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[jbeard]

Somewhat random question: does anyone know how to initiate suspend from the command line? It seems to possible to suspend the machine through the XFCE interface, but I've started using the ratpoison window manager, so I can no longer go that route. In regular ubuntu, suspend would be initiated by calling a shell script /etc/acpi/sleep.sh, but the XO doesn't use ACPI, hence doesn't have this shell script, so I'm not quite sure what to do.

Would greatly appreciate any advice anyone can offer. Thanks!

Jake

[teapot]

Somewhat random question: does anyone know how to initiate suspend from the command line? It seems to possible to suspend the machine through the XFCE interface, but I've started using the ratpoison window manager, so I can no longer go that route. In regular ubuntu, suspend would be initiated by calling a shell script /etc/acpi/sleep.sh, but the XO doesn't use ACPI, hence doesn't have this shell script, so I'm not quite sure what to do.

Would greatly appreciate any advice anyone can offer. Thanks!

Jake

A bug in power management causes SD card corruption on suspend, so it's intentionally not enabled in Ubuntu for XO.

[jbeard]

Good to know, thanks!

Jake

[Kattas]

Followed the instructions, pretty much to the T (I improvised a few times when it came to inserting various files, and there was a bit of running around trying to figure out how to remove various folders I created by mistake, but nothing that should have affected anything of import). Ubuntu boots, I get the  cute little pic of tux in the corner, but the login prompt doesn't ask for a password, it just asked for login again.
exact text:
Ubuntu 7.10 (none) tty1 (or ttyl, hard to read)

(none) login:

I've tried all possible combinations of olpc, OLPC, olpcolpc, etc.
Any ideas?

[teapot]

Followed the instructions, pretty much to the T (I improvised a few times when it came to inserting various files, and there was a bit of running around trying to figure out how to remove various folders I created by mistake, but nothing that should have affected anything of import). Ubuntu boots, I get the  cute little pic of tux in the corner, but the login prompt doesn't ask for a password, it just asked for login again.
exact text:
Ubuntu 7.10 (none) tty1 (or ttyl, hard to read)

(none) login:

I've tried all possible combinations of olpc, OLPC, olpcolpc, etc.
Any ideas?

If you have installed it correctly, log in as user "olpc", password "olpcolpc". If that does not work, something is missing. I am not sure if 7.10 installation has no hostname, I think, all versions have "OLPC" as hostname instead of "(none)" so maybe you have some files missing, or you extracted tarball as a non-root user, producing a filesystem with wrong file permissions.

Also I have posted an updated version 8.04 ( http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2240.msg21169#msg21169 ).

[Kattas]

I've tried recreating the boot files both by downloading fresh files and reextracting them in pretty much every su I can think of (sudo -s, su, su -olpc) and it keeps giving the same weird login prompt (which never asks for a password, by the way). I paid closer attention to the boot text this time and noticed the following potential issues:

failure reading codec reg 0x7e,Last value=0x7e805368

and

INIT: version 2.86 booting
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/rcS"
INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/rc"

Any chance that indicates the reason for the lack of a host name?
I'm going to try downloading the 8.04 build later and see if that works any better.

[teapot]

I've tried recreating the boot files both by downloading fresh files and reextracting them in pretty much every su I can think of (sudo -s, su, su -olpc) and it keeps giving the same weird login prompt (which never asks for a password, by the way). I paid closer attention to the boot text this time and noticed the following potential issues:

su or sudo -s  on the ORIGINAL system in Terminal should give you the root prompt (ends with "# "). Only after that you can install Ubuntu.

See http://abelits.livejournal.com/38634.html

failure reading codec reg 0x7e,Last value=0x7e805368

and

INIT: version 2.86 booting
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/rcS"
INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/rc"

Any chance that indicates the reason for the lack of a host name?

Those files run the rest of boot scripts, so you effectively end up with a completely unconfigured system. Yes, that explains the lack of host name.

I'm going to try downloading the 8.04 build later and see if that works any better.

It will work better by the virtue of being a later version (both of Ubuntu and of installation process/configuration), however you still have to install it as root as shown in the instructions and photos. You can't arbitrarily skip steps and expect things to work.

[Keith]

Teapot,
I am glad I checked on this thread, I am SUPER excited to go home and give it another try.  In the meantime, I see that you have a torrent of the tarball (I admit I have not read the whole thread yet).  I will be doing this straight from the XO but I don't see anything on the first blush of the instructions how to open the torrent via the XO.  Will it need a bit torrent client or anything?

