[Server-devel] XS wishlist

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> Came across this via Twitter: http://asingh.com.np/blog/olpc-xs-my-wishlist/

Yeah - unfortunate that it didnt get posted here.

> Porting XS to new version of Fedora
> Support for multiple architecture

Yes - squarerly in my plans. I have the mixed fortune of being tasked
with steering a sizable part of the engineering behind XO-1.75; so
that's what's breaking my back ATM.

OTOH, the next XS I'll probably have running on ARM too -- oh, ah, you
meant 64 bits... that too ;-)

Note that the plan is to aim for F14 and RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux
version 6 (or 6.x). The XS packages will probably be in EPEL, with a
group, so you can add the EPEL repos, and groupinstall XS Server.

> Basic Self Tests

That's hard, specially combined with the "make it more modular and
flexible" requests.

> Inclusion of new packages

Sure -- once we're on top of a recent Fedora/RH/CentOS/ScL... however

> systemd: a replacement for SysVinit and Upstart that acts as a system
> and session manager.

Unlikely. Breaks too many things at the moment, benefits _desktops_,
and causes duplicate work in the face of RH6. Will wait-and-see.

> usb-modeswitch: a library/utility for handling Mode-Switching USB
> Devices on Linux. This package is required to access internet through
> 3G cards (e.g. Mobile broadband).
> ipcheck: a Dyndns.org client to register your dynamic IP address. It
> helps to configure the server with dynamic dns and with port

all yes'ses

> forwarding enabled on the Internet gateway, eases accessing the
> schoolserver from anywhere on the Internet.

Ugh -- no. It'll get me one happy user (the requester) and a long list
of admins trying to kill me.

> MySQL: a relational database server, and a de-facto backend for many
> services. Also it would be good to ditch PostgreSQL for Moodle. MySQL
> management is easy than PostgreSQL and there is more documentation,
> community support and human resource for MySQL.

NO. Getting MySQL to run correctly and reliably is much harder than
running Pg. This is one requester that knows how to run MySQL badly.

Here's your test: step 1 - run a busy mySQL install; step 2 - unplug
power cord at random times; step 3 - boot and see how mySQL behaves,
and the state of the data. Lather, rinse, repeat.

> PHP with required extensions: a powerful server-side HTML embedded
> scripting language. OLE Nepal’s digital library “E-Pustakalaya” runs
> on PHP and MySQL. Also we might need some PHP extensions like
> php-mysql, php-gd, php-xml.

Someone is just NOT using the XS and writing random stuff. PHP and the
php-xml and php-gd extensions are installed and in use on the XS.

> Python 2.x and Python 3.x: an interpreted, interactive,
> Expect:
> libicu and unicode support
> tzdata and extensions:

Oh man. Next we're gonna hear that it'd be good to have the XS run linux!

I abandon right here.



m
-- 
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 martin at laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
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