OLPC:News: Difference between revisions

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
Line 3: Line 3:
[[Category:General Public]]
[[Category:General Public]]


=Laptop News 2007-09-01=
=Laptop News 2007-09-08=
1. Schedule/features: As mentioned, there were Sugar, network, and security reviews this week resulting in the reporting of some new bugs and future features. One outcome was the identification of some last-minute features, so we will not be ready for code freeze on Monday—we are probably off by about a week. Next week, we will have a major push to get all remaining blocking bugs addressed.
1. Schedules/testing: This week was “feature freeze” and by the end of the week we were very close to finalizing the feature set for the Trial-3 software release. Since there were a lot of new features getting checked in, we saw numerous builds and wrote up and fixed many, many blocking and regression bugs. Over the next week we will be focused on stability, through bug fixing and testing. There was some good progress on some of the biggest (and loudest) bugs related to suspend and resume, which is great to see. No more features for Trial-3. If you think there is an exception to this rule, please contact Jim Gettys and Kim Quirk.


2. Testing/Support: Alex Latham joined OLPC for a fall internship and has already contributed to the testing efforts, finding and reporting bugs. Over the next few weeks we need to concentrate effort towards both more “random” testing and our more formal test procedures (See [[User_Stories_Testing]]). Anyone who has time and a laptop can help by loading the latest release and going through some of the test plans. Please report your bugs to trac (http://dev.laptop.org) and your high-level thoughts to the Test Group Release Notes page in the wiki (See [[Test_Group_Release_Notes]]).
2. Sugar: The Collabora team continued to work on final items before the upcoming software release. This included adding support for mutable activity properties (name, tags, colors, etc), invitation support, porting of many of the activities over to the new tubes specification and cleaning up a lot of the base system elements. Morgan Collett updated the Connect and Chat activities to the new interfaces.


3. Update to Trial-2 software: A change in our build system caused several languages to not be properly included in our Trial-2 build. A new build, 542.3, was released to fix this. There remain some problems with the Spanish and Portuguese versions of TamTam that are still being worked on.
If no school server is chosen, a presence server in the MIT collocation center is being used to enable individual developers to share.


4. Updates: Scott Ananian spend this week working on upgrades. He got an rsync-based upgrade server now running at http://updates.laptop.org under a fakeroot; and he modified the manifest format and code to make it easier to read incrementally (so we don't need to keep the entire filesystem manifest in memory during sync and validation).
A new version of TamTam from Jean Piché's team is included in the new builds.


5. Activities: This week there were updates to the Write Activity, TamTam, Memorize, Chat, Etoys, Record, and Calculate. Also, XoIRC—an Internet-relay chat client activity written by Eduardo Silva and dedicated to the #olpc-help channel—made its first appearance. Chris Ball released a new version of Pippy that allows you to access a fully interactive Python interpreter, as well as the example programs. Muriel de Souza Godoi fixed some Memorize bugs (and released v16).
Pango (to enable support for languages like Amharic) and Cairo were updated to their latest versions.


6. Kernel: Andres Salomon has been been working with Arjun Sarwal, author of the Measure Activity, to determine what we actually want the laptop sound driver to do. As a result, Andres reworked the way that the sound driver handles high-pass filter/analog input and V_REFOUT. Andres synced his sound driver with master—they are slowly working their way through upstream's ALSA tree. Andres also synced the master branch up with the stable branch's EC code, making debugging cleaner in the process. He also made the EC-delay timeout configurable (olpc_ec_timeout=<ms>). Richard Smith also supplied a fix for the always-charging bug in the battery driver.
Chris Ball updated Pippy to add journal integration, sound support from Nathanaël Lécaudé and the TamTam team, and new examples from Madeleine Ball, Mel Chua, and Rafael Ortiz.


7. Universal serial converter: Joel Stanley finished up his last week of his OLPC internship with work on testing the new XO universal serial converter, which is used for breaking out a serial-port and debricking capability on the laptop. Thanks to Joel for some great work.
Simon Schamijer updated the Memorize activity for the new tubes API.


