The content of my box : (lspci and lspci -v).

migus@dazibao:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562V-2 10/100 Network Connection (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300 Pro] (Secondary)
02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 61)


So let me explain how I did.

1. First, I used a netboot. I downloaded a recent netboot.tar.gz (from Debian website). I downloaded a daily image and use a Netboot PXE.. Not all the netboot.tar.gz are working… (That is to say, that I am not sure that all daily snapshot are working). I used this tarball:
   http://migus.nerim.net/vostro200/netboot.tar.gz
   I tried to build my own netboot.tar.gz without success. IRQ conflicts always vanished the debian-installer. I wish I had included the lastest e1000 drivers in my netboot…

I had a problem of network hardware (Intel e1000 included in vostro 200 is too recent). So

2. I decided to plug the time of my install an old 10OMb/s Ethernet card (e100 with PXE).

Very quickly I had IRQ conflicts that blocked the disk detection. (SATA Controller had timeout).

3. I passed the following arguments to the install command line acpi=off  irqpoll  vga=791

Everything went well. The installer finished its work. The box rebooted.

4. I downloaded module assistant, kernel-headers, gcc : aptitude install module-assistant gcc linux-headers-2.6.21-2
   and the e1000 driver from http://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/. I just run make install

(for lspci I ran a update-pciids (8)).

Everyting work well since :-)

Conclusion :
1) Install an old PCI Ethernet card with PXE
2) Install DHCP + PXE
2a) Find a netboot.tar.gz that work without freeze. (the tarball on my website works)
2b)Do not forget to plug your USB keyboard in the usb connector just bellow your ethernet connector. (If you don’t for an unknown reason, when you type on a key, Your box get it twice….)
3) Tune the installer command line : acpi=off  irqpoll
[let’s the installer worked]
4) Download e1000 driver
5) Remove your old PCI Ethernet Card.
6) Be happy
6a)If you want to enable acpi into your desktop, once you installed your system you can try acpi=noirq irqpoll.



+- 6 lignes : cryptonit (0.9.7-1) unstable; urgency=low – Pierre Machard——————
+– 7 lignes : cryptonit (0.9.6c-3) unstable; urgency=low – Pierre Machard——————
+– 7 lignes : cryptonit (0.9.6c-2) unstable; urgency=low – Pierre Machard——————
+– 7 lignes : cryptonit (0.9.6c-1) unstable; urgency=low – Pierre Machard——————
+– 6 lignes : cryptonit (0.9.6-1) unstable; urgency=low – Pierre Machard——————


That nice but strange a first sight.

I modified two files planet.py and planetlib.py. I had trouble to display dates in my timezone. The only solution I found was to add (3600 * 2) seconds to the current UTC time. (In France we are living at GMT+2 in summer)


--- planet-nightly/planet.py 2004-10-01 20:03:20.000000000 +0200
+++ planet.py 2005-06-03 14:31:05.000000000 +0200
@@ -14,6 +14,9 @@
import sys
import time
import os
+import locale
+locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR')
+

- info["new_date"] = time.strftime("%B %d, %Y", date)
+ info["new_date"] = time.strftime("%d %B %Y", date)
prev_date = date[:3]
else:
info["new_date"] = ""



--- planet-nightly/planetlib.py 2004-10-01 20:03:20.000000000 +0200
+++ planetlib.py 2005-06-03 14:31:35.000000000 +0200
@@ -23,6 +23,10 @@
import feedparser
import StringIO
import sgmllib
+import locale
+locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR')
+
+

def format_date(self, date, fmt=None):
"""Formats a date for output.


My blogger code is the following:
B4 d++ t+ k+ s- u-- f- i o+ x e l c--

The final score will provide the mark for Structure / Writing. I do not know yet If I will study in an american university. The goal of this TOEFL was to have a proof about my English level, and who knows perhaps studying in a foreing country next year. FYI I am currently in first year of a Master of Computer and Science in France.

My best training was Debian. We are always working in English, it helps a lot. Evenif develepers’ mother tongue is not English. If somebody knows an intersteting university, not too expansive, drop me an email. In France we have that chance that our tuition fee is very low

In French typo we have non-breakable spaces. The problem is that currently mozilla does not handle these non-breakable spaces correclty. It simply replaces non-breakable spaces by “normal” spaces. It renders some forms, filenames and wiki very dirty. You could help solving this issue by voting for this bug.

For more information, read the whole bug repport. Please VOTE for this bug!

I read a lot of emails, posts and comments about ubuntu, but to be honnest ubuntu makes me wonder about the future of Debian. I am not sad, but to my mind we have to resolve our problems in a near future otherwise our project will loose its energy, its maintainers, and its users.

Strong projects from Debian have been included into Ubuntu, the others have “not yet been integrated” or have been ignored… I do not want to make here a judgment on debian maintainers but we have to see the reality in front. 3 examples to show the interest of Ubuntu:

The debian-installer has been included without major changes because it’s nice and because Joey Hess is doing a nice work (He is not alone, but he realised a very big work).

Some people from the gnome-team have been recruited by canonical (that’s a great opportunity for them, and I deeply belive that canonical did a good choice).

Ubuntu is providing an up-to-date distribution with security support and the most important packages (other packages, from universe are only included to provide a lot of packages to ubuntu users).

Let’s go back a few seconds on the gnome-team. (Note that I am not involved in maintaining gnome)
What interest for people involved in gnome-team, when they must upload the lastest stable release of gnome (2.8) only in experimental, and when gnome users are only repporting bugs that have been fixed in 2.8 ? If I remember correctly, a few month ago (before the summer) the gnome-team was obliged to convince the release team that gnome 2.6 was not breaking gnome 2.4 because we were about to release Sarge. Now, gnome 2.8 has been released, we still do not have released Sarge. Are gnome-maintainers supposed to wait for the release of Sarge before uploading 2.8 into unstable ? I understand that they are interested by Ubuntu. Nobody can blame those guys. Ubuntu is based on gnome 2.8 and I can tell you that It works well.

I really belive that some “key persons” on the Debian project should stop focusing on their own person, and should recognise the reality. Debian is not on the good way. I wish I had not such idea, but unfortunately currently I do not think that we are doing the right things (except debian-installer, gnome-team and translators). I am really tired to see people complaining that Ubuntu is not intersting. Sorry guys, but at least test it.

I am still using Debian on my PCs. But today I was obliged to grab packages from ubuntu to use gnome 2.8… My question is simple today I started to grab packages from Ubuntu, gnome was the first, what packages will follow on the list ? And I wonder if I will see Debian as motivating than in the past when I decided to join the project.

P.S. I do not know if my low motivation on Debian is a consequence of my agression, or if it’s related to Ubuntu and the indifference of some Debian maintainers that refuse to see that Debian is on a difficult path.