next »

[cruisingjack]

This may have been covered in another post but a search has not found it. I know that on a standard Intel based PC running Xubuntu the XFCE menu has an Applications button.  I do not have one on my XO running Hardy that I just completed.  My drop down menu has the following:

Settings
Accessories
Multimedia
Network
Office
--------------
Help
About Xfce
Quit

How can I add "Applications"?

[Chris J]

When you load software that is set up for XFCE, it will appear in the menu automatically. You can also change the menu by right-clicking the menu icon on the taskbar and selecting "Edit menu."

My Ubuntu/XFCE desktop doesn't have "applications" on it, so I can't say where it may have come from.

[Eddie Owens]

Thanks machineelf368 for that tip.

I was proceeding on the assumption that once I had MPlayer installed and enabled, it would recognize and play an .flv file when encountered (I had not yet installed Flash on my OLPC).  But apparently not so!  I was trying to work on the windows model that you can assign which applications open which files.

So I went ahead and installed Flash, and it played the Zeppelin-over-Tokyo video clip in a pretty choppy manner.   

Then, per Teapot's suggestion, I also installed Tubewatcher and Flashblock, and things worked great, with a VERY smooth, fullscreen rendition of Zeppelin-over-Tokyo.

I might add, for others doing this, that after installation of flashblock there is no video in the empty frame (because Flashblock blocks it - its original intent was to block banner ads), but the URL is hiding there, and must be passed on to Tubewatcher and MPlayer.  So what you have to do is to right-click the empty frame, click on "properties" in the window which opens, another window opens with the URL of the video, and one must select the URL.

Then go to the main XFCE menu, click on Network/Tubewatcher, and the video downloads and plays fullscreen.

It sounds complicated but only takes a couple of seconds for the keystrokes.  This particular clip is really big, so it took awhile for the download.

The rendition is MUCH better with MPlayer than Flash.  Thanks again Teapot.

[teapot]

This may have been covered in another post but a search has not found it. I know that on a standard Intel based PC running Xubuntu the XFCE menu has an Applications button.  I do not have one on my XO running Hardy that I just completed.  My drop down menu has the following:

Settings
Accessories
Multimedia
Network
Office
--------------
Help
About Xfce
Quit

How can I add "Applications"?

Submenus appear and disappear when you install and remove packages with applications that fall into those categories. If you want to change them, you can customize the whole menu, however automatically added entries follow categories set in packages.

[cruisingjack]

Thanks again Teapot.  I realized that I had not followed the final steps in converting the XO to Ubuntu in that I did not update the system.  I ran sudo aptitude and now have all of the latest updates.   

[GoremanX]

I've followed teapot's instructions to the letter on multiple occasions. Each time, I get the same result: the system boots up, the session manager comes up (I assume this is gdm), and then everything freezes. The XO no longer accepts any input from the mouse or keeyboard, everything is just hung. No amount of keypresses does anything. My only option is to turn off the XO by holding the power button down.

I've had these same results on a 16GB SD card and a 4GB USB drive. I've tried following the steps on my XO, on my opensuse 11.0 desktop, and on my opensuse 10.3 desktop. I always end up with the exact same result described above.

The tarball I'm using is OLPCFiles-hardy-20080506.tar.bz2, which I downloaded using ktorrent a day ago.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe my tarball wasn't downloaded properly, but I'm hesitant to download it again for nothing. It took long enough the first time. The md5 sum of the file I downloaded is: 55d5049ad0ce747c35f521f7c8322030

I never had any problems using the original "compressed files" method with Ubuntu 7.08, so I'm not sure why this is a problem now. I've searched these forums and have yet to find anyone else having this problem.

Normally I would put "init 3" at the boot loader to start up at the console and figure out why the session manager is screwing things up, but I have no idea where to tell the kernel which runlevel to stop at with this olpc.fth boot method.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[surial]

In regards to the SD card corruption bug: I think it's been fixed. It may finally be time to re-enable suspend in xubuntu for XO.

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

Specifically: waiting half a second between when the XO wakes up and when the SD card is read solves works around the problem. This isn't the last word for Sugar, as the plan there is to suspend pretty much all the time, and 500msec is far too long for them, but for xubuntu it shouldn't be a problem - especially if this is used at least for now to suspend the XO when you close the lid.

Before I try it and end up trashing my SD card (Yes, warning - if you DO sleep your XO when an SD card is present, you will occasionally lose your SD card's partition table. The only way to recover from that is a full repartition and reformat unless you -really- know what you're doing) - Is the OLPC project's sd.c code that is part of the sd driver copied over during the configuration process as outlined on page 2 of this long thread? If so it -should- be okay to sleep the XO *IF* you copied those drivers over from the joyride beta. Those ship with this fix. 708 does NOT.

NB: Full path of the relevant code in the olpc git repo is drivers/mmc/core/sd.c

At any rate, is it possible to create a driver file that can just be copied onto the SD card? I'm not quite enough of a linux guru to tackle this one myself. I don't even know which binary the code from sd.c ended up in.

Assuming it IS safe to go to sleep, how do you enable the feature for close-lid and possibly after X minutes of no activity?

