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[teapot]

Fix for booting from USB:
http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=3942.msg26761#msg26761

[teapot]

I have updated one of my SD cards from Hardy to Intrepid "manually" (changed repositories, used aptitude to update and ugrade, manually resolving few conflicts shat shown up), and I can say that in general it does work, however I don't recommend it to anyone not familiar with all details of configuration/scripts and drivers involved, or not willing to deal with cleaning up after all possible errors.

In my case installed Sugar-related packages refused to upgrade cleanly, and Geode X driver was not updated, so I had to include it manually after X failed to start. GTK theme had to be updated to match changed theme engine, wrong X session was called, keybindings were wrong... So yes, it can be done, however I would rather post a tarball and a procedure to replace everything but home directories.

[mavrothal]

So yes, it can be done, however I would rather post a tarball and a procedure to replace everything but home directories.

That is Great!

Being the first (?) to experience Intrepid in the XO  I was wondering if it is worth it? eg if there is any noticeable difference for the end user besides having the "latest and greatest". My experience with OSX10.4-10.5 and XP-Vista is that with the exemption of TimeMachine (if you do not want to bother setting up a proper backup) in 99.9% of everyday use makes no difference and you just end up with a "heavier" OS. Can you say if this might be the case with Hardy and Intrepid specially on the XO hardware?

[careyj]

Hi,

Thanks for the instructions.....for a non-technical newbie person, I was able to successfully run the new OS on a SD card.

I have a few questions....

1.  The set-up assumes if I have the SD insert, it would then boot off on it, right?  Is there a set-up sequence that will allow to you either continue on the SD or the internal drive (for Sugar)?

2.  Currently, Firefox beta 3.05 is part of the installation...however, when I went to update it, it's greyed out and that option is unavailable.  I did download the Firefox 3.1.2 to the desktop, but don't know how to install it....I concerned about because I don't know the terminal commands and where to install it.

3.  In general, is there a GUI app that will install "tar" files?

I was able to download in install Open Office....not sure if I need to install Java?

Thanks in advance,

Carey

[teapot]

1.  The set-up assumes if I have the SD insert, it would then boot off on it, right?  Is there a set-up sequence that will allow to you either continue on the SD or the internal drive (for Sugar)?

This can be configured in /boot/olpc.fth file -- the one in the tarball boots the original system from internal flash if you press "circle" game button before powering on (and release after you see the message asking you to do this, complete with ASCII graphics showing the location of the button).

2.  Currently, Firefox beta 3.05 is part of the installation...however, when I went to update it, it's greyed out and that option is unavailable.  I did download the Firefox 3.1.2 to the desktop, but don't know how to install it....I concerned about because I don't know the terminal commands and where to install it.

Run the upgrade procedure -- in terminal sudo aptitude, enter the password, then press u (packages data will be reloaded) , U (latest versions will be selected for installation), g (aptitude will show the list of changes, next g applies it). After update is finished, <Ctrl>-T c removes the downloaded package files (they take a lot of space).

I have noticed that Firefox version that comes with Ubuntu occasionally shows broken images on XO, so I have installed the same version from a mozilla.com . Download the tar file, in home directory run tar xvzf Desktop/<file name>.tar.gz[/b], start local copy of Firefox by running /home/olpc/firefox/firefox &. You can make a launcher in Xfce panel with /home/olpc/firefox/firefox as the command.

3.  In general, is there a GUI app that will install "tar" files?

There is (file-roller) that will unpack them, however I strongly recommend to perform installation from the terminal, to make sure that you are in the right directory, and as the right user.

I was able to download in install Open Office....not sure if I need to install Java?

If you have installed OpenOffice.org from packages or through the installer script, and did not include Java, some functionality (database, support for some file formats) will be missing, however everything else will be perfectly usable, so unless you need something specific that relies on Java, you can omit it.

[greenheron]

Thanks for suggestions on printer install. Another problem popped up. sudo no longer responds. Is there a way to "re-install' sudo?
Thanks in advance for help.

[teapot]

Thanks for suggestions on printer install. Another problem popped up. sudo no longer responds. Is there a way to "re-install' sudo?

There is, however if of all things sudo does not work, your configuration must be damaged beyond repair, so you have to reinstall it from scratch.

[teapot]

I was wondering if it is worth it? eg if there is any noticeable difference for the end user besides having the "latest and greatest". My experience with OSX10.4-10.5 and XP-Vista is that with the exemption of TimeMachine (if you do not want to bother setting up a proper backup) in 99.9% of everyday use makes no difference and you just end up with a "heavier" OS. Can you say if this might be the case with Hardy and Intrepid specially on the XO hardware?

Though all systems suffer from bloat increasing over time, in Linux it mostly happens because of the packages people want to upgrade anyway -- over the last few years the greatest "offenders" on a typical desktop installation were Firefox/Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Java/Eclipse and games. New features of other existing packages don't require large increase in size or RAM/CPU requirements, and they often are significant enough to use a backport in the older version (ex: Network Manager). So Gutsy->Hardy and Hardy->Intrepid upgrade doesn't mean increase in size or loss of performance.

