XS Community Edition/5.0/Project Specifications
This IIAB XSCE content does not reflect the opinion of OLPC. These pages were created by members of a volunteer community supporting OLPC and deployments.
Summary
A school server provides communication, networking, content, and maintenance to a school and or classroom. In everyday usage the school server provides services which extend capabilities of the connected laptops while being transparent to the user. These services include:
- Classroom connectivity – Similar to what you would find in an advanced home router.
- Internet gateway – If available, an internet connection is made available to laptops.
- Content - Tools are available for deployments and teachers to make instructional media available to their schools and classrooms.
- Maintenance - Tools are available to keep laptop updated and running smoothly.
Reference User
A technically savvy user who does not have any experience with the command line
Design
One of the key design criteria of successful community-based projects is modularity with 'plug in' services
Hardware
School servers can be either an XO or standard x86 and arm based hardware.
XO
XSCE is to run on XO-1.5, XO-1.75, and XO-4 laptops. The XO may be augmented by SD cards and off the shelf USB devices:
- two USB ethernet dongles – Allow the server to offer internet access to connected XO's.
- a USB hard drive – Allows the server to provide additional storage capabilities.
XO-1.5 'lite' machines may require an internal SD card to meet storage requirements.
Standard Hardware
For greater flexibility some schools will want to use standard hardware. XSCE is currently supporting:
- Trim-Slice
- i386
- x86_64
Other hardware may work, but is not tested as part of the release process. Please help us by running the tests at ../0.5/Testing testing on your hardware of choice to verify it works.
OS
XSCE will run on either:
- OLPC-OS 13.2.0
- Fedora 18
Configuration Tools
Remote Configuration
One of the most pressing logistical challenges for deployments is travel time between schools. If can take days, and weeks in some cases, a technical support person with the needed skills to arrive 'on-site' to fix an issue. XXCE provides two options for remote administration:
- OpenVPN -- Any individual school server with internet connectivity can be accessed remotely by support staff.
GUI
Target users are often not familiar with Linux system administration. Initial setup or fixing a problem with their server is not a good time to introduce system administration skill.
Deliverable
Project is migrated to ansible and fully tested.
RPM
A RPM combined with tested installation instructions necessary to convert a standard XO or Fedora-compatible computer into a School Server.
IMAGE
A downloadable USB flash drive image, combined with tested installation instructions, which permit deployment staff to install XSCE software without an internet connection.
Core Services
The core server will contain five services which can be extended via extended services.
Service: Network setup
Purpose:
Provider: xs-setup-network
Service: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
Purpose: Schoolserver and clients need to be on same subnet.
Provider: dhcpd
Service: Iptables -- Network Address Translation (NAT)
Purpose: Permits all XO’s to access the internet.
Provider: gateway
Service: Internet domain name server
Prupose:
Provider: named
System monitoring
Purpose: Ensures that all offered services are running as expected
Provider: monit
Service:Jabber server
Purpose: collaboration > 15 clients needs to work.
Provider: ejabberd
Extended Services
Service: Web server
Purpose: Building block for many other extended services
Provider: apache
Service: proxy server and web cache
Purpose: bandwidth, web-filtering, web-monitoring
Provider: squid
Service: Moodle
Purpose: Provides Course Management System
Provider: Moodle
Service: Activity update
Purpose: Enables teachers to easily distribute new or updated activities to their students
Provider: activity updater
Service: OLPC-update
Purpose: OLPC-update is necessary to update the kernel of XO
Provider: rsync
Service: Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Purpose: Creating secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities
Provider: openvpn
Service: Backup student work
Purpose: To back up student work
Provider: idmgr
Service: Content filtering
Purpose: age-appropriate surfing, legal compliance, religious risks
Provider: dansguardian and opendns
Service: Statistics Collection
Purpose: Collects users statics for academic research
Provider: pilot monitoring system
Service: Book server (SameerV, AlexK, GeorgeH)
Purpose: Locally currated selection of eBooks?
Provider: https://github.com/PathagarBooks/pathagar
Service: Internet in Box
Purpose: Provide offline content
Provider: http://internet-in-a-box.org/
Service: Customization Stick
Purpose: Permit small deployments to modify stock images (add or subtract activities)
Provider: Tiny Core Linux
Future features
Features which will be implemented in either 0.5 release or 0.6 release are listed here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/feature
There are additional features which have not been captured in a feature page. A feature page for each of these needs to be created:
Service: (GeorgeH, Gerald, AnnaS)
Purpose: local distribution/replication of Sugar Activities etc
Provider: pdsh
Service: MediaWiki
Purpose:
Provider:
Service: Restore student work
Purpose: To restore student work
Service: 1-N WebDEV(JerryV, GeorgeH)
Purpose: Journal submissions to teacher, academic record (homework etc)