8. Firmware: Lilian Walter started research on IP security (IPsec) for IPv6. Internet key exchange (IKE) v1 can be readily tested using racoon—an IKE daemon for automatically keying IPsec connections that is distributed with FC7. IKE v2 can be tested with racoon2 after building it. That will be the next phase.
Simon also has been working on a the web browser (See the new visual design at [[Web_Browser]]). He added a sharable link tray and fixed bugs in the shared browser session.


Mitch Bradley made a stripped-down OFW that will fit in 128K, including SD and (probably) USB mass storage drivers, but without networking, to enable us to have a backup recovery path in case of boot ROM reflash problems. He is waiting for testing on the OS signing and activation features that are in the firmware was released last Friday.
Marc Maurer worked on the Abiword (Write Activity) collaboration backend. He also added a new format toolbar to Write and added some additional style options (headings, numbering, bullets, etc.) He also added the ability to insert images into Write directly from the Journal.


Mitch is also working with Quanta and David Woodhouse to track down some more instances of NAND FLASH corruption (possibly manifestations of Trac #1905, but it is perhaps a new problem).
3. Upgrades and multi-boot: Scott Ananian installed Debian Linux alongside Fedora Sugar on an XO as a demonstration of the new upgrade mechanism, which allows you to keep the old version around and boot into if the upgrade goes awry; and the P_SF_RUN Bitfrost security mechanism, which allows a child to poke around the root filesystem and muck with things, while still being able to revert to the “pristine” OS image if things go wrong (See preliminary instructions at [[Installing_Debian_as_an_upgrade]]). This will get much easier next week as the rest of the upgrade infrastructure is rolled out: you will be able to just subscribe to the “debian” stream to get Debian installed (for example). There will be “stable” and “devel” streams for Sugar releases—the real point of this work.


9. X Window System: Stefano Fedrigo (a volunteer from Italy) profiled our graphics performance at 16-bit and 24-bit color depth; this will help us decide which depth to use, since there are trade-offs involved. Stefano, Bernardo Innocenti, and Chris Ball are working on further analysis.
4. X Window System: Bernardo Innocenti merged more xkb changes for our existing keymaps, defined a few missing keysyms and updated the olpc patch in
response to Sergey Udaltsov 's reviews. He is currently testing new RPMs. A new patch submission is due soon.


Bernardo Innocenti has been working on merging all recent changes to keyboard definitions from Walter Bender, Sergey Udaltsov, and Jim Gettys into an OLPC patch for our xkeyboard-config package. The RPM is in the builds and looks fine so far. Bernie is planning to send the patch
Bernie and Walter Bender have also been finalizing the keyboard layouts for mass production (By way of example, see [[:Image:Keyboard_english.png]]).
upstream and maybe propose this package for F8.


Sergey, Walter, Lidet Tilahun, and Mako Hill have provided additional bits and suggestions for comprehensive Ethiopian support. Bernie has been able to assemble the various pieces, but for moment, they are only adequate for demonstration purposes. Next week, Bernie will work on packaging these bits for the builds.
5. Embedded controller: Richard worked on the “battery-always-charging” bug. It does not appear to be just an EC problem as Open Firmware shows the correct status but the kernel does not. They both use the same EC commands. It is still unclear what is wrong.


10. Games: MIT's GAMBIT program started operating this summer out of 5 Cambridge Center, under the direction of Philip Tan. They run a practical design course in the fall and will have a group working on game development for XOs.
6. The Wireless Bug (Trac #1835): Richard is also working on this bug. The more he gets into it, the more it smells like hardware. On a resume, after some number of cycles, the machine will hang. It is likely that we are not getting good data from the reset-vector fetch. The next step is to decode the LPC (low pin-count) bus and see what data is coming back in the fail case.


11. Jams: Game Jam Brasil is scheduled for the last week in September. Mel Chua expects to be in Manila for their Jam the first weekend in October. Chris Torstenson and Kevin Driscoll are planning a Boston Content Jam for the same time.
Javier Cardona and Chris Ball also continued work on the wireless-resume bug. Javier added debugging code that is providing useful information on each crash, and is continuing to try to iron out the bugs as we find them.


