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In the past, OLPC produced alternative software images which could be run in emulators such as QEMU and VMware. This meant that development and testing could happen to a limited extent without requiring an XO laptop.
[[Image:AP1_39.jpg|thumb|laptop-in-laptop]]


'''In 2013, please see Tom Gilliard's many [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit virtual machine images ready-to-go].'''
== [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start|Quick Start]] ==


Note, XOs are readily available to genuine volunteer contributors through the [[Contributors program]].
To set up a "virtual XO", and get a taste of the XO software, see [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start|Quick Start]].


[http://sugarlabs.org Sugar], the unique user interface of the XO laptops, is also distributed as a generic software project and can be developed and tested on "regular" computers as well as XOs. See [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads Sugar Labs Downloads] for the full range of options, such as [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick Sugar on a Stick].
== Overview ==

One way to run oplc software is using an emulator on your pc. See [[Getting started programming]] for other options.

Note '''[[:Category:Emulation]]''' and [[Emulating the XO/Help and tips|Help and tips]].

For play, you can use [[LiveCd]] or [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start|Quick Start]].

For development, you can use [[LiveCd]], or qemu (as in quick start, but with a different image), or perhaps one of the [[Developer Images]] other than the LiveCd. An alternate approach is to attempt [[:Category:Installing_Sugar|installing sugar]]. See [[Getting started programming]] for a comparison.

A common development approach is to use [[QEMU]] with kqemu acceleration. See [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start|Quick Start]] for the basics.
Though for development, we will use a different .img, one with a few extra utility programs. See [[OS images]], including '''[[OS_images#Latest_Stable_Build |latest stable build]]'''.

Instead of qemu, you can run [[Emulating the XO/UsingVMware|VMware]], and there are addition options on a [[Emulating the XO/Mac|Mac]].

Please report your experiences in [[User Feedback on Images]]. There is a [[Virtualization Common Room]].

There are [[Emulating the XO/Limitations of XO disk images|limitations with XO disk images]].

== Alternatives ==

An OLPC laptop is custom hardware, running a stripped-down Red Hat linux, running [[Sugar]]. But what if you don't have a real olpc laptop? There are a several options.

{| border=1 cellspacing=0
|- style="background:lightgray; "
! option
! updated !! sound? !! camera? !! library? !! etoys? !! R/W? !! development software? !! net? !! comments

|-
| [[LiveCd]]
| April || yes? || yes? || no || ?
| no || toolchain, Gnome || yes?
| Alternative Quick Start. Good for new developers. Problems: A.

|-
| colspan=10 style="background:lightgray; " | XO disk images:

|-
| colspan=10 | LATEST-STABLE-BUILD <span style="font-size:80%; "><tt>http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/LATEST-STABLE-BUILD/</tt></span>

|-
| development-ext3.img
| ~monthly || yes/B || no || yes || yes
| yes || no || after config
| Quick Start for getting a look at Sugar.

|-
| development-devel_ext3.img
| ~monthly || yes/B || no || no || yes
| yes || a little || after config

|-
| colspan=10 | LATEST <span style="font-size:80%; "><tt>http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/LATEST/</tt></span>

|-
| development-ext3.img
| ~daily || yes/B || no || yes || yes
| yes || no || after config

|-
| development-devel_ext3.img
| ~daily || yes/B || no || no || yes
| yes || a little || after config
| Good for new developers (requires some command-line comfort).

|-
| colspan=10 style="background:lightgray; " | OTHER

|-
| [[Developer Images#Big Fedora Core 6 Build|FC6+Sugar]]
| April || yes? || ? || ? || no
| yes || Full Fedora Softare Dev. || yes
| 6GB (April version: no etoys)

|-
| [[:Category:Installing Sugar|Installing Sugar]]
| continuous || yes || yes? || yes? || yes
| yes || your own || yes
| Quite hard to do.
|}
Key:
:library: A library of sample content is included (english version). Ie, pretty text to web browse without having to get network.
:R/W (writable): With an .img, you can save things between sessions. With a .iso, your environment is the same each time you start.
:development software: are development tools included?
:Net (network): does the network "just work" or "manual" steps are required?

Problems:
:A: LiveCd (April) on fc6 x86_64, kernel panics under kqemu. A squashfs problem.
:B: Tam Tam is silent (though EToys makes noise). Cause unknown.

Notes:
*re "does sugar-jhbuild support camera/mic?": "yes, if the camera uses v4l2 and 640x480, I'd suspect so." (#olpc, now) [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 00:16, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Doables:
*Try booting LiveCd, and remove LiveCd's "?" above.
*Find out what's going on with Tam Tam sound. It would be nice for the xo disk images to all be sound-yes.
*Add a microphone column? Reconsolidate sound/camera/mic into a H/W column?

