[Server-devel] The three step XSCE demo

Sat Nov 23 12:15:46 EST 2013

I'll add this and Miguel's info under
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.5/Hacking . I had to
order a new 8GB memory stick for my laptop. It was swapping really
badly with 4GB :(

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Tim Moody <tim at timmoody.com> wrote:
> I take a middle of the road approach, using vbox, but not vagrant.
>
> Some time ago I created a vbox with a minimal FC18 64 bit install, which I
> call FC18-64Base and which I periodically yum update and into which I put my
> personal account, make myself a sudoer, etc., turn on sshd if necessary.
>
> I then did a vbox clone of the that vm and performed Miguel's setup - get
> git and ansible and update ansible, which I call XSCEAnsibleBase with two
> nics, one for wan and one for lan. A vbox clone takes a little over a
> minute.
>
> When I want to test the server I do a vbox clone of XSCEAnsibleBase and name
> it XSCEAnsibleTest (I usually generate new mac addresses to be safe).
>
> Then I git clone https://github.com/XSCE/xsce --depth 1 or my working
> branch.  (--depth 1 saves a lot of time on the git clone)
>
> I connect XSCEAnsibleTest to my home network on wan so I can ssh in and to
> an isolated access point on the lan to connect XOs.  I can also sftp into
> the server using my account.
>
> I am fortunate to have some XOs for testing, but I have also used SoaS,
> again running as a vbox vm.  In that case I could eliminate the extra access
> point and just connect the server and client vms on the lan side over a
> virtual network internal to vbox.  Awhile back I successfully ran three SoaS
> vms simultaneously on an old Dell laptop to test collaboration.
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message----- From: server-devel-request at lists.laptop.org
>> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 12:00 PM
>> To: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
>> Subject: Server-devel Digest, Vol 79, Issue 17
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   1. Re: The three step XSCE demo! (Miguel Gonz?lez)
>>   2. Re: The three step XSCE demo! (David Farning)
>>   3. Re: The three step XSCE demo! (Thomas Gilliard)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 19:27:42 +0100
>> From: Miguel Gonz?lez <migonzalvar at activitycentral.com>
>> To: Anish Mangal <anish at activitycentral.com>
>> Cc: server-devel <server-devel at lists.laptop.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Server-devel] The three step XSCE demo!
>> Message-ID:
>> <CABn5_V1ZA-QYMz2HGD0r+Zib3RNRx=Nj==Qg9EcrBrK-WdhiKw at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>> I'm going to describe in detail my current dev environment. Hopefully,
>> it could be useful for somebody.
>>
>>
>> Pre-requisites
>> ====
>>
>> I'm using a VirtualBox and installing a virtual machine with Fedora18.
>>
>> I'm also use vagrant to automatically manage the virtual machine.
>> There packages available from its website [1]. I'm currently using
>> version 1.3.4.
>>
>>
>> Booting a fresh virtual machine
>> ====
>>
>> The file Vagrantfile defines a basic image to download (= vagrant box)
>> and allows to add configuration details like network configuration.
>>
>> This is a simplified but fully functional version:
>>
>> ```ruby
>> # -*- mode: ruby -*-
>> # vi: set ft=ruby :
>>
>> VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
>>
>> Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
>>  config.vm.box = "fedora-18-x86_64"
>>  config.vm.box_url =
>>
>> "http://puppet-vagrant-boxes.puppetlabs.com/fedora-18-x64-vbox4210-nocm.box"
>>
>>  # config.vm.network :public_network
>>
>>  # config.ssh.forward_agent = true
>>
>>  config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", :disabled => true
>>
>>   config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|
>>       # vb.gui = true
>>   end
>>
>> end
>> ```
>>
>> With this command, vagrant downloads the basic image (only the first
>> time) and deploys and boots up the virtual machine:
>>
>> ```
>> $ vagrant up
>> ```
>>
>>
>> Then, to access the vagrant virtual machine:
>>
>> ```
>> $ vagrant ssh
>> ```
>>
>> Installing XSCE
>> ====
>>
>> Inside the vm now it's possible to follow the install instructions
>> [2]. I'm copying them below:
>>
>>
>> Install git and ansible (for dependencies):
>>
>> ```
>> sudo su -
>> yum install -y git ansible
>> ```
>>
>> Update ansible to use a :
>>
>> ```
>> cd ~/
>> git clone https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git
>> cd ansible
>> git checkout 07b59da99
>> python setup.py install
>> ```
>>
>> Clone the XSCE git repo and run the actual setup:
>>
>> ```
>> cd ~/
>> git clone https://github.com/XSCE/xsce
>> cd xsce/
>> ./runansible
>> ```
>>
>> XSCE autoconfigures itself according to the interfaces it detects. If
>> XSCE only detects one interface, as in this setup, it configures
>> itself in "appliance mode". But the service are not reachable because
>> `eth0` in the host machine is using a subnetwork.
>>
>> One solutions is define a port forward for every service. Other
>> solution, the one I'm using currently is to add a new interface
>> **after installing XSCE**.
