Release notes/10.1.1

The contents of this page are considered outdated and some of the information may be stale. Please use information here with caution, or update it.

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

  For the general public

Purpose

An update to 10.1.0 for XO-1.5 hardware.

Contains a bundled firmware update to Q3A39.

Installation

The build is installed to the internal microSD device. You will need a USB memory stick of at least 1Gb capacity, but only for the duration of the installation.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP!

• Prepare the USB memory stick:
  • Download os206.zd (706Mb),
  • Save the file to the top directory of a USB memory stick,
  • Download fs.zip (2.5Mb),
  • Save the file to the top directory of a USB memory stick,
  • Check the USB memory stick contains at least the two files fs.zip and os206.zd.

• Prepare the XO-1.5 laptop:
  • Make a copy of any data you wish to keep,
  • Ensure the battery is in the laptop,
  • Connect the laptop to external power,
  • Turn off the XO-1.5, unless it is already off.
  • Insert the USB memory stick into any USB port on the XO-1.5,

• Start installing:
  • Hold down all four game keys (see this in pictures),
  • Turn on the XO-1.5,
  • Wait for the message Release the game keys to continue,
  • Release the game keys.

Installation progress will be displayed. Green colour will fill grey blocks. It will take about ten minutes. Once finished, the laptop will reboot. Remove the USB memory stick during or after the reboot. The USB memory stick can be used on other laptops.

If you see a message Boot failed then either:

• the USB memory stick has not been properly prepared, or;
• the firmware is out of date and should be updated (see Firmware for XO-1.5).

Upgrade

As an alternative to installation, you may wish to upgrade from a previous version of the XO-1.5 operating system. This method preserves most user data, Sugar journal and installed Sugar activities, but does not preserve certain operating system customisations such as additional packages.

Since activities are not updated, several known problems will remain. Most but not all of these can be fixed using Software update.

To use this method, establish an internet connection, then type on the Terminal:

sudo olpc-update 10.2_xo1.5-206   # updating to build 206 of 10.1.1

A few previous versions do not support this method.

New features

New Help activity

The Help activity has been revised to include XO-1.5 features.

Acceleration of movies and video

Movies and video are now played smoothly with new Xv support in the graphics driver.

3G and GSM modems

When a USB wireless modem is attached, it can be configured and used for internet access:

• a new Modem Configuration icon is in My Settings,
• when a USB wireless modem is inserted, an icon appears in the Frame.

Disabling wireless

The wireless can be turned off, and will remain off until it is turned back on. To do this, open My Settings, Network, and click on the Radio checkbox.

Any current connection will be broken. All access points will disappear from the Neighborhood View. The wireless device icon will disappear from the Frame. The setting persists over a reboot.

Sugar Labs logo

A Sugar Labs logo is displayed during startup.

Battery monitor in GNOME desktop

A battery icon appears to the left of the date on the top right of the GNOME desktop. Notifications regarding change to battery and AC adapter state appear on the bottom right.

Battery performance logging

Battery performance data is now logged on the laptop for analysis if required. CSV files are stored in /home/olpc/power-logs/.

Constant and automatic power modes

For use as a school server, the laptops can be configured to remain powered using new CP and AP firmware tags.

olpc-os-builder

This release was built using olpc-os-builder, a tool to allow deployments to reconstruct OLPC official releases with local customizations. It's easy to install and use and replaces the functionality of Image builder, Pilgrim and the temporary kickstart solution used for the previous release.

We used the the build configuration file examples/olpc-os-10.1.1-xo1.5.ini

Known Problems

No screen rotation

The screen rotation key (on the bottom left of the display) does not rotate the screen image. It is safe to use, but makes no change.

Developers are working on rotation support in the graphics driver. (<trac>9350</trac>)

Record activity video recording may pause

When recording a video of a very complex natural scene, such as moving vegetation, in High quality, the recording may pause. If this happens, reducing camera movement may allow the laptop to catch up. Alternatively, switch to Low quality and try again.

Record activity preview black on lid close and open

With the Record activity on screen displaying a preview of the camera image, closing the laptop lid for long enough to cause a suspend, and then opening it, results in the preview going black.

If this happens, the preview can be restored by pressing Alt/Tab, or switching between Sugar views using the keyboard keys or the frame icons.

The black preview does not affect the taking of photographs, or recording of video. If a video recording is being made, there will be a segment of time missing in the playback.

