Using the XO laptop

These are my notes, but you might find these better!

Updating the build - e.g from 650 to 653

Using olpc-update


    su -l
    olpc-update -rv //build-number//
Use the tab key to get the xo to complete unambiguous commands or file names

Using a complete install


  1. With the laptop off, insert the USB drive containing the two files fs.zip and os653.img in its top-level directory (assuming you want build 653).
  2. Power up the laptop while holding down the four gamepad buttons (X, O, Square, and Check). Release the buttons when the screen says to do so.
  3. Watch while the screen shows the NAND being erased and rewritten, and the laptop reboots.

That's it. You should then be prompted for name and colors, with the laptop having about 70% free drive space.

If this doesn't work, erase the USB drive and download the files again. They could be corrupt. Y

RPM has five basic modes of operation (not counting package building): installing, uninstalling, upgrading, querying, and verifying. This section contains an overview of each mode. For complete details and options try rpm --help, or turn to the section called //Other RPM Resources// for more information on RPM.

RPM packages typically have file names like foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm, which includes the package name (foo), version (1.0), release (1), and architecture (i386). Installing a package is as simple as:
rpm -ivh foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm
foo
I have had to add --nodeps when trying to install a package that failed to work with yum

XFCE

startxfce4

Using external storage for programs

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1600.0
This has some ideas http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=7694&p=1 and some links to other ideas.

Getting Frame not to appear instructions

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ask_OLPC_a_Question_about_Software#How_to_disable_the_auto_Frame_appearance_when_mousing_into_hot_corners

Keyboard Shortcuts

Link to Keyboard Shortcuts

Rsync

From http://www.linux.com/feature/117236
Making local copies
Suppose you have an external USB or FireWire drive, and you want to copy data from your home directory to your external drive. A good way to do this would be to keep all your important data under a single top-level directory and then copy it to a backup directory on the external drive using a command like:
rsync -avh /home/usr/dir/ /media/disk/backup/

midnight commander

*
a more intuitive file manager

  • mc is a linux clone of the old Norton commander DOS program.
>
> Open the terminal activity and become root by typing: (-y answers "Yes" for you)
    su -l
    yum -y install mc
  • When the download and install is complete, exit root mode:
>
    exit

  • You can then run midnight commander. Do not run mc from root mode unless you are sure of what you are doing!
    mc

Getting online

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WPA_Manual_Setting#Option_4:_Manual_Script

For projecting on a Windows machine

Obtain UltraVNC – you will need the Viewer:
http://www.uvnc.com/index.html
You will also need the XO software: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/VNC_Launcher
There are two versions for corresponding OS on the XO
You could read more about the process under this title: Cloning a current Sugar session (using VNC) but essentially you run the VNC software on the XO then run the viewer on the PC, key
in the IP address that is shown on the XO at the top of the verbose text and bingo! The mouse on the PC
seems to do most things except make the frame appear by running into the corners.

boa (Web Server)

To install:
    su -l
    yum -y install boa

To run:
    cd /var/log
    mkdir boa
    /usr/sbin/boa

To find out what the IP is:
    ifconfig
Look next to eth0 for 192.168.whatever (for example).
The configuration file is in /etc/boa if, for instance you want to change where your content lives. The default is in /var/www/boa/html, which is where the web pages to be served need to be.

To access the files from another computer on the network simply enter the address http://192.168.whatever.