=== Future possibilities ===

It would be nice to have:
*LiveCd with [[Library]]. To be an "intro" livecd for non-developers to try sugar.
**Perhaps create a mutant LiveCd. Take LiveCd, unsquash its squashfs, add library, resquash, and mkisofs. Downsides: LiveCd isn't updated very frequently (but since an update is coming rsn, perhaps we don't care just now). See [[Talk:Emulating_the_XO]].
*a small(?) qemu image with full fedora host detection/configuration (like Big FC6 Build). To be an "intro" qemu image for non-developers. A "virtual XO".
**Perhaps derive from LiveCd? The bottleneck is getting a clean sugar-jhbuild. LiveCd is the only production source of this human intensive process, other than the latest-stable-builds, which are xo-specific. It's not clear that one could get from any xo disk image to a hardware-independent build. Perhaps one might find out what versions of things went into a latest-stable-build? Perhaps sugar-jhbuild works not-infrequently for some particular environment, eg fc7 x86? Perhaps take someone's fc6+sugar image (Big FC6 Build lacks etoys), attempt updating it, and strip it down?
**Re derive from LiveCd, one might be able to unsquash the fs, customize for this role, make a qemu image with it, and add boot stuff?
**The LiveCd image, once unsquashed, is not small (4GB). Is this Gnome and such? Does the xo have some non-readonly compression which we can shrink that with? Is it worth a performance hit? [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 23:38, 1 June 2007 (EDT)
**If sound starts fully working on xo disk images, given that qemu doesn't support usb cameras, is this option needed? Isn't the non-devel image equivalent? [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 23:38, 1 June 2007 (EDT)

Notes:
*qemu appears to currently lack usb camera support.

== Emulation for Development ==

=== Development using QEMU ===

If you wish to develop software on an emulated image, you will usually want a connection between your host and the laptop image.

You need a "<tt>*-devel*.img</tt>" image, rather than a standard (non-devel) one. The <tt>-devel</tt> image has extra software like <tt>sshd</tt> and <tt>wget</tt>.

Get network working on the laptop. See [[Using QEMU for Troubleshooting#Network]]. A simple <tt>echo ifup eth0 >> /etc/rc.local</tt> , run as root on the laptop, should do it. You should now be able to surf with the laptop's web activity. Under QEMU the Laptop image can see the host as IP address 10.0.2.2 .

Next, you have several alternatives:
* SSH using qemu -redir tcp:2222::22. (a good first approach)
*# First-time setup
*## Get the image's network working.
*## Change the image's root password.
*##: Log into the image as root (no password needed yet!), type <tt>passwd</tt> , and then give it one. Complaints about "BAD" passwords won't stop things from working.
*##: Logging in as root is easy in qemu - you have a console window. Elsewhere...''(? someone else will need to fill this in)''
*# Whenever you run qemu, add the argument <tt>-redir tcp:2222::22</tt>
*# You can now log into the laptop image, from your real machine, using ssh. And you can use scp, etc.
ssh -p 2222 root@localhost # simple
ssh -o NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost=yes -p 2222 root@localhost #avoids annoying warning
* SSH using a key. (if ssh passwords get annoying, you can try this)
*: If you create an SSH server on your host and install a key on your Laptop image that has logon rights for that server, you can ssh from the OLPC to your host. This avoids password typing.
*: Adding platform-specific instructions might be useful? [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 15:59, 21 May 2007 (EDT)
* Using a web server. (if you don't want to deal with ssh, and have a webserver)
*: If you have a web server, you might simply download stuff onto the laptop using the laptops's web browser.


For emulation of extremely old builds, you may be able to come across "ext3 images" on some corners of http://download.laptop.org and http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/ which can be loaded into emulators. You are unlikely to find support for them!


[[Category:OS]]
[[Category:OS]]

Latest revision as of 16:26, 30 July 2013

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In the past, OLPC produced alternative software images which could be run in emulators such as QEMU and VMware. This meant that development and testing could happen to a limited extent without requiring an XO laptop.

In 2013, please see Tom Gilliard's many virtual machine images ready-to-go.

Note, XOs are readily available to genuine volunteer contributors through the Contributors program.

Sugar, the unique user interface of the XO laptops, is also distributed as a generic software project and can be developed and tested on "regular" computers as well as XOs. See Sugar Labs Downloads for the full range of options, such as Sugar on a Stick.

For emulation of extremely old builds, you may be able to come across "ext3 images" on some corners of http://download.laptop.org and http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/ which can be loaded into emulators. You are unlikely to find support for them!