12. University chapters: Olin College started a university chapter on Wednesday, and are drafting a model for other universities to follow. People from other universities are encouraged to help define the model (See [[University_program]]).
Richard and Chris found a bug where the CPU occasionally on resume appears to be stalling instead of executing instructions. Since this happens during our extreme-traffic wireless-resume testing, the problem could be as simple as us not giving the power rails enough time to quiesce. Richard is working on it.


13. Translations: Todd Kelsey and Lingotech are working on translations of demo notes for the laptop, as an example of short-turnaround localization of specific useful documents. Draft documents in Spanish, Amharic, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic and other languages are in the wiki (See [[542_Demo_Notes]]). These are being reintegrated with the on-wiki translation system. To get a document translated, post it to the wiki and note the need for translation (See [[Translating]] for a more detailed description of how wiki pages get translated).
7. School server: The school server software continues to improve; a new release with several bug fixes and the laptop registration service is expected by the beginning of next week. To aid in server development in crowded work areas (such as Cambridge), John Watlington tested and documented the mesh blinding tables (See [[Mesh_Debug]]). Several new school servers came online this week: one for a trial in India, one for content development, and several for testing in Cambridge.


14. Cartoons and Comics: The Avallain comic maker had an alpha release this week: you can make your own layered comics with custom backgrounds and resizable characters in Javascript; and save your creations. At the moment, these simply work through the browser; exporting to a flat image and sharing are coming next (See [[Comic_Maker]]).
8. Kernel: This week Andres Salomon worked on vserver patches and fixing sound bugs. The screeching-upon-resume bug has been fixed, along with a number of other sound bugs. The patches been pushed upstream. A few bugs still remain, but no known major ones.


15. Our Stories: Asabe Yabani is working on a detailed implementation plan for OurStories in Nigeria. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Queen Rania of Jordan, and former child-soldier Ishmael Beah are recording audio clips about Our Stories over the coming weeks, in preparation for a site launch (coordinated by Google) on October 15. XOs remain a focus for recording of stories.
Marcelo Tosatti added code to our kernels that makes it possible to trace how long suspend/resume cycles take. This should allow us to pinpoint where we spend a lot of our time. Currently, the largest consumer of time turns out to be writing to the serial console during resume.

9. Firmware: Mitch Bradley Released Q2C26 firmware with OS security and activation support, some bug fixes, improved NAND FLASH bad-block management, and created a kit for creating signed OS images and leases. Lilian Walter put into place the code to solicit stateless DHCPv6 information. She is finishing up IPv6 fragmentation and reassembly.

10. Wireless: Michail borrowed an Anritsu Network analyzer and did some antenna performance measurements on the C- and B- Build laptops. He is happy to report that the C Build units are the first ones with completely functioning antennas. Quanta has implemented grounding of the antenna cable's shield in the C-Build machine and that seems to have made the right antenna perform properly. Michail’s only comment is that the insulation on the left antenna's wire is being stripped too short: the braid deforms from the mechanical stress imposed on it during the antenna's rotation. The insulation has to be left intact all the way to the grounding sticker as it the case with the right antenna.

Note: the C-Build laptops have metalization all around the plastic parts. Because of that, when the antennas are closed, the plastic below them acts as a ground plane and diminishes the antenna's performance completely compared to the previous builds. The antennas work much better when in the up position on the C-Build laptops.

11. Build 542.3: John (J5) Palmieri reports that a new spin of the stable build fixes a bug in Sugar that had prevented the installation of translation files; it also fixes a Journal bug for the Spanish locale.

http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/build542.3/

When installing this image, it should be named 'os5423.img' (along with the corresponding 'os5423.crc'). The FAT file system would otherwise be unhappy with the double dots in the names and the auto-reinstallation script would thus refuse to install them.

12. OLPC Philippines has registered a name. It is named as OLPCPH. [[OLPC_Philippines]]


=More News=
=More News=

Revision as of 00:39, 9 September 2007

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.
   HowTo [ID# 63970]  +/-  

Laptop News 2007-09-08

1. Schedule/features: As mentioned, there were Sugar, network, and security reviews this week resulting in the reporting of some new bugs and future features. One outcome was the identification of some last-minute features, so we will not be ready for code freeze on Monday—we are probably off by about a week. Next week, we will have a major push to get all remaining blocking bugs addressed.

