Customizing NAND images

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

This page describes how to create a jffs2 image from a laptop's internal NAND, producing an image that can be flashed onto a different XO. The laptop that is being backed up is the "host" laptop, and the laptop receiving the contents of the host laptop is the "target" laptop.

Basic Procedure

Steps:

• Make the modifications on the host laptop that you want to be present in the generated image. If you've logged into sugar and want the user to see the welcome/login prompt again, you can rm /home/olpc/.sugar/default/config.

• Insert a Windows-formatted (VFAT) USB disk into the host laptop, and reboot.

• At the "Type any key to interrupt automatic startup" key, press a key. At the "ok" prompt, type "save-nand disk:\nand.img" and press return. The contents of the NAND will be backed up to the nand.img file on the USB disk. The "ok" prompt will return when the copy has finished, and you can then power the laptop off with the power button.

• Move to the "target" laptop, and insert the USB disk. Again, interrupt at the prompt, and at the ok prompt type "copy-nand disk:\nand.img". This will copy from nand.img to the internal NAND. When back at the ok prompt, power off, remove the usb disk, and power on again to load from the new NAND image.

Example Customizations

Language

Sometimes you may want to define the default language for the system, either for use or while localizing.

The /etc/sysconfig/i18n file defines the LANG variable that Sugar will use.

Keyboard

If something went wrong in the software installation, or the manufacturing data does not match the actual keyboard in the system, you could conceivably have to set the keyboard type.

No English language input is possible on the default image targeted at non-Latin-based languages (e.g. Arabic and Thai). To enable English input on those machines, follow the following steps:

1. After the system has booted, press ctrl+alt+f1
2. Login in as root (no password required)
3. Open the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf for editing (use vi or any editor you are comfortable with)
4. In the first InputDevice section do the following modifications:
   • Modify XkbLayout setting from "us" to "us,ara" (for Arabic—use other symbol files for other languages)
   • Add an XkbOptions option with the value "grp:ctrl_shift_toggle"
5. Save and close the file
6. Either reboot the machine or restart X by issueing a "/sbin/telinit 3" command and then "/sbin/telinit 5"

After you make the modifications, the two lines in xorg.conf should be similar to the following

Option    "XkbLayout"   "us,ara"
Option    "XkbOptions"  "grp:ctrl_shift_toggle"

After X is restarted, the default language will be english (that can be changed by swapping us and ara above), and you will be able to switch between languages using the ctrl+shift key combination.

Installing Flash, Java, MP3 codecs, MPEG4, Patented Codecs

These Restricted Formats have problems that makes it difficult or impossible for OLPC to preinstall, but you may be able and interested in deploying systems with these preinstalled.

Helix (Real) Media Player

The Helix media activity page covers installation of this activity and its associated codecs.