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[MarkS]

Yes, you can use "adduser" to create a new user, but it only sets up a basic account. None of xfc things are set up (like net manager, task bar, windows, etc.). I can figure out most of them, but haven't figured out how to put the net-manager on the menu.

But at this point its moot. My 8G SDHC flash card might as well be swiss cheese. I can install Ubuntu on it and everything works ok until I try to install with Synaptic. Then it starts getting memory errors and the dpkg database is corrupted and I have to start over.

Have there been any reports about what is the largest card that will work without corruption problems?

Thanks
Mark

[moocapiean]

Someone over in the Compressed files thread discovered that it isn't the size that's the problem, but non-standard SDHC implementations.

I think moocapiean dragged me out of the rabbit hole I have been going down the last couple of days   The weird behavior that I have been seeing is almost certainly with the SD card itself.  I've been playing around this evening with the ext3-formatted boot SD that I made and a smaller 1 GB FAT16 SD that I have and I think I might have a clue why some cards seem to work and others don't.  I was under the mistaken idea that my SD card was SDHC because it was a 4 GB card.  I was wrong.  The card says SD on the label, so it is really a nonstandard extension of the SD standard, which stops at 2 GB.  I found this on Wikipedia:

"Before SDHC was standardized, various manufacturers "extended" the SD control block fields for their 2 GB and 4 GB cards in different ways. Those cards are incompatible with many SD and some SDHC devices, as they conform to neither standard"
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card

So it works just fine on my MacBookPro in Ubuntu, but shows unpredicable behavior and is unreliable on the XO.  So, be careful with 2GB and 4GB cards.  1 GB SD and 8 GB SDHC are propably fine.  I wouldn't use a 2 GB or 4 GB card in the XO unless it is truly made to the SDHC standard and not just some one-off extension of SD.  The behavior is just too unpredicable and flakey. 

I'm ordering a Class 6 SHDC card tomorrow and starting over when it comes in.

I'm not sure if that applies to your 8GB card though.  Maybe there's something else causing a problem with SD cards.  I don't have one, so I'm not sure what else to tell you.


As for creating a new user, I just renamed the olpc user.  That took care of the problem you're having.  If you want to create a new user and keep olpc, maybe copying everything from olpc's home directory into the new one and changing the permissions would work?

Oh, I just remembered that the network-manager applet (is that what you're talking about?) is started automatically as one of the Autostarted Applications.  Go to Xfce Menu -> Settings -> Autostarted Applications.  From there, you should be able to add the command nm-applet to the list of autostarted applications.

[JoeMac]

Wow, I've done this enough now to get quoted

The 8 GB cards are all true SDHC.  There are differences in the quality and speed of the SDHC cards, though.  I have been been using a Class 6 Kingston 8GB SDHC card, I haven't had any trouble using Synaptic.  I spent most of yesterday running multiple different configurations of Synaptic trying to get Opera and all of it's related components dowloaded and installed without any trouble (so far...other than stupidly hosing my keyboard mucking around trying to get screen rotate to work, but that's another story). 

I'm not entirely sure of all of the differences that go into making a Class 6 vs. a Class 4 SDHC card of the same capacity, but I know with other integrated circuits it is often the same part but the faster/better part passes QC/QA at the accelerated speed and the slower/cheaper part generates errors or other funkiness at accelerated speeds. 

Considering how deeply discounted the Class 6 cards are, I would pass on any of the Class 4 cards and spend the extra $5-10 bucks on a Class 6 card.  Save the Class 4 cards for the digital cameras.

[MarkS]

Just to verify -- are you using it to run Ubuntu? Are you using Ext 2 or other system?

This is a PQI card. The vendor (Fry's) labeling says "8GB SDHC Class 6". However, the package labeling doesn't say anything about it being "Class 6", which you think would be a major selling point. It just says "Compliance with SD 2.0 Specifications" and "Can be inserted into SDHC sockets".  On the card however, there is a letter "C" with the number 6 inside it, suggesting that it might be class 6.

I've tried it both as a flash drive (in an SDHC adapter) and by itself in the OLPC. Either way eventually it quickly corrupts the dpkg database. If there was an easy way to repair the database I would just forge on. Oh yeah, the backups of the database (-old) seem to get corrupted too. Maybe if I made a manual backup before proceeding I could make progress, though the dpkg database would never reflect what's really on the system.

Thanks!

[JoeMac]

MarkS - C with a 6 inside is indeed the symbol indicating adherence with SDHC Class 6.   I saw good deals on the C6 PQI cards when I was looking for a card 2-weeks ago, but I was only looking at Kingston, Sandisk and A-Data - all of them brands I have had previous good experience. I had heard of the difficulties with SD cards on here including assorted weirdness I had with a nonSDHC 4GB card I had tried earlier, so I decided to spend a couple of bucks extra in hope that maybe one of these would work better.  I'm sure other brands are just as good or better - I just didn't have any previous experience using them.  The Kingston was also on sale   I'm now on my second complete compressed-file Xubuntu installation on this one card and many, many boots over this past weekend, and I've dowloaded mabye 15 packages spread over 4 synaptic sessions and so far (knock on wood), no problems whatsoever.  I am using EXT3 for the primary partition and also a 1 GB swap partition - so in other words I've pretty much maximized writes to the drive as far as the SHDC's partitioning and configuration goes since EXT3 is journaled and the swap is, well, a swap.  The card uses leveling, so I'm not overly concerned with card life and I figured at $25 a pop, how could I go wrong?  I figure the swap partition will croak first and maybe by then 32 GB SHDC's might be $25.  We'll see how long it lasts.

