XOs in El Salvador Update

Good things are coming out of all the difficulties we have had getting the XOs out of customs in El Salvador:

• The community at Buena Vista has become actively involved in helping, including meeting with a former National Assembly delegate with whom they have contact. This may be the most important development of all, since the project will only succeed to the degree that the community takes direct ownership of it.
• We are greatly expanding our contacts with members of the government and the FMLN, the soon to be ruling party of President elect Mauricio Funes. The FMLN is likely to have a much greater interest in Free Software and its implications for national soveriegnty, so these new contacts may come in handy in the future.
• Finally, Douglas now has a process in place to get the XOs. It will take 20 more days, but the cost had been cut by more than two thirds.
  

I'm now waiting for Paco to setup a meeting on #ubuntu-sv with the community at Buena Vista. We need to begin planning the educational part of the program, which is the real reason we are going through all this effort in the first place.

Sugar on a Stick

I asked Matt to document the process of creating Sugar on a Stick. Alas, he didn't. The wiki page that describes the process is:

• http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Linux

Here is what I did from a root prompt on my eeepc running Jaunty to set it up as a "Sugar on a Stick Factory":

• # apt-get install isomd5sum cryptsetup syslinux
• # mkdir /opt/SoaS
• # cd /opt/SoaS
• # wget http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh
• # chmod +x livecd-iso-to-disk.sh
• # wget http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-beta.iso
  
• plugged-in a 4G USB flash drive
• # mount (which revealed the drive was device /dev/sdc1 mount on /media/USB DISK)
• # fdisk -l (which revealed the the boot flag on my USB stick was not set)
• menu: System -> Administration -> Partition Editor (GParted)
• select my device
• menu: Partition -> Unmount
• menu: Partition -> format to -> ext2
  
• menu: Partition -> Manage Flags
• check the boot flag and close
• # umount /dev/sdc1
• # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=446 count=1
• # ./livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --overlay-size-mb 600 --home-size-mb 1024 --delete-home --unencrypted-home soas-beta.iso /dev/sdc1

The script produced the following interaction:

Verifying image...
/opt/SoaS/soas-beta.iso: 53509e4773805e4657cb20f0e784a50d
Fragment sums: 3815452cc8252b238fa24ca651d8a9c7d67dd33ba13986227ed3aac4cba4
Fragment count: 20
Checking: 100.0%

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
MBR appears to be blank.
Do you want to replace the MBR on this device?
Press Enter to continue or ctrl-c to abort

Copying live image to USB stick
Updating boot config file
Initializing persistent overlay file
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 6.3625e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s
Initializing persistent /home
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 6.3904e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s
Formatting unencrypted /home
mke2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
65536 inodes, 262144 blocks
13107 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=268435456
8 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376

Writing inode tables: done done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 31 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
tune2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
Setting maximal mount count to -1
Setting interval between checks to 0 seconds
Installing boot loader
/media/usbdev.yOpIUg/syslinux is device /dev/sdc1
USB stick set up as live image!

Back at the # prompt, I typed "reboot", hit the key, selected the USB stick... I watched the fedora splash screen and waited until I got to the Sugar first time boot screen. Cool!

A Good Link

I found this blog post evaluating Python eggs from the point of view of someone used to using the debian packaging system: Why I don't use easy_install.