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[kimtoufectis]

Success!!!  Got swap.  Got Fedoraplus.  Got Flash, which lumbers as one might expect on an xo-1, but runs...much exploring to do now about what runs acceptably.  There's a Firefox add-on that provides a lower-quality flash for older, less-capable machines; any experience?

Dude, this os is hamstrung without swap, and creating swap is so not a "ready for prime time" process for those not yet familiar with swap.

But my main message is thanks for seeing me through this...

[mavrothal]

Dude, this os is hamstrung without swap, and creating swap is so not a "ready for prime time" process for those not yet familiar with swap.

I do not think that F14 builds are any worse/slower than F11 builds performance wise. Actually I think is probably better! The simple fact that you can now take full advantage of the OS and load it with all the goodies F14 has, makes it look like needing swap.

The XO-1 needs some swap no matter what the OS. As soon as you open a browser your 256MB are immediately consumed. Even in minimalistic OSs like Tinycore and Puppylinux.
 
It is actually pretty simple to have a script that automatically adds swap.
I have one in XOpup that does it for the user and actually prompts for it if the memory runs low and there is no swap.
The problem is that although  the new file system in F14 builds supports swap on the internal NAND, there is no space in the XO-1 for that. And you can not force/trust the user will have an SDcard always attached on the XO.

Besides is always nicer to eat the fish that you fished than the one from the market

[mavrothal]

Besides is always nicer to eat the fish that you fished than the one from the market

Having said that   I can appreciate that not everybody needs to be a fisherman, assuming that (s)he does some other job
So here is a simple way to have swap in your SDcard.

1) Open a text editor (nano, gedit) and copy/paste the text bellow

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# A script to generate a swap file in the 1st partition of XO's external SDcard
# mavrothal GPL 2011
# No warranties

# If you want to make swap on a USB thumb drive
# replace "mmcbkl0p1" with "sda1" in the script below
# Just keep in mind that a USB is "easily" removed
# and this will crash your system if you have swap on it.

# version 5

# Check if it is an XO-1.
# The XO-1.5 has 1GB RAM and swap on a slow SDcard will slow it down.
XOVER=`cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_version`
if [ "$XOVER" != "1" ] ; then
echo " This script is for the XO-1 only"
exit 0
fi

# Do we have any swap already?
SWP=`cat /proc/swaps | grep [0-9]`

# Do we have a card mounted? Where?
SDNAMEMOUNT=`df | grep mmcblk0p1 | cut -d '%' -f 2 | tr -d '\ '`

# Free space in the card?
CARDSPACE=`df -B M | grep mmcblk0p1 | cut -d 'M' -f 3 | tr -d '\ '`

if [ "$SWP" != "" ] ; then
echo " Ooops! Swap is already available."
echo " Nothing to do here."
echo " You may have too many apps open. Close some!"
sleep 5
exit 0
else
if [ "$SDNAMEMOUNT" = "" ] ; then
echo " Please insert a card in the XO's card slot and try again"
sleep 5
exit 0
else
if [ "$CARDSPACE" -lt "512" ] ; then
echo " There is not enough free space in your partition/card!"
echo " Try another card with at least 512MB available in the 1st partition"
sleep 5
exit 0
else
                        rm -rf $SDNAMEMOUNT/.swap.bin 2> /dev/null
                        sync
                        sleep 1
echo " Creating 256 MB swap file. Will take some time (1-2 minutes)..."
dd if=/dev/zero of=$SDNAMEMOUNT/.swap.bin bs=1M count=256
                        sync
                        sleep 1
chmod 600 $SDNAMEMOUNT/.swap.bin
mkswap $SDNAMEMOUNT/.swap.bin
echo "$SDNAMEMOUNT/.swap.bin none swap defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
                        sync
sleep 1
swapon -a
echo " "
echo " Done"
echo " Swap is now available!"
                        echo " Run the \"free\" command to verify it"
sleep 3
exit 0
fi
fi
fi

2) save it and name it something like "make-swap-on-SDcard.sh"  ( )

3) Open a terminal in the directory you saved the file (or example if you saved it on the Desktop type "cd Ddesktop") and type

Code:

sudo chmod 755 make-swap-on-SDcard.sh # or whatever name you gave it
sudo ./make-swap-on-SDcard.sh # or whatever name you gave it

That's it!
You have swap. Immediately and every time you reboot your XO with this card in.

