Release notes/8.1.0
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for other discussion, see Update.1
This page is monitored by the OLPC team.
For the general public
What's new in the Update.1 release?
- fix bugs
- laptops now suspend when closed & resume when opened, for better battery life
- each activity runs isolated from the others, for better security
- Sugar activities are now released separately, or in "Activity Packs", rather than as part of the operating system release.
Please also refer to the milestone and the official roadmap for schedule dates and features for each release.
Pending successful completion of the Release Checklist, we will release build candidate-703 as official-703.
Breaking Changes from official-656
Activities must be installed separately.
Motivation: OLPC cannot presently afford to maintain more than one stable build. Therefore, we have decided to provide a "blank slate" which must be customized with activities and content bundles at installation time. (Some people have asked OLPC to provide a single step upgrade/customization path but no resources have been allocated to this task).
Finding Activities
OLPC hosts many Activities and several activity packs including:
- G1G1 activity pack.
- Peru activity pack
- Nepal activity pack
- Here is a list of the customizations OLE Nepal has made as of March 27th for build 702.
Installing an activity pack
See the instructions in Activity pack.
What's the recommended way to upgrade?
- Prepare a USB flash drive with the G1G1 Activity Pack per the instructions
- Run Olpc-update to the new build
- Reboot with this USB flash drive inserted.
If you are upgrading from build 69X, the build is already separated from the activities in those builds. So you can run olpc-update candidate-703 and your activities will not be affected.
Improvements from build 656
See OLPC_SW-ECO_4 for a more precise list of the changes, indexed by ticket, that lead from candidate-699 to candidate-703. To summarize, we added:
- Open Firmware version Q2D14 which will delay firmware updates until power is available (easing mass laptop updates).
- Better Spanish localization of the library and of the X and console keymaps.
- The ability to customize installed activities, boot screens, and activity order via USB key.
- Rainbow prevents faulty activities from damaging many parts of the system configuration.
- OHM power management software can be manually enabled to provide better battery life in solo-use situations.
- The XO announces its build identifier under the "About this XO" palette entry available from the central XO Icon on the Home View.
- Miscellaneous stability improvements including a new libabiword that fixes a Write sharing crasher.
Notable Current Bugs
- #6532 SD Card Corruption: partition table gets corrupted on ext3-formatted SD cards on suspend/resume
- The contents of a USB key didn't show in the journal. So couldn't install activity bundles from the USB through the journal.
Customization Issues
- Customization key won't install if the activities or library directories had already been created as root
Localization Issues
- #6777 Library bundles cannot use non-ascii characters in their file names
- #6973 Haiti keyboard doesn't match keyboard mappings.
- #6945 'Switch [language] group' key non-functional on Amharic keyboards
Activity Issues
- #6773 TamTamJam: Recorded microphone slots don't playback. ?need to test
- Couldn't add feeds to news reader because clicking "+"/dropdown on the feeds tab didn't do anything. ?need to test
- Read will not share a pdf document.
- #6729 Read doesn't save the PDFs it opens (when sharing)
- #4539 Sharing in Etoys only works if the laptops are in the same network (on same mesh channel, or connected to same access point). ?need to test
(Almost) full activity testing results for Update.1 RC-2, all results are from build 702
Touchpad Issues
- The Nepal pilot reported "jumpy touchpad" problems in dusty conditions. In response, we have surveyed known touchpad issues and have examined potential software work-arounds: [1], [2].
Network Related Issues
- USB ethernet adaptors will not work at all at first. #6917 The workaround is to upgrade the olpc-utils package manually to 0.71 or higher, or to enter this command in the Terminal after becoming root: echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="net", KERNEL=="msh*", OPTIONS="last_rule"' > /etc/udev/rules.d/10-olpc-netif.rules
Access Points
- When a number of laptops try to connect to the school server (either over a WiFi AP or a mesh) at one time, random "failure to associate" will occur and the laptops will join a simple mesh instead #4153 (#5963 is dup). This is indicated by the network indicator in the home view (it will say "Connected to a simple mesh" instead of "Connected to a school mesh portal" or "Connected to <school_essid>" when hovered over. Simply click on the school Wifi AP or one of the mesh circles in the laptop's neighborhood view to restart the association process.
- Sometimes when a number of laptops try to connect to the school server at one time, random laptops may be unable to connect to schoolserver presence service (ejabber) #5908. This is indicated by a greatly reduced number of XO icons in the neighborhood view (compared to a laptop which is connected to the presence service). Simply click on the school Wifi AP or one of the mesh circles in the laptop's neighborhood view to restart the association process (in extreme cases, restart Sugar (CTL + ALT + ERASE) or reboot the laptop).
- Association with WEP/WPA encryption works. However this must be tested for a wider range of access points.
- Sometimes obsolete APs show in the neighborhood view, or an AP is shown more than once. #6909
School Server/ Jabber Server
- To register to a school server and connect to the school jabber server you must
- Ensure that you are connected to the appropriate Network by hovering over the Network circle in the Home View.
- Hover over the XO icon in the main view and select
Register. - Hover again over the XO icon and verify that the
Registerentry has disappeared. - Restart sugar by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+Erase. - Confirm you have connected to the jabber server by typing
olpc-netstatusfrom the terminal.
- When registering with a school server, you MUST associate with the correct network before clicking
Registerfor the first time. Otherwise, you wont be able to register until you restart Sugar (Ctrl+Alt+Erase) #6857. - You should restart sugar (
Ctrl+Alt+Erase) to resolve the following bugs- You can't register with the school server. #6857
- You can't connect to the default jabber server alhtough you have registered.#6881
- You connected to the jabber server, and gabble is running, but no XOs, or few XOs are seen in the neighborhood view. #6883,#6884
- You are running both gabble and salut. #6881,#6886
Simple Mesh / Salut
- When XOs leave the mesh, the neighborhood view will notice with a delay between 10-30min.#6282,#5501
- However, when XOs enter the mesh or start an activity it is shown instantly.
- You can refresh the data of the neighborhood view by reconnecting to the mesh.
- Suspend/Resume will not work with salut.
- Chat crash fixed?
UI
- Sometimes in the neighborhood view, when connected to an Access Point a mesh circle continues to blink. This will also show up as two network circles in the Home view. This shows false information, but also causes no harm, so it may be ignored. #5459
- When an XO joins a shared activity its icon should disappear and reappear next to the activity. It happens that the XO icon will just disappear. Its collaboration will work properly, and if it leaves the activity it will show again as normal. You can see the correct number of XOs clustered around the activity by restarting sugar(
Ctrl+Alt+Erase). However the bug will continue from this point on when new XOs join the same or other activities. #5904