jamesk
KA-Lite, admin module states it needs the English module, but it fails at 30.8%.
Almost all of the content I have checked works. There were a few that failed the first couple days I had it running, but now as I went through the modules randomly, everything appears to be working good. The French module also stays at 87% translated.
It looks as though the 87% Translated is from Learning Equality. Itās probably a record of how much of the content has been translated to that language. I noticed that this manual page shows Spanish as 85% translated and Chinese as 57% translated.
For the language pack download issue can you try this command and let me know what the output is.
āsudo kalite manage languagepackdownload -len --commandlineā
That should try to install the english language pack through the command line and then we can see what the issue is from there if it errors.
James
jamesk,
I had not read into the man pages on the % of translation on the different modules, but suspected thatās all that was completed.
I entered the command below.
sudo kalite manage languagepackdownload -len --commandline
Unknown command: 'languagepackdownloadā
Type ākalite manage helpā for usage.
@SHOMI Sorry about that. It seems that command is outdated. There is more info available at this link
https://ka-lite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html
It seems as though the process has changed for the newer KA-Lite versions. At that link there are instructions on the new process but this is the command that would work for French
āsudo kalite manage retrievecontentpack local fr fr.zipā
so for English it would be
āsudo kalite manage retrievecontentpack local en en.zipā
this is the direct link they provide to the content packs if that doesnāt work
http://pantry.learningequality.org/downloads/ka-lite/0.17/content/contentpacks/
Iām not an expert on KA-Lite but I think that should work.
James
jamesk,
I have not had a chance to try the English pack out from your last reply. I am wondering if the KA Lite says it needs the English pack based upon the older configuration, where it appears now that the languages are more independent. It looks like I will not really need the English pack since the a French is running good. So far though, the server is running pretty good with the 20+ modules I have installed. I have just over a month away before I travel to set the computer room up so I have been letting this burn it a little longer while I get the loose ends tied up.
Again, SHOMI is grateful to you and the World possible Org for all of the material and assistance in the forums.
Youāre welcome @SHOMI. I am happy that everything is working. There is a big update coming soon with a new image that has some added features for administration that you might want to check out at some point in the future. Best of luck with the deployment!
James
Hi All
Does anyone have any idea when this stuff will be available to download from ftp.worldpossible.org or is that defunct now?
I have setup Kolibri on laptops and PCs and Iām not sure which way to go.
Thanks
Howard
Hi Howard,
Are you looking to install content for Kolibri? I think best way to install Kolibri content is through Kolibri itself. There are instructions for installing Kolibri channels in this readme file under āinstalling Kolibri Channelsā. The only difference is the port may be 8080 instead of 9090 if youāve installed Kolibri another way.
Iām not sure if the FTP will be updated or if my images will be put there. I do have a new image coming soon that has a lot of new features and bug fixes that will be posted here.
If youāre debating whether to use a server or installing content directly to devices, in my opinion using a server is much easier to maintain for multiple devices and using RACHEL is a bit easier than Kolibri, which can be confusing to get used to.
James
I have installed Raspbian on some laptops we were donated and installed Kolibri. What I liked about Kolibri was the management of classes but I agree it is more complex.
Iāll look forward to your new work
Thanks
Howard
Hi @giakonda ā weāre testing out @jameskās great work next week or so. Should be up after that.
do you mean up on the ftp site?
If so what is its name
Thanks
Howard
I donāt think itās up on the FTP. I would wait though because I am almost done a new image that will be much better than the previous ones. Iām just tracking down a bug with the database but will be up once I figure that out.
James
Also do you have the newest kiwix-serve binary on this? The newer zim files will not work with the older kiwix-serve binaries.
Have a nice day.
Hello Blueskies,
The images at the top of this post already include Kiwix-serve 0.9 which should be the latest version. It is downloaded during the installation process and the download page was last updated 2018-10-21. The last time the Kiwix source code was updated was to 0.9 in 2014, found at this link.. It should be up to date.
James
Hi @jamesk,
I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a 32GB microSD card and 128GB USB Flash Drive. Iāve been lead to believe that Rachel canāt normally take advantage of external USB drives, so was looking to use this Stretch image that youāve put together to boot from USB. Perhaps Iām mistaken though.