Notes: 1) This script does not make a swap partition. It makes a swap file in your SDcard. The file is invisible since it's called ".swap.bin" (note the dot in the beginning) and it's at the root of your SDcard
2) If you delete the ".swap.bin" file or rename the card your swap will not work. In these cases just run the script again to make a new one. If you make a new one make sure that you delete or comment-out (by adding "#" in the beginning of the line) any previous swap entries in your /etc/fstab
3) You can move/copy the script somewhere in your PATH eg in /usr/local/sbin/ so you can call it directly by typing it's name as root eg "sudo make-swap-on-SDcard.sh".

[kimtoufectis]

At this point I'm adapting to most aspects of os12 pretty well.  I added Midori and Opera 11, and having gotten 256MB of swap working I was routinely getting Low Memory warnings so I upped it to 512MB.  Still, I'm seeing memory warnings...

A visit back to Sugar now properly shows my 4 GB SD card as a 3.4 GB card, since the remainder is swap, but there's a problem:  every time I try to do anything it tells me my journal is full and to remove old items.  The message pops up even when the Journal is empty, which seems like a memory problem.

A visit to the Terminal and a free command returns:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        231468     208456      23012          0         40      99040
-/+ buffers/cache:     109376     122092
Swap:       524284       6280     518004

...so swap seems to be working but not perhaps to its full potential. Any advice to dispense these memory issues?

[mavrothal]

Journal is full means that your Internal NAND/storage is getting full (thus the suggestion to move /home to the card).
Has nothing to do with RAM memory/swap.

What is the output of the "df -h" command?

[kimtoufectis]

No answer to your question:  I shut the it down last evening amid frequent memory warnings in both Sugar and Gnome; booting produced a "Disk Full" failure today advising me to "consult an expert" to resolve.  Now I have questions of my own.

I'm figuring my only path forward now is to reflash?  If so, I'm wondering whether Fedora 14 is just too big for the xo-1.  I assumed that swap gave me, in effect, an extra 256 MB or more of room for the Journal as well as for the system to operate; do I misunderstand what swap does?

Am I expecting too much of the xo-1?  Opera 11, Midori, Adobe Flash, and mp3 codecs (those last two via FedoraPlus and Usermode), plus running the update from the control panel in Sugar once, never before prompted messages advising that I delete old items from my (actually empty) journal.  Is that because the Dextrose builds I've used lately were a good 250 MB smaller than the 800+ MB of os12?  Prior to this os I've added extra activities, even downloaded pictures and whole novels from the Internet Archive to my journal without these issues, and all while blissfully ignorant of swap and gparted...

Am I wrong to attribute these troubles to the bulk of Fedora 14 plus Sugar?  I'm open to a work-around (I have no idea how to move /home to swap!), but this is the hardest I've worked to get my xo-1 to behave since getting from Build 656 to Build 702 years ago...

[mavrothal]

I'm figuring my only path forward now is to reflash?  If so, I'm wondering whether Fedora 14 is just too big for the xo-1.  I assumed that swap gave me, in effect, an extra 256 MB or more of room for the Journal as well as for the system to operate; do I misunderstand what swap does?

Yes. Swap is like extra RAM not extra "hard disk" space. Journal is full means no more "hard disk" space (eg your 1GB internal NAND storage is full)

Am I expecting too much of the xo-1?  Opera 11, Midori, Adobe Flash, and mp3 codecs (those last two via FedoraPlus and Usermode), plus running the update from the control panel in Sugar once, never before prompted messages advising that I delete old items from my (actually empty) journal.  Is that because the Dextrose builds I've used lately were a good 250 MB smaller than the 800+ MB of os12?  Prior to this os I've added extra activities, even downloaded pictures and whole novels from the Internet Archive to my journal without these issues, and all while blissfully ignorant of swap and gparted...

Yes os 12 is big. One of the advantages of dextrose (besides it is F11) is that does not have so many localisations that take a lot of space.
But again see what "df" says in case there is something else.

Am I wrong to attribute these troubles to the bulk of Fedora 14 plus Sugar?  I'm open to a work-around (I have no idea how to move /home to swap!), but this is the hardest I've worked to get my xo-1 to behave since getting from Build 656 to Build 702 years ago...

Good is refreshing isn't it?
Pictures and music and books are not that big, but applications (like Opera) and videos and libraries are. The older builds being ~100MB smaller allowed you to install several apps and still have some space. With os12 you have 2 options, no-extra (non-Sugar) stuff or extra space for storage.
Having /home in a different partition is almost "standard" linux practice.
Try fyoder's instructions are much better than mine You have done the tricky part (partitioning the card), the rest is really simple. Just make sure that you have ext2 or ext3 file system in your card and use accordingly

[kimtoufectis]

Mav--

Uncle.

