next »

[mavrothal]

Has anyone gotten printing up and running on the new official or unofficial OSs? 

The official line is the printing is NOT supported on update 10.1.2 (current) neither is planed for 10.1.3 (next) nor anyone works on it 
So if anyone one gets printing goint on F11-XO builds do tell

[anna]

The Google Chrome browser works quite well.

Create the repo file /etc/yum.repos.d/google.repo

Code:

[google]
name=Google - i386
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Then you can

Code:

yum install google-chrome-stable

The only way I've been able to get yum to work consistently is with two USB drives:  an old 1 GB drive for swap and an ext3 formatted drive mounted on /var/cache/yum.  Not exactly user friendly, but it does the trick.

[Dinky]

eddie:   re:  printing

Can not try printing on new os850 -- need to leave my XO in present state, but ....

Since the error involves the Access Control List, an old, dirty work around might be worth trying, if running cups without printer security is acceptable:

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2425.0

Editing the cups configuration is the pertinent part.

[anna]

eddie:   re:  printing

Can not try printing on new os850 -- need to leave my XO in present state, but ....

Since the error involves the Access Control List, an old, dirty work around might be worth trying, if running cups without printer security is acceptable:

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2425.0

Editing the cups configuration is the pertinent part.

I installed cups and edited the configuration as detailed in your post, Dinky.  Went to http://localhost:631/admin and it made me put in a username and password.  So I set a password for root, and successfully logged into the interface.  Added the ipp network printer I've got on my school server here, then opened Abiword, typed in some text, and printed it.  It took several seconds, and I was just going to look at /var/log/cups/error_log when I heard the printer drum start a-turning.  Success!

I had just been fooling around this evening getting this printer to work under my Ubuntu Lucid desktop, so I had the ppd file handy.  I wasn't about to install Samsung's mess of a "Unified Printer Driver."

[Dinky]

Glad to hear that this old trick allows some printing.  

Dropping printer ppd (or ppd.gz) files into the directory where the built-in drivers are located (/usr/share/cups/model) will let them show up in cups admin list of printers.

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=894.msg19251#msg19251

There is a long history about printing on the XO in the thread started by Tony Pearson from IBM.  The above link is from that thread.  The need for setting a password for root for some browsers was mentioned by Tony in the reference given in the first post of the thread. The password was removed after the printer was setup.

[Gerbal]

It looks like most of the reason the os850 build is so heavy on the XO-1 is some of the decisions made with fstab:

Code:

/dev/root  /         ext3    defaults,noatime 0 0
devpts     /dev/pts  devpts  gid=5,mode=620   0 0
tmpfs      /dev/shm  tmpfs   defaults,size=50m         0 0
proc       /proc     proc    defaults         0 0
sysfs      /sys      sysfs   defaults         0 0
/tmp            /tmp            tmpfs         rw,size=50m 0 0
varcacheyum     /var/cache/yum  tmpfs         rw,mode=755 0 0
vartmp          /var/tmp        tmpfs         rw,size=50m 0 0
varlog          /var/log        tmpfs         rw,size=20m 0 0
none            /ofw            promfs  defaults    0 0

Fstab allocates what looks like 170mb of ram as tmpfs for a whole variety of temp and log files. This makes sense when you have plenty of ram to spare, but is a nogo when you only have 256mb of ram to spare.

The solution to this issue is either to delete the offending tmpfs lines (will fill up the disk with temp, cache, and log files) or to mount /var/cache/yum, /var/tmp, /var/log, and /tmp to an sd card or usb stick (my preferred solution).

[Eddie Owens]

I recently reported on a problem in using cups.i586 (yum install cups.i586,  with plenty of swap space), which I had installed in hopes of printing from OS 300.  The usual way of accessing CUPS is to type "http://localhost:631/" in a browser, and CUPS mysteriously appears.  When one does this with OS 300/cups.i586 a bizarre "Error 404 - Not Found" or "Operation Not Supported" error is generated and makes adding a printer with CUPS impossible.

