School server

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The School Server is one of the products of the OLPC project, designed to complement the XO. It is a Linux-based OS (a Fedora-based distribution) designed to be installed on generic low-end servers. We outline hardware recommendations and in the future, we may offer a hardware platform specially designed for the role.

When we deploy one laptop per child, we must also provide additional infrastructure extending the capabilities of the laptops. While the laptops are self-sufficient for many learning activities, other activities and services depend on the School Server providing connectivity, shared resources and services. Services, tools and activities running on the School Server allow asynchronous interaction, can use larger storage capacity, and take advantage of the processing power of the XS.

Outside of collaboration activities, the School Server provides other services to the laptops -- those services are transparent, seamless and automagic. Read more about the high level definition of the School Server.

Roadmap

The school server is in heavy development at the moment (March/April 2008) - following

• XS Roadmap (see also XS Changelog)
• XS Core and Contrib
• XS DevKit

Technical notes

• XS Directory Layout for packagers

Meetings

• Tuesday March 25th 11 AM US EST - Agenda - Minutes - IRC Log

Design Documents

The high-level design of the School server is described here - note that some may be slightly outdated:

• Scenario taxonomy School Server and XO laptop scenario taxonomy
• The Server Specification introduces the School Server and its functions
• School Service Names

Blueprints

• Datastore Simple Backup and Restore
• OTP Root Passwords
• Remote management

XS Documentation

• XS Server Software describes the software system being built for release, and has instructions for downloading and installing the software
• Server Services described the services supported by the School Server
• XS_Recommended_Hardware describes the hardware for the School Server
• XS_Server_Hardware describes future plans of OLPC-provided server hardware.
• XS Installing Software has instructions for installing the latest School Server images
• XS Configuration Management has aids to configuring the software for your school
• XS Building Software
• XS Software Repositories
• School Identity Manager
• XS LiveCD
• XS Software Testing
• XS Backup and Disaster Recovery

Slightly Outdated

• Trial1 Server Software describes the proposed first revision of the server software
• Short Term Server Questions is a discussion of issues surrounding the immediate deployment of school servers
• Server Discussion describes services and enhancements possibly supported by the School Server
• XS Server P2P Cache

See also

• IRC - #schoolserver on irc.oftc.net
• Using SSH Keys
• Active Antenna
• Ejabberd Configuration
• School server network debugging is helpful. Troubleshooting School Servers is so incomplete as to be useless.
• How to debug networking in a crowded environment
• Collaboration Network Testbed
• School server/School district networks
• Bitfrost Security and Identity model
• Thin client
• http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/