I reflashed with os12/Fedora 14 and it hangs on reboot.  The chimes play and xo avatar appears; ten minutes later the first dot comes up in the circle.  After ten or more minutes it goes black, and part of the linux penguin sits, beheaded, at the top of a blank black screen.

Tried a fresh reboot; same outcome.  Pulled my SD card in case the swap partition had anything to do with it.  Re-reflashed and rebooted, no change.  I was afraid I'd wrecked something with the new os that interferes with reflashing at all, rendering my xo as a sculptural paperweight.

Next I tried reflashing with os406dx (my all-round favorite, though admittedly I don't know what I don't know so take that as you will) and it reflashed and rebooted like the 550 MB charm I generally find it to be.  Back to tabs in the Browse activity, back to integrated backup onto external storage, back to a frame indicator of system resources in use.

I may try Fedora 14 again, but I think I'll rest a bit first.  But I'm still digging out:  my reinserted 4 GB SD card shows as 3.4 GB in the frame because it's still partitioned, and given the yum limitations of such builds, some swap might help.  Typed "sudo swapon..." but it failed.  Typed "free"; the swap row of the table is back to 0, 0, 0.  Typed "fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0" and it printed a table with p1 and p2, 3.4 GB and 524 MB respectively as it was before, but says "Partition x does not end on cylinder boundary" after each partition.

I'm presuming that I've got a non-functional partitioning of the SD card (correct me if I'm reading this wrong) and would appreciate your advice on how to recapture my entire SD card.  Do I again download gparted, clear the SD card, and repartition?  Anything more expedient to try before going that route?

--Kim, wiser but exhausted...

[mavrothal]

Mav--

Uncle.

uncle  

I reflashed with os12/Fedora 14 and it hangs on reboot.

2 reasons, a) bad download. If you used the one that you used before, unlikely but just in case redownload.
b) you install the  "os12.uim" instead of "os12.onu" (the most likely) or you used copy-nand (the command for all old builds) instead of update-nand. The command is "update-nand u:\os13.onu" (I did that mistake a couple of times... )

I may try Fedora 14 again, but I think I'll rest a bit first.  But I'm still digging out:  my reinserted 4 GB SD card shows as 3.4 GB in the frame because it's still partitioned, and given the yum limitations of such builds, some swap might help.  Typed "sudo swapon..." but it failed.  Typed "free"; the swap row of the table is back to 0, 0, 0.

You have to tell it where swap is. eg add the swap line in /etc/fstab for this to work. Or try "swapon -a /dev/mmcblk0p2" to see that indeed your swap is fine.

....but exhausted...

That is the problem. Little mistakes happen in that stage... Today is another day.

Next I tried reflashing with os406dx (my all-round favorite...

Good control, but I think is better to get out of the comfort zone now and then  os13 is out...

[mavrothal]

Looks like that the Fedora14-based OLPC 11.2.0 builds are getting in the final stretch.

os20 was just release and from now on only bug-fixing is allowed till the final release.

So please, download os20 ("olpc-update" also works if you use an earlier F14 build  but I'm not sure about F11 builds, eg the "official" and dextrose), test and report either to the olpc bug tracker or the OLPC devel list or just here

Also please report things that do work OK for you (so other people do no need to test them )

[kimtoufectis]

Mav--

I've dutifully followed along with the various official OLPC build updates since receiving my machine three years ago, and even tried Dextrose, XtraOrdinary, and PuppyLinux builds periodically.  I'm not afraid to update or even to reflash.

But I see problems ahead for me as a moderately savvy user, and serious problems for non-savvy xo-1 users (including just about every kid for which the OS is ostensibly built).

At 746 megabytes, the combination of Sugar, Fedora, and Gnome is just too large to use without swap.  There's little space left for installing new activities, or for downloading files.  Even with your careful guidance I barely got swap working on a prior version (see our many prior exchanges on this subject in this thread), but by following instructions, not by understanding the principles; I'd be lost if I had to do it again.  It will be as bad or worse for just about all the children who are the focus of the project.

I know time moves on, and old versions of Fedora end up unsupported.  But without some means of getting kids to set up swap on the 1 million plus xo-1s out there, do you seriously think the community is ready to make this move?

