School server

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

+	Software
XO
	13.2.11	2020-01-29
XS
	xs-0.7	2012-02-20

The XO School server, or XS, is one of the products of the OLPC project, designed to complement the XO laptop. It is a Linux-based OS (a Fedora-based distribution) engineered to be installed on generic low-end servers. We outline hardware recommendations and in the future, we may offer a hardware platform specially designed for the role.

When we deploy one laptop per child, we must also provide additional infrastructure extending the capabilities of the laptops. While the laptops are self-sufficient for many learning activities, other activities and services depend on the School Server providing connectivity, shared resources and services. Services, tools and activities running on the School Server allow asynchronous interaction, can use larger storage capacity, and take advantage of the processing power of the XS.

Mailing List

Join the server-devel mailing list, search the list archives at archives or find us on the IRC channel: #schoolserver on irc.oftc.net.

XS Documentation

• XS Release Notes
• XS Server Software Instructions for building, downloading and installing the software
• Overview of main XS Features
• XS Recommended Hardware describes the minimum hardware requirements for the School Server
• XS Installing Software has instructions for installing the latest School Server images
• XS Building Software
• XS Software Repositories
• School Identity Manager
• XS LiveCD
• XS Software Testing
• XS Backup and Disaster Recovery

Roadmap

• XS Roadmap (see also XS Changelog)
• Get Involved - join the mailing list and get started with one of these easy tasks. We also have some advanced tasks around Fedora packaging or configuration.

Technical notes

• XS-XO Interactions: how does the laptop talk to the server?
• XS Automount triggers
• XS Packaging
• XS Directory Layout for packagers
• Moodle implementation plan
• Ejabberd resource tests

Design Documents

The high-level design of the School server is described here - note that some may be slightly outdated:

• Scenario taxonomy School Server and XO laptop scenario taxonomy
• The Server Specification introduces the School Server and its functions
• School Service Names

Blueprints

In development

• Lease and update server
• OTP Root Passwords
• Remote management

Implemented

• Datastore Simple Backup and Restore

Key tools

• Ds-backup - backup infrastructure
• XS-rsync - the rsync publishing, used for XO OS updates.
• XS-tools - grabbag of useful utilities. The NOC team will also want this :-)
• XS_Automount_triggers - used by Xs-activation, Xs-activity-server, Xs-rsync and probably others.
• XS-activation - activation lease server.
• XS-activity-server - serves packages over http.

Meetings

• Thursday 7th August 10pm US EST - Agenda, Minutes and IRC log
• Tuesday March 25th 11 AM US EST - Agenda - Minutes - IRC Log

Slightly Outdated

• Trial1 Server Software describes the proposed first revision of the server software
• Short Term Server Questions is a discussion of issues surrounding the immediate deployment of school servers
• Server Discussion describes services and enhancements possibly supported by the School Server
• XS Server P2P Cache
• Server Services

See also

• IRC - #schoolserver on irc.oftc.net
• server-devel mailing list archives at http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/
• Using SSH Keys
• Active Antenna
• Ejabberd Configuration
• School server network debugging is helpful. Troubleshooting School Servers is so incomplete as to be useless.
• How to debug networking in a crowded environment
• Collaboration Network Testbed
• School server/School district networks
• Bitfrost Security and Identity model
• Thin client