At Mavrothal's suggestion I submitted a bug ticket (#10283) to OLPC about this problem.  Their response was that "we don't ship with CUPS",  meaning I guess that the problem lies in CUPS, not the XO.  They suggested upgrading to OS 850, since it is much newer, which I did.  The same error occurs with OS 850.

Happily someone posted a comment in the bug thread saying that the problem is occuring in the XO-1.5 series too, but that they had discovered that the system  would accept the URL "http://localhost:631/admin".  So I tried this on the XO-1/OS 850, and it works just fine (note that the "a" in "admin" has to be lowercase, not uppercase)!  It looks like Anna beat me to it, as evidenced by her excellent tutorial on installing a Samsung printer.

I have an HP OfficeJet 6500 E709n  printer connected to my system wirelessly.  To get it going one needs to first download a few things:

NOTE: to use the following yum command you must become root or superuser.   In a terminal with a "$" as prompt, type "su" and then hit <enter>, and the prompt becomes "#", and you are ready to use "yum". 

#1. CUPS, with "yum install cups.i586".  As others have said, you really need some swap space, and there are several recent posts on how to set it up..

#2. HPIJS, with "yum install hpijs.i586".  This is a collection of a large number of Hewlett Packard printer drivers.

#3. Foomatic, with "yum install foomatic.i586".  According to openprinting.org, "Foomatic is a database-driven system for integrating free software drivers with common spoolers".  

So, I turned on my printer, and made sure that the wireless light was on.

I opened a browser, entered "localhost:631/admin" and CUPS activates to the "Administration" tab.  CUPS 1.4.2-26.fc11.i586 has an option on the Administration page which worked well for me: Find New Printers.  Clicking on this option, I saw after a few seconds a list of "Available Printers", and my HP OfficeJet was on this list.  Select the printer, click on "Add This Printer" and you are led to an "Add Printer" page where you can edit the Description and Location fields, and check whether or not to share the printer.  The "Connection" field doesn't seem editable (which is probably best!).  Click on "Continue".  "Add Printer" continues on a new page where you choose a driver (or provide a .ppd file).  I chose "HP" and a whole bunch of HP models (DeskJets, OfficeJets, LaserJets, faxes) can be browsed and I clicked on my model and "Add Printer".  One is led to a "Set Defaults" page, and when you set them you are done, ending up on the home page.  There you can click on "Administration" and set the printer as "Default" or click on "Maintenance" and print a test page.  (It printed).

If, while using CUPS, it wants a username and password, try "root" and "password".

And with CUPS one can pipe output from the screen to the printer.  In a terminal, type "ls | lpr" or whatever (where "lpr" is line printer)..

Whoopee!

Forgive all of the details.  Most readers probably do not need them, but a few people may benefit.  Setting up a printer can sometimes drive me crazy.

[Dinky]

Using "hpijs" and "foomatic" is the full heavy weight version of printing.  For many HP printers, you can use one of cups built-in printers which are available in admin.  Additionally, you can drop a printer definition file (ppd file) in /usr/share/cups/model  (much as anna has done, although she also added a wrapper).

Thus for simple printing, it is only necessary to install cups and use admin to configure one of its built-in HP printer drivers.

[Eddie Owens]

A CUPS follow-up:

The bug-trackers at OLPC graciously have passed along to me the info that the package "cups-i586" (which contains cups-1.4.2-26.fc11) available for OS 300, 850 etc, is missing a file "/usr/src/cups/www/index.html", which causes the problem of activating CUPS in the normal manner.  Interestingly, the file is included in a full install of FC-11, but is missing when CUPS is an add-on from the repository.

I have found a mirror which has FC-11 and made a Live CD, from which I copied the missing file to my OS 850.  Now entering "http://localhost:631/" activates CUPS-1.4.2 normally to the Home Tab rather than giving an error.  The missing file is only 3.8kb and I will be happy to PM it to anyone who might want it,  but the workaround of entering "http://localhost:631/admin" into the browser does the job!  One just has to know about this or you hit a brick wall trying to use CUPS. 

