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[BeninTucson]

Hi tyto . . .

If you have an XO-1 and want to bring it up to the most current version of Sugar software and firmware, no Developer's key is needed. The No-Fail upgrade is fairly easy to do and the directions are well written . . .

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/No-Fail_Upgrade

It does wipe the Journal clean and removes the user ID name, asking you to re-enter this information . . . no big deal for me, since I was the 2nd owner and wanted to officially
make the machine my own anyway.

One has to remember that, if you own a Mac or any machine running Windows, getting
a Developer's key (or the equivalent thereof) is absolutely impossible for those softwares. It's only Linux that lets you do anything like this. To run these SD cards with other Linux distros (Xtra Ordinary, etc.) on your XO-1 requires the key . . . and OLPC DOES make it available. My big qualm is that the directions OLPC provides for this particular operation are poorly written.

Ben in Tucson

[Wayan Vota]

Check out how the Xtra Ordinary OS works on an XO laptop with a developer key:



Not to tease Ben in Tuscon, but.. WOW!  the Xtra Ordinary distro really makes the XO usable - even more than Teapot's Ubuntu version.  Now the XO can be your "real" computer

[mavrothal]

the Xtra Ordinary distro really makes the XO usable - even more than Teapot's Ubuntu version.

Would you care to elaborate on that? Besides the ease of installation, which is unquestionable, what else is better?
Is it faster? (numbers?)
Does it go through updates without braking the install?
Does it have applications not available/working in Ubuntu?
Does it have a better power management, longer battery life?

Assuming that I have a card and I'm able to install teapot's ubuntu (or even DebXO that has an installation almost as simple as Xordinary :-) what exactly would justify the $40 for Xordinary?

[GregYohn]

My Ubuntu that I picked up from the DC users group looks similar to Teapot's version.

From the video, I can not see anything different with The Xtra Ordinary than with the Ubuntu version  I have presently.

Does it have a large SD card provided? Is Flash optimized for the XO?

I went to the website that sells Xtra Ordinary and discovered that it has Skype, and Ekiga installed. Ekiga is a FREE Voip software that I can use with my 12Voip and VoipRaider free telephone service to most of the world. It also has a full OpenOffice too. I think I would like it on a larger SD card, since those files can get quite large.

For the rookie, I think the SD card would be helpful, since they would not know how to get these programs downloaded to their XO. I know, it was a battle for me to get my Twinkle program downloaded.

[BeninTucson]

OK folks . . .

I'm sure this general subject has already been broached elsewhere on this Forum. But I'll ask on this thread, since it is an integral part of upgrading that should occur once one
gets the new system software running . . .

How does one back up their new Developer's key?



I know I have to remove the new Xtra Ordinary card and boot up in Sugar. While I was spinning my wheels getting the key this past week, I learned that if I simply opened the Terminal activity from Home view, I wouldn't find any traces of it in there.

I'm going to guess (and this is just a guess) that I have to go into the Journal activity and find the session where I actually obtained the key and open the Terminal activity from that particular session.

Or is there some other obvious place that I should start?

Please remember that I'm basically a "insert the USB drive, click to open, drag files into window, drag closed window to trash" Mac kind of guy. I'm assuming that I'm now stepping into the world of Linux type commands for this. There is no such thing as "too much information" when trying to explain the details to me.

Thanks in advance . . .

Ben in Tucson

[mellon]

Isn't there a /security/develop.sig file?

[Mike Lee]

Here are some random notes from a couple hours of using Xtra Ordinary. First, I have to say that this is an excellent service for those who don't want to mess around with configuring their own card by piecing together scads of software packages and customizing settings. Once the developer key is installed, the inserted card boots easily and quickly.

* One thing I realized after I started to make changes on my SD card is there is no backup. If the card gets corrupted, I'm SOL. I'll probably order another card from Ondisk so I can have a master copy and make backups.

* In the Ice Weasel web browser, all web pages seem defaulted to display zoomed to 200%. I couldn't find a way to reset this globally. I will try a Firefox plugin called NoSquint that should override this.

* The Digital Clock Applet is defaulted to military 24-hour time. I looked up the instructions and changed the %R setting to %r to get 12-hour time with AM/PM.

* The basic screenshot utility works well. It drops the screenshots into the XO's onboard memory in /home/olpc/

* Linux Flash was already installed. I tried running a Flash-based slideshow in Flickr, but the XO bogged down after a few images. CTRL-ALT-ERASE restarted the window manager.

* The screen rotate and volume control buttons are not implemented.

* The multiple screen resolution settings really work, but be careful at the lowest settings such as 320x240. When I set that, I had a hard time getting back to the controls to undo.