What would you suggest as the best way to install and make best use of all of this storage capacity? I also have other smaller microSD and USB Flash cards as well, so could hopefully turn many of them into one large drive.
Also, is there a performance/robustness difference between running from USB and microSD?
Finally, I notice that you mention the need for an Ethernet connection, but I only have wifi available here. Will I be able to use wifi after etching the image, or are other steps needed before/after to make this available?
Thanks!
Nick
Hi Nick,
The 3B+ has USB booting supported by default so you just need to flash one of these Stretch based images ( I suggest the Kolibri one ) to your USB device and it will boot when plugged in.
These questions have some pretty lengthy/complicated answers but Iāll try to explain it all. Sorry if itās long.
There are a few big issues I ran into when using multiple storage devices.
The pi wonāt boot sometimes because it doesnāt know which device to boot from. USB devices seem to get named randomly so sometimes your boot device will be /dev/sda1 and other times itās called /dev/sda2 or something else. This is a big issue because even though USB devices are less prone to corruption, this did corrupt my USB flash drives multiple times and I had to re-flash the image.
USB storage devices arenāt usable by just plugging them in unless itās the boot device so you need to set it up to be automatically mounted at boot time to a specific path. This is also a problem due to the naming issue as itās not reliable to expect your drive to have the same path to mount it every time.
The other issue Iāve seen is that USB booting from a flash drive can cause power issues ( low voltage warnings ) if you donāt have a proper power supply. If youāre using multiple flash drives and not drives with their own power supplies low voltage warnings happen more often.
If you get that working then you can just create a symbolic link between that device and /var/www/modules ( the modules path ) using the ln command to get it to act as more module storage. That symbolic link might need to be remade every time the drive is mounted so it would have to be written into a script. You may be able to use a MicroSD and a USB flash drive at the same time but youād probably have to boot from the USB drive and use a symbolic link for the MicroSD. Iām not sure if that would work but it may take some work. It is something that Iām going to look at in the future and automating but I ran into issues so the best thing to do is use a single device for now.
For performance, the MicroSD is a known bottleneck with pis. Using a fast MicroSD helps significantly and the difference is very noticeable. Even though some cards are labeled as class 10 they can still be slow. I have not done extensive comparisons between USB and MicroSD but if youāre using a slower MicroSD then USB will definitely be better. What I have tested extensively is USB Booting when using the pi as a desktop PC. It significantly speeds up the performance in that area and even made the pi0w a usable desktop and made web browsing smooth. I suspect this would be the same running RACHEL. The only issue is the USB ports share the same bus as the wifi. This means it might slow down the Wifi when under heavy load. Especially when writing files/installing modules, but that is also an issue with MicroSDs. So with all of that, my preference is USB.
For the ethernet issue, the problem is that you need to connect the pi to the internet to install content. There is no desktop in this image for performance reasons so if you want to use a keyboard/mouse/monitor and connect your pi to the internet over wifi, it all has to be done in the command line for now. It can be done but itās pretty advanced so thatās why I suggest using an ethernet port. I donāt know how advanced you are but these are the steps once youāve logged in with username and password pi/rachel.
Hopefully after reboot it works. This is another thing Iām going to be making a lot easier through the admin interface in the future but for now this is the only way. Hope that all makes sense.
James
Thanks so much for the incredibly quick and detailed response!
Iām pretty computer savvy, though all of this is new to me so all your tips are quite appreciated and helpful!
I decided to keep it simple and etch your kolibri image onto a USB flash drive and was downloading modules fairly quickly, both through Rachel and Kolibri. Great work!
However, I get an error downloading Kolibri-index (which I presume is to access kolibri from within Rachel?):
en-kolibri-index failed0
command: rsync -Pavz --del rsync://dev.worldpossible.org/rachelmods/en-kolibri-index ā¦/modules/
runtime: 0:29 failed
files_done: 0 out of 3 ( 0% )
data_done: 0 out of 32 ( 0% )
data_rate: 0
latest output:
rsync: link_stat ā/en-kolibri-indexā (in rachelmods) failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1668) [Receiver=3.1.2]
What can I do for this?
