User:Skierpage

I'm a fan but just a casual G1G1 user and occasionally run images on Windows.

• I edit wiki pages here on wiki.laptop.org (I document/support/test the wikipedia:Semantic MediaWiki extension so I'm fairly knowledgeable about MediaWiki).
• I file bugs.

You can e-mail me as "info" at my web site, skierpage.com.

Leave me a note...

(From joe)

Hi,

Thanks for the info. The format that Charlie, et al are creating would supersede the format shown on the "Testing" page. This is still a "work in progress".

Regards,

Joe

From Tomhannen on emulation

Hi - this should help.

--Tomhannen 09:22, 7 December 2006 (EST)

XO experiments

PDFs in Browse

Trying to view PDFs in the browser without the horrible download-journal-start Read dance. evince isn't going to make a plugin [1], they recommend mozplugger. I tried yum install mozplugger, it installed sox and gsm WHY??!, still no luck and maybe it messed up PDF download, I now get a Mozilla "rainbow-daemon" dialog not a nice Sugar dialog.

Maybe I need to install evince as well, since /etc/mozpluggerrc wants to start this? XO has evince library, but yum install evince pulls in literally dozens of other libraries so I cancelled.

Wiki experiments and such

The gargantuan over-complex XO Korea structure from User:Php5 means searching in English finds Korean pages, such as:

• XO_Korea/hobby_and_profession/business_area
• XO_Korea/business_content/45120000_Photographic_or_filming_or_video_equipment

How many pages in Category:XO Korea?

{{#ask:

 |format=count

}}

I sort of love php5's overcomplex microcosm, though :) and these days it's down to 10% of the whole... it reminds me of the bulk import of chinese characters and their meanings into an en-language dictionary, which overwhelmed /that/ random-page feature for a couple of years. --Sj talk

Damn transclusion woes

A bunch of pages were transcluding Friends in testing/current image number, like Template:Joyride-jffs2-link. Francesca (?) put a semantic annotation in there, which added it to hundreds of pages.

I hid that in a noinclude, but for some reason that messed up pages.

Let's try it here with a local copy in User:Skierpage/current image number, transcluded into this link:

joyride-2263

Testing my XO

Responding to the Friends in testing call...

clean-install of 650 back to the future

To see how olpc-update works from candidate-765, I ran Clean-install procedure to get os650.zip and fs.zip on a USB flash drive.

First Erasing, bunch of black squares, then Writing, bunch of green then yellow dots. A few red ones.

then a restart, then Ship.1 build 650 Christmas 2007 baby!

No sudo, had to su -l but then

 olpc-update candidate-765

more or less worked. irsync_pristine and irsync_dirty failed, but No out-of-memory.

During first boot,

error about no /home/olpc/.ssh
error about chmod u+rw something something not valid.

No ~olpc/Activities

Software updates "Checking for updates" "Loading groups... took forever, part of progress bar blanked out. <trac>8681</trac> ?

I looked in journal, and there were two entries, "pi Seconds ago" and "oi 24 minutes ago", with a _-_- document logo. (I had just changed my timezone, maybe the time was off.)

Problems updating to 765

Mail "Signed candidate-765 and gg-765-2 builds available for testing" went out. I renamed my developer.sig key and tried

 sudo olpc-update 8.2-765

but that build isn't signed so update complained so I killed it.

So I tried

 sudo olpc-update candidate-765

that completed, suspiciously quickly.

But now my XO won't boot

 Q2E1`8  Q2E
 Trying nand:\boot\runos.zip
   OS found - No signature for our key
 Boot failed  :-( 

If I press the [o] key to boot the alternate image (which is presumably my previous unsigned build), I get the same error.

Solved by putting developer key on USB flash drive

I solved this problem by copying my backup of develop.sig to /security/develop.sig on a USB flash drive. With the USB flash drive inserted, booting from unsigned nand code worked.

Then I re-ran

 sudo olpc-update candidate-765

and it worked fine.

Damn U3 technology f***s up USB drives

If you buy a USB flash drive, it probably has crappy invasive U3 technology. Even if you have autorun turned off, Windows' "helpful" USB driver auto-install will automatically install some stupid driver that presents the flash drive as both a removable drive and a CD-ROM. WTF!??!

