Puppylinux for the OLPC laptops: XOpup

[Varmint]

mavrothal wrote, in part:

"I have XOpup in an SDcard that is permanently in my XO's SDcard slot."


My reply:
You have an SD card slot? Can't do that here on my model 1.0 OLPC, so yours is obviously a later model.

As to puppy not being able to handle the raw nand drive, I don't see why it should be a problem. It is, as far as I'm aware, just an SSD drive of some sort. I have an Asus Eee 701SD that I've put multiple puppies, backtrack, ubuntu, slackware, and pcbsd on. So I guess my question now is:

Is something different about the XO's on-board nand drive, or is it just invisible from puppy due to the on-board system bios?

As always, thanks to everyone for their time and expertise!

[mavrothal]

You have an SD card slot? Can't do that here on my model 1.0 OLPC, so yours is obviously a later model.

ALL XOs from early pre-production models have an SDcard slot.
Just turn the screen and look under the power button

Is something different about the XO's on-board nand drive, or is it just invisible from puppy due to the on-board system bios?

XO-1 has a raw NAND without any controller (as SDcards SSDs and USBs have). It needs to be handles by a special file system as jffs2 or Ubifs.

[Varmint]

mavrothal wrote, in part:
"Just turn the screen and look under the power button"


My reply:
Holy cow, mavrothal....that was a genuine shocker, and the one place I never thought of looking for it. Thank you....I am now a very happy old fart. The possibilities once again abound. Now I need to get another sd card just for this.

[mavrothal]

Here are some more recent puppies that are modified for the XO laptops

Racy5.2.2_XO.tar.gz (md5sum: 828d129d623b8dab5f08d5b5c477fe9b)

racy-5.3_XO.tar.gz (md5sum: dfceeeed60c9b180d3a8f2c7a6d05b59)

slacko-5.3.3_XO.tar.gz (md5sum: 85f866cadc97f6934ad0ac10d81fc96e)

Install as the original XOpup.

More info on these pups here and here (as long as this site is still up... )

[Varmint]

Downloaded the Slacko version. I'll try it out later. I'm sure others will greatly appreciate your efforts, as well as sharing these links to other versions.
Thanks again!

[jenpc]

mavrothal - Thanks for creating and posting those recent puppies!

I am new to Puppy and want to do a full install on my OLPC XO-1. (It's my only laptop and I need to make it as functional as possible for travel and when it's too hot to use a desktop!)

I made sure my XO is "security disabled", downloaded slacko-5.3.3_XO.tar.gz, confirmed MD5, extracted to a small thumb drive, and XO boots beautifully with it. Connect to Internet with Frisbee, no problem. (However, it gets to RAM is low and even RAM is critical very quickly. With a single browser opened to laptop.org, and no other applications running, happened within a minute. Using a 1G USB drive that has 89% space free after extracting puppy to it.)

I want to do a full install - if not of slacko then whatever folks recommend. (Hope to use for e-mail (Sylpheed currently), skype (audio), pidgin or similar for IM, read PDFs, play video with audio (right now the goal is a short QuickTime (*.mov), not sure whether that's realistic), light word processing, browse web, etc.)

Install as the original XOpup.

Not exactly sure what that refers to unless it's just how to run puppy from the USB. I've read about different methods including a script and the Universal Installer and thought I'd try the Universal Installer. If I click on the "Install" button on the desktop, and then in the box that opens click on the button to run the Universal Installer, that box disappears and nothing happens. No other program is (visibly) launched. As an experiment I've also tried the button for the BootFlash USB installer (which has the same icon as the Universal Installer) and that program doesn't launch, either. The other 3 buttons (for web page, package manager, and SFS downloader) do work.

Questions:

• * RAM shouldn't get to critical so quickly with a full install, right? A full install would be preferred over puppy on USB drive or SD card in this case, right?

• * Is this the right method for a full install? If so, what steps am I missing or is there a problem with launching the universal installer? (I'd check to see whether it's installed but haven't found info on the package name / location yet.)

• * Is slacko an appropriate version for my purposes? (I know I need to install the software I want, and if necessary could use a version that has minimal/no applications except the package manager to do the installs.)

I plan to download racy-5.3 and try it next to compare them and see whether the Universal Installer will launch with it, but would welcome help especially if I'm approaching this wrong!

Update: Tried racy-5.3 and had the same issues as with slacko. (Installer not launching, running out of RAM quickly.)

[mavrothal]

(However, it gets to RAM is low and even RAM is critical very quickly. With a single browser opened to laptop.org, and no other applications running, happened within a minute. Using a 1G USB drive that has 89% space free after extracting puppy to it.)

I want to do a full install

<snip>

If I click on the "Install" button on the desktop, and then in the box that opens click on the button to run the Universal Installer, that box disappears and nothing happens. No other program is (visibly) launched. As an experiment I've also tried the button for the BootFlash USB installer (which has the same icon as the Universal Installer) and that program doesn't launch, either. The other 3 buttons (for web page, package manager, and SFS downloader) do work.

