Release notes/8.2.0

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Revision as of 22:50, 16 December 2008 by Skierpage (talk | contribs) (→‎Upgrading from previous releases: checksum is INAPPROPRIATE here!)
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  For the general public

Before you update to this release

  • If you are in a school or other deployment, make sure you contact your technical support team before updating. Some deployments have special configurations which will need special steps taken before update. Your deployment may not yet support this release.

New features in 8.2.0

There is a new Help Activity in this release that includes a full manual on the laptop. Look for the icon of a Question Mark.

In addition to fixing bugs, we've added lots of new features to our 8.2 release, including

The new XO manual is also available here.

Upgrading from previous releases

For technical details and other upgrade options see olpc-update and Clean-install procedure. If you run into trouble, see Upgrade troubleshooting, Support FAQ and Support to email our tech support volunteers.

If your XO is connected to the internet

Note that this process may make some of your Activities and the Journal items that depend on them not work - make sure you have backed up any files you want to save!

This process can take more than 30 minutes so be sure to reserve enough time.

  1. Make sure your XO is plugged in, turned on, and connected to the Internet (you should be able to load http://laptop.org in the Browse Activity). If your XO is not connected to the internet, you will not be able to use this upgrade method.
  2. Open the Terminal Activity. Activity-terminal.svg You can find it by going to the home view (press the 5th symbol from the left, top row), clicking on the little arrow at the bottom right of the screen, and then on the symbol that looks like this one.
  3. In the Terminal Activity, type su - (lowercase letter 's', lowercase letter 'u', a space, and a hyphen). Press Enter.
  4. At the "-bash-3.2#" prompt type olpc-update 767. Press Enter.
  5. You should see text that looks something like this (sometimes, in addition to the text below, you might get a message about irsync_pristine failing, and that "irsync_dirty" is being tried, this is normal):
 Downloading contents of build ''{{:Friends in testing/current image}}''
 Updating to version hash ''xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx''
 Making clean /versions/updates/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Trying irsync_pristine update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/''build-{{:Friends in testing/current image}}''
 - Cleaning tree.
 - Fetching contents.
 - Performing incremental rsync. [Comment: Wait a long time! Could be over an hour depending on your internet connection speed.]
 Verifying update.
 Installing update in /versions/{pristine,run}/''xxxx''

6. At the end of the upgrade, you will either see the words "Installing update in...." or "Update Succeeded!" on the screen. If you see the words "I don't think you're connected to the internet." see the notes below.

7. Wait for the prompt "-bash-3.2#" and type reboot then press Enter to restart your XO. You will probably hear the little XO tune 2 times, then it will say erasing and a countdown will appear. Finally it will reboot again, you will hear the tune for a third time. Now you are ready to go to step 8.

8. After your XO reboots, the last step is to download the new versions of Activities. When the XO boots you will see a bar toward the top of the screen that says "Software Update" and the options being "Cancel", "Later" and "Check now". Before you choose "Check now" to update the activities, you must reconnect your XO to the internet. You may see the sign-in box appear in home view. If it does, and it lists your router, you can do it from there. If it doesn't appear or offers the wrong connection, go to the Neighborhood view and conect from there. Then go back to Home view and then click "Check now" (it's ok to leave the home view because when you go back the options should still be there). First the XO will check for any updates and then it asks if you'd like to install them. Click "Install selected" to install your newest versions of your activities.

Congratulations, you've upgraded!

Note:

  • When upgrading from build 703 or 708 you will not see the Library (links to science, books, etc links on the left side) in the Browse home page. You can re-install the Library as follows:
    • Open the Control Panel and go into Software update.
    • After it checks for updates, go to "Modify activity groups" and click on the triangle.
    • Beside "Group URL" type: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/G1G1 and click the "Add" button.
    • Click "Refresh" and allow the XO to upload the new updates.
    • Click on Install selected. Once it completes, reboot.
  • If you can browse the Internet (see step 1 above) but the olpc-update command returns the error "I don't think you're connected to the internet.", you may need to open TCP port 873 (rsync) on your firewall for the outbound connection.

If your XO is not connected to the internet

You can use another computer that is connected to the internet (a desktop at home, a computer lab, etc.) plus a USB storage device (such as a USB flash drive) to upgrade your XO. The way it works is on your non-XO computer you download two files containing the upgrade data, saving them to the USB flash drive; then you insert the USB flash drive into your XO and trigger its upgrade process. Note that this process will COMPLETELY erase ALL files on your XO! Make sure you have backed up any files you want to save!

