Workarounds

Please describe problems and temporary solutions here. Create a topic for each, with a concise description. If the solution takes only a few lines, post it here. Otherwise create a page for it and put a link after the problem description.

See also New Users.

WPA

XOs do not yet deal with WPA security automatically. They do not display WiFi access points that require WPA. Workaround at WPA Manual Setting.

Fixed in 653.

Installing Eric3 IDE

Since the develop activity is still in progress I thought it would be worthwhile to get an existing Python IDE up and working. Eric3 [[1]] is a very complete IDE and more or less a standard I'm told in the Python world. There is a later version (Eric4) but the support for that doesn't seem to be available yet from YUM.

Below are the step by step instructions for getting Eric3 running on ship2.

1. Go to the terminal activity and type su to get permissions to install software
2. type: yum install qt and answer y to the prompt
3. type: yum install PyQt and answer y to the prompt
4. type: yum install PyQt-qscintilla and answer y to the prompt
5. download eric-3.9.5.tar.gz[[2]]
6. copy it to your /home/olpc directory. (If you download on a desktop, you can do this with sftp or a USB memory stick. See the appropriate instructions.) (ed: It would be good to put a link here...)
7. type: tar xvf eric-3.9.5.tar.gz
8. type: cd eric-3.9.5
9. type: python install.py (Make sure you are still in super user mode or it will fail with a permission error. If you do this by accident its no big deal, just type su to return to super user mode and try again.)

Congratulations! You should now have eric3 installed. You can go ahead and delete the /home/olpc/eric-3.9.5 directory and the /home/olpc/eric-3.9.5.tar.gz files to free up some room.

To run eric3, type /usr/local/bin/eric3

Some Caveats

• This is a basic Eric3 installation. You can get some advanced features by installing other supporting packages. Read the Eric3 docs for more information.
• Eric3 is cramped on the default emulator screen size because it is not the full OLPC size. (Its only 1024x 768.) There are instructions elsewhere on the wiki for changing the screen size. (ed: It would be good to put a link here...)
• On my emulator running ship2, this brings you up to 86% of the disk used, which I don't think is horrible. On my G1G1, it brings me to 45% utilization.

Jeffpk 18:15, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Installing Abiword Word Processor

The "write" activity is a nice little introduction to word processing but it isn't really up to snuff for serious writing. It also doesn't, to my knowledge, save files in a format other word processors like Word or OpenOffice can read and write.

I did a bit of looking for something a bit more full featured but still small enough for the OLPC and found Abiword. [[3]] Its still pretty small but is closer to a full word processor and can share documents with many other larger word processing programs. It took a bit of fiddling to get installed but it works a treat on the OLPC once installed.

For some reason python comes with an older libabiword installed. In order to install the current abiword you must first remove this.

Below are the step by step instructions for getting Abiword running on a G1G1.

1. Go to the terminal activity and type su to get permissions to install software
2. type yum remove libabiword
3. type yum install abiword

Thats it! After that, type exit to leave super user mode and then abiword to run the word processor.

Jeffpk 12:47, 23 January 2008 (EST)

How to enable full Abiword functions in the Write activity

Actually, the full version of the Abiword application is already installed.

OLPCNews Forum

To setup:

Open Terminal activity.

su
cd /usr/share/activities/Write.activity
mv keybindings.xml keybindings.xml.orig

To Use:

Start Write activity. Within the activity, press Ctrl-N. Write is will function as a full abiword install until you exit it.