The Puppy installer is inactivated in all XO-puppy versions because it does not work.
Actually Slacko_XO runs on XO-1 with the "nocopy" option, so RAM wise consumes as much RAM as a full install. Should be considerably better than Racy too.
Full install is not going to help any further. 256MB RAM is just too little for modern browsers...
(Some browsers -Opera I think- allow you to adjust how much of the cache will keep in RAM. Decreasing it to 2-4MB alleviates some of the pressure)

Click "mkswap" when the warning about RAM pressure comes up and prompt you for swap/kill apps. If you have 500MB free space on your boot device, will take a minute or so to make a 256MB swap file and after that will be OK (even with google chrome and 5-6 tabs open or running OpenOffice)

[jenpc]

The Puppy installer is inactivated in all XO-puppy versions because it does not work.

Ah! Thanks for sparing me much more aggravation in trying to do that, then!

I bought an SD card over the weekend and am running slacko from that now.

Click "mkswap" when the warning about RAM pressure comes up and prompt you for swap/kill apps.

Excellent! No problems with RAM since I did that.

Thanks very much for your reply and answers! I'm still struggling to get things working the way I'd like, but at least now I can make some progress.

[mavrothal]

I'm still struggling to get things working the way I'd like, but at least now I can make some progress.

Looking at your "wish list" above, I would think that Skype may be a problem (poor audio quality). Video works too but puts a very big strain on the machine.
Video playback quality depends a lot on the encoding and the bit rate, though in general is ok.
Browsing-wise, Flash is very poor (the geode CPU is too underpowered for that) but everything else is fine.
Keep in mind that although capable of printing, this service is inactivated in XO builds. Just need to restart it from the boot manager if you need to print (and likely install the driver for your printer).

[jenpc]

Looking at your "wish list" above, I would think that Skype may be a problem (poor audio quality).

Yes, I discovered the Skype audio quality issue.

Video playback quality depends a lot on the encoding and the bit rate, though in general is ok.

I haven't gotten MPlayer to work yet; hangs when I try to open the .mov file. Maybe I'll try VLC next.

One item I haven't found the answer to yet is: How do I increase swap (i.e. before I'm prompted that there's an issue)?

Thanks for the tip about printing!

[mavrothal]

I haven't gotten MPlayer to work yet; hangs when I try to open the .mov file

You may want to take this over to the Slacko thread

One item I haven't found the answer to yet is: How do I increase swap (i.e. before I'm prompted that there's an issue)?

To make a swap file before the warning comes up run "mkswap-file.sh" in the terminal.
To make a swap file bigger than 256MB open /usr/sbin/mkswap-file.sh with a text editor and change the "count=265" in line 30 to the size you want, save and run the script.
If you already have a swap file make sure you first stop swap (in terminal: "swapoff -a") and delete the previous /mnt/home/pupswap.swp file before you run the script.

[jenpc]

Excellent! Thanks for those swap instructions, mavrothal.

[mavrothal]

Just build the latest Puppy Precise 5.2.71 for the XO-1 and XO-1.5 using the Pox_git tools.
It has the olpc-latest 3.3.8 kernel and my limited testing shows that works suprising well
The only strange bug is that you get network after the second reboot ie after you make a save file, reboot to update the layered file system and reboot again. Now you can use networkwizard to connect to your wifi network.

As usually, download the Precise-5.2.71_XO.tar.gz file. (ms5sum: 76f126b2db02bac042500543fe1f42bb)
Extract it at the root of a USB/SDcard and boot your unlocked XO.

[eph.zero]

Thanks, Mavrothal. Trying it out.

[mavrothal]

Fresh of the press here is Puppy Precise 5.4 for the XO-1 and XO-1.5

The size has gone up considerably but is still pretty spiffy even on the XO-1.
Is using the more reliable 2.6-olpc kernel but patched to recognize xz compressed SFSs, so the official devx_precise_5.4.sfs (and other recent SFSs) can be loaded on the fly.
Is build with Pox_git tools from the official precise-5.4.iso and few extra pets. All the changes over the original puppy_precice_5.4 can be found in /usr/local/share/build.log.tgz

To install, download Precise_5.4_XO.tar.gz (md5sum: 0b6599c889d2100dab8847b9ef3f92c6), expand it at the root of a USB stick or SDcard and boot your unlocked XO.

My limited testing shows it is OK and based on the testing of my (private) previous Precise builds, I would not expect many issues.
Power management, game keys, sound, camera, screen rotation, etc, work in the standard XO-fashion. Puppy works as expected too
Seamonkey takes some time to load and this is also true for the PyppyPackageManager. Video/audio playback is also fine.

