Changes

===Sugar Digest===

===Sugar Digest===

1. As Caroline Meeks and I are wrapping up the Sugar-on-a-Stick summer programs, it has been a time to reflect upon what we have learned and what challenges face us in September (Many thnaks to Greg, Anurag, Jennifer, et al. for their help). The goal of our pilots was to identify any issues we might face with a school-wide rollout of Sugar on a Stick and to work through many unknowns regarding the logisitics of deployment.

1. As Caroline Meeks and I are wrapping up the Sugar-on-a-Stick summer programs, it has been a time to reflect upon what we have learned and what challenges face us in September (Many thnaks to Greg, Anurag, Jennifer, et al. for their help). The goal of our pilots was to identify any issues we might face with a school-wide rollout of Sugar on a Stick and to work through many unknowns regarding the logistics of deployment.

We learned a great deal, e.g., replication of custom keys: be sure to remove any owner keys in the .sugar/default directory before copying. And we experimented with a number of different workflows regarding how to prepare for a class: use USB extension cables if possible; preload helper boot CDs; have the children turn on their computers and then gather for a discussion of the lesson plan while the machines are booting; have a cache of hot spares since some keys inevitably will not boot (more on this in a moment); have the children shutdown the computers and then gather for a wrap-up discussion while the machines power off; etc. And we uncovered some bugs in our sharing logic (See my post from last week); and experienced some issues regarding robustness of the USB images.  

We learned a great deal, e.g., replication of custom keys: be sure to remove any owner keys in the .sugar/default directory before copying. And we experimented with a number of different workflows regarding how to prepare for a class: use USB extension cables if possible; preload helper boot CDs; have the children turn on their computers and then gather for a discussion of the lesson plan while the machines are booting; have a cache of hot spares since some keys inevitably will not boot (more on this in a moment); have the children shutdown the computers and then gather for a wrap-up discussion while the machines power off; etc. And we uncovered some bugs in our sharing logic (See my post from last week); and experienced some issues regarding robustness of the USB images.  

:If any state is preserved by the children on the USB sticks, and there is no copy of the state kept elsewhere, and there is a possibility of power failure, premature removal, or other interruptions, then every software component that uses the saved state must be either capable of detecting corruption of the saved state, or graceful recovery from apparently invalid state.

:If any state is preserved by the children on the USB sticks, and there is no copy of the state kept elsewhere, and there is a possibility of power failure, premature removal, or other interruptions, then every software component that uses the saved state must be either capable of detecting corruption of the saved state, or graceful recovery from apparently invalid state.

Meeting this challenge is not trivial; the more clarity we can bring to the use cases, the more likely we will be able to engineer solutons.

Meeting this challenge is not trivial; the more clarity we can bring to the use cases, the more likely we will be able to engineer solutions.

In the meanwhile, we need to: experiment with more USB manufacturers; be more careful about characterizing the different failure modes; do some workflow experiments to see if we can minimize failures; try different file formats; and come up with simple and robust backup/restore mechanism so that we can end run failures.

In the meanwhile, we need to: experiment with more USB manufacturers; be more careful about characterizing the different failure modes; do some workflow experiments to see if we can minimize failures; try different file formats; and come up with simple and robust backup/restore mechanism so that we can end run failures.

Variables include:

Variables include:

Which Sugar-on-a-Stick image is being tested?

* Which Sugar-on-a-Stick image is being tested?

What customizations have been made?

* What customizations have been made?

What process was used to create the key?

* What process was used to create the key?

What size and brand of key is being tested?

* What size and brand of key is being tested?

What hardware the key is being tested on?

* What hardware the key is being tested on?

What is the nature of the failure? (no boot, corrupted data, etc.?)

* What is the nature of the failure? (no boot, corrupted data, etc.?)

What was the history of use prior to failure?

* What was the history of use prior to failure?

Let's get a plan together and take avantage of this generous offer from the Fedora community.

Let's get a plan together and take avantage of this generous offer from the Fedora community.