wmf-01 “le premier”

2x Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 285 @ 2606.342 MHz
2x 250 GB HDDs, 2x slots empty
2 Gigabit Ethernet NICs

This machine worked swimmingly.

wmf-02 “something witty”

2x Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 265 @ 1800.000 MHz
2x 250 GB HDDs, 2x slots empty
2 Gigabit Ethernet NICs

This machine was incredibly noisy when turned on.

wmf-03 “lemon”

2x Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 265 @ 1800.000 MHz
2x 250 GB HDDs, 2x slots empty
2 Gigabit Ethernet NICs

This machine did not fully POST, and was incredibly noisy when turned on.

Between them, only one of them had working fans. The other two made ungodly noises. We managed to salvage enough fans from the machine that didn’t post so that we now have two working machines cooling-wise.

We hope to install these machines at a Virginia co-lo center after we finish getting all the parts for Ivan Krstić‘s blackrock.

NB: This post has been sitting around in my drafts for a while, and I just got around to posting it now. We’re still waiting on some last-minute parts before putting these serves into production.

After reading several articles about the alleged spying that was enabled by a Pennsylvania school district via its one-to-one MacBook, and seeing discussion on a variety of mailing lists, I’ve decided to implement my own zero-cost, no-hassle solution to the problem for the OLPC XO-1‘s camera.

This should be able to be adopted in deployments everywhere, by anyone with a piece of paper, or anything else they can slide through the plastic faceplate.

Just say no to fancy addons and factory-added “shutters” or “covers”, make your own!

While assisting with the various presentations at the Open Source Center and staffing the Sugar/OLPC booth, I ran into some of the folks from NComputing. Their corporation has some similiar goals with that of OLPC, as both involve low-cost computing for the third world and elsewhere. Providing multi-seat technology, which is similar to thin-clients without the lag and network overhead, they enable multiple displays and mice to function off a single computer. Since they support both Ubuntu and SuSE Linux with their (admittedly closed) hardware, I decided to investigate their technology as a means of enhancing deployment of Sugar.

The method to activate the NComputing software (requires registration to download) is not obvious; one must navigate to the console, select “Serial Numbers” from the side menu, and then right click the empty license list and choose “Manage”. Many users would not be able to do so without the manual; maybe it would be easier to prompt for a license key in the debconf install process?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test their software with Sugar; the most recent version of Ubuntu they support is 8.04, and I can’t even insmod their kernel module on 9.04.

aside: meant to put this out an age ago, just got around to hitting “publish” today. (2009-08-16)

I’m working on a series of projects to make the use of SoaS inside the school itself easier from a setup perspective, as well as solving the management problems I mentioned earlier. This solution comes in a few components:

• SoaS-helper – modified Fedora OS which runs on the school lab computers. When booted, it prompts the user to plug in a USB key containing their SoaS USB stick (which will work with *any* stick that has the proper files). After detection, it will set the user’s home directory to the loopmounted partition and start the Sugar environment as well as update the SoaS installation to the latest image. May also be extended to create USB sticks, or also allow local profiles to be created for users without sticks.
• SoaS-admin – system by which the SoaS-helper machines themselves are updated. Keeps a registry of all sugar sticks. (Key escrow maybe?)
• SoaS-emu – provides a GUI installer for SoaS’s appliance as well as for the SoaS-helper. This will install VirtualBox and configure it for Sugar, making Sugar very easy to demo in schools and at roadshows.

These are all currently in the planning stage, but expect an alpha of some of the components in a bit.

The meeting will immediately follow that of the OLPC Learning Club, and we’re expecting some spillover. In addition to packaging mentoring offered by several Ubuntu MOTUs and Developers, we’ll be teaching basic QA during the event. Our *specific* QA focus is that of the Sugar packages for jaunty (which are being hammered out as we speak by Morgan Collett), but the bug jam aspect of the meeting will be more open ended.

Gallaudet University
Student Academic Center / Student Union Building (SAC/SUB)
Lower Level, Flex Rooms A and B
Saturday, February 21, 2009
10:00-13:00 OLPC LCDC
13:30-18:00 Ubuntu Bug Jam

Usually we maintain Sugar packages in Debian’s Git services at Alioth. Ideally, every Ubuntu SugarTeam member is also a Debian OLPC maintainer on Alioth, who have the rights to push Debian/Ubuntu-spesific fixes upstream. When we are close to a freeze or are unable to work with upstream (Debian) to meet our 6-month-release-cycle-deadline, we are forced to diverge from their repositories. Keep in mind, however, that we have the full expectation to merge at the soonest juncture.

It was something we *had* to do, since, as Jonas Smedegaard, the primary maintainer in the team, has stated numerous times that he doesn’t want to maintain multiple branches (stable from a few months ago and unstable of the most recent series), at least not yet. This was obviously a problem, was we had to meet Ubuntu’s FeatureFreeze. (getting exceptions, as we had to do last time, are not fun

Morgan Collett uploaded the core suite last week and we’re working on squashing bugs and handling the other activities.

Let’s hope we’ll be able to make this the best release of Sugar-in-Ubuntu ever!

The magical alchemy you need to know is

git reset --hard HEAD

Don’t do the following, (which is what you’d think to do if you were familiar with SVN), because it’ll undo your last commit:

git reset HEAD

Now why can’t Sugar use bazaar or another sane, userfriendly VCS?