[JoeMac]

MarkS - What build are you using?  You might want to take a look at this:

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6532

I have been using build 656, and that might be why I haven't had problems so far.  In fact, I upgraded to 656 and stopped there because I had heard there we SD card issues with some of the other builds, but I had no idea of the extent of problems some folks have been having until I checked the developer's site.

[MarkS]

I'm on the original build 650. I'm reluctant to upgrade unless there's some truly compelling reasons. My daughter would be pretty upset if the install went South 

[JoeMac]

Beleive me, I understand.  My 8-year-old son likes the Sugar interface and gets around in it fairly well.  I have my olpc.fth set up to default to Sugar unless I hold down a game key, so he can boot up without any fuss.  My XO shipped with 653 and I updated to 656 to get some of the bug-fixes, so I have no experience with Build 650.  656 seems very stable so far, and the firmware upgrade that (I think) came with it works well with the compressed-files Xubuntu installation.  It just doesn't do suspend/resume like the post-656 builds but if you use an SD card, stay away from suspend for now.  I won't upgrade beyond 656 until the the SD-card corruption issue get's solved in the later  builds.  Apparently anything beyond 656 that has suspend/resume enabled trashes the master-boot-record on SD-cards when suspended. 

 I think 656 is the current "official" release until "update 1" is released.  I have seen a couple of complaints about "update 1" shipping with the known and documented SD corruption bug and I am a bit disappointed that OLPC is apparently releasing an official update with such a serious issue.

[gerald]

Thank you for the instructions for this. It has worked out well.

Has anyone gotten the display backlight to completely turn off like in sugar?

I plug in a USB stick and it shows on the desktop but when I click it, I can't mount it. If I manually mount it via terminal it works. Any ideas on how to get stuff to automatically mount?

Also, what are the gamepad values so that I can experiment with keybindings?

Thanks

Greg

[teapot]

Thank you for the instructions for this. It has worked out well.

Has anyone gotten the display backlight to completely turn off like in sugar?

I plug in a USB stick and it shows on the desktop but when I click it, I can't mount it. If I manually mount it via terminal it works. Any ideas on how to get stuff to automatically mount?

Also, what are the gamepad values so that I can experiment with keybindings?

Thanks

Greg

My version of Hardy compressed files ( http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2240.msg21807#msg21807 ) includes that -- the only significant thing missing is power management. Keys are now configured with the same setolpckeys program that runs in Sugar-based builds, so they should be compatible -- you can use xev to read key codes.

I also didn't include automatic switch to b&w mode when the backlight is completely off -- I am still not sure if this is the best way to handle this, or it will be better to make color/b&w switch completely unrelated to backlight.

[gerald]

Oh. I guess I can just do your new install. Is this the slim Xubuntu version of Hardy or is it the full blown version?

[teapot]

Oh. I guess I can just do your new install. Is this the slim Xubuntu version of Hardy or is it the full blown version?

It's slightly slimmed down Xubuntu -- once it's installed, you can use apt or aptitude to install either of "full-blown" desktops, as long as you have enough space on SD card or USB drive.

[Neandertal]

Once it's loaded, issue the following commands:
cp -ra /boot /media/OLPCRoot/
cp -ra /lib/modules /media/OLPCRoot/lib/
cp -ra /lib/firmware /media/OLPCRoot/lib/
cp -ra /security /media/OLPCRoot/
cd /media/OLPCRoot/etc
mv modprobe.d modprobe.old
cp -ra /etc/modprobe.d /media/OLPCRoot/etc/modprobe.d
mv fstab fstab.old
cp -ar /etc/fstab /media/OLPCRoot/etc/fstab
cd X11
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.old
wget http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xorg.conf
cd /media/OLPCRoot/boot
mv olpc.fth olpc.fth.nand

I've run into a problem when I try to do the cp commands.  I get the response:
"cp: missing destination file operand after '/boot/media/OLPCRoot/'"

The OLPCRoot (on a USB thumb) drive and its contents show up just fine when I cd & ls it.  Any thoughts?
 
I really appreciate the instructions, although I fear that I'm still not up to the task!

Thanks!

[teapot]

I've run into a problem when I try to do the cp commands.  I get the response:
"cp: missing destination file operand after '/boot/media/OLPCRoot/'"

There should be a space after "boot"

[Eddie Owens]

Teapot.  How do you install the "full blown" versions of Xubuntu with apt or aptitude?

Do you not have to ask for specific files with apt or aptitude, and if you do not know what is missing how do you know what to ask for?  Is there a "Gimmie the whole works" version of the command (and how much space DOES that require, and what is in the full version)?

I tried to use Synaptic to get Abiword for Hardy a day or so ago, but if I was using Synaptic properly, it did not seem to be available yet.  Are there still some packages that are not ready yet?

Thank you.