Developers are aware of the problem. (<trac>10068</trac>)

No NANDblaster

NANDblaster, a technology used to install OLPC OS releases on large numbers of laptops simultaneously, did not make it into this release. A development version is working. This feature is a high priority and we expect to finish it soon. (<trac>9484</trac>)

Bugs fixed

Many bugs were fixed; a brief summary:

• Sugar activities: restore stop button to toolbar, restore game keys in Read, update to latest activities from Sugar Labs,
• Touchpad: disable tap-to-click,
• Camera: fix image quality and light sensitivity, improve total framerate, support slower framerates, support USB webcams,
• Graphics: increase solid fill performance, fixes crashes in 16-bit mode, fix Xv scaling, fix playback of videos,
• Network: reconnect after idle suspend, fix "discard network history", fix broken "disconnect", fix association failure after encryption removed from an access point,
• Internationalisation: remove several languages to save disk space,
• System: optimise for saving memory, switch to a new power manager, inhibit suspend on camera, audio or network activity, inhibit suspend when using a USB mouse or keyboard,

A detailed list of bugs fixed follows; from the release announcements of each of the development builds between 10.1.0 and 10.1.1.

os102

• Non-workaround fix for stop button pushed off the toolbar (<trac>9823</trac>)
• Invoke python with -O0 to save memory (<trac>8431</trac>)
• Fix Scratch sounds being jumpy (<trac>9375</trac>)
• Fix spurious linefeeds when resuming on VT (<trac>9690</trac>)
• Fix game keys not working with .epub files in Read (<trac>9838</trac>)

os103

• Camera driver rework from Jon Corbet
• Fix stop button/terminal size again (<trac>9823</trac>)
• olpc-update regenerated ssh host keys (<trac>9901</trac>)
• limit tmpfs (/tmp and /var/tmp) size (<trac>9636</trac>)
• explain that a restart is required after olpc-update (<trac>9791</trac>)

os104

• Include Q3A26
• Fix for olpc-update contents verification (<trac>9948</trac>)

os105

• workaround for wireless resume crash from dsd (<trac>9836</trac>)

os106

• potential fix for camera driver oops (<trac>9958</trac>)
• new runin tests release

os107

• Remove kernel SD debugging code pushed accidentally.

os108

• run prelink during the build process, disable it afterwards (<trac>9947</trac>)

os109

• olpc-kbdshim: don't rotate input on a failed screen rotation (<trac>9350</trac>)
• kernel: camera oops fix from corbet (<trac>9958</trac>)
• batterymon: new package, battery applet for GNOME (<trac>9987</trac>)
• olpc-utils: start batterymon on GNOME launch (<trac>9987</trac>)

os110

This build saves 110M of usable disk space (30M uncompressed) by trimming the number of locales with translations shipped in /usr/share/locale, and rebuilding the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive glibc archive to include just the new set of locales.

The languages no longer shipped by default are:

• German,
• Greek,
• Italian,
• Japanese,
• Polish,
• Telugu,
• Thai, and;
• Turkish.

If you disagree with removing any of these, we can talk about it -- this isn't a final decision. Bear in mind that translations take up a large amount of disk space, as shown above, and it doesn't make sense for XO deployments to carry lots of translations they won't use.

(It's still going to be just as possible to create builds that contain these translations, by reverting commits 35e7226.. and f61e839.. from olpc-os-builder.)

os111

• Shrink image sizes some more, for smaller SD cards.
• Preparation for switching from ohmd to powerd (<trac>10036</trac>)
• Increase tmpfs size (<trac>9979</trac>)
• Pull new kernel, including some new camera options (<trac>9853</trac>)

os112

• Switch from ohmd to powerd
• New kernel includes userspace controls for camera exposure
• New firmware Q3A35

os113

• enable Xv support (<trac>9407</trac>)
• patch to disable HQV0 camera interrupts from Jon Corbet (<trac>10061</trac>)
• powerd update, fixes to olpc-pwr-log integration

os114

• With thanks (again) to Jon Nettleton, this builds fixes an X crash bug when using the camera with Xv, and also greatly improves 2D acceleration performance for solid fills -- this is particularly apparent with Implode and Physics.

os115

• bitfrost: make olpc-update inhibit suspend via powerd if present
• kernel: make camera frame rate configuration persistent
• sugar/rfkill: support for turning off wifi in Network control panel (<trac>9899</trac>)
• TurtleArt: new upstream release

os116

• powerd: fix auto-reconnection after an idle-suspend (<trac>10086</trac>)

os117

• sugar: fix "discard network history" and AP disconnection (<trac>9788</trac>)
• sugar: fix AP association failure after removing encryption (<trac>9977</trac>)
• rfkill: more fixes (<trac>9899</trac>, still needs newer olpc-utils)
• kernel: add USB webcam drivers
• powerd: inhibit suspend when camera or audio are active, and at a lower CPU busyness threshold; change trace file format; suppress wake on wlan when screen is blanked, by default.

