next »

[teapot]

I think I figured out why synaptic wouldn't install.  It wasn't an interupted wifi connection.  Either during my initial mucking around in aptitude or during the synaptic installation, a .deb that I think manages the apt repositories started to update.   It's called python-software-properties 0.63ubuntu1, and the installation hangs right there.  When I try to uninstall synaptic, the uninstall also hangs on this.  I tried punting (I'm way over my head here) and used a web-browser to download the python-software-properties_0.63ubuntu1_all.deb and tried manually installing it using dpkg -i, but again it just hangs.  I don't think I can install any packages without resolving this.  Am I  back to square 1 (wipe card, start over)?

That package contains all files in /usr/share/pysharedl/softwareproperties/ directory and /usr/share/pyshared-data/python-software-properties file. dpkg should be able to remove this package without breaking aptitude, however if it will cause any problems while uninstalling, you should be able to copy those files from another box with Hardy installed, then reinstall the package using the latest version.

[JoeMac]

I guess it's time to trying installing Hardy through VMWare on my other computer

[StewieGriffin]

Great job, teapot!

This build of Hardy fully solves all the issues I was having with the previous version of Gusty on my OLPC.  I now have a fully updated final Hardy working and I am very happy!  It was very easy to format my sd card on my Hardy PC first, then move over to my OLPC to copy the security and lib files.

[StewieGriffin]

Here is some wallpaper I made for my Hardy OLPC box...

http://www.xfce-look.org/content/show.php/Majorca?content=80033

[JoeMac]

teapot,

I tried copying the files over, but no joy.  I started over from scratch and just finished up a few minutes ago.  One thing that worked well for me at the end was to update/upgrade from the command line:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude upgrade
It just seemed to work better for me than launching into aptitude.  I noticed that apt upgraded and I think that seemed to do the trick for when I needed to get synaptic installed.  Everything works now, and I always learn something new with each installation.  This time I learned how to make a swap partition in fdisk (hex 82) and use mkswap (baby steps...).  Thanks for getting me going on Hardy!

[teapot]

This time I learned how to make a swap partition in fdisk (hex 82) and use mkswap (baby steps...).  Thanks for getting me going on Hardy!

Speaking of swap, the scripts in this archive skip swap activation on boot even if it is enabled in fstab, in an attempt to reduce the amount of I/O on SD card. You can either manually enable it when you need it by running sudo swapon -a (and keep the box swapless most of the time) or uncomment that section in /etc/init.d/mountall.sh (or just copy that file from regular Hardy install).

[JoeMac]

I have an fstab modified for that already.  I just didn't switch to it because I wanted to make sure everything worked first before change olpc.fth and fstab.  I figured I might as well learn how to make and initialize the swap partition from the command line. 

I also apparently spoke far too soon about getting Hardy working on the XO.  Everything seemed fine until I used Synaptic to install a couple of the Xubuntu packages to try out.  Now the system will not reboot .  I get the following right near the beginning of the boot:
OSError:  [Errno 20] Not a directory
and then the boot just hangs, not even a spit out to a command line.  I really liked some of the changes in Hardy, but the distribution and it's associated packages seem to be far, far more fragile on the XO than Gutsy and it's packages had been.  I'm now going to try a third round of starting over from scratch on Hardy, but I'm also really close to the point of slipping my earlier Gutsy install back into the SD card slot and just waiting for Hardy and its associated packages to get the bugs worked out.  I'm just too new to Linux to understand much more than 25% of what I'm doing, and if installation of a couple of cannonical packages on the XO hoses the entire operating system, then it probably isn't a good way to go for me until things get sorted out by others far more capable than myself.

[teapot]

I also apparently spoke far too soon about getting Hardy working on the XO.  Everything seemed fine until I used Synaptic to install a couple of the Xubuntu packages to try out.  Now the system will not reboot .  I get the following right near the beginning of the boot:
OSError:  [Errno 20] Not a directory
and then the boot just hangs, not even a spit out to a command line.

This is a python message, so I guess, it's from a script running from a ramdisk when it tries to start init from the root filesystem. Have you by any chance installed "upstart" package? It's a different version of init that comes with Ubuntu. To keep things compatible with scripts in unmodified OLPC ramdisk image I had to replace it with the "normal" SysV init (that Ubuntu also has packaged and supported but replaced with Upstart in original install).

[JoeMac]

I'm not sure, it's possible that the 2 or 3 packages I installed may have had that as a dependency.  Without being able to boot the card, it's hard to tell.  I will be much more careful to check package dependencies, though.  The nature of the error message and the earlier problems that I had installing Synaptic got me suspicious about the SDHC card, especially since so many of us on the forum (myself included) have had various problems with the cards in the past.  I ran a read test and a nondestructive read-write test (using badblocks in terminal on my new Hardy virtual machine) on the partition that I had formated to EXT3.  The partition passed the read test, but it failed the read-write with 20 bad blocks all grouped together right in the middle of the partition.  I think this might have been the source of the earlier problems that I had, too.  Fortunately, I bought it from Newegg about a week ago, so getting an RMA was a snap.  No more 16GB  Class 6 Transcend SDHC cards for me.  It seemed thin and flimsy and didn't fit my USB card reader as tight as the Kingston cards I had been buying.  I never expected bad blocks nearly right out of the box.  I'm ordering a new SDHC tonight, and I'm running a read-write test on it as soon comes in.  Then I'll start over with Hardy.  At least I should be good at it now that I've had some practice

