Fedora Edu Spin

Day 32: Summer Holidays

Karl L OLPC, SUGAR , , , , ,

Well the time spent working on the project so far has flown by, and as previously organised I will now be taking some holiday leave until mid August, meaning I will probably be back working on the project some time after 2009.08.17.

This doesn’t mean the ball stops rolling however, and it allows me to hand the joint reigns over to Andy who will be living in Lincoln again and able continue the project research.

The last week has allowed me to start updating the project wiki which I believe will become the focus of the projects outcome.

I think that with the amount of work already completed on Sugar, including Sugar on a Stick, and with help from the Fedora Edu Spin, we will be able to push forward into being able to produce a bootable pen drive image which will allow users to install and develop sugar activities.

This is actually already possible; however some prior knowledge is needed in order to set up with the software, development files and necessary information to create activities. (Such as getting a hold of, updating and building Sugar Jhbuild, the development version of Sugar, etc.)

The best route that this UROS project could now direct its attention, at least in my opinion; would be to provide the above knowledge in the form of tutorials and wiki information for entry level access users.
By that I mean users who know nothing about OLPC or Sugar, but want to learn and subsequently create activities, or in any case just the latter part of creating activities without a platform to work from.

A best case scenario as Iv discussed with James would be to have some static format of the wiki in a final stage snapshot already on the image provided, meaning users without an internet connection could still make use of the materials provided.

Those with a connection could then access the latest version online, and contribute towards the wiki with any problems or updates they encounter.

This is Karl signing off, thanks!

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Day 22: Progress

Karl L OLPC, SUGAR , , , , ,

Things feel like they have been moving a little more over the past week, and with Andy’s return to the project from his camp away, we should hopefully be able to produce some useful work!

Following on from where I left you, aside from our results celebrations, last week Day 18 (2009.07.08) Day 19 (2009.07.09) and Day 20 (2009.07.10) continued with getting Sugar JHbuild to work, and after some discussions with the developers, I finally found myself pulling, updating and building a version of the latest Sugar JHbuild successfully onto the laptop.

This then allowed me to correctly get the sugar emulator working from the build, meaning I should now be able to mess around with the build code for Sugar, and hopefully learn how to introduce my own activities. It is possible to do very useful things with the emulator, such as run multiple profile instances in order to test XO collaboration etc.

During the build I had found myself with more errors, which when I asked the developers, was able to be guided onto the correct course of action, along with asking me to actively contribute by raising a ticket over at Sugar Labs Development, in order to allow the developers to diagnose and fix the problem.

After further talks with Sebastian over what I can do to contribute, I soon found myself writing some basic tutorials for anyone else who might be new and come along attempting to get Sugar JH build working.
These were uploaded to the Education Spin Wiki which were made in order to allow access to the Education Spin, allowing members to build their own version.

The Education Spin Wiki can be found here, along with the Getting Started Page with some tutorials here. The idea for the tutorials is to allow anyone who might be new to Linux, OLPC or Open Source projects in general to get involved as easily as possible by stepping them through the start up processes required to for example, get Sugar JH build working.

This also prompted me to create accounts with Fedora and Sugar Labs Git in order to allow me to contribute to the Wiki and hopefully Sugar Project. Along with this I managed to finally create my own SSH Key to develop with.

Day 21 (2009.07.13) and Day 22 (2009.07.14) saw Andy return to the project, and allowed for Cornelia, Andy and I to have an informal meet on how the project is going and where we would like to head.

With the date of the Nottingham Unconference looming and its day Programme released, we also planned out what materials we would need, and so after registering that we would attended, agreed that we would be bringing a handout along with demonstration of the Codex project, in order to hype interest about OLPC and the Sugar project to other Conference attendees.
We plan to update the Codex Wiki created last year, using it as a portal for those who want to follow on from our leaflet.

Finally we also got a link to the missing puzzle pieces of last years Git Codex Sample along with Tutorial Content, meaning we can hopefully adapt some content that was created last year, carrying on the cycle. – Over and out!

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Day 12: Another Day at the Office

Karl L OLPC, SUGAR , , , , , , , ,

I thought id take a snapshot of our mock “Office” today, just to prove to the non believers that we really do have our own XO to play with (two infact!), and an incline into how I’m working (Multitasking) in the very humid labs on these lovely British summer days!

Left to right you can see; The newly released SoaS Strawberry running off a pen drive, the laptop donated to our cause running Feodra 11, our very own XO-Laptop, and lastly a newly created Feodra Spin running off a pen drive.

Day 10 (2009.06.26) ended the week having to help Andy move out of his house and a very rushed jog down to the train station, seconds before it was leaving, I’m also now the proud owner of a guitar and Bonsai Tree to look after for the next couple of weeks!

Day 11 (2009.06.29) started the week off with the help of Sebastian in teaching me how to use kickstart files in order to create a custom Fedora spin ISO, in all honesty it was more me following instructions, but we all have to start somewhere.
Once it was done (the poor little laptop takes a while) I was easily able to get it running on a pen drive using the fedora live USB creator and soon found myself sitting infront of the first snap shot of the Fedora Edu Spin (see picture above), fun stuff!

I also spent some time reading more of the many materials online, and in particular finding out some online resources for sugar Activity development; The suggestion is to build activities in python first on a stand alone format and then import them into Sugar later on, allowing users to test their activities more robustly.
The two main wiki’s OLPC and Sugar Labs websites have a wealth of knowledge that goes very deep, its easy to get lost in all the information.

Today found me having trouble still with getting the Sugar-Jhbuild to work on the machines in the Lab, the firewall at the Uni seems to have blocked the ports, and although I can clone the Git repository using an HTTP connection, subsequent commands wont work as they still use the GIT connection.

After some further discussions in IRC I was linked on how to use the Git protocol though an HTTP connect proxy, but unfortunately we aren’t running from a proxy in the labs. The next idea was to change the GIT Config as suggested here using the “insteadOf“ command.

I must say that I am very thankful for the patience that everyone on IRC gives me in trying to learn my way through this, however my inexperience with Unix was starting to show, and a very helpful developer pointed me to some useful materials that I can use to start learning Unix from.

I did mention before I started that I wasn’t an experience Linux user, however this is starting to get the better of me in doing basic things on the linux terminal, and the first step is admitting you have a problem! (AA anyone?)

The 6 step program I was recommended included the following:

  1. For humor read “The Jargon File”, “The Unix Haters Handbook” and “The Bastard Operator from hell”.
  2. Skim the Bash Users Guide.
  3. Get a sugerlabs shell account, run “Screen”.
  4. Read about Unix Pipes.
  5. Learn Unix Shell Keyboard Shortcuts.
  6. Read about “Man Bash”.

I did start to think last week that should probably spend some time learning my way around Linux better, and as explained by one of the developers  “ill probably spend most of my time trying not be confused, but eventually ill learn the amazing power bash has to offer”, so included with the python learning ill be spending tomorrow on some new Unix material.

When I do eventually get the Sugar-JHbuild working ill post up some more details!

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