OLPC Little Green Machines!

You might want to periodically update the Sugar learning platform or your favorite Sugar Activities when new versions are released. The Sugar community actively evolves and improves the Sugar platform. New development releases are available on a daily basis. Stable releases are made every six months. Sugar Activities are also being improved.

The Sugar learning platform is most often updated as part of an operating-system upgrade; for example, in upgrading Ubuntu from Version 8.04 to 8.10, the Sugar release updates from Version 0.71 to Version 0.82. Typically, Sugar Activities are updated separately.

Updating Sugar Activities

You can keep your Sugar Activities up to date in four ways:

• Through the Sugar Control Panel
• Through the Browse Activity
• Via USB storage device (removable media)
• Via "yum" or "rpm" or "apt-get"

Sugar Control Panel

When you have an Internet connection, updating through the Sugar Control Panel is the easiest way to keep your Activities up to date.

1. Select the Control Panel from the hover menu on the Home View.

2. Click the Software update button. 

3. Sugar searches for updates.

4. Click "Install selected" to install the updates.

Sugar shows the progress with a series of successive screens. After Sugar installs the updates, you can exit the Software update dialog by clicking the X on the upper-right corner of the panel.

Updating through the Browse Activity

You can update individual Activities by installing the latest versions through the web browser.

1. Find the Activity's .xo file in your browser (a good place to look is the Activity page in the OLPC wiki http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities).
2. Click an Activity's .xo file and it downloads into the Journal.
3. Opening the Activity from the Journal automatically installs the new version.
4. For more detail, please refer to the chapter on Installing New Activities.

Updating via USB storage device (removable media)

You can update an Activity .xo file from removable media by copying it to your Journal.

1. Insert your removable media into your computer.
2. Open the Journal.
3. Select the view for your removable media by clicking its icon at the bottom of the screen.
4. Click the .xo file and Sugar installs it.

Updating via "yum" or "rpm" or "apt-get"

If you are comfortable using the Terminal Activity, you can use Linux commands to install and update Activities.

On Fedora-based systems, use the "yum" command.

On Debian-based systems (including Ubuntu), use the "apt-get" command.

Updating Sugar (and the underlying operating system)

Instructions for OLPC XO laptops (Fedora)

You can update Sugar and the underlying operating system without losing any data. You can update Sugar one of these three ways:

• If you have a wireless Internet connection, you can use the connection and the Sugar Control Panel to request a software update.
• If you have a wireless Internet connection and would like to use the Terminal Activity, you can update by entering commands from the Terminal Activity.
• If you do not have a wireless Internet connection, you can use an image file on an external storage device to update Sugar.

Note: The update process takes about 30 minutes.

Updating through the Terminal

Refer to wiki.sugarlabs.org for the most recent version number and for information about updates and reasons for updating. 

To determine what version of Sugar you are currently running, hover the pointer over the XO icon on the Home View and go to Control Panel, and then click About my XO.

With an Internet connection

1. Plug the XO laptop into an electrical outlet.
2. Connect to the Internet.
3. Open the Terminal Activity.
4. Open a "root shell" by typing: 
   

   su -l 

   and then press enter.
5. Run the update by typing 
   

   olpc-update build-number 

   and then press enter. (You should replace the string "build-number" with the number of the build you would like to upgrade to, for example, 8.2-757.) Alternatively, you can use the --latest flag to get the latest build, for example,

   olpc-update --latest stable

6. Once your updates are complete, reboot your computer. 
   

Without an Internet connection

Before you begin, you need to download two files to a USB stick. You can find the osNNN.usb and osNNN.toc files at http://download.laptop.org/xo-1/os/official/, where NNN is the version number you want to install.

1. Plug the XO into an electrical socket.
2. Insert your USB stick.
3. Open the Terminal Activity.
4. Open a "root shell" by typing:  

   su -l 

   and then press enter.
5. Run the update by typing 
   

   olpc-update --usb 

   and then press enter.

6. Reboot your computer.

Instructions for Ubuntu

Follow the standard process for updating Ubuntu to the latest release. The new Sugar packages should be included as part of the upgrade.

Updating Sugar without updating the operating system

You can update the system files without updating the underlying operating system.

Instructions for Fedora

1. Connect to the Internet.
2. Open the Terminal Activity.
3. Open a "root shell" by typing: 
   

   su -l 

   and then press enter.
4. Run a yum update by typing 
   

   yum -y update 

   and then press enter.
5. Run a yum install sugar by typing 
   

   yum install sugar 

   and then press enter.
6. Once your updates are complete, reboot.

Instructions for Ubuntu

1. Connect to the Internet.
2. Open the Terminal Activity.
3. Open a "root shell" by typing: 
   

   su -l 

   and then press enter.
4. Run an update by typing 
   

   apt-get -y update 

   and then press enter.
5. Run the command "apt-get install sugar" by typing 
   

   apt-get install sugar 

   and then press enter.
6. Once your updates are complete, reboot.