Release notes/13.2.5

Overview

13.2.5 is an OLPC OS release. The target platforms are XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4.

Features

• based on Fedora 18, with updates,
• based on Sugar 0.106, see release notes, with Social Help, with new activities, and display brightness controls,
• refresh of activities, Browse-157.2, Clock-18, Distance-35, GetBooks-16, ImageViewer-62, Implode-15.2, Memorize-51, Moon-17, Pippy-66, Read-115, Record-100, Speak-51, Terminal-44 and TurtleBlocks-210,

Fixes

• enable Sugar Web activities,
• fix for DCON DETTL signal integrity, <trac>12852</trac>,
• for custom builds made with restricted software, enable MP4 video playback codecs, <trac>12742</trac>,
• fix the activity updater, which wasn't working at all in 13.2.3, and which was using activities.sugarlabs.org in 13.2.4, see <trac>12878</trac>,
• for XO-1.75 and XO-4, fix language control panel for laptops with spanish keyboards,

Installation

XO-4

How to install signed build 17 of release 13.2.5 on XO-4.

The build is installed to the internal storage device. You will need a USB drive or Secure Digital card of at least 1 GB capacity, but only for the duration of the installation. We recommend the drive be FAT formatted, but other formats are supported, see how to prepare a drive for use by the firmware for more details.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP!

• Prepare the USB or SD drive:
  • Download 32017o4.zd, see How to Download,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the drive,
  • Download fs4.zip,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the same drive,
  • Check that the drive contains at least the two files fs4.zip and 32017o4.zd.
• Prepare the laptop:
  • Make a copy of any data you wish to keep,
  • Check that the battery is inserted and locked,
  • Check that the power cord is in place and the battery indicator is green,
  • Turn off the laptop, unless it is already off,
  • Insert the USB drive into any USB port on the laptop,

• Start installing:
  • Hold down all four game keys above the power button,
  • Turn on the laptop,
  • 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 five minutes. Once finished, the laptop will reboot automatically. You may remove the USB or SD drive during or after the reboot.

The USB or SD drive can be used on other laptops. If installation progress is not displayed, you may be running an old firmware version which does not recognise the fs4.zip file. Please rename fs4.zip to fs.zip and try again. If you see a message Boot failed then either:

• the USB or SD drive has not been properly prepared, or;
• the firmware is out of date and should be updated (see Firmware).

XO-1.75

How to install signed build 17 of release 13.2.5 on XO-1.75.

The build is installed to the internal storage device. You will need a USB drive or Secure Digital card of at least 1 GB capacity, but only for the duration of the installation. We recommend the drive be FAT formatted, but other formats are supported, see how to prepare a drive for use by the firmware for more details.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP!

• Prepare the USB or SD drive:
  • Download 32017o2.zd, see How to Download,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the drive,
  • Download fs2.zip,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the same drive,
  • Check that the drive contains at least the two files fs2.zip and 32017o2.zd.
• Prepare the laptop:
  • Make a copy of any data you wish to keep,
  • Check that the battery is inserted and locked,
  • Check that the power cord is in place and the battery indicator is green,
  • Turn off the laptop, unless it is already off,
  • Insert the USB drive into any USB port on the laptop,

• Start installing:
  • Hold down all four game keys above the power button,
  • Turn on the laptop,
  • 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 five minutes. Once finished, the laptop will reboot automatically. You may remove the USB or SD drive during or after the reboot.

The USB or SD drive can be used on other laptops. If installation progress is not displayed, you may be running an old firmware version which does not recognise the fs2.zip file. Please rename fs2.zip to fs.zip and try again. If you see a message Boot failed then either:

• the USB or SD drive has not been properly prepared, or;
• the firmware is out of date and should be updated (see Firmware).

XO-1.5

How to install signed build 17 of release 13.2.5 on XO-1.5.

The build is installed to the internal microSD device. You will need a USB drive or Secure Digital card of at least 1 GB capacity, but only for the duration of the installation. We recommend the drive be FAT formatted, but other formats are supported, see how to prepare a drive for use by the firmware for more details.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP!

• Prepare the USB or SD drive:
  • Download 32017o1.zd, see How to Download,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the drive,
  • Download fs1.zip,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the same drive,
  • Check that the drive contains at least the two files fs1.zip and 32017o1.zd.
• Prepare the laptop:
  • Make a copy of any data you wish to keep,
  • Check that the battery is inserted and locked,
  • Check that the power cord is in place and the battery indicator is green,
  • Turn off the laptop, unless it is already off,
  • Insert the USB drive into any USB port on the laptop,

• Start installing:
  • Hold down all four game keys above the power button,
  • Turn on the laptop,
  • 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 automatically. You may remove the USB or SD drive during or after the reboot.

The USB or SD drive can be used on other laptops. If installation progress is not displayed, you may be running an old firmware version which does not recognise the fs1.zip file. Please rename fs1.zip to fs.zip and try again. If you see a message Boot failed then either:

• the USB or SD drive has not been properly prepared, or;
• the firmware is out of date and should be updated (see Firmware).

XO-1

How to install signed build 17 of release 13.2.5 on XO-1.

The build is installed to the internal NAND flash device. You will need a USB drive or Secure Digital card of at least 1 GB capacity, but only for the duration of the installation. We recommend the drive be FAT formatted, but other formats are supported, see how to prepare a drive for use by the firmware for more details.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP!

• Prepare the USB or SD drive:
  • Download 32017o0.img, see How to Download,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the drive,
  • Download fs0.zip,
  • Save the file to the top directory of the same drive,
  • Check that the drive contains at least the two files fs0.zip and 32017o0.img.
• Prepare the laptop:
  • Make a copy of any data you wish to keep,
  • Check that the battery is inserted and locked,
  • Check that the power cord is in place and the battery indicator is green,
  • Turn off the laptop, unless it is already off,
  • Insert the USB drive into any USB port on the laptop,

• Start installing:
  • Hold down all four game keys above the power button,
  • Turn on the laptop,
  • Wait for the message Release the game keys to continue,
  • Release the game keys.