Plug an empty formatted USB flash drive into the computer that is connected to the internet. Then, right-click (Ctrl-click for Mac) on each of the two URLs below and choose "Save Target As" ("Save Link As" for Firefox). Save both files to the USB flash drive. Do not open the files.

The first file is about 297 KB, and the second file is quite large (about 450 MB), so they might take a while [15 - 20 min.] to download. When the download is complete, Eject/Remove the USB flash drive, and unplug it. After you have finished this step, there should be two files on the USB flash drive, the fs.zip file, and the .img file. The MD5 checksum for fs.zip is 1bb452e77b7390e00bdd7fdcc7cbc793 The MD5 checksum for gg-767-4.img is 3f281dda352d32320879728377b32476

Now, follow the steps below to complete your installation:

  1. Turn off your XO and connect your USB flash drive to it.
  2. Make sure your XO is plugged in.
  3. Hold down all four gamepad keys (on the right side of the screen, above the power button). While still holding the four gamepad keys, push the power button to turn the XO on. Keep holding down the four gamepad keys until the message "Release the game key to continue" appears on the screen.
  4. Release the gamepad keys. If you see a grid of colored boxes on your screen, congratulations! Your XO is reflashing. It will take about 10 minutes and your XO will automatically reboot when it is done. Your XO may reboot twice, playing the little XO tune.
  5. After your XO reboots, the last step is to update to the newest versions of Activities. When the XO boots you will see a bar toward the top of the screen that says "Software Update" and the options being "Cancel", "Later" and "Check now". Before you choose "Check now" to update the activities, you must reconnect your XO to the internet. You may see the sign-in box appear in home view. If it does, and it lists your router, you can do it from there. If it doesn't appear or offers the wrong connection, go to the Neighborhood view and connect from there. Then go back to Home view and then click "Check now" (it's ok to leave the home view because when you go back the options should still be there). First the XO will check for any updates and then it asks if you'd like to install them. Click "Install selected" to install the newest versions of your activities.

Congratulations, you've upgraded! Now, you should be ready to go. Have fun!

(If you chose "Later" on the software update, go to the Sugar Control Panel and select the "Software update" when you are ready to install the updates)

Resolved bugs in this release

Many bugs were closed in this release. A few important ones include:
<trac>5156</trac> Browse can view Google calendar.

<trac>5613</trac> The XO name can now accept any characters. This is important for languages which do not use the ASCII characters.

<trac>6014</trac> Activities try to save their data when the XO is shut down while an activity is open. This is better but not complete. Users should close their activities before shutting down the XO.

<trac>7480</trac> You can reset your network history in the Network control panel in case you need to remove old configurations. However, you will need to re-enter all AP passwords after doing this.

For a list of all closed bugs in this release click here.

Notable open bugs in this release

For the best experience and maximum reliability with the XO we recommend the following best practices:

For all XOs

  • If you open too many activities (generally more than 3) at once you may experience slow response. To close activities, use the frame button (upper right), hover over the open activities, and click on close.
  • In general, you do not need to double click on anything in the XO interface. It is designed for a single click. For example, double clicking to launch an activity will cause the XO to launch two instances of the activity which may cause one to fail.
  • Drag and drop has limited support in this release. It may in work in some cases but it does not work consistently everywhere.
  • Power save mode is still in development. In this release it is turned off by default in the control panel. If you use it and experience problems, please turn it off.
  • If the XO stops collaborating or stops responding, you can reboot it from the home screen (hover over the XO in the center) or hold down the power button for more than 6 seconds.
  • Ensure that you have unmounted a USB stick before removing it. Go to the Journal, hover over the USB stick icon and click on 'unmount'. Another method to remove a USB stick and avoid corruption is to power down the laptop before removing the USB stick..

For XOs used in school with many XOs present

  • Reliable collaboration using the Write activity over mesh or access point networks may not exceed two hours. If there are a lot of XOs or a lot of wireless traffic (e.g. many XOs or many access points) then Write may shut down during collaboration. In this case you may be able to reconnect Write to the collaboration in the Neighborhood view.
  • When collaborating over a Mesh (i.e. XO to XO collaboration with no access point or school server) you should limit the number of XOs on any channel to 10. There are three Mesh channels available (1,6 and 11) and each should have a maximum of 10 XOs. More XOs in a channel may cause instability in the collaboration.


  • Please see the Deployment Support pages for information on collaboration and connectivity in schools or areas that are densely populated with XOs.

Click here for a more detailed list of open bugs


  For Developers

API Changes

API changes documents Sugar and system API changes since release 8.1.x.

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