Good news, and other news...

[alexpgp]

Well, thanks to an almost unconscionable level of boilerplating, I'm on page 17 of 19 for the day. Once I finish these last 3 pages, I think I'll hang up my translation spurs for the day.

On the Linux front(s), I was able to get SmallLinux to boot on the ThinkPad, and even managed to run fdisk to partition the 1-GB hard drive into a 48-MB swap partition and an "everything else" Linux partition that's bootable. That's as far as I got. I'm not exactly sure, off the top of my head, how to go about formatting the partitions (or even if that's required); in any event, it would be nice to transfer the boot info to the hard drive, so that I don't have to keep a floppy in place (the ThinkPad only has room for a floppy drive or the CD-ROM drive, and I'd prefer to keep the CD-ROM drive in place, if only because a small piece of plastic that keeps the floppy in place has been misplaced).

The files I wanted to save from the crippled eSlate all fit onto 3 floppies, so that was not that big of a deal. When it came to reinstalling the Mandrake 7.1 (the only distro where I have a fighting chance to run X), the process seemed a lot clunkier today than it did way back when. Most certainly no support was installed for either PCMCIA card (my Linksys NP100 or the WaveLAN wireless card), at least any to the level where the hardware was recognized as a network card. The install process didn't ask me for network configuration parameters unless I specified a "custom" install, and when doing a "custom" install (one of three installs done today), the list of network drivers I'm asked to select from doesn't seem to have anything I care to specify.

So right now, the eSlate is sitting there with a "fresh" Mandrake 7.1 on it, incapable of running X (I remember having to finagle with it for a while before it'd cooperate), with no network support, etc., etc. I've initiated a download of the latest/greatest RedHat ISO disk images for their 7.2 version, but unless things speed up overnight, it'll take 18 hours to download each of the two images necessary to install RedHat 7.2. We'll see though; it's not as though I have a metered connection, have any pressing deadline, or anything like that.

At any rate, in the final tally, today's Linux-related activities are running below average, but that's not bad, considering how little attention I've devoted to them.

* * *Drew went up to Wolf Creek today and just got back a few minutes ago. He looks tired, but happy. Shannon didn't go with him, at least not directly. She stayed back a couple of hours and went with Huntur to a friend's house, after which she and baby caught up with Drew on the mountain.

Galina listened to some Robert Kiyosaki tapes while making the most delicious borshcht (the first such soup I've had in way too many a moon). Yum!

Back to the subject of translations: I am feeling a little bette about the reference documents I've been sent for the job. If anything, they show that some level of inconsistency has already crept into the translated documents (e.g., calling a "building" a "facility"), so I'm not going to grind myself unnecessarily to find the one-and-only, consistently used term.

Cheers...

Comments

[volkris.livejournal.com]

The format command would be something along the lines of
mkext2fs /dev/hd[n]
assuming you're just going to use the standard Linux filesystem. Perhaps the command is mke2fs. I don't have my own linux box in front of me to check.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found the command (forget what it's called... had an embedded dot... but basically what you said).

Thanks for the help.

Cheers...