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

[Holt]

Machines all appeared properly registered to "schoolserver.xs051.org" 
yet shared chat wasn't workable much at all 12+ hrs later.  And 
"olpc-xos" returned very low numbers all around, so I powered off every 
machine together, then started afresh:

40 machines were powered on, waiting 15-20 seconds between each boot.  1 
machine absolutely refused to show the shared chat bubble even after 
reboot etc, but eventually 39 machines successfully connected to a new 
shared chat -- hardly flawless but the vast majority of chat messages 
get through.

"olpc-xos" however returned widely varying results:
    * 9 machines showed a number between 35 and 40
    * 21 machines showed a number between 30 and 34
    * 7 machines showed a number between 20 and 29
    * 3 machines showed a number between 10 and 19

2 hours later, not a single "olpc-xos" return value appears to have changed.

Chat continued to work tolerably, with:
    * 17 machines forcing me to the Home View at the very 1st keypress 
-- then all was fine, after I rejoined the Chat still in memory (from 
Home View)
    * 5 machines had the Chat activity fail with errors; acknowledging & 
ignoring error did not work -- then all was fine, after I stopped Chat 
and rejoined the shared chat (from Network View)
    * not every chat msg arriving on every machine, but perhaps this 
lossiness is the norm...


Kimberley Quirk wrote:
> 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