Please help beta test Webconverger 12
Kai Hendry
As you can see from https://github.com/Webconverger we've never been
so busy developing Webconverger. We've fixed loads of bugs, like
kioskresetstation behaviour and generally gave Webconverger a lot of
polish.
As mentioned on
http://webconverger.org/blog/entry/Webconverger_11.2_release_notes/ we
have re-engineered Webconverger to support subscriptions and in the
near future upgrades. http://webconverger.org/upgrade
We now have an initial subscription user experience working on the
Live version. As a way of rewarding webc-users, we are temporarily
offering the customisation service for 1USD a month if you can help
test it and provide valuable feedback.
It's really easy to subscribe: http://vid.ly/7w2p7e
And unsubscribe: http://vid.ly/0o5w5f
We've hopefully pre-empted most questions in this FAQ:
http://config.webconverger.com/faq/
Please download the ISO from here: http://build.webconverger.org/latest.iso
Thank you for your continued support,
Guttorm Flatabø
We now have an initial subscription user experience working on the
Live version. As a way of rewarding webc-users, we are temporarily
offering the customisation service for 1USD a month if you can help
test it and provide valuable feedback.
Things are working very well, and it seems to be pretty safe (although I suppose you haven't really done anything about that?).
I'd expect the configuration to take into account language and wireless network as well. While I can choose language in the startup menu, that's very easy to forget and kind of defeats the purpose of paying for a saved configuration.
The first time I started I didn't connect it to the network expecting it to start up with a page to configure that. The network cable illustration that appeared was pretty self explanatory, but after plugging it in, the "plug it in" screen did not go away after 10-30 seconds, so I restarted.
While I get the UI correct language and keyboard layout when choosing Norwegian Nynorsk, the http accept language value is en-us,en;q=0.5. Also there are no search plugins installed, which could be related.
My homepage configuration did not work, I got an empty homepage. As I remember I had chosen http://gmail.com%20http://www.yr.no/stad/Noreg/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%98lnes/ as homepage, as far as I remember that should give me two tabs.
You should send an e-mail with the unsubscribe link so that one can unsubscribe without using the subscribed computer (in case it brakes, you don't have access to it, etc.), but I suppose it is as easy as cancelling the automatic payment? I see changing configuration as half of the package (those who don't know how to change it manually might not look at it that way), and thus think that you should try hard to make it part of the package on launch.
--
Guttorm
Kai Hendry
> I'd expect the configuration to take into account language and wireless
> network as well. While I can choose language in the startup menu, that's
> very easy to forget and kind of defeats the purpose of paying for a saved
> configuration.
Having the language options there, and that being not being part of a
customisation service does indeed suck. I planned to start small and
add those features. Just getting this far has been tough, so please
bear with us.
> The first time I started I didn't connect it to the network expecting it to
> start up with a page to configure that. The network cable illustration that
> appeared was pretty self explanatory, but after plugging it in, the "plug it
> in" screen did not go away after 10-30 seconds, so I restarted.
That is a known bug, which we reproduced ourselves, whereby Debian's
hotplug is very slow to come up sometimes. ~90seconds typically. :/
You can see some commits to that effect a couple of days ago:
https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/commit/92226510080502560e122d7a261934323c41afeb
> While I get the UI correct language and keyboard layout when choosing
> Norwegian Nynorsk, the http accept language value is en-us,en;q=0.5. Also
> there are no search plugins installed, which could be related.
Ok, this is useful feedback. I think I know how to fix this.
> My homepage configuration did not work, I got an empty homepage. As I
> remember I had chosen
> http://gmail.com%20http://www.yr.no/stad/Noreg/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%98lnes/
> as homepage, as far as I remember that should give me two tabs.
Omg, you pushed it too far here. :P
> You should send an e-mail with the unsubscribe link so that one can
> unsubscribe without using the subscribed computer (in case it brakes, you
> don't have access to it, etc.), but I suppose it is as easy as cancelling
> the automatic payment? I see changing configuration as half of the package
> (those who don't know how to change it manually might not look at it that
> way), and thus think that you should try hard to make it part of the package
> on launch.
http://config.webconverger.com/faq/#how-do-i-cancel-my-subscription?
All those ways of updating, reading and convenient cancel links would
have cost us in development time. So we straight for easiest /
simplest solution and leveraged Paypal here. Besides doing this
properly would mean that every Webconverger purchaser would have to
create yet another account with us. I think it's unavoidable tbh and
it makes better business sense to "own the customer", so I'm told. :)
Ultimately I'm personally looking to make things as simple as possible
for us and you. Thanks for the feedback!
Kai Hendry
> Having the language options there, and that being not being part of a
> customisation service does indeed suck. I planned to start small and
> add those features. Just getting this far has been tough, so please
> bear with us.
I don't have time to create a form to allow users to select their
language, so what I've done for Webconverger 12 is this:
1) User chooses language from boot menu or perhaps is intrepid enough
to find his/her locales settings and boot with that
2) The form in a hidden value records a locale= and xkb= setting, and
remembers it for subscription.
This is probably a reference point of what not to do in a beta, though
over the weekend I re-wrote how http://webconverger.org/i18n works.
I also made many several updates to the wiki.
http://webconverger.org/recentchanges/
> That is a known bug, which we reproduced ourselves, whereby Debian's
> hotplug is very slow to come up sometimes. ~90seconds typically. :/
We think we have this down to 10-20 seconds now. Btw, wireless does
not work atm due to https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/issues/2
It's a simple change that needs to go into a new initrd we are working on.