So download and run http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/u3/launchpadremoval.exe , then open Device Manager and make sure you don't have a second CD-ROM.

Paint-23 on 8.2-763

(I sent this to devel list.

Paint-23 on 8.2-763. These are roughly in menu order.

If from Journal I double-click on a Paint activity icon, I get two icons in the Frame, one of which has a doubled menu ("Paint Activity - Resume - Stop - Resume - Stop") that I can't resume or stop. When I tried to reproduce I got two icons, the first had the doubled menu, but this time the second icon pulsed forever.

You can't name a paint session in Paint (6220, I added this to release notes).

I can copy Paint's marquee selection and it appears in the frame, but the selection seems inactive -- it's gray, has no hover menu, I can't drag it.

I couldn't get paste of a selection to work.

The Paint fill is so slow that I assumed the app had died.

The Tools menu looks like a tools palette but you it doesn't show the selected tool. Actually, there is one item that looks like a selected tool, but it's the rounded-rect around the current color.

The color selection swatches would be a lot more obvious if they started out as the kid's XO colors instead of black and black.

Meanwhile the T in the text menu does have a gray background as if it's selected, but it isn't until you click it. And the two effects icons have a white background as if they're active.

If you type a pencil or brush size in their drop-down menus you can't dismiss the menu from the keyboard.

The Pencil size seems unchanged after changing its size.

Polygon tool cursor doesn't look like the polygon tool icon.

The Shapes menu doesn't fit the available space, "Triangle" is in a more items drop-down. I would get rid of the "Line" shape so the Shapes menu can fit on the regular screen.

The menu is "Text", its menu item is "Type". What's the difference?

The image resize spinboxes are so slow if I paste a previous Paint image in, I assumed the app had died. If I type in the image resize text boxes nothing happens but I don't know if it's really slow or they're dead to text input. Ideally they'd immediately show the value you type in or spin to but then you'd get a busy cursor.

I can choose anything from the Journal for Image insert, e.g. a terminal session, but nothing happens if it isn't a previous Paint session. Is Paint meant to insert the preview image of non-Paint sessions?

After unsuccessfully changing the size of an inserted image, the pencil tool works but the paint tool gets stuck as a selection marquee tool (makes no sense, but it's happened three times to me).

The two Effects operations are next to each other and have similar icons but do completely different things. It would be better to separate them, and change the hover text for the first to "Make picture gray"

Notes on Software update of activities

Running 8.2-759, Software update offers me

• Distance 12 to 13,
• Firefox 4 to 6
• Measure 17 to 19
• Paint 20 to 22
• Pippy 25 to 26

Modify activity groups is empty. Is it still going to Activities/Joyride ? That page has CC Licensing Activity and Scratch, yet Software update doesn't offer them.

I ran update and screen went blank and machine restarted. After restart, got new list of offered activities.

Looking at an activity like Cobble, it has two repeating forms each with:

• URL for the .xo bundle:
• Version number:
• Releases tested on: 7.1.0 (650) 7.1.1 (653) 7.1.2 (656) 8.1.0 (703) 8.1.1 (708) Candidate
• Development status:

That's bad, because this info is tied to the page, it isn't associated with each other. Same issue as multiple test results.

Can we have many-valued property Works_on: "version (build)", thus "26 (Candidate)", "24 (8.1.0)" But need URL in there as well... So I guess we need subpages with version support for each stream.

Notes on Update from 8.2-759 to 8.2-760

 sudo olpc-update 8.2-760

in Terminal Activity worked great! irsync pristine worked, verification worked.

After restart I got messages about writing NAND. It seemed that the reboot didn't tell me it was installing new firmware version Q2E17.

2nd restart displayed Q2E17, then booted into Sugar.

Got prompt to run Software update, but that reported "Could not access the network". I often get this problem.

bug?: With Software update panel up, I can't get to frame with mouse, but pressing the upper-right Frame key will show the frame, though it seems inactive.

The Frame showed an AP so I retried and it worked fine.

Display pulses after standby (Out-of-memory?)

Twice with 8.2-759 my XO had trouble displaying screen after being in "standby", the screen flashed on every 30 seconds. See User:Skierpage/out-of-memory for notes.