[mavrothal]

Kim,
I agree that F14 builds are BIG and leave little space for the user.
However, I have no evidence that is any slower or more resource demanding than F11 builds.
I actually have an XO-1 with os860 and one with os20 and I can run them side by side.

One problem is that F14 applications being newer have more goodies and thus more resource demanding. But if you stick with Sugar, the difference is negligible if any.

Now, if you do not want to run Sugar, there are faster/lighter options

[kimtoufectis]

Kim,
I agree that F14 builds are BIG and leave little space for the user.
However, I have no evidence that is any slower or more resource demanding than F11 builds.
I actually have an XO-1 with os860 and one with os20 and I can run them side by side.

One problem is that F14 applications being newer have more goodies and thus more resource demanding. But if you stick with Sugar, the difference is negligible if any.

Now, if you do not want to run Sugar, there are faster/lighter options

I'm not making the case that Fedora 14 makes the machine slower or less responsive.  Since without swap I found it essentially useless for my purposes (Internet access for webmail and the like and following new developments in Sugar), and since I never managed to properly configure swap, I have no opinion on how responsive the XO-1 is in this configuration and certainly accept you at your word on this.

Keep in mind that Sugar is the point of the machine; certainly removing it would lighten the load on the hardware but it diverges from the basic use case that drives the  entire OLPC initiative.  Wanting to see what else this hardware can do is fine for those with such skills (I for one benefit tremendously from learning from the advances this community makes possible), so I'm not putting it down...

My point is that shifting to Fedora 14 leaves so little memory free to actually use the machine that the children for which the machine was created are likely to find the "upgrade" renders their machine an interesting paperweight.  For those of us without a working familiarity with swap (me and virtually all children included) this path seems to leave us out of the picture.

Maybe this is inevitable.  After all, the 2007 hardware design is nearing the end of its expected five year design life.  Newer hardware generations (XO 1.5 and 1.75) don't share the same 1 Gigabyte memory limitation.

Still, stranding over a million kids, the heart and soul of the program--without a viable forward path--is HUGE.  A leap like this merits careful consideration...if there are paths forward for them, I think they deserve a good, clear explanation of their options.  If I don't know how to proceed, I'm pretty sure they won't either.

[mavrothal]

I'm not making the case that Fedora 14 makes the machine slower or less responsive.  Since without swap I found it essentially useless for my purposes (Internet access for webmail and the like and following new developments in Sugar), and since I never managed to properly configure swap, I have no opinion on how responsive the XO-1 is in this configuration and certainly accept you at your word on this.

Kim, the comparison I'm referring to has no swap cards or any other bells and whistles. Is just what the next kid gets.
Hopefully, I'll find some time to make some "side by side" videos about it.

Keep in mind that Sugar is the point of the machine; certainly removing it would lighten the load on the hardware but it diverges from the basic use case that drives the  entire OLPC initiative.

Sugar is indeed one of the points of the machine but removing it will not lighten the load of the machine other than saving some HD space. Sugar and Gnome are using pretty much the same infrastructure so removing one or the other does not make the machine any "faster".
Of course Sugar is not the only point of the machine, that's why it also includes Gnome... But coming back to, the very important Sugar, as I said above I see no taxing because of Fedora 14 other than the NAND-space limitation.

My point is that shifting to Fedora 14 leaves so little memory free to actually use the machine that the children for which the machine was created are likely to find the "upgrade" renders their machine an interesting paperweight.  For those of us without a working familiarity with swap (me and virtually all children included) this path seems to leave us out of the picture.

I may get a bit technical but just trying to clarify things.
There are three things in machine when it comes to usability/performance: The CPU, the RAM and the hard-disk space. You can see usage and availability for each of these typing "uptime" "free" and "df" respectively. Swap relates only to RAM. F14 builds  are NOT more demanding than F11 builds in RAM or CPU, thus the run equally well (or bad) without any swap.

F14 builds ARE bigger and thus leave less "hard disk" space to install additional application. But sticking with Sugar "the point of the machine" as you say there is negligible difference. If you want to run additional NON-Sugar applications, then do not run Sugar!

It seams to me that what you are really saying is that F14 is too heavy for GNOME and gnome-applications, on the XO-1. Well, it is! But mostly because F14 gnome applications got bigger and more demanding.

Still, stranding over a million kids, the heart and soul of the program--without a viable forward path--is HUGE.  A leap like this merits careful consideration...if there are paths forward for them, I think they deserve a good, clear explanation of their options.  If I don't know how to proceed, I'm pretty sure they won't either.