OLPC developers say they are monitoring the situation cause it affects the XO-1.5 fc-11 builds too. 

[Rao]

I have tried various OSs including OS353pyg, OS300, OS16.  For what i do with my XO-1 surfing and email), Teapot's intrepid is still the best.

I would appreciate if you can tell me whether I can continue to use  Teapot's Intrepid (on SD card with a swap partition) if I update to OS850?

thanks,

Rao

After almost 2 years OLPC released the first officially signed new build for the XO-1 (and XO-1.5), os850. So if you are still running official OLPC builds (os656/os802) and never bothered with developers key etc, here is a build that may breathe new life to your XO-1.

The build is Fedora-11 based and comes with dual boot, Sugar and Gnome, eg is a "Best OS image ever" class build
However in this case installation is much simpler. Just make sure you do not miss the step: rename "os850.img.fs.zip" to "fs.zip" after you download it.
You can even upgrade to this build if you are running os767/os802. There are some caveats in upgrading but nothing unusual, and you get to keep all your data too or even go back to your old build!

This is a "realease candidate" build which means one or more additional ones will come before the "final", depending on YOUR testing . The build is very solid but the more people use it the more likely bugs will be identified and hopefully squashed out before the final.
So please install, test and report.

[Eddie Owens]

Rao,

I have OS 850, and I have no problem booting Teapot's Ubuntu on an SD card.  You might note what Open Firmware (OFW) you are using and write it down (type in terminal "cat /ofw/openprom/model" to get that info).  You can always re-install the older OFW if you have a problem (but you need the newer OFW for OS 850).  I don't think you will have any problem though.

If you do go to OS 850, I suggest adding a swap partition or file as you are setting it up because to add programs from the repositories you will need to use "yum", and it soaks up a lot of memory.  In the past week there have been several good posts about setting them up.  Even though my OS 850 is on the NAND, when I use "yum" to add a new program or file, I activate a swap partition on my SD card with "swapon /dev/mmcblk0p2".

At the suggestion of others I have added midori as a browser, and it seems light and responsive.

[nuke]

Thanks.  I updated to the new official build last night.  Looks nice.

As with every install, I try and run an update check once everything is installed.  There are at least a dozen packages to update.  I notice that I am unable to run update without everything grinding to a halt.  It looks like it crashes.  When I force quit (hold down power button), I can restart OK but no update was completed.  I have tried to install just a couple of packages at a time without any luck.  After force quitting a few times, the XO won't boot so I have to re-install the update image.  :-(

Also, when in Fedora and running Firefox for a little while, the XO-1 becomes unresponsive.

Any ideas what is messed up or what I have to manually fix?

I don't want to go back to the old version, but at least it wouldn't freeze after 15 minutes of use.

[nuke]

Hmmm.  After just letting everything wait while I ran only 1 update (etools.noarch) I see that the wifi kicked out.  Then everything else timed out.

"Network is unreachable".

Anyone else finding this problem? 

Any suggestions on what to fix?

[stevenpirie]

so in the Gnome desktop version of this, how do I get totem to install appropriate codecs that will let me play video files?
What is currently supported as a video file type? And where/how do I obtain codes to watch mp4 files (essentially rips I have made for my iPod/iPad that my kids can then watch on the xo-1?)

[mavrothal]

so in the Gnome desktop version of this, how do I get totem to install appropriate codecs that will let me play video files?
What is currently supported as a video file type? And where/how do I obtain codes to watch mp4 files (essentially rips I have made for my iPod/iPad that my kids can then watch on the xo-1?)

os850+ support only free codecs eg theora/ogg.
To get the rest first you must add the rmpfusion yum repos and then yum install the plugins.
Alternatively you can install os406dx (this is the newest dextrose image) that already has the plugins and more important has the new geode video driver that does much better with movies.

PS: you can also install the new geode driver in official builds by this command

Code:

su
rpm -Uvh http://download.sugarlabs.org/dextrose/testing/dxo2/rpms/i386/os/xorg-x11-drv-geode-2.11.9-1.fc14.i586.rpm