[IAEP] [support-gang] <OLPC

[James Cameron]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 03:53:32PM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
> For a truly shared computer, I suggest switching to a login screen
> before Sugar, such as that provided by the default Fedora (before OLPC
> OS removed it).

I tried this just now on an XO-4 with 13.1.0 build 15, and was able to
switch to using a login screen:

# yum install -y gdm       # install the login screen
# chkconfig olpc-dm off    # turn off the automatic login by OLPC
# chkconfig gdm on         # turn on the login screen
# passwd olpc              # set the password on the default account
# adduser fred             # create a new account
# passwd fred              # set the password on the new account
# reboot

It worked reasonably well, and the login screen had a Sugar vs GNOME
option, but there were a few irritating bugs that would need to be
worked:

- fonts used by Sugar are too small, (perhaps this is something done
  by olpc-dm when it should instead be done in a platform-specific
  session startup for Sugar),

- there's no Logout option on Sugar, to take the system back to the
  login screen,

- after Logout from GNOME, there is system startup text displayed for
  a short time before the login screen appears,

- no Sugar Activities are present in the second account even if they
  are copied manually ... something that the Sugar developers could
  probably advise on.

> For XO-1.5, a 4GB SD card per student might be another alternative;
> when the card is inserted before power on, the laptop could be made to
> behave with the identity of that student.  This is costly, and risky,
> but is available immediately with no unusual configuration.

How is this done?  Store a fresh operating system on the SD card using
a spare laptop, then use the SD card on the student shared laptop:

- unlock a spare laptop,

- power off the spare laptop,

- insert an SD card,

- power on and get to the ok prompt,

- type 'devalias fsdisk ext:' and press enter, this selects the
  external SD card socket for the next step,

- type 'fs-update u:\21021o1.zd' to install the build, changing the
  file name as appropriate,

- remove the card,

- power off the student shared laptop,

- insert the card,

- power on the laptop.

The fs-update step would need to be repeated for each SD card, unless
a duplicator was available.  If using a duplicator, the master SD card
must be duplicated before it is used to boot a laptop.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/