mplayer


Installed using the instructions at thepete.com .
Run using
Put your media files (avi, mp4, mov, mp3, etc) on an SD card or USB stick and in Terminal enter:
./mplayer -fs /media/SD/video.avi (This assumes your SD card's name is "SD".)
good thread at http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=863.0
and at http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2067.msg16182#msg16182

vlc


http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=685.msg5294;topicseen
May need to download key from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-fedora.html

openoffice

  • /usr/lib
     yum -y install openoffice.org-writer
     yum -y install openoffice.org-calc
     yum -y install openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-impress
or use the download and instructions at http://download.openoffice.org/common/instructions.html or better ones at http://documentation.openoffice.org/setup_guide2/2.x/en/SETUP_GUIDE.pdf

skype


firefox

  • /usr/lib
  • installing firefox requires that you remove its exclusion from the XO's repository list
    nano /etc/yum.repos.d/olpc-koji-ship2.repo
    yum install firefox
some good notes about the built in browser http://bilug.org/2008/01/15/xo-fixing-browser-flash-performance/

Firefox Plugins Page

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7

flash-plugin

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Adobe_Flash

    su -l
    wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/flash-plugin-9.0.48.0-release.i386.rpm
    rpm -i flash-plugin-9.0.48.0-release.i386.rpm
    exit

Java Plug-in

On Linux, Mozilla requires JRE 1.4.2 or later.
Mozilla 1.4 and later, and Mozilla Firefox, are compiled with gcc 3.x. A gcc 3.x compatible version of the Java plugin must be used. JRE 1.4.2 and later contain a compatible plugin.
If you installed the Java Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 9, this plugin is /usr/java/jre1.5.0_09/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so - and to install it for Mozilla (including Mozilla Firefox), do the following:
  • Open a terminal
  • Change to your Mozilla (or Mozilla Firefox) plugins directory (maybe /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.8/plugins)
  • Issue the following command: ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_09/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so ./libjavaplugin_oji.s
    • or ln -s /usr/java/jrel.6.0_03/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
Important!
Important!
If you install your JRE in a different way (self extracting package, debian package, etc), libjavaplugin_oji.so will quite likely be in a different location. Do not just blindly use the command listed above!
Note:
Note:
In JRE 1.4.2, this file was in plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32
Important!
Important!
Always make a symbolic link, as shown above, instead of copying the plugin. If you copy the plugin, your browser will crash every time you open a page containing a Java applet. You have been warned!
If you are using an older Linux distribution, you may need to install the gcc3 support libraries, as the gcc 3.2 version of the Java plugin requires libgcc_s.so.1 to operate. You may be able to find packages using Google.
If you are using an old or unofficial build of Mozilla (1.4a or later) or Mozilla Firefox, you can check which compiler was used by entering about:buildconfig in the location bar and pressing enter. You will see a line such as "gcc version 3.3.2", which will show the compiler that was used. If gcc2.9x was used, you need to use the ns7-gcc29 or ns610 plugin, not the ns7 or ns610-gcc32 plugin.

For a collection of card solitaire games:


To install:
Open terminal activity and type:
su -
yum install PySolFC
logout

To run solitaire game, go to terminal activity and type:
pysol

glchess


gis geometry


feh

http://linuxbrit.co.uk/feh/
To turn your XO into a photo frame you need to down load and install a program called feh.

go to the sugar terminal, use the terminal icon, and type: (hit enter at the end of each line)
su - [this puts you at the root so you can do a yum install]
yum install feh [Answer "y" when prompted to install the program.]
exit [this returns you to the sugar terminal you started with]
To use feh:
Put your jpg files on a SD card or a flash drive and plug it into the XO.
Go to the sugar terminal, use the terminal icon.
Type the following at the sugar terminal:
feh -F -D 5 --scale-down /media/SD/
[this assumes your SD card is named SD. use the name of your SD card or your USB drive in place of SD]

-F plays full screen, you need this or small pictures will be copied several times on the screen.

-D plays the slide show with the number, in this case 5, being the number of seconds to wait between slides.

Q will quit [it may take a picture or two to quit. CTRL+q will also quit]

For more information type feh --help for the help file.

EPUB files

http://justwriteclick.com/2008/01/20/how-to-download-and-copy-epub-files-using-the-xo-laptop/

Audacity

type "su" (without quotation marks).

Then type "yum install audacity" (without quotes).

