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Index: Home | What Is Izumi | Linux Tips | OpenBSD Tips | FreeBSD TipsThis page contain several tips for using the OLPC XO Laptop. I use this mostly as reminders of commands that I found useful. There's generally nothing here one couldn't learn by searching on the net or reading the man pages, which is generally how I got the commands in the first place.
$Id: Linux Tips.izu,v 1.64 2007-05-07 16:19:14 ralf Exp $
I finally received my OLPC XO laptop, which I ordered via the G1G1 program.
It's cute and nice. Here are a couple of pictures:
The first thing is that it's small. It's about 24 cm large (about 10 inches). It's like a small cover book.
The keyboard reminds me of the old 8-bit consoles from the 80's. Not high quality typing, feels very plastic and it's easy to mistype. But it's covered by a flexible plastic sheet so nothing will get stuck in it.
The screen looks nice, very easy to read. It has the interesting property that it is easy to read even when the backlight is turned off.
I'm not going to repeat the full specs of the hardware here but in essence it's a small CPU (x86 Geode a 430 MHz), 256 MB of RAM and 1 GB of Flash.
Since it doesn't have a hard drive, it's very silent.
I'm already familiar with the Sugar interface since I had already installed the QEMU image for testing.
One thing that is striking is that although the hardware & software is very polished, it's still a product which is pretty much in its infancy. And it comes with a "vibrant" community. The device is linux based and there are tons of web sites and forums dedicated to the device and helping its users. It's a very open-source based concept where periodic updates are available with a distinction between development, experimental and stable builds, something I'm familiar with.
I can't help but think if that some large corporate entity tries to compete, as some are determined to do, their final product will have a very different feeling -- i.e. only made available once well tested, with a closed source OS, with a strict separation between users and core developers. Similar to what I experience at work, where the process is currently very closed.
I barely got my XO yet I already need some help.
Out of the box connecting to my wifi doesn't work for me: my WPA network is seen but fails to connect and my WEP network is not seen at all.
How to find which software build I'm running:
cat /boot/olpc_buildcat /etc/issueFrom forum Wireless Connectivity Questions:
I already have the fix, as my G1G1 comes with build 656.
In fact what worked was the enter the WPA password in hex, as explained in WPA Manual Setting.
Now, what is Update.1 and how does it compare to build 656? There are also mentions of joyrides. What are those?
The best way to update is to use the terminal and use the over-the-air integrated updater: "$ olpc-update <buildnumber>".
There's a page for user feedback on images running on OLPC hardware.
I installed Opera for OLPC as indicated on this page.
The part to create the activity icon didn't seem work at first, so I can just run it from the terminal. In fact it did work, it's just that the icon appeared in the middle of the activity list when I was expecting it at the end.
All in all, it's a port and the UI is not very well integrated with the default XO UI scheme. An example is the classic Win95-like menu inherited from the statically linked GTK/QT. But it's nicely configurable (all keys can be remapped) and thus more suited to power users whereas the default browser is more suited for novices (it lacks tabs, access/shortcut keys, etc.)
For development, start on the wiki for developers.
This assumes you started the Terminal activity.
The IP of your machine:
/sbin/ifconfiginet addr under eth0You can connect to your XO via ssh.
First you need a password for the default user (olpc):
supasswd olpcexitBy default you can't SSH to a QEMU instance, since you can't access the private network. There's probably some configuration trick for QEMU to do that. Or you can create an SSH tunnel from the XO to a Linux box and then ssh from that Linux box back to the XO:
ssh -2 -v -f -N -R 2222:localhost:22 you@yourlinuxboxssh -p 2222 olpc@localhost
The first command creates a remote forward tunnel and anything that tries
to contact yourlinuxbox on port 2222 gets forwarded back to port 22 on the XO.
Then from the linux box you just ssh locally to port 22.
