLPC Australia XS concerns

[Aleksey Lim]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:54:24AM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> I think my biggest technical concerns in XS-land are twofold:
> 
>   * we need the XS to behave well on an *existing* network (i.e.
> single interface), without trying to be a gateway or duplicating core
> network services (DNS, DHCP, etc.)
>   * while other XS efforts are keen to add features, we want to be as
> trim as possible

The core purpose behind Sugar Server (upstream SL project) is exactly to
provide useful components to create solutions on purpose, e.g., like you
just described..

> We started the XS-AU when it had become clear that XS development had
> slowed. We could find no alternative that satisfied our needs, and I
> felt it better to go our own way rather than complaining that the XS
> didn't meet our particular use case (which seems to be quite different
> from other deployments). It's been working very well, and it's quite
> low-maintenance for us. We'll need a good reason to jump ship.
> 
> We've been working on a prototype "XS Lite", which is essentially an
> XS-AU with everything except ejabberd stripped away. Our deployments
> are done at the classroom-level; a teacher receives XOs for the
> children in their class once they have completed the necessary
> training. We would like to provide a simple server with that
> allocation of XOs. This means that the server needs to be low-cost and
> easy to implement (plug-and-play). We are assuming that there is *no*
> technical expertise available at the school.

..but you need only jabber server :)

Don't you even use activation service for XO? ie you have all XOs
unlocked at schools?

> The server doesn't have to be very capable. Anything that requires
> registration won't work for us as the turnover of teachers and
> students is too high. We don't need Moodle or anything similar, since
> such services are already provided on the state education network.
> Since it's based on the XS-AU, it can be 'upgraded' to a full XS with
> some yum commands.
> 
> Given the modest requirements, I think an XO would be suitable
> hardware. They are cheap and reliable, and we already have them in
> stock. As a standalone collaboration server, the XO's WLAN can be the
> AP. If we need to connect to the school network, we can use a
> USB2Ethernet adapter. This will also allow the server to leverage the
> other APs in the school. What's important is that we need to be
> tolerant of multiple schoolservers on the network, potentially one per
> class.

Thats my intention as well, sugar-server[1] package does not have
big external deps like httpd server for all its [optional] services.
And should work quite well in full feature mode (but not what AU needs)
with having second net device and enough storage on, e.g., extral USB
device.

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server/Architecture#sugar-server

-- 
Aleksey