fractalnavel

been spending some time trying to get this xo box more connected:

remote desktop access ?  i don't mean ssh or the like here, i'm talking something along the lines of vnc or rdp.  there is some interesting info relating to this on the olpc wiki, but i figure that this will probably be the more complicated task, so i move on.  nomachine looks more promising than what i saw on the wiki, depending on the specifics, of course.

done how about ftp access ?  to the xo from elsewhere, i mean.  getting a good graphical ftp client running on the xo won't be all that useful, if  my experience with the thunar graphical file system manager thing is any indicator - it gets a bit crippled when run outside of its intended gui desktop environment.

there does seem to be ftp over ssh installed on the box, but that's not what i'm looking for.  vsftpd seems the best candidate, in terms of power vs. footprint (in all senses).  took some time to get it configured properly, since i was basically just looking for secured full access for the root account, not in managing user accounts, and default ftp configuration is specifically set up to disallow that (i kept missing something obvious that i already knew about).

found out that the latest version of smartftp (3.x) now supports ftp over ssh, so i guess i could have gone that direction, but that wouldn't have quite given me what i wanted.

then there's access to windows server file shares from the xo.  this gets sticky, because apparently the files system types i would need have been stripped out of the kernel, one (smbfs) because it's deprecated and no longer in fedora core (as of quite some time ago), and the replacement (cifs) because apparently the olpc folks were insane about reducing their kernel size (and insanely anti-windows as well).  so even after messing with samba & samba-client installations, these filesystems are expected to be compiled into the kernel, and that leaves me with the not so pleasant prospect of having to do this myself.  not a problem if this was a widely available linux version on widely available hardware with normal peripherals, but since this is not the case, i need to get the xo backup & rebuild provisions in place first.

the samba stuff looks cool, by the way, and i could set up the xo to have shares available to the windows systems, but that's not what i'm looking for.  i need to have external server based storage available from the xo.  not too big a footprint, either.

the final access item was http access to the xo, but that looks relatively simple and is also not really what i need, being a read-only protocol (without enabling all kinds of server-side processing, which bloats fast).  i'll save this until later.

other: mentions of email, skype, various im clients & other human-to-human communications protocols are in the wiki.  not high on my list, but i can see where it would have been good to have some of this built-in for the olpc target audience.  but the more i dig into this, the more i wonder about the real political hurdles they had to cross that forced the technology into its current shape. intra-village comms ok (mesh chat, school server, etc.); but not inter-village!  wider external information flows are incoming only.  would xo-packaged versions of these tools be accepted ?

a correction to an earlier post:  thunar reported total file space usage around 2.5gb, apparently due to counting linked objects in addition to physical ones (?), resulting in a lot of duplication.  the real total persistent memory size (flash memory, not a drive) is 1gb, as documented.  the originally installed xo os & ancillaries weigh in at just under 200mb.  after being used to multi-gig windows behemoths, that's quite eye-popping.

currently i'm at about 400mb total space used, with a most of the non-built-in stuff being the "activities" i downloaded earlier.  with multi-gig sd cards & usb drives (and external hard drives of all sizes do reportedly work just fine), i'll be able to stretch a bit.  i'd like to reconfigure things such that an sd card could be considered & used as if permanent as far as the os is concerned, which would give a lot of breathing room, but i suspect i would need to be rebuilding & partitioning devices from scratch.  that would seem to be a better approach though, where the base system resided on the built in device, and all extensions, user & other volatile activity used the removable devices.  that would be tricky.  also makes me wonder about their 1gb internal storage - if sd cards can be so much larger, why not also what's inside ?  since these things don't take kindly to being filled up & don't recover easily from that situation (numerous reports of this), trading off more hardware cost to reduce the frequency of this scenario of unusability would make sense.  risk management, eh ?

that discussion covers the pre-networking connectivity needs, sneakernet.  but since external devices are also needed for backing up, looks like i need to invest there as well.

unless - i wonder - has anyone out there been able to use "regular" imaging tools on their xo's ?  like norton ghost or acronis true image.  sounds like another research avenue.

i could not dissuade my sister & gang from maryland from including me on their easter ohio visiting itinerary last week, no matter what horror stories of dust bunny avalanches & pizza box / beer bottle towers i threw at them.  at least i managed to convince them that it was in their best interest to stay at a local hotel instead of attempting to find a spot to sleep here.

so sis & husband & their "littlest", 14 year old alden (who has got to be approaching / exceeding either or both of six feet & 200 pounds, pontoons for shoes (dad is 6'7'') ), arrived friday evening.  couldn't believe the weather we were having, 60s and almost clear.  so we did the usual out of towner dinner at montgomery inn (with left overs for me ;-) ), desert at graeter's, and ended up at mt. adams looking for some palatable music (blues? no.  and the old jazz bar has been a sports bar for a while now).  i was surprised at how relatively empty the area was; in the past, there were almost always lines for everything, or at least a sardine situation inside.  must have been some combination of the holiday, time of year and unexpected nature of the nice weather.  we sat in the blind lemon for a while, then walked around the rest of the area looking at churchs (the one at the top was open & people were doing the hillside stairs thing), pubs, etc.  beuatiful night & views of the near flooded ohio river.

next day was a late brunch, and we ended up at the museum center for the "body" exhibit (huh - there are a number of these now, "body world" is apparently the original).  only moderately crowded, we got in right away.  it's an unusual display, and somehow oddly unsatisfying combined with a strangeness that didn't hit until a couple of days later.  they seemed to have this penchant for stripping various layers off the body, but always leaving intact gentialia.  what the hell is that all about ?

favorite overheard quote - four year old, reading a label:  "mommy, what's an 'anus' ?".  no prompt answer was forthcoming from mom.

the (omn?)imax was broken, so we wandered over to the shops for a bit, then saw flyers about the old train station control tower being open.  apparently, the local train club has had that space for some time now.  cool view of the tracks out back & the usual historical museum type stuff.

leaving that, we discover the omnimax is now working, so we go to that film, more about bodies - but not really associated with the exhibition.  hmm, that should have been mentioned.  i was wondering if alden could get extra credit for biology - or maybe marketing ?

nothing extraordinary, but nice to see people.  it's been since last june with all the graduations. 

and i traded my chocolates for homemade banana bread.