Installation progress will be displayed. Green colour will fill yellow blocks. It will take about five minutes. Once finished, the laptop will reboot automatically. You may remove the USB or SD drive during or after the reboot.

The USB or SD drive can be used on other laptops. If installation progress is not displayed, you may be running an old firmware version which does not recognise the fs0.zip file. Please rename fs0.zip to fs.zip and try again. If you see a message Boot failed then either:

• the USB or SD drive has not been properly prepared, or;
• the firmware is out of date and should be updated (see Firmware).

XO-1 with SD card

How to install signed build 17 of release 13.2.5 on XO-1, to an SD card in the external slot.

ALL USER DATA WILL BE ERASED FROM THE LAPTOP AND THE CARD!

• select an SD card of at least 4GB capacity; it will be erased by the process below,
• select a USB drive of at least 1GB capacity,
• download 32017o0.zip (606 MB) and expand the contents onto the USB drive,
• Shutdown the XO-1,
• insert the USB drive and the SD card into the XO-1,
• hold down all four game keys above the power button,
• turn on the laptop,
• wait for the message Release the game keys to continue,
• release the game keys, progress will be displayed, grey blocks will turn green, and the screen will show:

 Blocks/square: 2        Total blocks: 15283     Now writing: 70  0 %
 Installing to SD card ..... please wait.

• after a few minutes it will show:

 Blocks/square: 2        Total blocks: 15283     Now writing: 0  0 %
 Rebooting in 10 seconds ... please wait.

• it is finished, you may remove the USB drive then, during the reboot, or after the reboot.

Note: it is best to leave the SD card in the same laptop. Booting from it and then moving the card to another laptop can cause problems. In particular you may need to Discard wireless connections in the Network panel of My Settings. See also Imaging/Side_effects, in particular the sections regarding .olpc-configured, and network.

Update

You may wish to update from a previous version of the operating system. This method preserves most user data, the Sugar Journal and installed Sugar Activities, but does not preserve certain operating system customizations such as additional packages.

(Update is distinct from install. If you have followed the install procedures above, then you need not follow this section.)

Preparation

To prepare for an operating system update:

• remove as much saved content as you no longer need,
• remove any large activities you no longer need (in the Home view, erase them),
• remove any large collections (library content) you no longer need, and;
• use Software update to ensure the Terminal activity is the latest available version.

Follow the instructions in one of the subsections below, according to which method and laptop model you are using.

Simple Online Update

See Simple Online Update for more detail about the method.

• establish an internet connection from the laptop (if you plan to do online update),
• start the laptop normally,
• start the Terminal Activity, and depending on the laptop model type:

XO-4

sudo olpc-update 13.2.5_xo4-17

XO-1.75

sudo olpc-update 13.2.5_xo1.75-17

XO-1.5

sudo olpc-update 13.2.5_xo1.5-17

XO-1

sudo olpc-update 13.2.5_xo1-17

An online update can be very slow on an XO-1, in one test it took two hours; please consider reinstalling.

Simple Offline Update

• Download a .usb and .toc file, see How to Download,
  • for XO-4
    • 32017o4.usb,
    • 32017o4.toc,
  • for XO-1.75
    • 32017o2.usb,
    • 32017o2.toc,
  • for XO-1.5
    • 32017o1.usb,
    • 32017o1.toc,
  • for XO-1
    • 32017o0.usb,
    • 32017o0.toc,
• Put them on a USB drive,
• Boot the laptop normally,
• Plug the USB drive into the laptop,
• Start the Terminal Activity, and type:

sudo olpc-update --usb

See Simple Offline Update for more detail about the method.

Known Problems

Welcome Activity Missing

The new version of Sugar does not start the Welcome activity on first boot, so it has been removed. See <trac>12869</trac>.

Restricted Software

Restricted software, such as browser plugins, codecs, and so forth, are not included in the public release. Deployments who need this software should contact OLPC or make their own builds, see OS_Builder/Add_Restricted.

Video Playback

The XO-1 cannot play some videos in the Browse or Epiphany web browsers, because the Adobe Flash plugin is no longer available for the Geode processor.

On some models, particularly XO-1 and XO-1.5, although MP4 playback support may be present with restricted software builds, the video to be played may require more processor and graphics bandwidth than the hardware can provide;

• especially true in the presence of advertising or related videos elements on youtube.com,
• also true inside a web browser for khan academy,
• not as true when playing the same video in Movie Player or Jukebox,
• workaround is to transcode such videos to a lower bandwidth, or to pause playback and wait for advertising to complete.

Frozen Repositories

The frozen repositories have not been updated; the release was made from all Fedora 18 updates.

XO-1.75 Volume Control

The Sugar frame volume control was not working on XO-1.75 and was hidden.

Since release this problem has been fixed. To apply the fix, either repeat your custom build using latest builder patches, or install these changes on each laptop:

• use Sugar, My Settings, System Update to update activities, or download and install Measure-52 and Record-102,
• use Terminal to restore the volume control;

su -
olpc-12867-reproduce

• use Terminal to update kernel and utilities, then reboot;

sudo yum update olpc-utils kernel*
sudo reboot

The new Measure activity no longer turns off the microphone boost amplifier. The new Record activity avoids playing back the shutter sound at the end of an audio recording.

The new kernel migrated the XO-4 audio driver to the XO-1.75, fixing several problems. The new olpc-utils package resets the audio volume controls on reboot.

See <trac>12867</trac> for technical details.