2. Testing/Support: Alex Latham joined OLPC for a fall internship and has already contributed to the testing efforts, finding and reporting bugs. Over the next few weeks we need to concentrate effort towards both more “random” testing and our more formal test procedures (See User_Stories_Testing). Anyone who has time and a laptop can help by loading the latest release and going through some of the test plans. Please report your bugs to trac (http://dev.laptop.org) and your high-level thoughts to the Test Group Release Notes page in the wiki (See Test_Group_Release_Notes).

3. Update to Trial-2 software: A change in our build system caused several languages to not be properly included in our Trial-2 build. A new build, 542.3, was released to fix this. There remain some problems with the Spanish and Portuguese versions of TamTam that are still being worked on.

4. Updates: Scott Ananian spend this week working on upgrades. He got an rsync-based upgrade server now running at http://updates.laptop.org under a fakeroot; and he modified the manifest format and code to make it easier to read incrementally (so we don't need to keep the entire filesystem manifest in memory during sync and validation).

5. Activities: This week there were updates to the Write Activity, TamTam, Memorize, Chat, Etoys, Record, and Calculate. Also, XoIRC—an Internet-relay chat client activity written by Eduardo Silva and dedicated to the #olpc-help channel—made its first appearance. Chris Ball released a new version of Pippy that allows you to access a fully interactive Python interpreter, as well as the example programs. Muriel de Souza Godoi fixed some Memorize bugs (and released v16).

6. Kernel: Andres Salomon has been been working with Arjun Sarwal, author of the Measure Activity, to determine what we actually want the laptop sound driver to do. As a result, Andres reworked the way that the sound driver handles high-pass filter/analog input and V_REFOUT. Andres synced his sound driver with master—they are slowly working their way through upstream's ALSA tree. Andres also synced the master branch up with the stable branch's EC code, making debugging cleaner in the process. He also made the EC-delay timeout configurable (olpc_ec_timeout=<ms>). Richard Smith also supplied a fix for the always-charging bug in the battery driver.

7. Universal serial converter: Joel Stanley finished up his last week of his OLPC internship with work on testing the new XO universal serial converter, which is used for breaking out a serial-port and debricking capability on the laptop. Thanks to Joel for some great work.

8. Firmware: Lilian Walter started research on IP security (IPsec) for IPv6. Internet key exchange (IKE) v1 can be readily tested using racoon—an IKE daemon for automatically keying IPsec connections that is distributed with FC7. IKE v2 can be tested with racoon2 after building it. That will be the next phase.

Mitch Bradley made a stripped-down OFW that will fit in 128K, including SD and (probably) USB mass storage drivers, but without networking, to enable us to have a backup recovery path in case of boot ROM reflash problems. He is waiting for testing on the OS signing and activation features that are in the firmware was released last Friday.

Mitch is also working with Quanta and David Woodhouse to track down some more instances of NAND FLASH corruption (possibly manifestations of Trac #1905, but it is perhaps a new problem).

9. X Window System: Stefano Fedrigo (a volunteer from Italy) profiled our graphics performance at 16-bit and 24-bit color depth; this will help us decide which depth to use, since there are trade-offs involved. Stefano, Bernardo Innocenti, and Chris Ball are working on further analysis.

Bernardo Innocenti has been working on merging all recent changes to keyboard definitions from Walter Bender, Sergey Udaltsov, and Jim Gettys into an OLPC patch for our xkeyboard-config package. The RPM is in the builds and looks fine so far. Bernie is planning to send the patch upstream and maybe propose this package for F8.

Sergey, Walter, Lidet Tilahun, and Mako Hill have provided additional bits and suggestions for comprehensive Ethiopian support. Bernie has been able to assemble the various pieces, but for moment, they are only adequate for demonstration purposes. Next week, Bernie will work on packaging these bits for the builds.

10. Games: MIT's GAMBIT program started operating this summer out of 5 Cambridge Center, under the direction of Philip Tan. They run a practical design course in the fall and will have a group working on game development for XOs.

11. Jams: Game Jam Brasil is scheduled for the last week in September. Mel Chua expects to be in Manila for their Jam the first weekend in October. Chris Torstenson and Kevin Driscoll are planning a Boston Content Jam for the same time.

