Rawhide-XO

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This is a page for notes and test results for the http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/ development builds from right before Rawhide was released as Fedora 11.

The master and xo-1 branch of the GIT repository contains kickstart files for producing updated Fedora 11 builds.

What is it?

A "spin" of Fedora rawhide (the development version of Fedora 11 Linux) incorporating recent Linux software packages, the Sugar desktop UI and a more conventional Gnome desktop.

As such it is sort of a replacement for the cutting-edge joyride OS images that OLPC used to produce. See Future releases for the change in plans. As such builds are very raw and often may not work at all.

Build contents

Each nightly Fedora Rawhide build e-mails a list of its packages and sends it to fedora-devel-list.

Rawhide-XO is an adaptation of the nightly Fedora Rawhide. It uses kickstart files (.ks files, see http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/fedora-xo/tree/) to customize the build for the different images it provides.

Resources

Installation

The images page http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/ has installation instructions.

USB/SD image installation

The .bootable.gz image writes a partition table as well as the contents of a 2GiB partition to your USB or SD card. It does this regardless of the actual size or previous partitioning of the memory card.

Note the card must be 2 Gibibytes, which is substantially bigger than 2,000,000,000 bytes; many 2GB cards only store 1.91 x 1024 x 1024 bytes.

  • wmb: ... which argues for making the base image somewhat smaller ...

LiveUSB Creator

You can instead use the Fedora LiveUSB Creator to create a live USB or SD from one of the .iso files. This can give you a persistent home directory for files and downloaded activities but

  • the next time you run LiveUSB Creator it will wipe out your home directory
  • changes to system files won't survive your next boot

copy-nand installation

This will wipe out the contents of your OLPC's NAND flash. However, you can customize the build and install new packages and your changes will survive reboots. Performance is better than booting from USB/SD, and you can use an SD card for swap.

Basic user guide

On first boot at the login screen, you can choose either Gnome or Sugar from the drop-down list at the bottom. You want to login as "liveuser", or wait for automatic login.

Sugar

If you start the Gnome desktop (the default), you need to exit to switch to Sugar. (Sugar commands like sugar are available to you in Gnome, but running them under another desktop manager is not recommended.)

To return to the "first boot" login screen from Gnome, in Terminal, run su -l then run as root: 

 init 3

log in as liveuser, then run as root 

 init 5

it will stop GNOME and restart gdm


In the Sugar desktop, to set the keyboard to match the XO-1's keyboard, start Terminal Activity and enter 

setxkbmap -model olpc

The AltGr key will now work to insert the special characters on some of the keycaps.

See Keyboard shortcuts for keys in Sugar (e.g. Alt+Shift+F brings up the Frame) and http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar for general Sugar instructions.

Accessing NAND Flash

If you boot rawhide-XO off USB or SD, the XO-1's internal 1GB of NAND flash storage is left unmounted. But this storage is available as the mtd0 device. To make this accessible at the path /mnt/my_nand you could as root enter the command 

 mkdir /mnt/my_nand && mount -t jffs2 mtd0 /mnt/my_nand

Differences from OLPC images

Many of these are probably shared with "Sugar on a Stick" SoaS-2 images, and should be on a common page.

  • the default user is liveuser, not olpc
  • liveuser can't use sudo to run commands as root (but can run su -l to become root).
  • many olpc commands missing, such as olpc-netstatus
  • different file system
    • /efi instead of /ofw
    • /home/liveuser instead of /home/olpc

Known issues

  • On the XO-1, you must hold down the checkmark '√' gamepad key at boot, otherwise boot will hang with the XO guy on white.
    • wmb: The solution for this is to add "dcon-unfreeze unfreeze" to /boot/olpc.fth, somewhere before the "boot" line, thus turning off "pretty boot". Alternatively, if you want to keep pretty boot, releasing the screen only after all of the text messages have finished, you can add "echo 0 >/sys/devices/platform/dcon/freeze" to a late initscript.
  • Keyboard map alert.
  • Can't choose Gnome or Sugar after desktop login
  • You can't choose an English or American OLPC keyboard in the keyboard chooser on the "first boot" login screen.
  • No power management until you install Ohm
  • In Gnome, you get warnings from the battery management applet
  • The stock Fedora kernel does not play sound, hence (probably) why totem crashes. how to replace with the OLPC kernel

See Fedora on XO tracker bug dependency tree.

Also see Talk:Rawhide-XO for user reports, and Sugar Labs testing reports for the similar SoaS-2 images.

Kernel differences

The OLPC OS Images contained a customized kernel; its differences with the stock Fedora 11 kernel include:

  • open firmware interface (arch/x86/kernel/ofw.[ch])
  • geode GPIO driver (used by DCON and suspend/resume)
  • dcon driver (drivers/video/olpc_dcon.[ch])
  • suspend/resume code (arch/x86/kernel/olpc_pm.*)
  • parts of the HGPK touchpad: drivers/input/mouse/olpc.c
  • working sound drivers

Reporting bugs

  • You should file bugs with the Sugar desktop and activities in the Sugar Labs bug tracker. You can check with the sugar-devel list before or after.
  • Bugs with the Fedora "rawhide" distribution and its behavior on the XO-1 should be filed in the Red Hat Bugzilla. You can check with the Fedora-OLPC list before or after.
  • product "Fedora", version "Rawhide", pick relevant component.
  • After creating your bug, edit it to add 461806 in the "Blocks" field to link it to the FedoraOnXO tracker bug.
Note: the product "Fedora OLPC" in Red Hat Bugzilla is discontinued. Any bugs filed against this deceased product should be refiled against Fedora if they are still valid.

See also

  • Sugar Labs' Sugar on a Stick initiative. Its "SoaS-2" build images are similar to Rawhide-XO in that they are development builds based on Fedora 11 ("Rawhide"). Unlike Rawhide-XO, Sugar on a Stick is a USB flash drive image intended to run on a variety of computers (including the XO-1) and boot straight into the Sugar UI. In addition, occasionally Sugar Labs produces XO-specific SoaS images that you can copy to the XO-1's built-in NAND flash memory.
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