I sent e-mail XO screen pulses after "standby", OOM afterwards to devel@laptop.org and filed <trac>8490</trac>

People think its CPU pressure not OOM. Alas, there's no guide of helpful stuff to type in low memory.

Notes on Update from 8.2-757 to 8.2-759

sudo olpc-update 8.2-759 gave me the same Contents manifest failure at line 383 Last file examined: localtime error (<trac>8190</trac>. and the same (?) out of memory error <trac>5954</trac>).

Supposedly these are fixed in build 8.2-758, so I shouldn't experience them any more.

Home View > XO Man > Restart left me at

waiting for X server to shut down ..
xinit: unexpected signal 15

I think this is known. By clicking power off and back on (i.e. not forcing a power off) it advanced to

PM: Syncing filesystems ... done.
 Freezing user space processes ...
...
 Restarting tasks ... done.

So held down power button and back on.

 New firmware version Q2E15
 writing
 erasing
 ...
 Restarting

and then a reboot with the new firmware. Linux boot had same-ish errors as before: a couple of

 Failures reading codec ...

the same

 alsactl failed to obtain info for control #32 ...
 alsactl failed to obtain info for control #40..

Notes on Update from joyride-2301 to 8.2-757

I got the same Contents manifest failure at line 383 Last file examined: localtime error, so filed <trac>8190</trac>. I got the same (?) out of memory error <trac>5954</trac>

Got a few hangs and instabilities.

Notes on Update from joyride-2230 to joyride-22713

Tried this, a later release than 2263 recommended by Friends in testing.

Trac 5954 crashes

In Terminal Activity

sudo olpc-update joyride-2271
...
Verifying update
Contents manifest failure at line 383
Last file examined: localtime
Trying irsync dirty update  from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2271
- Creating contents for existing tree.

???? Next lines are the welcome kinds of the world for OLPC!

Other times I tried this and other joyride updates the Terminal Activity vanished and I was back in Home view.

So I did it in a Console, and joyride-2273 installed fine. Some errorsl

Downloading contents of build joyuride-2273.
Trying irsync_pristine update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2273
- fetching contents.
- Performing incremental rsync.
- Cleaning up (trac #5051)
Verifying update.
Contents manifest failure at line 383
Last file examined: localtime
Trying irsync dirty update  from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2271
- Creating contents for existing tree.
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/sbin/olpc-contents-create", line 91, in <module>

...

 File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-patckages/bitfrost/contents/util.py", line 100 in mkdirobject
   entry['h'] = mkhashes(file(fullname).read())
MemoryError
Trying rsync update from rsync://...
Installing update in ...
Update succeeded!

Note the crash in irsync dirty update, that was killing, not just sudo olpc-update, but the Terminal activity.

This sounds like <trac>5954</trac> oom-killer during olpc-update.

Various

Terminal Activity mouse jumped to Activity, but then just the text "Activity" got stuck in the top right corner. if I brought up frame, it was still there, I couldn't choose a menu item of one of my running activities. Clicking other items in the frame, like network or speaker, would just highlight Activity.

I did Ctrl+Alt+Erase to restart X and Sugar.

Read of a PDF works, but Sugar activity handbook shouldn't be a PDF <trac>7898</trac> and I ran into "Keep error on exit" <trac>7843</trac>, I pasted my Read log error for the latter.

Read of a 4-page DjVu file shows 1/4, lets me advance, but doesn't show anything. When I page backwards it gets slow, then really slow, then cursor won't track and the machine is completely unresponsive. Had to power cycle. Nothing obvious in the error logs.

But then I tried again on another DjVu file from http://djvu.org/docs/, http://djvu.org/docs/1998_zcoder.djvu. All blank, showed 1 of 10. Then I zoomed out and saw the text of page 1!! But when I zoomed in, Read died, and Browse too!. Nothing in error log. I updated <trac>6223</trac>.

I couldn't find any help on the wiki in Support FAQ, searching for "freeze", etc. for what to do when the machine goes unresponsive.

Notes on Update from build 708 (8.1.2 candidate) to joyride-2230

Got a developer key, found a few bugs.

In 8.1.1, build 708, more /etc/issue shows

 OLPC build update.1 708 (stream udpate.1; variant devel_jffs2)
 Kernel \r on an \m

Bug: last line seems bogus!?