20080511 Update: QEMU's documentation
indicates it has native support for redirecting ports to the guest OS by using
the -redir option. Moreover, the default start_olpc.cmd script that comes
with the Windows QEMU image of the OLPC XO already uses it to redirect 2222 from
the host to 22 on the guest. So forget all that mess above and simply type this
from your host OS:
ssh -p 2222 olpc@localhost
$ su # cd /usr/share/activity => make room by deleting stuff not needed # yum install screen # yum install vim
As yourself:
$ vim ~/.vimrc => set ts=4 sw=4 et or => set tabstob=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab (i.e. no real tabs, only spaces)
Restart Sugar from QEMU after adding/removing activities:
sendkey ctrl-alt-backspaceChange mouse acceleration in QEMU:
xset m 1 0xset m 2 10xset m parameters: acceleration (float value), threshold (number of pixels before acceleration kicks in.)Pygame:
Example:
$ wget "http://dev.laptop.org/~mcfletch/OLPCGames/OLPCGames-1.6.tar.gz" $ cd $ tar xvzf Downloads/OLPCGames-1.6.tar.gz $ cd ./OLPCGames-1.6/skeleton $ ./buildskel.py Ralf2 "Ralf 2 Activity" $ mv Ralf2.activity ~/. $ cd $ cd Ralf2.activity
$ ln -svf ../OLPCGames-1.6/olpcgames . $ python setup.py dev QEMU ==> sendkey ctrl-alt-backspace
Later:
$ su % yum install svn % exit
$ svn co http://bribrie.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/brie2.activity brie2.activity $ cd brie2.activity $ ln -svf ../OLPCGames-1.6/olpcgames . $ python setup.py dev QEMU ==> sendkey ctrl-alt-backspace
I still find it incredibly hard to find information on the OLPC wiki.
Today I noticed a small banner at the top that read:
Please help test the latest beta software build, 8.2-763!
OK I know this is open source blah blah and sexiness is a non-goal, but come on, that banner couldn't be harder to see and the link provided could not be any less useful: it takes you to a page that indicates there's a test iamge 8.2-763 and following that link takes you to a an "OLPC Build 763 (devel_jffs2)" FTP-like directory.
So enough ranting. I'd like to try it but hmm, so what is this "devel_jffs2" thingy again? I vaguely remember seeing it. It turns out to be explained on the "Types of Builds". Ah no, wrong page again. The page I want that explain if I need a jffs2 or ext3 is nowhere to be found conveniently. I had to search for the keywoards, guess from the very confusing search results to find the "image variants" description page:
OK fine. So it turns out I want to try using an USB stick, I'm not quite ready to upgrade to just a release candidate. So I want the ext3. On the file server page for "OLPC Build 763 (devel_jffs2)", going up I can find a "devel_ext" list of files, so I'll grab that.
Now I remember I had seen a mention of flashing to USB sticks, but once again I have no clue how. No direct links in Developers page seem to point to that.
Once again after a boring search, I got the correct "OS images for USB disks" page.
The whole thing is a maze. Seriously guys, hire a doc writer and let him organize your wiki! So much for the bazaar/organic growth kind of thing. And stop using wikis to pretend displaying organized information.
So anyway, I finaly go the final steps rights:
$ bzcat.exe xo-1-olpc-stream-8.2-build_763-devel_ext3.img.bz2 > xo-1-olpc-stream-8.2-build_763-devel_ext3.img
dd under my linux box but I'd have had to crawl under the table to get to the USB port whereas I have a USB port right in the screen connected to my Windows box... whatever.)Now I could tell you what I did next but the bottom line is that it didn't work so I'll skip the details: trying to boot from the stick right away just hang.
Instead what I did that worked:
/security/develop.sig
onto /media/OLPCRoot/security/.
ESC to access OpenFirmware,boot u:\boot\vmlinuzAnd it totally crashed. At first it was crashing as explained here. If that site is to be believed, it would seem I need to use:
boot u:\boot\vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 rootdelay=10
It turns out that it crashes this way if I manually request booting from USB in OpenFirmware. If I let OpenFirmware auto-detect the USB, it starts booting just fine from it. Using the "v" game key, I see that the boot process hangs later with various EXT3-fs error messages, so maybe my USB key hasn't been correctly written.
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This work is licensed by Raphaël Moll under a Creative Commons License.
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