OLPC Firmware q3a65

NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... Please leave suggestions on the talk page.

• add support for sparse .zd files, decreasing fs-update time,
• fix fs-update failure to erase whole disk,
• revised help display,

The fix for failure to erase whole disk exposed a problem with some cards. We now split the erase into 16 segments, and check for completion of the erase prevented erase interruption, resulting in these cards being properly erased.

The user experience changes to fs-update are:

• there is a delay while erasure occurs (previously erasure was covering 1/256th of the card so the delay was not obvious),

• during the delay a ~ (tilde) is displayed on the status line, and the storage LED blinks 8 times,

The length of the delay depends on the type of card, and how much work the card has to do. Workload depends on the size of the image to be installed, and the size of the image already on the card. In our tests it is no more than about 15 seconds (Toshiba SD, SanDisk microSD 4GB 2009), and no less than about 33ms (SanDisk 4GB 2010).