As I said in the very top of this thread the size of the builds IS A VERY IMPORTANT issue.
One "simple" way to decrease the size of the build and increase the available HD space, is to remove the different language localizations that take A LOT of space.
Unfortunately, I do not think that fedora has the equivalent of "localepurge" of Debian/Ubuntu. However, you could go to /usr/share/locale/ and delete any languages that you do not have any use for. This will save you a bundle (>30MB if you allow only english and spanish) in disk space for GNOME applications.

[mavrothal]

Good news Kim!
First OLPC developers are looking to see what the problem is with the size of F14 builds and hopefully find a solution before long.

In the mean time I made something, just for you   , that will increase the available storage space by 55MB!
Do this:

1) Open a text editor (nano, gedit) and copy/paste the text bellow

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# This script will remove extra localization, dri, firmware and
# 256x256 icon files from the F14-based OLPC builds for the XO-1.
# Will also prevent installation of additional locales by new rpms
#
# mavrothal, GPL2, 2011
#
# No warranties.
#
# version 8
#
# Works with jffs2. Thx to KG for testing

# Check if it is an XO-1
XOVER=`cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_version`
if [ "$XOVER" != "1" ] ; then
echo " This script is for the XO-1 only"
exit 0
fi

# Check if it is an OLPC build
BUILDORG=`cat /etc/issue | grep OLPC`
if [ "$BUILDORG" = "" ] ; then
echo " This script is for OLPC builds only"
exit 0
fi

# Check if it is an F14 build
KERNVER=`uname -r | cut -d "." -f 3`
if [ "$KERNVER" != "35" ] ; then
echo " This is script is for F14 builds only"
exit 0
fi

# Check if we run already
OSVER=`ls /versions/pristine`
if [ ! -f /versions/pristine/"$OSVER"/lib/firmware/usb8388.bin ] ; then
        echo " The files have been removed already. Nothing to do"
        exit 0
fi

# Make sure we have language set
LANGVER=`cat /home/olpc/.i18n | cut -d "\"" -f2 | cut -d "_" -f 1`
if [ "$LANGVER" = "" ] ; then
echo " There is no language set!"
echo " Please set language in the control panel"
echo " and then reboot and run this script again"
sleep 5
exit 0
fi

# How much space do we have available before deletions
AVAILBEF=`df -B M / | awk 'END {print $4}' | tr -d 'M'`

# Delete extra locales, dri and firmware files

# Make sure we do not delete needed files
mv /versions/pristine/"$OSVER"/lib/firmware/usb8388.bin .
mv /versions/pristine/"$OSVER"/usr/share/locale/"$LANGVER"* .
mv /versions/pristine/"$OSVER"/usr/share/locale/locale.alias .
# Do delete what we do not need
rm -rf /versions/{pristine,run}/"$OSVER"/lib/firmware/*
rm -rf /versions/{pristine,run}/"$OSVER"/usr/share/locale/*
rm -rf /versions/{pristine,run}/"$OSVER"/usr/lib/dri/*
rm -rf /versions/{pristine,run}/"$OSVER"/usr/share/icons/*/256x256
# Restore needed
mv usb8388.bin /versions/run/"$OSVER"/lib/firmware/
mv "$LANGVER"* /versions/run/"$OSVER"/usr/share/locale/
mv locale.alias /versions/run/"$OSVER"/usr/share/locale/

# Prevent additional locales being installed by new RPMs
LANGVERLONG=`cat /home/olpc/.i18n | cut -d "\"" -f2 | cut -d "." -f 1`
echo  "%_install_langs "$LANGVER":"$LANGVERLONG"" > /etc/rpm/macros.lang

sleep 1

# How much space do we have available after deletions
AVAILAFT=`df -B M / | awk 'END {print $4}' | tr -d 'M'`

# How much did we delete
DELETED=`expr $AVAILAFT - $AVAILBEF`

echo " An additional $DELETED MB of disk space is now available"
sleep 3
exit 0

2) save it and name it something like "delete_unused.sh"

3) Open a terminal in the directory you saved the file (for example if you saved it on the Desktop type "cd Ddesktop") and type

Code:

sudo chmod 755 delete_unused.sh
sudo chown root:root delete_unused.sh
sudo ./delete_unused.sh

That's it!
Now you should have more than 250MB available. It is still considerably less than the 400MB that F11 (OLPC 10.1.3, Dextrose) builds had, but is a bit better