12. University chapters: Olin College started a university chapter on Wednesday, and are drafting a model for other universities to follow. People from other universities are encouraged to help define the model (See University_program).

13. Translations: Todd Kelsey and Lingotech are working on translations of demo notes for the laptop, as an example of short-turnaround localization of specific useful documents. Draft documents in Spanish, Amharic, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic and other languages are in the wiki (See 542_Demo_Notes). These are being reintegrated with the on-wiki translation system. To get a document translated, post it to the wiki and note the need for translation (See Translating for a more detailed description of how wiki pages get translated).

14. Cartoons and Comics: The Avallain comic maker had an alpha release this week: you can make your own layered comics with custom backgrounds and resizable characters in Javascript; and save your creations. At the moment, these simply work through the browser; exporting to a flat image and sharing are coming next (See Comic_Maker).

15. Our Stories: Asabe Yabani is working on a detailed implementation plan for OurStories in Nigeria. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Queen Rania of Jordan, and former child-soldier Ishmael Beah are recording audio clips about Our Stories over the coming weeks, in preparation for a site launch (coordinated by Google) on October 15. XOs remain a focus for recording of stories.

More News

Laptop News is archived at Laptop News. Also on community-news.

You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.

Press requests: please send email to press@racepointgroup.com

Milestones

Latest milestones:

Nov. 2007 Mass Production has started.
July. 2007 One Laptop per Child Announces Final Beta Version of its Revolutionary XO Laptop.
Apr. 2007 First pre-B3 machines built.
Mar. 2007 First mesh network deployment.
Feb. 2007 B2-test machines become available and are shipped to developers and the launch countries.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda announced its participation in the project.

All milestones can be found here.


Press

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.
   HowTo [ID# 63970]  +/-  

Laptop News 2007-09-08

1. Schedule/features: As mentioned, there were Sugar, network, and security reviews this week resulting in the reporting of some new bugs and future features. One outcome was the identification of some last-minute features, so we will not be ready for code freeze on Monday—we are probably off by about a week. Next week, we will have a major push to get all remaining blocking bugs addressed.

2. Testing/Support: Alex Latham joined OLPC for a fall internship and has already contributed to the testing efforts, finding and reporting bugs. Over the next few weeks we need to concentrate effort towards both more “random” testing and our more formal test procedures (See User_Stories_Testing). Anyone who has time and a laptop can help by loading the latest release and going through some of the test plans. Please report your bugs to trac (http://dev.laptop.org) and your high-level thoughts to the Test Group Release Notes page in the wiki (See Test_Group_Release_Notes).

3. Update to Trial-2 software: A change in our build system caused several languages to not be properly included in our Trial-2 build. A new build, 542.3, was released to fix this. There remain some problems with the Spanish and Portuguese versions of TamTam that are still being worked on.

4. Updates: Scott Ananian spend this week working on upgrades. He got an rsync-based upgrade server now running at http://updates.laptop.org under a fakeroot; and he modified the manifest format and code to make it easier to read incrementally (so we don't need to keep the entire filesystem manifest in memory during sync and validation).

5. Activities: This week there were updates to the Write Activity, TamTam, Memorize, Chat, Etoys, Record, and Calculate. Also, XoIRC—an Internet-relay chat client activity written by Eduardo Silva and dedicated to the #olpc-help channel—made its first appearance. Chris Ball released a new version of Pippy that allows you to access a fully interactive Python interpreter, as well as the example programs. Muriel de Souza Godoi fixed some Memorize bugs (and released v16).

6. Kernel: Andres Salomon has been been working with Arjun Sarwal, author of the Measure Activity, to determine what we actually want the laptop sound driver to do. As a result, Andres reworked the way that the sound driver handles high-pass filter/analog input and V_REFOUT. Andres synced his sound driver with master—they are slowly working their way through upstream's ALSA tree. Andres also synced the master branch up with the stable branch's EC code, making debugging cleaner in the process. He also made the EC-delay timeout configurable (olpc_ec_timeout=<ms>). Richard Smith also supplied a fix for the always-charging bug in the battery driver.

