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On 06/05/2011 09:42 PM, Tony Anderson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4DEBA76A.3080900@olenepal.org" type="cite">Hi,
<br>
<br>
I hope we can keep Abhisek in the loop as he has detailed
information on the XS version deployed in Nepal. The procedure
there is to build XS and release it as an img. The image is loaded
to a usb drive (mkusbinstall.sh). This key is used to install all
of the deployed school servers. I have attached the instructions
for installing NEXS from the olenepal redmine (slightly edited).
<br>
<br>
I am very internet-challenged (at this campground I arrived on
Thursday and used the internet for about two hours and then it
died - now on Sunday evening it is working intermittently!), so I
think some of my previous comments have not been received. So
please be patient if you have read this before:
<br>
<br>
I think the separation of the server into two components XS and XC
is very valuable. The XC build should provide a working
schoolserver which can be accessed via the LAN from an XO using
ssh. With the XS-Au fix for the 'race' condition in kickstart, it
should be possible to do this install 'headless' on a server which
supports booting from the usb drive when present (and bootable).
<br>
<br>
XC provides the content for the /library partition. However, with
Daniel Drake's usbmount scripts XC could be used to install any
optional packages such as Dan's Guardian, Moodle (forgive me,
Martin), Fedora Commons, Fez, mediawiki, and so on.
<br>
<br>
The netsetup.sh script should be used to configure the WAN network
and should not be needed when the school server is not connected
to an external network (the LAN network is configured the same in
every school as 172.18.0.1). The LAN should be configured for the
baseboard (RJ45) port and the WAN for a secondary port (e.g.
usb-ethernet).
<br>
<br>
Essentially this is the procedure used in Nepal with considerable
success over the past two years (success measured by the
schoolserver very rarely being a problem requiring service (UPS
failures seem far more frequent).
<br>
<br>
Tony
<br>
<br>
P.S.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLE_Nepal:Procedure_to_build_NEXS_from_OLPC_XS">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLE_Nepal:Procedure_to_build_NEXS_from_OLPC_XS</a>
gives a description of the build procedure used for XS-0.4. It
provides details on the installation of the extra packages as of
that time. Abhishek Singh can provide more recent details.
<br>
<br>
On 06/03/2011 04:21 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On 4 June 2011 00:00, Aleksey
Lim<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:alsroot@activitycentral.org"><alsroot@activitycentral.org></a> wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Fri, Jun 03, 2011 at 09:40:48AM
-0400, Martin Langhoff wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 7:49 AM,
Sridhar Dhanapalan
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au"><sridhar@laptop.org.au></a> wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On 3 June 2011 21:31, Aleksey
Lim<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:alsroot@activitycentral.org"><alsroot@activitycentral.org></a> wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">btw, did someone try to use
cloning paradigm for setting up new school
<br>
servers instead of using regular install way? Just
clonning the system
<br>
will lest avoid many issues by design.
<br>
</blockquote>
Do you mean creating an image of a server installation and
applying it
<br>
to other machines?
<br>
<br>
We've done that with the XS-AU (using clonezilla), and I'm
pretty sure
<br>
it works with an OLPC XS.
<br>
</blockquote>
Note that without a script that cleans up config&
state, you're bound
<br>
to have some fun problems with the resulting systems.
<br>
</blockquote>
Do you mean particular script, which one?
<br>
</blockquote>
You'll need to clean up:
<br>
<br>
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules (delete the lines
that
<br>
refer to all the eth devices)
<br>
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* (remove the
HWADDR line)
<br>
ssh keys (/etc/ssh/ssh_host_*)
<br>
postgresql server.crt
<br>
<br>
Info: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/422">http://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/422</a>
<br>
<br>
Sridhar
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
Hi Tony, and all,<br>
Greetings from Nepal. I would like to correct a few things in
Tony's descriptions and elaborate upon what he discussed.<br>
<br>
NEXS (the Nepalese version built upon OLPC XS) has separated the
content part from the base server. We call the content part NEXC
("C" for content). This separation has helped us a lot in managing
content bundles and content updates. The NEXC generally contains:<br>
<br>
<ol>
<li>Content of the digital library (see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pustakalaya.org">http://www.pustakalaya.org</a>), which is spanned across:</li>
<ul>
<li>Database dumps for Fedora Commons and Fez</li>
<li>Fedora Commons datastream files</li>
<li>Fez's customized interface (that is being used at
pustakalaya.org)<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li>Wiki for schools</li>
<li>English Wiktionary</li>
<li>Nepali Dictionary</li>
<li>External Content: All the other static content (e.g. video
files, maps etc) are packaged as external content</li>
<li>Learn English Kids from British Council (recently added)</li>
</ol>
We have a 3-month NEXC release schedule. At every release, we'll
bundle the most recent content and put it on a USB HDD, test it
internally on our test school server, and then finally release it.
After every release, the deployment team will go to the schools with
the USB HDDs and plug it to the school server at the site schools.
Daniel Drake's usbmount script takes care of installing/updating the
content from the USB HDDs - you just nee to listen to the starting
and the ending beep during which all the content update is done. We
have tried updating it over Internet, but the connection here in
Nepal is so flaky and slow (most schools do not even have Internet
connection yet), and the content being huge (approx 12GB now), makes
it almost impossible.<br>
<br>
Corrections to Tony's discussion: Moodle and Dansguardian is not
installed as a part of NEXC, rather they are built with NEXS and get
installed as a part of NEXS. The NEXS is also not released as an img
file (Tony might be confused with NEXO being released as an IMG
file), rather as an iso file. The mkusbinstall (using the OLPC forth
script) is then used to copy the install image to a usb flash drive
(using syslinux).<br>
<br>
We would really try to test the Au-script for Anaconda USB race
conditions.<br>
<br>
All our customizations and scripts are available at a few mercurial
repositories hosted at hg.olenepal.org. For NEXS and NEXC, please
check:<br>
<br>
<ul>
<li>NEXS Scripts, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXS_scripts/">http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXS_scripts/</a></li>
<li>NEXS Image Builder, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXS-image-builder/">http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXS-image-builder/</a></li>
<li>NEXC Maint, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXC-maint/">http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXC-maint/</a></li>
<li>NEXC Scripts, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXC_scripts/">http://hg.olenepal.org/NEXC_scripts/</a></li>
</ul>
<br>
Thank You.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Abhishek Singh
System Engineer
Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal
साझा शिक्षा ई-पाटी
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.olenepal.org">http://www.olenepal.org</a>
Tel: +977-1-5544441 ext. 301</pre>
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