As for the rest regarding enabling WiFi, I donāt have a keyboard/mouse/monitor, so I figured out how to connect to the Pi via ethernet and SSH (using user:pi and pw:Rachel, which I had to dig around for). I cant seem to get the hotspot service to start again though, so I have no idea if any of this worked - I can only access it when it is still connected with ethernet as you detailed in step #5.
Also, I enabled VNC within raspi-config, however it doesnāt show me anything when I log in from my laptop or android phone (which I now see is because thereās no desktop in this image).
How would I go about installing a desktop onto this? Iāll probably just use it for exploration purposes (Iāve never used a RaspberryPi) and eventually revert back to one of your images.
Thanks!
Hey Nick,
No problem. Glad to help!
The kolibri-index module doesnāt download for me either and I believe this is an issue on the World Possible rsync server end. Maybe something is being updated or it has been removed? Iām not sure. Youāre right about that module. It shows direct links to Kolibri content inside of a RACHEL module to make it easier for users to directly go to from the home page. All modules are also available at oer2go.org. This is the link to en-kolibri-index but you can install it easily over ssh using these commands. To make this easier you can copy each command and if youāre using Putty for ssh, right click to paste.
You should then see it on the home page. For future reference, you can enable ssh by putting a file called āsshā with no extension on the /boot partition of your USB drive.
The wifi hotspot service is called āhostapdā. You can check the status of hostapd with āsudo systemctl status hostapdā. This will tell you if itās running or not. At the bottom of the output it will also show any errors that occurred if it failed to start. To make sure itās running you can do āsudo systemctl start hostapdā and check again. Iām not sure why it would get disabled.
The regular wifi service is wpa_supplicant and you can check if that is running with āsudo systemctl status wpa_supplicantā. Only one or the other can be running at any time. If wpa_supplicant is running then the pi is not in hotspot mode. Let me know what it shows and I can help from there.
To install a desktop you can run the command āsudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-modsā. That should install everything. These images are based off of Raspbian Stretch Lite which greatly improves performance. Iām not sure how functional the desktop will be other than for file browsing.
James
Youāre amazing. Thanks so much. I actually figured out the blank SSH file thing already, but the rest is super helpful. Like I said, I have a general aptitude for this stuff, but just donāt know how to speak the language (or, really, any computer languages anymore) so this at least gives me the basic phrases that I need to know.
Iāll try some of this stuff later and let you know how it goes.
A final question: if I wanted to make my own image to copy to other cards/keep different versions while I tinker, how would I do that? Is there a reverse etcher program that you use?
Iām planning to visit some rural communities in Guatemala in a week and will bring this along with my phone and laptop to show them what is possible. I met with the local World Possible chapter a few days ago, but a) I had already bought the RPi, b) they overcharge ($150) for a RachelPi with 64GB c) didnāt think you could use USB. Theyāre doing otherwise tremendous work though, including developing their own modules and integrating with the national education system. Hopefully, once I figure this all out, Iāll be able to bring a little bit of technical know-how to help them reach more people, if only by piggybacking off of the efforts of heroes like you!
Nick
Thanks Nick! It sounds like youāve got the hang of things!
To make an image you can use win32diskimager. This makes an image of the full device including free space. A 128GB USB drive will make a 128gb image. This can be a problem because not all devices that advertise their size are actually that size. A 128GB drive might be a bit smaller than another 128GB drive for instance and will give an error saying there isnāt enough space when flashing the image. To fix that you can shrink the image by removing the free space using a script called pishrink. Itās a bit tricky but you need to boot into Linux with another device that has enough space for the image on it and run the pishrink command/script on it. Itās a bit tricky and thereās a bug in the script right now so if you want to do this let me know and Iāll write out my process.
I think itās really great what World Possible, you, and all of the people on these forums are doing with RACHEL and deployments. Iām just trying to help in the way that I can. Iāve been working on a new image with new features and fixes since the last images that I hope will be done soon. You might find it interesting when itās done. Iād love to hear an update on how things go in Guatemala and if you have any more technical questions or suggestions feel free to ask!
James