OS images

Downloads

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. Each build is labeled with a unique version number. When reporting problems on mailing lists, please make sure you list the build number you are using.

You can download the latest images from:

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

Latest Stable Build

A build is marked "stable" when the developers are happy with a build. At minimum, a stable build will meet the criterion:

• USB image on A test board with Insyde BIOS
• NAND image on A test board with Insyde BIOS, booting via USB and kexec'ing into a kernel loaded from NAND (select OLPC NAND in grub on the USB stick)
• QEMU image
• USB image for A test board with LinuxBIOS (for post-build59)

At some point this will include:

• NAND flash image for A test board with LinuxBIOS

Source: David Zeuthen on devel mailing list.

A stable build does not mean everything is working, nor that it is actually "stable." For example, for a while Sugar and X were both broken in a stable build, but virtual consoles worked fine and that was enough to get work done for most developers. Casual downloader and those upgrading to a new build beware: check the mailing list to see whether there are known problems before selecting a build.

The latest stable build is build59. --Blizzard 23:35, 8 Aug 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
  • Also available in two sub-variants: ext3, which is a filesystem image, and tree, which is an archive of the directory structure

• 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, 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.

Passwords

The images have no password set at build time. This means you can log in as root using no password. Always remember to change the password as the first thing when start using an image.

As the image-rpm variant ships with an SSH server you thus need to set the password to be able to login from a remote host. This is a feature of sshd.

Password handling is subject to change before official release.

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.

Using images on a USB disk

The OS images for USB disks page describes how to write these images to a USB disk, so that you can test the images on real OLPC hardware, or attempt to boot from them on your own PC.

Using images on an emulator

The OS images for emulation page details how you can run the OS images on a normal PC, without the OLPC hardware.

Using images with the on-board NAND flash on OLPC hardware

Instructions coming soon...