>>
>> To do it, from the host machine I halt the vm, uncomment a line in
>> Vagrantfile and run again:
>>
>> ```
>> $ vagrant halt
>> $ vim Vagrantfile
>> ... uncomment # config.vm.network :public_network
>> $ vagrant up
>> $ vagrant ssh
>> ```
>>
>> The guest machine has 2 interfaces, the internal subnet and another
>> bridged to the same LAN as the host
>>
>> ```
>> [vagrant at schoolserver ~]$ ip a
>> 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
>>    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
>>    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
>>    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
>>       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
>> 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast
>> state UP qlen 1000
>>    link/ether 08:00:27:f0:90:8a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
>>    inet 10.0.2.15/24 brd 10.0.2.255 scope global eth0
>>    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fef0:908a/64 scope link
>>       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
>> 3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast
>> state UP qlen 1000
>>    link/ether 08:00:27:ca:fe:ca brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
>>    inet 192.168.0.100/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth1
>>    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:feca:feca/64 scope link
>>       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
>> ```
>>
>> And now all the services can be accessed from the LAN by any device
>> for testing, in this case, using 192.168.0.100.
>>
>>
>> The main problem here is that running XSCE installation process again
>> (`./runansible`) will mess the configuration because **it will find 2
>> interfaces now**. So, before configuring the server again, disable
>> eth1:
>>
>>
>> ```
>> [root at schoolserver xsce]# ifconfig eth1 down
>> [root at schoolserver xsce]# ./runansible
>> ```
>>
>>
>> More..
>> ====
>>
>>
>> - To begin with a new fresh virtual machine:
>>
>> ```
>> $ vagrant destroy
>> $ vagrant up
>> ```
>>
>>
>> - Uncommenting `config.ssh.forward_agent = true` in Vagrantfile, it is
>> possible to write in a git repo from the guest using host's keys.
>>
>>
>> - Take a look to https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/pull/76 when we are
>> trying to simplify adding new *roles* (services) to XSCE.
>>
>>
>>
>> 1: http://downloads.vagrantup.com/
>>
>> 2: https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.rst
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Anish Mangal
>> <anish at activitycentral.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Sebastian,
>>>
>>> You should be able to download the image from here (Thanks to Thomas
>>> Gillard
>>> for uploading the file):
>>> http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/XSCE.ova
>>>
>>> Please verify the md5sum once you have downloaded the file.
>>> 56a4f141b564b0d2bd65c543a5e585c6
>>>
>>> About your question on dev environment I am ccing Santi and Miguel who
>>> can
>>> answer it best. It may depend on what part of the server you want to
>>> contribute to, but I think you should mostly be able to get away with
>>> just a
>>> VM image. I don't believe anyone has tried a chroot env (though I could
>>> be
>>> wrong) but it _might_ be possible.
>>>
>>> Also, for testing with real clients (like xo laptops) you are probably
>>> going
>>> to need something for the LAN side (an access point). There are a few
>>> permutations here, but I will step back and let more the technical
>>> experts
>>> converse :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Anish
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Sebastian Silva
>>> <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks that will be simpler. Actually I'm more interested in what a good
>>>> dev environment would be in order to contribute.
>>>> Do I need to make a fedora chroot?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Sebastian
>>>>
>>>> El 19/11/13 09:51, Anish Mangal escribi?:
>>>>
>>>> I tried uploading it to xsce.activitycentral.com, but I ran out of space
>>>> in my user dir. Normally the appliance is 1.3G, but this also has 400mb
>>>> of
>>>> IIAB test dataset.
>>>>
>>>> I'll give it another shot in another area where there is some free
>>>> space,
>>>> and get back.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Sebastian Silva
>>>> <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi
>>>>> I tried this but google drive problematic to download from as it
>>>>> requires
>>>>> to download from a browser. Not adequate for 1.6gb. Let me know if I
>>>>> can
>>>>> pick it up from a regular download place. Why is it so big?
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Sebastian
>>>>>
>>>>> El 17/11/13 20:48, Anish Mangal escribi?:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Download the XSCE Virtualbox appliance from here
>>>>>> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3eW2YPe6koIVXRVbDhSR0xXQ1U (approx
>>>>>> 1.6 GB)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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-- 
David Farning
Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com