Some other packages got "official" upgrades, so I no longer have to provide my own package because the version in Hardy was obsolete (I had to do that with clive for tubewatcher). And there are things that are in very active development, so it makes sense to keep the environment ready for their newer versions because eventually they are going to have better performance and features at the price of backward compatibility (X and video drivers).

And, of course, there is a matter of compatibility with new development that is going outside of distribution, official security fixes, etc. And personally I would rather see Ubuntu maintainers maintaining the packages and posting updates rather than do it myself with backports and fixes -- I have enough things to do that they don't -- power management, XO-specific configuration, still missing installer, etc.

Some things caused problems when switching between releases -- for example, Ubuntu (again!) changed their GTK theme, and removed the old theme engine that they used. I had to go again through the GUI tweaking process, however now it's finished, and I ended up with a slightly better looking green theme.

[mavrothal]

Here is a new one!
After updating the firmware to q2e21 and then q2e22 (through joyrides 2523 and 2527) the touchpad is giving up at random points under Ubuntu. A USB mouse is OK when the touchpad is dead. Keyboard and buttons are OK too. Rebooting fixes the problem. Restarting Xserver, does not. This is not happening under Sugar running 767.  Both Sugar and Ubuntu are having the same kernel, olpcrd.img, lib/modules, lib/firmware etc from build767 which comes with q2e18 firmware.
The questions are:
1) where do I look from possible logs of the problem
2) Should I go back to q2e18 (assuming that can be done) or update kernel, modules etc from the latest joyride?

PS Going back to q2e18 under os767 is simple. Just follow the instructions here http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q2e18#Unsecured_Machines

No more Joyride testing (till the next firmware release.... )

[mavrothal]

Has been really quite around here lately..
Anyway, I was going through the installed packages and I noticed 2 fortune-cookie packages in  the games section, fortunes-min and fortune-mod that if you try to remove also wants to uninstall xfce4 and xfce4-session !!! are they needed for anything???

[teapot]

Has been really quite around here lately..
Anyway, I was going through the installed packages and I noticed 2 fortune-cookie packages in  the games section, fortunes-min and fortune-mod that if you try to remove also wants to uninstall xfce4 and xfce4-session !!! are they needed for anything???

They are not really necessary, however Ubuntu often includes packages as dependencies when it shouldn't, and since those two are small I just left them there instead of re-doing the whole package.

[teapot]

In my case installed Sugar-related packages refused to upgrade cleanly, and Geode X driver was not updated, so I had to include it manually after X failed to start. GTK theme had to be updated to match changed theme engine, wrong X session was called, keybindings were wrong... So yes, it can be done, however I would rather post a tarball and a procedure to replace everything but home directories.

Responding to myself.

I have built a filesystem with Intrepid and OLPC 8.2.0 kernel/ramdisk/modules/firmware, and now going through iteration of making the filesystem from Ubuntu packages, applying updates, installing/testing/patching/updating the updates and making the filesystem again.

8.2.0 kernel, ramdisk, modules, firmware and boot script will be included, so you will still have to format the card and unpack the tarball, however copying current kernel, ramdisk and firmware will be optional -- 8.2.0 provided a stable base that did not exist in May.

I have also included tubewatcher and power management scripts, and updated gtk theme, so it will work with current set of theme engines. Boot splash screen works, too, however I am not yet sure if I should enable it by default because it may cause problems for diagnostics of errors early in boot process.

[mavrothal]

SUPER!
Do you have an ETA in mind yet?

I have also included tubewatcher and power management scripts

Are you going to also release the power management scripts for Hardy (if different than the current ones)?

[teapot]

SUPER!
Do you have an ETA in mind yet?

Next week.

Are you going to also release the power management scripts for Hardy (if different than the current ones)?

Yes, they will be the same between Hardy and Intrepid, and I will release them for Hardy, too.

They are slightly different from the last version -- I have added delays to avoid "missed" suspend, and made a saner definition of what is "idle", so formerly-experimental mode causes less surprises (like kicking in while OpenOffice.org installer is running and suspending it until the user touches the keyboard/keypad).

[pgf]

After updating the firmware to q2e21 and then q2e22 (through joyrides 2523 and 2527) the touchpad is giving up at random points under Ubuntu. A USB mouse is OK when the touchpad is dead. Keyboard and buttons are OK too.

in answer to your question #1 -- please look in /var/log/messages for evidence of touchpad failure.  in particular, please look for "recalibration failed" messages.  are you pretty sure the problem comes and goes with the new firmware?  can you reproduce at will?

i don't necessarily read this forum regularly these days -- please PM me, or send mail to me at laptop.org, my userid is pgf.  many thanks...