Couldn't

 sudo olpc-update 709

got "unknown moudle 'build-709': could not find build 709: are you sure it exists? Sure enough, rsync rsync://updates.laptop.org | sort doesn't list it.

OK, so much for trying 8.1.2!

Per Friends in Testing,

 sudo olpc-update joyride-2230

seems to work.

 Downloading...
 Deleting ...
 Making clean /versions/updates/3d478...
 Trying irsync_pristine update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2230
  - Cleaning tree.
  - Fetching contents.
  - Performing incremental rsync.

... long pause

 rsync: failed to open "/versions/updates/3d478.../usr/sbin/udevmonitor", continuing: No such file or directory (2)

 rsync error: some files coult not be transffered (code 23) at main.c (1385) [generator=2.6.9]
 Trying irsync_dirty update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2230
  - Creating contents for existing tree.
  - Fetching contents for update tree.
  - Performing incremental rsync.

... long pause, laptop screen went dark (standby?)

 rsync: getaddrinfo: updates.laptop.org 873: Name or service not known
 rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(104) [receiver=2.6.9]
 Trying rsync update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/build-joyride-2230
 - Fetching contents
 - Performing full rsync

... long pause, laptop screen went dark, went to bed

 Next morning
 Verifying update.
 Installing update in /versions/{pristine,run}/3d478...
 Update succeeded!

Are the first two failures expected? Seems like rsync will fail if it goes into standby? ffm|sh on chat says this is all expected.

Reboot

Note this update involves new firmware.

I pressed the check key to see information, below I type some of what I saw. I can't keep up with the text.

Trying nand:\security\developer.sig

Updating firmware...

screen went dark, happy chime

OpenFirmware CL1 Q2D16 Q20

trying key

OpenFirmware CL1 Q2D16 Q2D

Updateing firmware....

screen went dark, happy chime

Now OpenFirmware Q2E12 A2E

Is it expected that it restarts three times, second restart still running the original firmware.

Some Linux boot warnings and errors

I got these in joyride-2301

  /usr/bin/alsactl :failed to obain info for control #32 (No such file or directory)
  /usr/bin/alsactl :failed to obain info for control #40 (No such file or directory)

In console tty1 (I think)

 OLPC buid joyride 2301 (stream joyride; variant devel_jffs2)
 Kernel 2.6.25-20080813.4.olpc.cc.... on an i586

[press ENTER to login]
xauth:  creating new authority file /var/tmp/olpc-auth/.Xserverauth
xauth:  creating new authority file /var/tmp/olpc-auth/.Xauthority
xauth:  creating new authority file /var/tmp/olpc-auth/.Xauthority  <=== why twice?

X.Org X Server 1.4.99.906 (1.5.0 RC 6) 

(more X.Org startup stuff...)

(EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
(EE) GLX: could not load software renderer
 expected keysym, got XF86info: line 914 of inet
 expected keysym, got XF86info: line 914 of inet   <== (i.e. repeated)
 The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
> Warning:     Type "ONE_LEVEL" has 1 levels, but <RALT> has 2 symbols
>              Ignoring extr symbols
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server

Bugs, TODO

erased Log activity. No feedback after clicking [Erase] in confirm dialog. Still showed in Home view. If I clicked to start, I got endless pulsing icon.

Browse activity did go away when I erased it, as expected. (?)

Started Log after I'd erased it, it pulsed for a long time, then I had two Log activities on the Home view, one orange.  ?!
shell.log had errors 'No such file or directory' from execute_child from HomeBox.py

cat /etc/issue has a garbled second line: Kernel \r on an \m
Not a bug, /etc/issue is a template that gets filled in on new terminal.

<trac>7828</trac>In Home view , hovering on an activity brings up {name of activity} with an Erase menu item. But in the journal, the default for each "session document" is "Write Activity", "Terminal Activity", etc. and those also have an Erase menu item. One of those removes the activity's code, one just removes a "session document". I get them confused.

<trac>7830</trac> The submit button in the DevKey form file:///home/.devkey.html looks weird, "stripey"

<trac>7831</trac> The Journal menu for Stopwatch activity installed from OLPC library is too wide to fit screen.