Useful things for the OLPC

A collection of hints, tips, and how-tos that I've found useful during the first few weeks with my OLPC, which I hope will be of use to others...

OLPC daily news

OS and firmware versions

firmware

sudo cat /ofw/openprom/model

operating system

cat /etc/issue
cat /boot/olpc_build

screenshots

alt + 1

Connect to a jabber server

1. Go to the terminal window.
2. sugar-control-panel -g jabber (hint: type sugar-co then hit tab to complete the command)
   will display your current setting.
3. sugar-control-panel -s jabber server_name
   will connect to a (special for OLPC) Jabber server.
4. Reboot Sugar with CTRL-ALT-ERASE (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE in an emulator session)

port is 5223 note references to xochat.org should be ignored as this server is not avaibable any longer.

compiling C on the OLPC

setting time zone and Daylight Saving

sugar-control-panel -g timezone

sugar-control-panel -h timezone

su
sugar-control-panel -s timezone Europe/London

date --set "10:06"
^d

Daylight Saving / Summer Time

Note that the OLPC wiki assures us that
You needn't worry about any possible Daylight Saving Time; the OLPC handles this very well with no human intervention.
However, that's not true. The /etc/localtime file that ships with the XO is woefully useless for setting Daylight Saving.

What you have to do is to create a symlink from /etc/localtime to the correct timezone file in /usr/share/zoneinfo

For example, for people living in the UK:

su -l
cd /etc
mv localtime old.localtime

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB localtime
^d

BTW, to see what the localtime and zoneinfo files are saying, use zdump:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2008

keyboard shortcuts

quit activity ctrl-esc

full screen mode alt-enter

tray visibility alt-space

ctrl-alt-erase - restart sugar

installing new stuff

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

firmware

testing suspend resume mode

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Suspend_Resume

install perl

su
yum install perl

battery life

sensors

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure/Projects

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/Sensors

speech synthesiser

xoblog

video

Try either Ogle (http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/)
MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html)
or VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-fedora.html)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure/Hardware

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=908.0

mplayer

su
cd /bin
wget http://www.orderedpixels.com/xo/mplayer/mplayer.tar.bz2
tar vxf mplayer.tar.bz2

Setup subtitle support:

mkdir -p ~/.mplayer
ln -s /usr/share/fonts/dejavu-lgc/DejaVuLGCSans.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

To run:

mplayer -fs /media/[medianame]/[filename]

microscope

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3765

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

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ#What_does_.22Register.22_.28in_Home_view.29_do.3F

wireless

su -l
/sbin/iwconfig eth0 mode managed essid 
/sbin/dhclient eth0
exit

proxy settings for browser

pref("network.proxy.http",  "<set to your proxy server>"); 
pref("network.proxy.http_port",  <set to 8080 or the appropriate port>); 
pref("network.proxy.type",1);

pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "<your proxy>");

or in browser - about:config - can't change the values in the current version, so this doesn't work

network.proxy.http       <set to your proxy server>
network.proxy.http_port  <set to 8080 or the appropriate port>
network.proxy.type       <change to 1>

getting wireless working with WEP and a key slot other than 1 (e.g. 4)

su -l
iwconfig eth0 key [4] 10hexdigits
iwconfig eth0 key [4]

screen display

tam tam stuff

mini tamtam demo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=31L9qaxOrp0&feature=related

synthlab demo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwqt8NMT-zI

etoys
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T40RG2FqjOc&NR=1

USB serial port

su -l 
chmod go+rw to enable everyone to talk to it

su -l
yum install picocom

picocom -b 9600 /dev/ttyUSB0

to run it as user olpc, need to chmod o+w /var/lock so picocom can create the lock file:

su -l 
chmod o+w /var/lock

ssh daemon

set olpc user password as root

su -l 
passwd olpc

now you can ssh in ssh -l olpc <OLPC's IP address>

spy camera / motion detector

http://www.earobinson.org/2008/02/09/olpc-spy-cam/

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

aeroplane mode

sugar-control-panel -s radio off
sugar-control-panel -s radio on 

helpful notes from someone else

• Reorder activities
• feh
• mplayer
• flash
• tmobile registration

feh image viewer

su
yum install feh
exit

feh -F -D 5 --scale-down /media/SD

feh -F -D 3 -r -z -Z --scale-down --hide-pointer <top level directory of images>

-F    full screen
-D 3  3 sec / slide
-r    recurse
-z    randomise
-Z    stretch to fill full screen

feh -F -R 10 -Z http://<ip address>/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi

turn on right-mouse paste in terminal

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2"

to move apps around in the main list or to add new ones

/home/olpc/Activities/.defaults

and replace the entries in the order you want them.
So for example, you can move org.laptop.Terminal to the front of the list :)

This takes precedence over the master list at

/usr/share/sugar/data/activities.defaults

to find a list of installed activities

ls ~/.sugar/default

mp3 player

"buy" the decoder fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2 from https://shop.fluendo.com/

bunzip fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2
tar xvf fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar

mkdir ~/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins

cp fluendo-mp3-i386/libgstflump3dec.so .gstreamer-0.10/plugins

gst-inspect-0.10 flump3dec

gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=file:///path/to/file.mp3

Jim Gettys talk at MIT

Marvin Minsky

Dan Bricklin

active antenna

picture of the OLPC

I skewed the image so it's "square" again so you can display it on your OLPC, for example using FEH

Here's the XO children image

Display it with

feh -F -Z --hide-pointer XO_children.jpg

ad-hoc wireless

on Ubuntu laptop

sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager stop

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo iwconfig mode ad-hoc
sudo iwconfig essid 'olpc' (or whatever)
sudo iwconfig channel 4 (or whatever)

sudo ifconfig wlan0 11.0.0.1
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

run ~/perl/proxy/htty_proxy.pl

on OLPC

su -l
ifconfig eth0 down
iwconfig eth0 mode ad-hoc
iwconfig eth0 essid 'olpc' (or whatever)
iwconfig eth0 channel 4 (or whatever)

ifconfig eth0 11.0.0.2
ifconfig eth0 up

ping 11.0.0.1

~/.sugar/default/gecko/user.js

pref("network.proxy.http",  "11.0.0.1"); 
pref("network.proxy.http_port",  8080); 
pref("network.proxy.type",1);

Tony Pearson (IBM) on XO

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage?tag=OLPC

presentations

http://www.laptop.org.za/slides/olpc-dev-talk/presentation.html

remote display

Human Interface Guidelines

Instant Messaging on the XO

People seem to have various problems with this: what you actually have to do, is...

su
wget ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm
rpm -vi NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm
rm NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm

yum install pidgin

or... (not tried this)

yum install finch

Kopete
This is a monster download (48meg!), which doesn't really seem in the spirit of OLPC, but hey, it works great!
http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1073.0

Updating to Version 1

su -l
olpc-update 703

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Update.1_Software_Release_Notes

Thomas Overton suggests the Peru Activity pack
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peru_activity_pack

need
http://laptop.org/peru-bundles.zip
and
http://laptop.org/signed-customization-2.zip

unzip onto USB stick

reboot with the USB key inserted.

Note: I had some trouble with memory sticks that were not "real" Windows-formatted VFAT format.
Ones that had been formatted to that from Linux failed to mount during the boot sequence

Sticky ctrl key on keyboard

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/080327.html1 http://bc.tech.coop/blog/080327.html1

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1961.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1961.0

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1906.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1906.0

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=696.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=696.0

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