[IIAB] OLPC Server and Internet-in-a-Box Project

[Braddock]

Hi Tony,
We are working very hard to get you a deliverable in time for your trip 
to Africa on the 8th.

We have Wikipedia, 3,800 Khan Academy videos, 40,000 Gutenberg books, 
and world wide maps pretty much ready to go - if in rough around the 
edges.  I'll get you an HTTP link to a development version soon that you 
can play with.

I need to know if you want us to deliver the wired ethernet device (on a 
Seagate GoFlex Home) or a completely wireless variant (on a Seagate 
Satellite).  The wireless device would be cutting it close.

I figure we need to get a device to you by next Friday, April 5th.

Thanks,
Braddock

On 03/23/2013 11:32 AM, Braddock wrote:
> On 03/23/2013 06:34 AM, Tony Anderson wrote:
> > At a personal level, I am leaving April 8 for Africa. I would like 
> to arrange to take a copy of your current
> > content.
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> It would be thrilling if you try our system out in Africa! (Lesotho 
> again?  Rwanda?)
>
> However, we are still in very active development.  I'm pretty sure we 
> could get you _something_ by the first week of April, but it will be 
> high risk.
>
> Things I think we could deliver in time:
>
> -Worldwide maps to street level
>
> -Gutenberg
>
> -100GB Wikimedia library using kiwix-serve
>
> -Complete 3,800 video Khan Academy library
>
> All of this is accessible through a web interface.  The device just 
> acts as a web server.
>
> In terms of hardware, we would be able to deliver on a Seagate GoFlex 
> Home.  This is a wired ethernet device - no wireless - that you can 
> plug into an existing LAN.
>
> If you don't have an ethernet LAN on site we can try to push to get it 
> running on the wireless Seagate Satellite or Seagate Wireless Plus 
> devices, but it would be tight to get them ready within two weeks.
>
> I know very little about the web browser capabilities of the OLPC 
> laptops.  They are WebKit based?  What version?  Do they support HTML5 
> video, or Javascript?
>
> I'll try to get a trial site online so you can play with what we've 
> got so far, and maybe you can test with an actual OLPC laptop.
>
> thanks,
> braddock
>
>
> On 03/23/2013 06:34 AM, Tony Anderson wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I remember our conversation at the booth.
>>
>> In some ways, what we are trying to do with the school server is 
>> provide the 'internet-in-a-box'. Caryl Bigenho, who was in the booth 
>> has a group 'localfi':http://www.localfi.org. The website is sort of 
>> 'coming soon' but has a good explanation of the mission. George Hunt, 
>> who was also in the booth, has been leading a group in developing a 
>> version of the school server software which supports the ARM processor.
>> Beyond this there is the larger OLPC community (worldwide volunteers 
>> working on supporting deployments of the XO laptop), which works 
>> through a number of mailing lists including server-devel.
>>
>> My personal project is a derivative of the work of OLE Nepal 
>> (www.olenepal.org).
>>
>> You have presented a number of possibilities to be explored.
>>
>> The school server is designed on the basis that a school deploying 
>> XOs would have one for the school. While the software is based on 
>> Fedora, the architecture is more important.
>>
>> The school server is intended to support 100+ XOs at a school (the 
>> size of + is based on the school server performance and, more 
>> critically, how it is used. The number of concurrent connections is a 
>> typical limit. When a teacher directs her class to download Tom 
>> Sawyer, there can be problems.
>>
>> The server supports two network interfaces: LAN and WAN. The LAN is a 
>> local network which connects the XOs to the school server (which acts 
>> as the gateway/DNS/host) and to each other (in a simulated mesh using 
>> ejabberd). The WAN is optional and normally connects to the internet 
>> (which the server shares via the LAN).
>>
>> The original XO-1 (1.89 million shipped) has an internal store of 1Gb 
>> (with a 256MB memory). More recent models (XO-1.5, XO-1.75, and XO-4) 
>> typically offer 4GB internal store and 1GB main memory. The last two 
>> have ARM processors (V7).
>>
>> The primary problem for the school server is to supplement the 
>> limited space on the XOs with content on a large hard drive. Since 
>> the central idea of OLPC is that each child has a laptop, the server 
>> needs to deliver files to the XOs for local storage and use when the 
