Introduction

[jvlpog]

I am on the board and volunteer at Tara Hall Home for Boys in
Georgetown, SC and I am a retired IT person. Recently, a board member
decided to participate in the GIGI program and give all 15 boys an XO
computer, so I was assigned the task of learning about the XO and
teaching the boys how to use them. I have had some problems trying to
get information re the XO. There is a lot of information on the OLPC
website and the wiki, but it requires a lot of digging. I was hoping
to find a group like this to help me answer the really odd questions I
can't find the answers to elsewhere.

First question: do you know of any organization closer to me
(Florence, SC) than y'all?
Has the group been helpful to the current members?

Regards,
Ron Stephan

[Steve Holton]

Hi Ron-

I haven't heard of any. Have you asked on the OLPC Mailing lists?

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

I'd especially recommend the grassroots list:

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots

Or, if you have specific questions, I'd be happy to assist any way I can.

--
Steve Holton
sph0...@gmail.com

[jvlpog]

Steve,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I'm not sure which list I used to find this group, but it was on the
OLPC site. I'll check out the other sites you suggest.

I do a few questions.
Re the "radios". I read somewhere on the OLPC site that you can "turn
off the radios" before you get on a airplane or for whatever reason.
When you turn off the radios does that just disable the Wi-Fi access
or all radio activity? Can you still "share" with other XOs with the
radios off?

Is there a resource that I can go to that lists the commands available
when in terminal mode? I've used the sugar-control-panel command per
the Wiki, but I'd like to know about other commands as well.

Thanks,
Ron Stephan

> sph0l...@gmail.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Steve Holton]

Hey Ron-

Great questions to start things off....

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 10:57 AM, jvlpog <jvl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Re the "radios". I read somewhere on the OLPC site that you can "turn
off the radios" before you get on a airplane or for whatever reason.
When you turn off the radios does that just disable the Wi-Fi access
or all radio activity? Can you still "share" with other XOs with the
radios off?

The "Airplane Mode"
-  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Airplane_mode

is designed to allow the XO to meet FCC requirements for devices used in-flight. One of the base requirements for the XO was the ability to act as a mesh network router even when the XCO isn't fully "booted" so the  WiFi networking is enabled at a very low level.  Consequently you have to jump through hoops to turn it off.

You shouldn't need it unless you're planning to use it on a plane.

But turning off the radios *does* turn off both 802.11b/g (WiFi) as well as 802.11s (mesh) networking. You will disable all communication outside the XO.

Is there a resource that I can go to that lists the commands available
when in terminal mode? I've used the sugar-control-panel command per
the Wiki, but I'd like to know about other commands as well.

The Teminal Activity (as well as the command console, or Terminal mode) doesn't use a command interpreter, but rather provides a shell interface (bash) to the XO's underlying Linux operating system.  The shell offers a huge variety of pre-installed commands, allows access to a virtually infinite set of other utility commands and scripts, and even allows you to make-up your own commands .  Oh, and it's a power programming/scripting language in itself.

-  http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html

Consequently, there isn't a complete list of available commands, but there are several useful ones you should keep on-hand and important things to know before you start.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/l3/lesson3a.html

In a nutshell:

ls # lists the files and directories in the current location.
cd  # moves you into a directory. Give it a directory as a parameter to go to that directory.
less # displays the contents of a text file in a relatively safe way.

Better to ask a question like "How do I..." and hope someone responds with a "well, I did it this way...."

--
Steve Holton
sph0...@gmail.com

[jvlpog]

Steve,
Thanks again for the prompt reply.

I've perused the two links you provided and they should be helpful.
Eons ago I was a programmer and have been using Unix for a long time,
so a lot of the Linux "stuff" looks familiar. So I will slog along and
as I come across a question I can't find the answer to I will drop you
a note.

Regards,
Ron

> sph0l...@gmail.com