zen.org Communal Weblog

Zoë and I are home again. She caught her first cold last week, her first week in day care. She is better today then yesterday, but she never complained a bit. A little phlegmatic, but that was about it.

Catching up with tech news, I saw over on /. a QA with David Cobb, the Green Party candidate. A few weeks ago they had a QA with the Libertarian candidate too.

Monday and today where the only days this week 余艾蕾 and I woke up in time to make it to Zoë’s day care on our proposed schedule. The other three days we just could not get out of bed, Marvin is doing a good job helping up get up though. I think there is going to be some sleeping in this weekend.

Zoë sitting, sleeping on my lap I type. She has been zonked out for a couple of hours. What’s freaky is that I can almost see her skull grow. Sometimes when I look down I can see her pulse on the top of her head. She has grown some hair on her forehead, so I expect a skull growth soon to pull it up on top.

Today is the last day Zoë and I well be hanging out together. On Monday it’s off to day care for her and both 余艾蕾 and are back at work. While I had frustrating days with Zoë it was still better then work. I hear her getting hungry right now, so I better go.

Zoë’s dehydrated lowfat milk and vegetable oil powder was running low, so I strapped her into the infantino® EuroRider™ and went off to the local CVS. I stopped by a café and had a café latté and croissant, picked up same dinner rolls from Cramer’s Bakery and took a leisurely stroll along the Delaware Canal. When I got back to my front porch I heard Marvin meowing, I looked in the hedge but found nothing. I opened the screen door and there was Marvin, wedged between the screen door and the main door. I can only assume that he snuck there when I was leaving and was there the entire time Zoë was out for a walk! I feel really bad.

Now that I got the hardware working, I had to install the systems with a properly configured operating system. The problem is this system has neither floppy or CDROM drive. It does, however, have PXE network cards. I boot the system onto a Debian Sarge nfs root partition. Here is a summary af what I did after that:

1. Load the ide-detect module to find the ATA drives. Partition the drives, don’t forget swap.
2. Use mkswap to prepare your swap partition, and mkfs to make the file systems.
3. Mount all the partitions someplace like they will be mounted, I used /mnt. Mounting /proc files system can be useful too.
4. Use Debian’s debootstrap command to install packages where you mounted the partitions.
5. Use the chroot command and change to where you just installed the packages.
6. Edit the /etc/hosts file, /proc/mounts is a good start. Don’t forget swap.
7. Edit and create other files: /etc/apt/sources.list, /etc/hosts, /etc/kernel-img.conf, /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hostname.
8. Use apt-get and install a kernel, I installed resolvconf too and put resolver configuration in the /etc/network/interfaces file.
9. Install GRUB, create the /boot/grub directory. Run the update-grub command.
10. Follow directions in the Installation section of the GRUB manual, to install GRUB on the boot drive.
11. Use passwd to set the root password.
12. Reboot, make sure you are not booting PXE though.

After it comes up, set the time zone. Continue to configure normally.

The SATA cables with the 90° jack on one end came in today. Once again I can close the case on this system. Now to just convince the boss that to do the same to the other eleven systems.

My TX4 saga continued last week. Just a minor addition I put in for completeness sake. Don and I ordered SATA cables with 90° ends. Hopefully the case will be able to be closed with these cables, and hopefully they where approved to be purchased.

Last Friday the cable guy came to downgrade our channel count, and upgrade our resolution. A few years ago, when we first moved into our house, the cable company was AT&T, within a few weeks it changed to Comcast. It made it hell getting cable as nobody at Comcast knew my area was now Comcast,but I was finally forwarded to the correct place. Now the issue arises that my area is still running the old AT&T hardware, and Comcast does not buy parts for this old hardware. So I’m stuck getting all the extended basic channels and the limited basic price. Woe is me.