OS images

The operating system used for OLPC is work-in-progress and so-called images are available from

http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development

Build numbers

As the operating system for OLPC is under development, there are several builds available. The latest build might not always be stable since developers are experimenting with new features

Latest Stable

Latest stable build is build42. --DavidZeuthen 14:16, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Image variants

Images are available in two variants

• Normal images
  • These are in the images/ subdirectory of a build.
  • Intended for production use; does not contain tools or software suitable for developers of the OLPC operating system

• Developer images
  • These are in the images-rpm/ sub-directory of a build
  • Contains tools useful for developers of the OLPC operating system
    • Presently includes: yum , rpm, vim-minimal, openssh-server, xterm, which, file, tree, wget, xterm, xorg-x11-twm, gdb
  • WARNING: Do not attempt to update the kernel on images-rpm builds - the initrd will be wrong. We're working on fixing this through including an olpc-mkinitrd package.

Using Images

For development we right now offer images that runs the OLPC operating system off a USB storage device. We're working on getting this to work on the NAND flash of the hardware too. Instructions to come.

Images on USB storage devices

To try out an image, simply download the appropriate .img.bz2 file, e.g.

olpc-stream-development-42-20060714_1709-rpm-ext3.img.bz2

unzip it, and transfer it to a USB storage device via e.g.

# bunzip2 olpc-stream-development-42-20060714_1709-rpm-ext3.img.bz2
# dd if=olpc-stream-development-42-20060714_1709-rpm-ext3.img of=/dev/sdb bs=512
# sync

Remember to

• Do this as the super user / root
• Replace /dev/sdb with the device file of the USB storage device
• Make sure any old partitions from the storage device is unmounted.
• The USB storage device must be 512MB or bigger. All existing data on it will be wiped.

Now you should be able to boot the OLPC operating system off the USB storage device.