zen.org Communal Weblog

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.

I have added insight to my TX4 card issues. I plug them into the riser card and they seem to work, but after a few minutes the system freezes up. I plug them directly into the board and all works well, but I then can’t close the 2U case. Don and I tried a different riser card, same problems. I spent hours yesterday looking for a riser card with no electronics, but simply plugs into two 32-bit PCI ports, but none seem to exist. Computers suck.

Yesterday I changed my Comcast cable service to limited basic cable. 余艾蕾 and my idea was that with Zoë and Netflix we will be watching more movies, but more important then that, cable channels kind of suck. My wife and I seem to agree that EWTN is a waist of bandwidth, as is Lifetime, Spike TV, the Game Show Network and many other channels.

Some channels, like CNN, The History Channel, and some of the Discovery channels will not be missed even though I would sometimes watch shows on them.

I will miss more channels then 余艾蕾 though: Alton Brown and Iron Chef on the Food Network; Stargate SG-1 on the SciFi channel; international soccer games on the ESPNs; and more then anything The Daily Show and South Park on Comedy Central. South Park can’t really be watched with Zoë around anyway. All that is not worth the extra $25 bucks it costs me.

So hear me Comedy Central, ESPN, SciFi, et all. If Comcast didn’t put so muth other shit on I might still be watching you.