Hi,
I have a bunch of used windows laptops, and I was wondering since there are RaspberryPi emulators and OS for PC computers, if anyone has tried running Rachel-PI on Laptops or PCs?
Thanks!
Duncan
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Hi Duncan,
The preferred way to do this is to use our desktop Linux install scripts for Ubuntu or Linux Mint with either of those as the main OS. The hotspot becomes an issue when you run things in a VM, but you can also run the installer in a VM instance as well.
- Download - linux_08_28_2020.zip
Extract that zip to /var/tmp, then run “sudo bash setup”.
If you try that and run into any issues let me know and I’ll take a look. If you specifically wanted to emulate RACHEL-Pi, it’s probably doable but would take a bit of work.
James
Hi James,
Thank you. I will be honest the reason I was looking at Rachel-Pi is I hadnt found a link to another OS that was still active.
Forgive me, I am compltely new to linux. I go linux mint running on a laptop, and extracted the rachel installer to /var/tmp:
I then oppened the command terminal and rand sudo bash setup, and get no file/directory found:
I am sure the issue is brutally obvious with my command, or extraction location, if you can see the issue thats great, in the meantime I wil see if I can figure it out.
Thank you,
Duncan
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Hi Duncan,
No problem. I figured you might prefer a desktop OS. I do maintain support for the linux installers which is the same version that’s on the RACHEL-Pi. It’s just rare that people ask for it, so I only update when asked.
You will just need to cd into the installer directory
- cd /var/tmp/installer
- sudo bash setup
Then follow the on-screen instructions. There is a possibility this will error as it hasn’t been used/updated in a while. The last Mint OS it was run on was 20 I believe. Hope you get somewhere with it though. Let me know what you find and I’ll look at fixing any issues.
James
Hi James,
Thank you, can’t believe I forgot to cd.
- cd /var/tmp/installer
- sudo bash rachel
Seemed to work for me, to bring up the installer.
The only issue I am coming into now is it says I need a school ID to download Rachel. If I don’t have one setup is there a generic id you use for installs?
Thanks,
Duncan
Hi Duncan,
You can enter anything you’d like. It just stores this in a file on the machine for possible later use.
James
Hi James,
Thank you so much for your help getting Rachel running. It is now working. The one issue is I can no longer access any other site, aside from the Rachel address I set. I get a server IP missing on everything I access despite being connected to the internet.
In terms of what I have tried:
- Restarted Computer
- Disconnect/Reconnect to network
- Reset Wifi connection settings
- Reset proxy settings to default
Is this an issue you are familiar with, or simply a byproduct of setting up rachel?
Thanks,
Duncan
Hi Duncan - Are you using the WIFI to connect to the internet?
Hi James,
Yes, and it says I am connected to my home network, however, the site’s server IP address cant be found.
Thanks,
Duncan
Hi Duncan,
If you chose to install the wifi hotspot with RACHEL, it sets the whole thing up to act as a hotspot for users to connect to. Changing anything related to the wifi after that using the Network Manager UI is not suggested. You’ll need to use LAN to connect to the internet while RACHEL is configured with a hotspot enabled.
The alternative is to select the option where RACHEL doesn’t install a hotspot during the installation. That way you can use the wifi normally.
James
Hi James,
This makes sense, thank you.
I have set up a second device with the wifi hotspot disabled, and it can’t seem to open Rachel. It will say the install is completed, reboot and when I go into chrome or firefox, it won’t connect to the offline Rachel server. I set up the address to be the same as the one on the computer that has Rachel working, but I do not think that should be an issue?
If you know there are certain hardware incompatibility issues or anything else to try I would be grateful if you could share them.
Thank you for all your help,
Duncan
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Hi Duncan,
Good to hear you’ve gotten a bit further with it. The desktop installer can be a bit tricky due to the various hardware/operating systems it gets run on. Hopefully that part all installed alright.
When installed locally, the address of the servers that are running is localhost, which is 127.0.0.1. If you open up your browser and go to http://127.0.0.1, you should see RACHEL. The website name to access rachel on that you set, lets say “rachel.com”, has to be prefaced with “http://” or else it won’t be recognized.
So my suggestion is to first try http://127.0.0.1, and then try http://www.rachel.com or whatever address you entered. If this device is connected to your home wifi router via an ethernet cable, you should also be able to access RACHEL from the ip address that your router assigned to it, which would be http://ipaddress.
Hopefully one of those options works for you. I can help you troubleshoot further if that’s not it.
James
Hi James,
http:// was my issue, so thank you! I was at my wit’s end, so I can’t emphasize how much I appreciate all of your help.
Thank you,
Duncan
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Awesome! I’m glad you got it going. It is pretty frustrating that you need the http:// so I’ll have to look into that.
Keep in mind this is still the RACHEL-Pi version of RACHEL so some things are still not available. en-moodle, en-ka-lite, es-kalite, etc, are not supported. Moodle will be soon. en-file_share and en-kolibri-index might also need to be the custom pre-installed versions.
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Hi, I recently won a research grant for investigating how to optimize the RACHEL for a supply of probook pc’s at the university of Pittsburgh. I would love to get in contact with either of you to learn more!
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Hello James,
I wanted to thank you for these steps. Below is what I did to have Rachel Pi running on a Mint Linux VM in Oracle VirtualBox:
- I installed Oracle VirtualBox
- Downloaded Mint Linux 20.3 iso image and created a Virtual Machine.
- then I downloaded the linux_08_28_2020.zip and followed the steps below:
- extracted to /var/tmp
- cd /var/tmp/installer
- sudo bash rachel
I didn’t install a hotspot. I rather enabled my Windows PC to be a hotspot. Use this guide to do so.
Once Rachel was installed, I rebooted and looked up the IP Address of the Mint Linux (type ifconfig in a terminal to get the ip address) and typed that IP into my browser and BOOM: I had RACHEL.
I couldn’t get to it using http:\rachel.com. (not sure why).
But this setup means one does not have to buy a Raspberry Pi. which is such a relief. Any Windows / Linux box can be used. You just have to get a PC with a lot of Memory, HD Space and a good processor.
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
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You’re welcome @walash! Glad you got it running!
http://rachel.pi will only work when the hotspot is installed via RACHEL. The reason is the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file which provides IP addresses to wifi clients has a line that sets the RACHEL’s ip address as mapped to http://rachel.pi. You would have to do the same with custom DNS through your Windows hotspot.
The same installer should work on Ubuntu as well if you don’t want to use Mint. You can also use a USB wifi dongle to provide the hotspot via RACHEL. Happy RACHELing!
James
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I am surprised you would rather use a PC than a Pi. I have found the power saving and convenience of the Pi far outweighs its costs.
Still it’s impressive you got it to work, well done.
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