Random YUM Ideas from http://blogs.fruxant.com/sebas/sebas.php

IMPORTANT FOR BEGGINERS
Before continue this tutorial, you need to knowledge of SSH or you may ruin your server.
If you need installation support, better order this service from us, we will do this job for you for only 100USD.
We will need to get from you SSH access with root access.
ORDER LINK
So login with SSH and enter as root.
1. Verify if YUM is installed. If yes I will proceed to edit /etc/yum.conf. If not, I will install from RPM. In order to use yum, you first need to add a few lines in /etc/yum.conf from page, browsing right OS. http://3es.atomicrocketturtle.com/ YUM is installed in latest FEDORA by default.
2. Edit /etc/yum.conf to be like this, but in time it can change. Always use only your version PSA channel.
Automatic configuration
Using Lynx (yum -y install lynx):
lynx -source http://3es.atomicrocketturtle.com/installers/atomic.sh | sh
Using Wget:
wget http://3es.atomicrocketturtle.com/installers/atomic.sh
sh ./atomic.sh
3. Install some useful tools like, JOE - text editor, Midnight Commander and LYNX text based navigator.
shell: yum install joe mc lynx
4. Also we do an update of packages for yum with, to be up to date.
shell: yum update
5. In PLESK create a domain, usually each of us have a default domain, and this domain users we change to have access with SSH. Is important to create this user (domain) and not go forward to change root access. Of course you can create later as well, just if you disable root, you cannot access server with SSH.
Next I change the root password as well, from default value.
shell: passwd root (same, will ask for password) - WRITE this down somewhere, in your notes.
After this, I follow the description from http://www.crucialparadigm.com/resources/tutorials/secure-server-securing/disable-direct-root-login.php or later, the ELS installer will do this.
6. Now edit some files to be easier to navigate in SSH, like:
shell: joe /etc/bashrc
and add these lines. This will help not to write all the times cd /home/http/vhosts/ just execute phttpd and you are already there. You may create your own rules of course.
alias bye="exit"
alias ns="netstat -lpn"
alias pmysql="cd /var/lib/mysql"
alias phttpd="cd /var/www/vhosts"
This last is for when apache dies and semaphore is not cleared and apache will not restart. Just you enter killhttpd and then start apache.
Edit
shell: joe /root/.bashrc
and add a line like:
echo 'ALERT - Root Shell Access (YOURSERVERNAME) on:' `date` `who` | mail -s "Alert: Root Access from `who | cut -d"(" -f2 | cut -d")" -f1`" YOUREMAIL
This will help to know each time when someone logged in as root, which is theoretically only you, the ELS installer will do this.
You will get on root login a mail to your mail address with subject ALERT - Root Shell Access (YOURSERVERNAME) on:, from which IP is entered and so on.
YOURSERVERNAME and YOUREMAIL must be changed with your data.
7. Because YUM update installed MySQL 4, change also my.cnf and update tables to MySQL 4 compatible. In latest distros, there is already MySQL 5.
shell: /usr/bin/mysql_fix_privilege_tables --user=admin --password=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow`
shell: joe /etc/my.cnf


Sonata

Development is internal and not hosted.

[edit] Bundles

sonata-11.xo is known to work with build 542. http://wiki.laptop.org/images/7/7b/Sonata-11.xo works on 653 build.

[edit] Functional Test

Open the Sonata Activity.
Right click and select properties. Ensure connection to mpd server.
Place ogg or other files in ~/.mpd/Music
Since space is limited on the XO internal storage if your goal is to play audio files from local source it may be helpful to create a symbolic link to the actual files located on an external device, such as an SD card or USB drive. This will save space on the XO's internal storage.
ln -s /media/path/to/your/device /home/olpc/.mpd/Music/what_ever_you want_to_call_your_link
for example:
ln -s /media/disk/misc/ /home/olpc/.mpd/Music/misc
 
See http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=587.msg16206#msg16206