For anyone else suspecting a bad SD card, here is how to run a test for bad blocks:

First, make sure the partition is unmounted or you will risk corrupting the filesystem:

sudo umount /dev/mmcblk0p1

Then, run the read-write test (for more info, look here: http://ubuntumagnet.com/2008/01/checking-disks-errors-using-badblocks-command):

sudo badblocks -n -s -v -c 10240 /dev/mmcblk0p1

Because it is reading and writing back to the card over the entire partition, it takes a long time to run to completion.  I ran it in a VMWare virtual machine and watched an entire movie while it checked through the 14.5GB partition.  If there are bad blocks, it reports back their location as it finds them during the test. 

Wow, this is way off topic for this thread...sorry.

[teapot]

Back to the topic, here are my attempts to eradicate color orange from Ubuntu desktop by replacing everything orange with green:
http://mars.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/software/themes/

(as root extract icon theme in /usr/share/icons ,  then run gtk-update-icon-cache Human-Green , extract the gtk theme in /usr/share/themes , set "Ubuntu-Green" and "Human-Green" themes in Settings -> Settings Manager -> User Interface). It helps to have "tango-icon-theme" , "tango-icon-theme-common" and "tango-icon-theme-extras" installed.

[StewieGriffin]

If you are having trouble with Firefox 3, Beta 5 locking for a few minutes at a time and causing massive CPU or I/O problems, here is the known fix...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/215728/comments/63

...this will be fixed in RC1.

[teapot]

I made another version of the Ubuntu Hardy installation tarball.

Torrent is at http://mars.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/torrents/OLPCFiles-hardy-20080506.tar.bz2.torrent . The installation procedure is the same as for prerelease.

All non-Ubuntu or modified files used for building this tarball are now in http://mars.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/software/olpc/olpc-ubuntu-hardy-update-files-20080506.tar.gz . To build a tarball from scratch, create a directory containing initial Ubuntu Hardy configuration with debootstrap, copy new-files and installer-script there, then run chroot that-directory /installer-script . This should be only useful for developers -- installer script has no error handling, may leave processes running after installation is complete (though I tried to prevent it), and may cause conflicts with the services running on the rest of the system. It may be useful for someone who wants to check what exactly is modified, apply his changes to installed system, or port it to other environments.

The changes from the prerelease version are:

1. Packages are updated to the current versions (as of 05/06/2008).

2. olpc.fth now correctly switches to booting from onboard flash when keypad "O" is pressed (beware of the SD corruption bug present in current builds).

3. swap is enabled on boot if configured in fstab (it was disabled in prerelease version because I believed that no one uses it on XO).

4. Ubuntu kernel/ramdisk/module files are included, to prevent problems with package updates.

5. Access to backlight is now set using a group, so user's startup scripts no longer run sudo.

6. All keys are enabled, and screen rotation works (using a script from http://cyli.livejournal.com/38103.html, modified to be compatible with "original" OLPC key mapping).

7. Green theme (one I have posted, modified to make scrollbars wider, and with XO-screen-friendly font set as a part of the theme) is now included, set as global default, and used for login screen.

8. Slightly prettier gdm login screen.

9. "olpc" user now has uid/gid 500, to match the original laptop user (home directory on flash is visible as /media/olpcmtd0/home/olpc )

10. Users created with "adduser" get the same desktop configuration as the initial "olpc" user, however still need to be added to groups "audio", "video" and "plugdev" to get access to devices, and to group "sudo" to be able to use sudo.

It still uses kernel that should be copied from the original OLPC build, and power management is still disabled until the problem with SD cards will be fixed. As long as the system is booted from SD card, it should be safe regardless of the kernel version used.

[trailboss]

Thanks for the great work Teapot. Just wondering if I made an error in my installation with your second distribution. The first distro had wireless up and running on boot. I installed the second distro for the rotate button features (which I was about to tackle myself). What happened to wireless? Must be my "bad" (I am a complete linux nOOb, but I am learning), or did you leave wireless out?

[teapot]

Thanks for the great work Teapot. Just wondering if I made an error in my installation with your second distribution. The first distro had wireless up and running on boot. I installed the second distro for the rotate button features (which I was about to tackle myself). What happened to wireless? Must be my "bad" (I am a complete linux nOOb, but I am learning), or did you leave wireless out?

Wireless support is the same as in prerelease -- it depends on firmware file in /lib/firmware that should be copied from the original filesystem in the installation process. If you have it running without firmware file, copy the firmware with sudo cp /media/olpcmtd0/versions/running/lib/firmware/usb8388.bin /lib/firmware/ and reboot the laptop.

[JoeMac]

Great job teapot, and thanks for sharing this with us.  My new SDHC, hopefully a working one without bad blocks on it, should be here on Thursday.  I'll start putting your latest-greatest Hardy install on it Friday night right after I finish testing the card.  Thanks especially for the swap and the screen rotate

Advanced search