Small glitches: Audio recording on the XO-1.5 needs you to run the Alsa soundwizard first (sometimes twice!) and then adjust mic levels.
If you use Frisbee for wifi connection you might need to reset the DHCP server before it finds the wifi networks the first time you use it.

Note: If you want to compile any drivers for Precise_XO you will need the kernel headers. Find them here (md5sum: debd24a94252e3e363d99dd0567c3657 )

BugFix A bug in woof prevents saving user data to the "entire partition". It is now fixed by BK. The attached shutdown_fix.pet implements this fix and allows proper saving into the entire USB or SDcard partition in puppy_precise_5.4

Update Precise_5.4.1.1_XO is now available

[mavrothal]

Some time ago I made a display modification pet for XOpup that will invert the colors of the display or toggle between color and B&W mode. Some people find it easier for reading.
So here is a pet that will install with the other available XO-specific puppy versions including the above Precise_5.4_XO
The picture shows the resulting options (captured with a real camera, since the screen capture apps do not "see" these changes)


NOTE: Though I have not tested it, the color inversion should work in "normal" computers running puppy. Is mapped on the F13 key. Though you may need to remove/modify the /root/.Xmodmap file, installed/modified by this pet.

[mavrothal]

Almost all puppies including Precise, have Chromium in their repo but is i686 and may have trouble running in XO-1.
Google-chrome on the other hand is i368 and runs fine.
However, it needs a couple of simple changes. The attached pet does that.
So, download and install google-chrome from google BUT DO NOT RUN it yet. Then install the attached google_chrome_fix-1.pet and you are good to go.

Tested in precise but should work in all puppies, XO or not.

[WhyNot?]

Mavrothal, thanks for posting this info. and the .Pet, I've been running XOpup2.2 for a while now and appreciate that it's not responsive with Chromium.

Don't want to run anything media intensive, just interested in connecting with wifi using PogoPlug and GoFlex hardware for streaming.

Both of them by design recognize simple Chrome scripting, but not under "Chromium" on the XO1, doesn't support flash/streaming music on these platforms.

But, I've got an old Xubuntu Intrepid image which DOES work supporting Chrome/Flash on the XO1 (image came with chrome/flash installed) so I've confirmed that the XO1.5 isn't necessary in support of streaming.

I've been streaming simple music media, Ogg and MP3s, specifically. Essentially no hitches, but sometimes have to allow 10 or 15 seconds for the "Buffer" to load on the XO1. Playback is reliable and flawless once the buffer loading is complete.

Also, I CAN connect to them (No Issues!) with an XO1.5 running the same XOpup2.2. software applications under an improved hardware environment.

Thanks for being as supportive as we "End Users" have appreciated on the OLPC support site!

[mavrothal]

Mavrothal, thanks for posting this info. and the .Pet, I've been running XOpup2.2 for a while now and appreciate that it's not responsive with Chromium.

The available XOpup chromium browser is really old (v5 I believe).
Flash was always a pain on the XO-1...

BTW, check your other posts for replies

[WhyNot?]

Did check my other posted messages, thanks for the replies.

By the way, the SD cards I'm using (4 of them) are identical, same manufacturer, same format. Haven't had any issues transferring images from on to the other, but agree that could otherwise be a concern.

But the older XO1 image (Xubuntu from TeaPot) Intrepid with pre-installed Flash/Chrome does stream without software issues, at least regarding simple wifi connected OGG and MP3s.

I use your XOPupp2.2 to produce the same results on the XO1.5, haven't switched from Chromium yet but intend to.

Decided to put my XO1 to use as a streaming device, and it recovers the connection just fine after suspend, have done that across a couple of weeks.

Apparently the manufacturers and Coders had their "Stuff" together, well done!

UPDATE:

Interested in streaming with the XO1 OLPC? XOPuppy 2.2 works just fine!

Turns out Google-Chrome on my XO1 and XO1.5 machines works well with both PogoPlug and GoFlex (Seagate Wifi NAS) hardware. I'm only streaming audio (Oggs, MP3s) and can't recommend video files, suggest using other devices for that (IE Tablet with installed App )

For the GoFlex wifi NAS, Pause/Suspend/Resume is flawless with either XO using XOPupp2.2, the XO1 just takes a little while longer to acquire the wifi connection.

When I power up I can pick up where I left off, no issues. Audio media will reconnect and resume at the same point I "Paused" it before shutting the XO down to "Suspend" status. NICE

Under these same conditions, my PogoPlug drops the connection every time, so I have to find the root directory and return to whatever music directory I'm inclined to use, have to begin/start playing whatever music file I'd like to play.

So the PogoPlug server (after my Suspend/Resume cycle) DOES recognize that I'm the same user, doesn't require Log-In but won't pick up my music media where I paused it before Suspend.

Oh well, the PogoPlug works just fine within any single play session, right up until I pause/suspend media play. The issue may well be the net service, think it may generate a new proxy address each time I reconnect, which would confuse the PogoPlug server.