>> Norwegian Nynorsk, the http accept language value is en-us,en;q=0.5. Also
>> there are no search plugins installed, which could be related.
> Ok, this is useful feedback. I think I know how to fix this.
Fixed accept language works now too. :)
>> My homepage configuration did not work, I got an empty homepage. As I
>> remember I had chosen
>> http://gmail.com%20http://www.yr.no/stad/Noreg/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%98lnes/
>> as homepage, as far as I remember that should give me two tabs.
> Omg, you pushed it too far here. :P
Fixed this too.
I really hope in the next couple of days we can do some more intensive
testing and release this. So please grab the very latest ISO and check
out http://webconverger.org/testing/ for tips. Many thanks,
Guttorm Flatabø
1) User chooses language from boot menu or perhaps is intrepid enough
to find his/her locales settings and boot with that
2) The form in a hidden value records a locale= and xkb= setting, and
remembers it for subscription.
The first time I started with the default live boot without being plugged in to the network, and after plugging in it retrieved my settings and things were good (all configurations were activated).
The second time, I chose Spanish and had my network cable plugged in from the beginning. This time the homepage settings did not work, and I got the configure screen instead. The interface language was overridden (so I got nn instead of es), while the keyboard is Spanish.
> That is a known bug, which we reproduced ourselves, whereby Debian's
> hotplug is very slow to come up sometimes. ~90seconds typically. :/
Got 6 seconds on the machine that I gave up waiting for before.
>> My homepage configuration did not work, I got an empty homepage. As IFixed this too.
>> remember I had chosen
>> http://gmail.com%20http://www.yr.no/stad/Noreg/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%98lnes/
>> as homepage, as far as I remember that should give me two tabs.
> Omg, you pushed it too far here. :P
Yes, but the encoding isn't understood. "Ølnes" which is encoded to "%C3%98lnes", becomes "Ølnes" (http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%83%C2%98lnes/), looks like a UTF8 problem.
Additionally, the default search was for Debian packages, and searching in the URL bar doesn't work at all (address not valid).
--
Guttorm
Kai Hendry
> The first time I started with the default live boot without being plugged in
> to the network, and after plugging in it retrieved my settings and things
> were good (all configurations were activated).
Good to hear. :)
> The second time, I chose Spanish and had my network cable plugged in from
> the beginning. This time the homepage settings did not work, and I got the
> configure screen instead. The interface language was overridden (so I got nn
> instead of es), while the keyboard is Spanish.
Can you confirm you are using 71eda version from about: ? I can't
reproduce the problem. You Norwegian settings are applied in my
Virtualbox.
The config service appends to the /proc/cmdline as you can see here:
https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/blob/master/etc/webc/webc.conf#L18
So the configuration settings should apply last and have priority.
> Got 6 seconds on the machine that I gave up waiting for before.
Good stuff.
> Yes, but the encoding isn't understood. "Ølnes" which is encoded to
> "%C3%98lnes", becomes "Ølnes"
> (http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Sogn_og_Fjordane/Sogndal/%C3%83%C2%98lnes/),
> looks like a UTF8 problem.
I think I've fixed this with:
https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/commit/cca245176eba12b34dcf0cfeee92eb011d7f768c
Doing a http://build.webconverger.org/ now.
It's occurred to me that we don't support URLs with spaces in them.
> Additionally, the default search was for Debian packages, and searching in
> the URL bar doesn't work at all (address not valid).
Yes, they are a bit of a disaster area of noticed. Hence the
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/webc-users/T4WIo2F0gYg/uK2eMMDSdjQJ
post.
I think I will nuke the search box for the 12.0 release... Thanks for
these reports. Stuff I didn't spot.
Guttorm Flatabø
If I choose the Norwegian Bokmal (instead of Spanish) the only thing that changes, is that I get the correct keyboard layout (since it is the same for Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmal).
I don't have time to find out how to get out the daemon.log. I suppose I'll have to add repository, update repository, install xclip or sftp and get it out one of those ways. The vim avenue didn't lead anywhere, but that might be due to my vim incompetence. For those who'd like to try, there are two daemon.log's:
/var/log/daemon.log
/live/cow/var/log/daemon.log
Don't know if they're the same or which one is the interesting one.
--
Guttorm
Kai Hendry
> If I choose the Spanish boot menu option the homepage and keyboard
> configuration from the subscription service is not taken into account. UI
> language and accept language works as they should (they are configured as
> 'nn'). Nothing changes if I add the 'debug' boot option.
Since your locale and keyb are setup on the subscription service. Hope
you don't mind me sharing this one:
http://config.webconverger.com/clients/install-config/C8E8FC81-47C6-11CB-9433-A529317818FB%3b00:11:25:49:79:73
If you choose anything from languages, it should be overridden by your
configured settings in the cloud.
> I don't have time to find out how to get out the daemon.log. I suppose I'll
> have to add repository, update repository, install xclip or sftp and get it
> out one of those ways. The vim avenue didn't lead anywhere, but that might
> be due to my vim incompetence. For those who'd like to try, there are two
> daemon.log's:
> /var/log/daemon.log
> /live/cow/var/log/daemon.log
> Don't know if they're the same or which one is the interesting one.
The interesting one as of the very latest build 845006c is syslog.
http://flic.kr/p/bGnVoT
The very latest build are not tagged http://build.webconverger.org/ so
it's easier to match with
https://github.com/Webconverger/webc/commits/master
If you could get that over to me, that is really helpful for debugging.
Thanks for your great testing work,