os118

• olpc-utils: ship new olpc-solar-log script from rsmith
• olpc-runin-tests: update from rsmith
• openchrome: add I420 Xv support (<trac>10102</trac>)
• openchrome: fix for crashes in 16-bpp mode (<trac>10104</trac>)
• kernel: allow negotiation of 5/10/15/30fps (<trac>10106</trac>)
• olpc-powerd: - enable network activity checks: pings, inbound traffic for established tcp connections, as well as any non-mdns outbound traffic, within 5 seconds of the target time, will all keep the suspend inhibited.
• Record v66, remove bundled broken libgstvideorate.so, fixing "Record only records a few frames of video with Xv" (<trac>10070</trac>)

os119

• kernel: allow negotiation of 5/10/15/30fps (<trac>10106</trac>) With this change, Record should be able to record audio+video together, although you'll still need to VT switch away and back if you get a black Xv overlay as described in <trac>10068</trac>.

os120

• Speak: upstream Speak-14 release is broken (SL #1934), revert to Speak-11.
• kernel, <trac>10068</trac>: fix for "black Xv overlay when starting Record".
• kernel, <trac>10127</trac>: fix for "DMA image corruption from camera in C3/C4".
• olpc-utils: olpc-pwr-log updates from rsmith.
• olpc-update: Move configuration from /security to /etc.
• powerd: "Modify handling of battery dis/charge wakeups which were preventing eventual shutdown, and improve power logging, but apparently not enough for Richard."
• openchrome: minor cleanups from Jon Nettleton.

os121

• kernel, <trac>10045</trac>: (hack) Fix video recording with audio sync in Record
• kernel, <trac>10119</trac>: disable tap-to-click
• kernel, <trac>9765</trac>: fix "frame battery icon lags charging initiation
• olpc-runin-tests: remove lm_sensors dependency
• olpc-bootanim: (from Bernie) add Sugar Labs logo to boot splash animation
• openchrome: fix scaling with Xv overlay

os122

• kernel, <trac>10137</trac>: correct camera framerate setting (note, this version of the patch may break the camera fps on XO-1)
• record, <trac>10045</trac>: Fix sync issues by moving to dsd's Record-74.
• olpc-runin-tests: update from rsmith
• olpc-powerd, <trac>10129</trac>: fix a bug that could cause unwanted idle-suspend
• olpc-update: fix param order for check_stolen_hash()
• Upgrade to firmware Q3A37.

os123

• Update to Q3A38.
• olpc-runin-tests: Launch problem fix from rsmith.
• kernel: enable user-level access to EC permanent timer

os124

• Upgrade to q3a39.
• kernel: EC wakeup timer access
• olpc-utils, <trac>10152</trac>, <trac>10158</trac>: Fix sound in totem, use totem to play videos
• sugar*: Merge Bernie's work on 3G modem support for Sugar
• SDL_Pango, <trac>9994</trac>: Add SDL_Pango to build for Tuxmath activity

os125

• Record: Another attempt to fix Record sync, this time by writing intermediate files to a tmpfs, to avoid jitter due to slow SD writes.
• powerd: inhibit idle suspend for 1 min after waking from sleep
• usb_modeswitch, tcl: include for GSM modem support (<trac>9684</trac>)

os126

• sugar: Fix mimetype detection for files on removable media.
• olpc-powerd, <trac>10169</trac>: Inhibit idle-suspend on presence of USB HID devices.
• record-80: More sync work, and remove "Best" recording option.
• dracut-modules-olpc: Add new greplease tool, fix XO-1 locked boot, add diags
• Prepare for 10.1.1 release.

os204

• Scratch and squeak sound <trac>9375</trac> <trac>10168</trac> <trac>6201</trac>.

os205

• <trac>10186</trac>: Fix permissions problem on /home/olpc
• <trac>10175</trac>: Fix "Record-81 generates audio/ogg file with silent start"
• <trac>10183</trac>: Fix "Record-82 crashes while saving a just-recorded audio clip
• <trac>9112</trac>: Fix "Enable Browse to embed PDF files in itself" regression

os206

• <trac>10202</trac>: Reinstitute asserts in the Bitfrost package.
• <trac>10122</trac>: Fix "Distance activity not working well on XO-1.5"