School server
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.
Usage
See the quick guide to setting up and configuring a school server.
More details are available in the following sections:
- XS Recommended Hardware describes the hardware for the School Server
- XS Installing Software has instructions for installing the latest School Server images
- Read the XS Release Notes
- XS Configuration Management has aids to configuring the software for your school
You should join the server-devel mailing list, and can search its archives. There is also a dedicated IRC channel: #schoolserver on irc.oftc.net.
Development
Roadmap
The school server is in heavy development at the moment (2008) - following
- XS Roadmap (see also XS Changelog)
- Get Involved - join the mailing list and get started with one of these easy tasks. We also have some advanced tasks around Fedora packaging or configuration.
- XS Core and Contrib
- XS DevKit
Technical notes
- XS-XO Interactions: how does the laptop talk to the server?
- XS Automount triggers
- XS Packaging
- XS Directory Layout for packagers
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The high-level design of the School server is described here - note that some may be slightly outdated: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
In development
Implemented
XS Documentation
- XS Release Notes
- 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 Building Software
- XS Software Repositories
- School Identity Manager
- XS LiveCD
- XS Software Testing
- XS Backup and Disaster Recovery
Key tools
- Ds-backup - backup infrastructure
- XS-rsync - the rsync publishing, used for XO OS updates.
- XS-tools - grabbag of useful utilities. The NOC team will also want this :-)
- XS_Automount_triggers - used by Xs-activation, Xs-activity-server, Xs-rsync and probably others.
- XS-activation - activation lease server.
- XS-activity-server - serves packages over http.
Meetings
- Thursday 7th August 10pm US EST - Agenda, Minutes and IRC log
- Tuesday March 25th 11 AM US EST - Agenda - Minutes - IRC Log
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
- server-devel mailing list archives at http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/
- 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