NB: Teapot, you're da man.

[xlemming]

I've been suspending for about a week now.  I grabbed the ohm package, converted it to a deb, and installed it.  Then I use a script that I found here on the forums, its a really simple script run from the terminal and I used cntrl+c to kill it so it comes out of sleep mode.  I've had no sd card corruption problems yet, and having sleep mode works well.  I made it a launcher on my panel that executes in the terminal for me.  I can try and post the deb and the script later if people would like (I can't remember where the script is posted, but it is not my own).

[teapot]

I've followed teapot's instructions to the letter on multiple occasions. Each time, I get the same result: the system boots up, the session manager comes up (I assume this is gdm), and then everything freezes. The XO no longer accepts any input from the mouse or keeyboard, everything is just hung. No amount of keypresses does anything. My only option is to turn off the XO by holding the power button down.

I've had these same results on a 16GB SD card and a 4GB USB drive. I've tried following the steps on my XO, on my opensuse 11.0 desktop, and on my opensuse 10.3 desktop. I always end up with the exact same result described above.

This is usually the result of not copying /lib/modules files -- you have kernel running without keyboard and mouse drivers. This is the screenshot that includes copying the files. Please note which directories were current at the moment:

The tarball I'm using is OLPCFiles-hardy-20080506.tar.bz2, which I downloaded using ktorrent a day ago.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe my tarball wasn't downloaded properly, but I'm hesitant to download it again for nothing. It took long enough the first time. The md5 sum of the file I downloaded is: 55d5049ad0ce747c35f521f7c8322030

This is the correct md5, so your tarball is fine.

[teapot]

Sorry for delays -- I am going to release a version with properly packaged updated kernel that I am running now.

[GoremanX]

This is usually the result of not copying /lib/modules files -- you have kernel running without keyboard and mouse drivers. This is the screenshot of the moment right after copying the files.

I forgot to mention that the touch pad works fine until gdm comes up. Right before the login screen, when X is still loading up and the screen is just blue, I can move the cursor around with the touch pad and it works flawlessly. Everything freezes once the login screen is fully displayed with the list of users on the left (only olpc right now).

I'm running build 711 with firmware number Q2E12. Does firmware version have any bearing?

I am not overclocking, I am running the exact same olpc.fth file that's included in the tarball. As I said, I followed the instructions meticuloussly, because I get the same result every single time and I can't understand why.

[mavrothal]

Here is one new little problem. I created a new non-administrative user and everything was ok this time, but there is no sound. The xfce4-mixer defaults always to 0% and the is no sound even if you set it to 100%. The Wannaby Master of the control panel is set to blank with no additional options and having no sudo authority I can do very little from the terminal. Any suggestions?

The other thing is with the vfat partition of the SD card. Only the user that mounts it has write permissions everybody else has only read permissions. Any solution?

[teapot]

I forgot to mention that the touch pad works fine until gdm comes up.

So can you move "spinning wheel" cursor with a touchpad while gdm is loading?

Right before the login screen, when X is still loading up and the screen is just blue, I can move the cursor around with the touch pad and it works flawlessly. Everything freezes once the login screen is fully displayed with the list of users on the left (only olpc right now).

I'm running build 711 with firmware number Q2E12. Does firmware version have any bearing?

This is strange. Do you hear the drumroll sound after gdm screen comes up? Does Ctrl-Alt-Neighborhood do anything?

Does anything change if you plug USB mouse or keyboard in?

Also -- do you have OLPC developer key? Have you tried to disable security before booting (and did it actually work?)

[teapot]

Here is one new little problem. I created a new non-administrative user and everything was ok this time, but there is no sound. The xfce4-mixer defaults always to 0% and the is no sound even if you set it to 100%. The Wannaby Master of the control panel is set to blank with no additional options and having no sudo authority I can do very little from the terminal. Any suggestions?

User has to be in the audio group to use sound card. Run

sudo addgroup username audio

then log out and log in again as that user.

The other thing is with the vfat partition of the SD card. Only the user that mounts it has write permissions everybody else has only read permissions. Any solution?

This is the intended configuration -- when user on the console mounts the card, it does not allow other users (who may be logged in remotely, or be user IDs for scripts running from some services) to mess with his files.

You can force device to become readable/writable for all users with -oumask=0 option.

[GoremanX]

So can you move "spinning wheel" cursor with a touchpad while gdm is loading?

Yes

This is strange. Do you hear the drumroll sound after gdm screen comes up? Does Ctrl-Alt-Neighborhood do anything?

Does anything change if you plug USB mouse or keyboard in?

Also -- do you have OLPC developer key? Have you tried to disable security before booting (and did it actually work?)

I hear no sound ever. When I plug a USB mouse in, nothing changes. If the USB mouse is plugged in during boot, I can use it to move the cursor around until gdm displays, at which point it freezes. I do have the developer key, I don't think I'd be able to boot another kernel at all if I didn't. I am able to install Ubuntu 7.10 without issues using the compressed files method. I just did it, it works fine. It only does the freezing thing when I use the Hardy tarball. I'm at a complete loss as to what the problem could be.