* Suspend causes the screen to go black, but the backlight doesn't turn off. Hibernate just reboots the window manager. Lack of suspend/resume isn't a showstopper given how fast XtraO starts up.

I'm going to try printing to an inkjet printer and connecting a USB-VGA video out dongle to an LCD projector when I get a chance.

[mavrothal]

I haven't used XtraOrdinary but based on DebXO.

* One thing I realized after I started to make changes on my SD card is there is no backup. If the card gets corrupted, I'm SOL.

You could boot in sugar and dd copy it in another card mounted with a USB adapter, no? Is it copy protected somehow?

* In the Ice Weasel web browser, all web pages seem defaulted to display zoomed to 200%. I couldn't find a way to reset this globally. I will try a Firefox plugin called NoSquint that should override this.

in address bar: about:config
In filter field: layout.css.dpi
Right click and change the value from "-1" to "96"

* Linux Flash was already installed. I tried running a Flash-based slideshow in Flickr, but the XO bogged down after a few images. CTRL-ALT-ERASE restarted the window manager.

Does it have swap?

* Suspend causes the screen to go black, but the backlight doesn't turn off. Hibernate just reboots the window manager. Lack of suspend/resume isn't a showstopper given how fast XtraO starts up.

Try installing DebXO power management from here http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-March/023695.html

[markhadman]

OK folks . . .
I'm sure this general subject has already been broached elsewhere on this Forum.
[...]
How does one back up their new Developer's key?

Ben, despite what the marketing of on-disk/XtraOrdinary may have caused you to believe, you have taken a step away from the safe zone. The XO is broken by design, partly to stop people with too little knowledge from swimming out of their depth. You NEED to learn to interact with the terminal (aka bash, aka the command line, aka the console) and learn the very basics of the linux file system so that when someone drops a line about (eg) /security/develop.sig you have the first clue what they might be talking about.

Now, in answer your question... (you might like to come back to this after reading the links that I posted earlier)

No need to boot into sugar, you can do it from XtraOrdinary
Open a terminal (probably Applications > Accessories > Terminal)

Code:

sudo su

or

Code:

su

to become the 'root'/admin user (you will need to enter a password), then

Code:

mkdir /media/internal-flash/
mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock0 /media/internal-flash/

to mount your olpc's internal flash storage within a new folder in XtraOrdinary's filesystem. Note, the internal flash device might not be called /dev/mtdblock0, I think I read somewhere that Fedora11 (for example) enumerates it as /dev/hda1. Since my Ubuntu and your Xtra-O are both Debian-based we should be OK, but if not you're in a world of pain here... Then:

Code:

cp /media/internal-flash/security/develop.sig /security/develop.sig

to copy the developer's key into XtraOrdinary's filesystem on your SD card, then

Code:

umount /media/internal-flash
exit

to unmount the internal flash and no longer be 'root'.

If you still haven't bothered to read the links I posted, it may be helpful to know that you have to press Enter at the end of every command before the computer will do anything, and you should always wait for a new prompt before entering the next command, and when you open a new terminal it generally doesn't show what you did last time, and closing the terminal isn't a way of undoing anything that you've done.

...And with a bit of luck we're done, you now have two copies of your dev key, both in places that the Open Firmware (which boots your XO) can find it. Please bear in mind that (a) I've never used XtraOrdinary so I'm giving generalized instructions which may not work, and (b) Since I've disabled firmware security I now longer have or need a dev key, so I didn't actually step through these instructions myself.

You may be lucky enough to be able to do all of the above via the desktop/windows interface of Xtra-O without using the terminal, but that depends on whether it recognizes and auto-mounts other file-systems, etc etc and there aren't many people in the world who can tell you that for sure. Open Nautlius file manager or Thunar file manager (or look for the Places menu), look in the devices pane on the left and see if the internal flash is listed there under some obscure/obvious name and is mounted/mountable/browseable.

EDIT: Lucky you, I've just thought of another way. Open a terminal in Xtra-O, do

Code:

sudo mkdir /security

then paste that wget[blahblahblah...longURL] command. Then do:

Code:

sudo ls /security

to check that the develop.sig file is listed as being present. Congratulations, you just downloaded it again, this time onto your Xtra-O's filesystem on your SD card.

Let us know how you fare.

[BeninTucson]

Hello mavrothal . . .

Your "tough love" approach is duly noted. Despite what you think, I HAVE taken a look at those links you posted here the other day. The two that are geared to general Linux knowledge are quite large and not the sort of thing that most people (especially if they're not well versed in the subject matter) are going to digest and be able to cross reference from memory in an instant. As with 26 volume encyclopedias, it helps to know what particular piece of knowledge you are searching for before you start reading the entire set of books cover-to-cover.