>> student takes the XO home (out of range of the school server).
>>
>> At a personal level, I am leaving April 8 for Africa. I would like to 
>> arrange to take a copy of your current content. Perhaps we could find 
>> a way for me to reimburse you for the purchase of a Seagate device 
>> which you could install your current build and content to take with me.
>>
>> One short-term option could be to connect a server to the Seagate 
>> device. The server could access files and deliver them to a 
>> requesting XO.
>>
>> Longer-term, we could explore installing the school server software 
>> on the Seagate device leveraging your experience with Debian. Daniel 
>> Drake who is responsible for the current release of the school server 
>> software (XS-0.7) has documented the build process based on CentOS. 
>> The team supporting XSCE (XS Community Edition) which is based on 
>> Fedora is developing similar documentation.
>>
>> I hadn't thought of using Zim for content other than the Wikipedia. 
>> We are currently using Wiki4Schools (a DVD sized slice of the English 
>> Wikipedia from 2010). The problem with Kiwix (which has been 
>> implemented in the form of an XO activity) is that it expects the Zim 
>> file to be local. We need a way for Kiwix to browse a Zim file on the 
>> school server while running on a client (XO). Nick Doiron has 
>> implemented a map activity which has a similar limitation (It 
>> operates on map-paks which are derived from Google Maps or OSM; 
>> however, it assumes the Paks are built while online. This could be 
>> done on the server using your OSM database with the resulting pak 
>> downloaded to the XO. In this case, the teacher (or other technical 
>> support) could create a pak (e.g. Rwanda) which could then be 
>> accessed by the students via the school server library.
>>
>> In my implementation, the library is based on Django. It shouldn't be 
>> hard to implement a Django mechanism to download Gutenberg items from 
>> a Zim file. One important capability of Zim (and Kiwix) is the 
>> ability to search the content.
>>
>> By the way I was excited to find that there are collections of 
>> classical music available by Creative Commons (e.g. musopen). I 
>> downloaded a 7.5gb collection.
>>
>> This is a bit disjointed (thinking out loud?). We should be able to 
>> refine our dialog going forward.
>>
>> Thanks for your email. I look forward to a mutually beneficial 
>> relationship.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>>
>> On 03/22/2013 11:59 PM, Braddock wrote:
>>> Hello Tony,
>>>
>>> It was good to talk to you at the Scale conference a couple weeks ago
>>> about your OLPC Server work, and our "Internet-in-a-Box" project.
>>>
>>> We are aiming to provide a variety of knowledge sources including
>>> world-wide maps (osm), wikipedia (kiwix), gutenberg, open source
>>> software, khan academy, etc on a low powered appliance.
>>>
>>> I know there is a lot of overlap with your OLPC Server work and I'm
>>> hoping we can be of use to each other.
>>>
>>> I'm attaching a quick overview of the goals of our project.
>>>
>>> A few things we might be able to offer you a la carte:
>>>
>>> -We have world-wide zoomable street maps down to a resolution of 15 
>>> feet
>>> running on a very low powered device with a very simple setup. We
>>> pre-render the entire globe, with some extra emphasis on populated
>>> places, from Open Street Map, and are then able to very easily serve up
>>> the image tiles.  The dataset is about 100 GB and I'd be happy to ship
>>> it to you.  It wasn't clear to me how far along your own mapping 
>>> work was.
>>>
>>> -We are working to get Debian Linux running on the new Seagate Wireless
>>> Plus portable harddrive, which is very low power and can in fact run on
>>> its internal battery for ten hours.  We are also working on running our
>>> services on a Seagate GoFlex Home network hard drive, and a Seagate
>>> Satellite (the predecessor of the Wireless Plus) in a fully
>>> self-contained chroot image which really could be run from any ARM
>>> device.  I know you had mentioned a desire to run on low power for 
>>> solar
>>> installations.
>>>
>>> -Would a kiwix-compatible ZIM of Gutenberg content be of interest to 
>>> you?
>>>
>>> I am CC'ing our group - there are only about a half dozen people on the
>>> list, all located in the LA area.
>>>
>>> Hope we can collaborate - I know we could learn a lot from your
>>> real-world experiences.
>>>
>>> Braddock Gaskill
>>>
>>>
>