7. Universal serial converter: Joel Stanley finished up his last week of his OLPC internship with work on testing the new XO universal serial converter, which is used for breaking out a serial-port and debricking capability on the laptop. Thanks to Joel for some great work.

8. Firmware: Lilian Walter started research on IP security (IPsec) for IPv6. Internet key exchange (IKE) v1 can be readily tested using racoon—an IKE daemon for automatically keying IPsec connections that is distributed with FC7. IKE v2 can be tested with racoon2 after building it. That will be the next phase.

Mitch Bradley made a stripped-down OFW that will fit in 128K, including SD and (probably) USB mass storage drivers, but without networking, to enable us to have a backup recovery path in case of boot ROM reflash problems. He is waiting for testing on the OS signing and activation features that are in the firmware was released last Friday.

Mitch is also working with Quanta and David Woodhouse to track down some more instances of NAND FLASH corruption (possibly manifestations of Trac #1905, but it is perhaps a new problem).

9. X Window System: Stefano Fedrigo (a volunteer from Italy) profiled our graphics performance at 16-bit and 24-bit color depth; this will help us decide which depth to use, since there are trade-offs involved. Stefano, Bernardo Innocenti, and Chris Ball are working on further analysis.

Bernardo Innocenti has been working on merging all recent changes to keyboard definitions from Walter Bender, Sergey Udaltsov, and Jim Gettys into an OLPC patch for our xkeyboard-config package. The RPM is in the builds and looks fine so far. Bernie is planning to send the patch upstream and maybe propose this package for F8.

Sergey, Walter, Lidet Tilahun, and Mako Hill have provided additional bits and suggestions for comprehensive Ethiopian support. Bernie has been able to assemble the various pieces, but for moment, they are only adequate for demonstration purposes. Next week, Bernie will work on packaging these bits for the builds.

10. Games: MIT's GAMBIT program started operating this summer out of 5 Cambridge Center, under the direction of Philip Tan. They run a practical design course in the fall and will have a group working on game development for XOs.

11. Jams: Game Jam Brasil is scheduled for the last week in September. Mel Chua expects to be in Manila for their Jam the first weekend in October. Chris Torstenson and Kevin Driscoll are planning a Boston Content Jam for the same time.

12. University chapters: Olin College started a university chapter on Wednesday, and are drafting a model for other universities to follow. People from other universities are encouraged to help define the model (See University_program).

13. Translations: Todd Kelsey and Lingotech are working on translations of demo notes for the laptop, as an example of short-turnaround localization of specific useful documents. Draft documents in Spanish, Amharic, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic and other languages are in the wiki (See 542_Demo_Notes). These are being reintegrated with the on-wiki translation system. To get a document translated, post it to the wiki and note the need for translation (See Translating for a more detailed description of how wiki pages get translated).

14. Cartoons and Comics: The Avallain comic maker had an alpha release this week: you can make your own layered comics with custom backgrounds and resizable characters in Javascript; and save your creations. At the moment, these simply work through the browser; exporting to a flat image and sharing are coming next (See Comic_Maker).

15. Our Stories: Asabe Yabani is working on a detailed implementation plan for OurStories in Nigeria. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Queen Rania of Jordan, and former child-soldier Ishmael Beah are recording audio clips about Our Stories over the coming weeks, in preparation for a site launch (coordinated by Google) on October 15. XOs remain a focus for recording of stories.

More News

Laptop News is archived at Laptop News. Also on community-news.

You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.

Press requests: please send email to press@racepointgroup.com

Milestones

Latest milestones:

Nov. 2007 Mass Production has started.
July. 2007 One Laptop per Child Announces Final Beta Version of its Revolutionary XO Laptop.
Apr. 2007 First pre-B3 machines built.
Mar. 2007 First mesh network deployment.
Feb. 2007 B2-test machines become available and are shipped to developers and the launch countries.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda announced its participation in the project.

All milestones can be found here.


Press

Template loop detected: Press More articles can be found here.

Video

Miscellaneous videos of the laptop can be found here.

More articles can be found here.

Video

Miscellaneous videos of the laptop can be found here.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.laptop.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=OLPC:News&oldid=63970"