No, getting off my soapbox, thank you for the above step-by-step. I will review the links again (now that I have an idea of WHAT I'm looking for) and try out what you have outlined.

But before I do . . . one more "stupid" question . . .

You just said  "Since I've disabled firmware security I no longer have or need a dev key, so I didn't actually step through these instructions myself."

Well, I DID manage to disable the firmware security after I installed the Dev key the other day (perhaps you didn't read my previous posts so carefully.)

 

Does this mean I now no longer need to do a Dev key backup?  
. . . and, in fact, do I still even have one?

Ben in Tucson

[mavrothal]

Hello mavrothal . . .

Are you talking to me?
I mean, I just have 2 posts in this thread and only one simple link... What are you referring to?

[Mike Lee]

mavrothal,

Very helpful comments!

* One thing I realized after I started to make changes on my SD card is there is no backup. If the card gets corrupted, I'm SOL.

You could boot in sugar and dd copy it in another card mounted with a USB adapter, no? Is it copy protected somehow?

That's a great article on dd. This will be my first time running this command. I'll slog through.

* In the Ice Weasel web browser, all web pages seem defaulted to display zoomed to 200%. I couldn't find a way to reset this globally. I will try a Firefox plugin called NoSquint that should override this.

in address bar: about:config
In filter field: layout.css.dpi
Right click and change the value from "-1" to "96"

Entering 96 reduced the page to about 30%! The default was actually 0. I set it back to that as only some sites come in magnified. I'll live with this a while as I surf around some more to understand the behavior.

* Linux Flash was already installed. I tried running a Flash-based slideshow in Flickr, but the XO bogged down after a few images. CTRL-ALT-ERASE restarted the window manager.

Does it have swap?

I saw mention of swap being activated in the bootup.

* Suspend causes the screen to go black, but the backlight doesn't turn off. Hibernate just reboots the window manager. Lack of suspend/resume isn't a showstopper given how fast XtraO starts up.

Try installing DebXO power management from here http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-March/023695.html

I'll try that soon.

[BeninTucson]

mavrothal . . . sorry . . .

It was markhadman who those comments were directed to. A mixup by me of similar
usernames. mavrothal, markhadman . . . you guys related?  

Anyway . . . all hot and bothered Linux experts here who are tiring of my beginners questions will be happy to know that I picked up the volume Linux For Dummies today at the local bookstore.

Until I plow through it looking for an answer, though, I'll ask the same
question (since such possibly XO-1 - specific info might not be found there) . . .

markhadman (yes, really him) stated, in regards to the process of backing up the Developer's key  . . . "Since I've disabled firmware security I no longer have or need a dev key, so I didn't actually step through these instructions myself."

I noted that I have also disabled firmware security, after I installed my dev key.

So . . . after one does this on an XO-1, the key is gone and no longer needed?
Why, then, does OLPC tell you make a backup, if the very next recommended step negates the whole reason for worrying about needing a Developer's key ever again?

While I'm here, I'd like to give a "thumbs up" to Mike for giving Xtra Ordinary such a thorough workout (more so than I've had a chance to . . . or would even know how to do just yet.) After I consult the  . . . For Dummies book and check out some of the links recommended by markovathadmathal (uh, yeah . . . whoever,) one of my projects is to eventually configure a printer. I've got a barely used HP Deskjet 3740 purchased at Target several years ago for around $29. It has an external AC transformer and DC coming off of  that to the printer's chassis . . . which means that it could someday be the worlds cheapest portable battery powered printer for the XO-1.  

Ben in Tucson

[mavrothal]

Mike,

That's a great article on dd. This will be my first time running this command. I'll slog through.

Yeh, but big ...The command for cloning the card of the XO to a USB in attached to dev/sda should be
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda conv=notrunc,noerror
both devices should be unmounted. dd typo mistakes can be lethal.... Check that device names are as indicated before you unmount them (type "df")

Entering 96 reduced the page to about 30%! The default was actually 0. I set it back to that as only some sites come in magnified. I'll live with this a while as I surf around some more to understand the behavior.
You can try other values (eg 200 which is the actual dpi of the XO screen) .

I saw mention of swap being activated in the bootup.
Typing "top" in the terminal will tell you (before the application list) if and and how much swap you have/use.

[mavrothal]

mavrothal . . . sorry . . .

It was markhadman who those comments were directed to. A mixup by me of similar
usernames. mavrothal, markhadman . . . you guys related?  

No we are not...   but if you have troubles reading unfamiliar, longer than 3 letters, words, you are up for a hell-of-a-time with linux...