Servers using DEBIAN in Ceibal Plan (OLPC) in Uruguay - technical support

[Eduardo Gomez]

Dear *Debian* Project Team,



            First of all, *thanks* you very much for the final product that
you always give to us. We are from *Montevideo** City capital of
Uruguay*and we are working at TI area, specifically in Infrastructure
and Servers
from several years ago (we are using *Debian since Woody*).



            At present we are working for one of the most outstanding
technological project at the country, called Ceibal Project (
http://www.ceibal.org.uy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceibal_project).  In
your country this is known like OLPC (http://one.laptop.org/), please view:
Next Story/Photo “Uruguay Students in Artigas”.  For your information *in
more than 2000 servers* that currently exist to support the Plan in all
country we are *using Debian*.



            One of our tasks in the Plan is to create images servers, which
provide the support of each School
http://www.ceibal.org.uy/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=177:servidores&catid=40:tecnologia&Itemid=61).
To develop it we were using “Etch”, “Lenny” and now we are using *“Squeeze”
every day.*



            We have known about the improvements that this new version has
like update the kernel, faster booting, ext4 support inclusion, and control
units through sysv-rc-conf in runlevels and identification devices between
others points.  All of this had a pleasant result we started to use a new
method of work more strict and orderly.



            On the level control device UUID we focus on doing the initrd
and the current grub2 (grub-pc.) It is on this last thing we would like to
direct a query to the list *Grub-Devel *
<pkg-grub-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org><pkg-grub-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
(QA
page<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-grub-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>)
if you enable this medium.



            We have a solution Raid + LVM where generated images to scale on
school servers, both as Lenny as ETCH this methodology applied to generate
the image and then dump the new server where we generated by scripting the
partition / file system and then we added the solution.



            Currently in Squeeze this new device-level control by UUID,
forced us to remove the native UUID server and add to that generated by the
image. Ex: (q-mdadm-create / dev/md0-run-level = 1-raid-devices = 2-uuid =
xxxxx: xxxx: xxxx: xxxxx / dev/sda1 / dev/sdb1) (idem with assemble) this to
initrd level is supported to move from a master image to a server. The
problem is generated by GRUB2 which this procedure is letting us do not dump
the image.



            Therefore we disabled the control in Grub2 UUID
(GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID = bring), then update-grub, we generate a new
grub.cfg, core.img, etc etc to not corroborate anything regarding UUID at
boot.  But to dump the master image to a new server, this does not boot,
limiting the incident in the new boot loader, for that reason, we use the
old package grub (1) holding in Squeeze distribution.





            If you have any comments (we did not find anything similar in
the mailing list) or a special treatment for this particular point, we
appreciate the information, however *we will continuous very attached to
DEBIAN.*





            *Yours faithfully,*

* *

*            Gonzalo and  Eduardo**  *






Reference for the Ceibal Plan:

http://www.uruguay-ciencia.com/imagenes/sumario6/0408CEIBAL.pdf

http://one.laptop.org/

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Ceibal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

“Uruguay (380,000+ given to 1-6 students and teachers, completing the
initial objective.[66]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#cite_note-65>
[67]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#cite_note-bbc-jun-2010-66>90,000
ordered in 2010 for high-school students).
[67]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#cite_note-bbc-jun-2010-66>
”










To consult: http://www.debian.org/devel/people

* *

*Debian QA Group*  <packages at qa.debian.org> <packages at qa.debian.org>  (QA
page <http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=packages@qa.debian.org>)

*Debian Policy List*
<debian-policy at lists.debian.org><debian-policy at lists.debian.org> (QA
page<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-policy@lists.debian.org>)


*main:*   debian-policy

*Grub-Devel*  <pkg-grub-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org><pkg-grub-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
(QA
page<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-grub-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>)


*main:*   grub-splashimages, grub2-splashimages



-- 
A/P  Eduardo Gómez
Infraestructura - Sistemas
Plan Ceibal - CITS
Avda. Italia 6201
Montevideo - Uruguay
Tel.: 601 57 73 - Interno 2210
E-mail : egomez at plan.ceibal.edu.uy
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