Also, I notice in your photos pictures of the Terminal with a "Hello Children of the World" greeting.  Is this a function of another version of the OS I should be aware of?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!

[teapot]

The easiest way is probably to download a tarball with bittorrent client on another machine and copy it to a USB drive, then connect that USB drive to XO along with SD card where you can install Ubuntu.

At least one person posted here about how he installed bittorrent client (using yum) on XO itself and downloaded the tarball from torrent without using another computer.

It probably would be easier if it was possible to download tarball directly to the drive where Ubuntu will be installed, however this only works if the computer used for downloading can write to SD cards or USB drives formatted with ext3 filesystem -- only Linux can do that.

[Keith]

Ugh, I have no linux skills.  I am running on a Mac, but I do have Ubuntu and Win XP virtual client I can work with.

I can download the torrent and get it loaded up onto a USB drive w/o problem.  But I don't know command line enough to be able to navigate moving a file from the USB drive to the SD card.  I will try your instructions on line 5 & 6 and see if I have success there working on the XO w/ USB & SD

Thanks again, I will let you know how I do...

[markb]

I got ubuntu up and working of a 4GB USB memory stick (the 4 gb SD card I bought completely failed to be recognised by the XO   ) and after a few false starts I got to xfce and started to install a few things. A couple of things I noticed - the symantic package manager didn't work as it didn't have sufficient permission to run,  however It does if I used: su startxfce4. I'm not sure if this is the 'right' way to do things?

Secondly, and more annoying, login in is a lottery. If I try to login when the prompt first comes up with olpc & olpcolpc I get  a # prompt but the enter key does not work; I can enter a command but not get it to run, however the history function in bash does work (up & down keys), but not the enter key. I've found that in this situation I've clearly logged in too early and there's nothing I can do (pressing Ctr+Alt+F1, F2 etc, brings up tty2, tty3 but login in does work at all) but do a hardware re-boot.

If I wait before typing anything at the first login prompt everything is ok, the problem is I don't know how long to wait! There's no visual clue; all  I know is that it's at least 5 minutes. I don't like keep on having to do a hardware reset as I'm sure it will lead to file corruption.

Before I got this far, I found I had to make the changes to olpc.fth recommend by linuxspice (thanks!) in http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1767.0 otherwise the XO would hang. Is there something else I need to do of a similar nature that will let me know that the system is ready for a 'proper' login?

[markb]

and one minor issue - once I get Xfce up and running and go into a terminal session the keyboard goes barmy, the mouse still works (either USB or the touch pad) put I cant left click to get anything up and keys have seemly random functions?

[FuguTabetai]

I just wanted to say thanks to teapot and moocopean (sp? sorry about that!) for the great thread on setting up XFCE + Ubuntu on the XO.  I just got my system running in a nice state thanks to this method. 

The main thing that I got working was FBReader, which is just excellent as an ebook reader in tablet mode once you get the gamepad keys working. 

Next up is Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/) for Japanese learning.  I actually have it running, but I want to look into what I need to modify to get the gamepad keys working for tablet mode (subway commute doesn't allow for typing.) 

Does anyone have a good recommendation for using the built-in webcam?  I haven't played around with it too much, but the included webcam app didn't seem to work (I didn't even try to look at the error messages since that isn't a real priority for me yet.)

Thanks again! 

[Keith]

Hi
I am back and I am going to get this up and solidly running!  Quick question, do you still need the developers key to do the install?  I did not need it the one time I got it working, but wonder if it will be a more solid install if I use it.
Thanks

[zimm]

Well it seems I have bricked an XO.  I installed Ubuntu following the instructions on the front page of this thread.  I skipped over the olpc.fth portion of the instructions but followed the rest.  Now, when trying to boot into ubuntu, I see the linux penguin at the upper left
Lots of scrolling
Traceback. . .
OSError:  [Errno 21] No such file or directory:  ‘/sysroot/security/.private’

When I try to boot into sugar, I see one dot and then nothing happens.  I guess I can flash the machine off of a memory stick, but if this is something easier, I would like to hear those suggestions.  I guess I need to try and understand what on Earth the olpc.fth subthread is saying.

I'm having a very similar problem.  Someone here had said it could be resolved by just creating the directories but that has not worked for me.  if you the reader of this message have a minute to explain what is contained in .private (is this a file or a directory?) perhaps those of us who are stumped here could recreate the file by using the keys to our machines.

Argh and thanks in advance