[Testing] FYI: all 41 still on the mesh, 19 of which chat successfully

[Kimberley Quirk]

Adam,
This is good information. One thought i had was that if the 12  
troublemakers were not correctly registered to the school server, then  
they would never share an activity properly.  I know I tried to  
register each laptop to the school server... but it could be the case  
that I registered a bunch of them while they were connected to the  
wrong AP, which might cause this kind of problem.

To figure this out, you can look at the control panel of the suspect  
laptops, then click on network. They should all show the same server  
registration as the good laptops, something like  
"schoolserver.xs051.org".

If any of them are different, then you probably need to remove the  
school registration and try registration again. Hopefully Reuben can  
help with this.

The second scenario you mention sounds like the case when too many  
laptops (more than 10) are connected to a simple mesh (like mesh  
channel 1), and then there is no way they will share anything. This  
can happen when you reboot many laptops at basically the same time. If  
20 laptops are all booting about the same time, some (many?) of them  
will not connect to desired AP, they will time-out from trying that  
and default to mesh channel 1.

And, there is the possibility that too many reboots in a short period  
of time and not enough time for things to really settle might result  
in the presence service being confused.

When things are working well these things will all be met:

1 - each laptop will show the same number of other laptops when you  
type: olpc-xos
2 - each laptop will be registered to the same school server: control  
panel, network
3 - starting/sharing chat on one laptop, you will see the chat icon on  
all other laptops and they can connect
4 - typing in chat for each laptop can be seen by all other laptops  
over a period of a few hours (not 24 hours later)

I think you need to get to this level of performance before releasing  
8.2.1. What you describe below could be an important regression.  
Another test would be to get all the laptops up and registered to the  
school server and start the chat testing each new laptop against the  
ones already in the chat by typing a bit... before adding the next  
laptop. If there is a regression perhaps it shows up after the 10th  
laptop (or some such thing).

I added the Testing group in case there are other thoughts (probably  
should have been on this thread from the beginning).

Keep us posted,
Kim


On Jan 31, 2009, at 1:44 AM, Adam Holt wrote:

> All 41 machines were rebooted.  The XS/ZOOM51 AP was rebooted too.
>
> 29 of the machines chatted successfully, after rebooting a few  
> troublesome machines repeatedly.
> The remaining 12 true-troublemaker machines refused to join the  
> chat, even after a couple reboots, even when each (apparently,  
> claims to have) rejoined "ZOOM51".
> These troublemaker machines returned low numbers (like 3 and 5) when  
> running "olpc-xos", as if they were on their own little segregated  
> subnet or such -- ostensibly connected to ZOOM51, but never able to  
> show a chat-bubble in the Network View.
>
> After further reboots of the troublemakers and the AP, "olpc-xos"  
> returned even more erratic numbers, differing on almost every  
> machine, including 11, 12, 15, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30 and higher  
> (39?) occasionally too.  But perhaps this is a result of too many  
> reboots.
>
> I also noticed that chat was not transmitting/receiving all messages  
> amongst all 29 "well-behaved" machines, but again perhaps this is a  
> relic of way too many reboots, as I tried and failed to get the  
> shared-chat bubble to show up on these machines' Network View.
>
> There you go if that's useful-- wish I knew what I was doing :)
> --A!
>
>
> Kimberley Quirk wrote:
>> Thanks Adam! I forgot to send out the test bed config, but you  
>> figured it out with our brief discussion on Thur evening. There  
>> were 41 laptops that all saw each other when I left, but I hadn't  
>> even tested if they chatted with each other properly.
>>
>> The fact that they all still reported seeing 41 others is good  
>> (probably 'presence' is working and the jabberd server). The fact  
>> that they weren't actually chatting is probably not good (telepathy  
>> or gabble, perhaps), but may not be a regression since I didn't  
>> make sure they were all chatting to start with and that test really  
>> only has to work for 2-3 hours (not over night).
>>
>> So -- if you and/or Chris have a chance, what you should do is  
>> reboot them all; if they don't come up on the school server it is  
>> probably because there was too much traffic at the time they tried,  
>> so click on the zoom51 AP and get them all back on the school  
>> server. Check that they see each other (olpc-xos); then start one  
>> shared chat and see if they can all chat together for a few hours.
>>
>> Thanks! If that works, it would be good to check that a number of  
>> them can see the same browse links, and that 3-4 of them can share  
>> a write doc.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Kim
>>
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2009, at 5:16 PM, Adam Holt wrote:
>>
>>> Kim & All,
>>> When I ran "olpc-xos", it worked on every machine I tried -- a  
>>> dozen.
>>>
>>> Then I pressed "alt-home" on all 41, and entered chat successfully  
>>> on 39 of the 41.  Of these 39:
>>>
>>> * Unfortunately only 19 of them chatted to one another successfully.
>>> * In 19 /other/ cases the chat activity crashed the very moment I  
>>> tried to type.
>>> * One single (final) laptop had a different problem, the chat  
>>> activity did not send out (or receive) anything I typed into chat  
>>> -- not sure why as its "olpc-xos" test continued to run  
>>> successfuly displaying 41, and its chat activity did not crash.
>>>
>>> --A!
>>