Re: Please proof-read Debian 5.0 ("lenny") release notes
W. Martin Borgert called attention to:
> http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/releasenotes
I'm working on it, but since it's 02:00 here I think I'd better save
the rest for tomorrow. Commentary so far:
In the first couple of chapters I see a few places where I'd have
added or subtracted commas, but nothing really non-native-speakerish
and nothing that makes a difference to the meaning.
Are you localising or localizing? Either way, there are several
discrepancies, probably best caught by ispell.
3.1.1 has a couple of mildly odd phrasings, but only one outright
mistake: s/optionnally/optionally/.
4.4 has a slightly ungrammatical bit of phrasing: "by both its
codename [...] and by its status name". It's clear what's intended,
but to fix it either drop the second "by" or move the first to after
the "both".
4.4.2 refers twice to "packages mirrors". Intelligible, but should
be "package mirrors".
4.5.1 has "a NFS mount" (s/a/an/) and "whatever filesystem that is
mounted on your system" (s/that //); definite errors, but with no
risk of unclarity.
Here come the first of the content issues:
4.5.6 has what looks like a rather old list of "packages obsoleted
in lenny" (almost all of them vanished in etch) and promises a more
complete list in 4.11 - there's no such list.
4.5.6.1 (and footnote 6) talks about starting a desktop upgrade by
installing xlibmesa-glu, but that's a sarge-to-etch transitional
package.
4.5.7 talks about etch 2.6.8 kernels. Wouldn't those have to be
from sarge? Has this warning been fact-checked?
4.5.9 talks about the new package signature checking mechanism.
Does it mean the archive keyring setup, already in etch?
4.5.10 (back to l10n-english!) has a non-native-speakerish sentence:
"You can work around that by specifying -o APT::Force-LoopBreak=1
option on aptitude command line." Make that: "You can work around
this by specifying the option -o APT::Force-LoopBreak=1 on the
aptitude command line."
4.6.1 has warnings about the move from a "-386" kernel flavour to
"-486". That was a sarge-to-etch change.
4.6.4 talks about /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules - I
hope we're taking into account the fact that lenny's udev has
switched the path to /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules...
4.7.2 deals with the difficulties of upgrading to mdadm 2.5.3; etch
already had 2.5.6, so I strongly suspect this is stale.
4.8.1 expands UUID as "universal unique identifier" - s/al/ally/.
It also has persistent misspellings: s/eg./e.g./g and s/ie./i.e./g
4.8.2.1 has a phrase with two missing articles (though it's still
intelligible): "If such menu does not appear, try pressing Esc key"
^a ^the
(In fact, "foo key" should be "the foo key" throughout 4.8.2.1)
4.8.2.2 has "a Debian GNU/Linux installation media" (drop "a")
followed by "when prompt" (s/prompt/prompted/) - it's not hard to
guess what's intended there, but it's the closest to a real problem
in the English so far. In fact 4.8.2.2 is pretty wobbly throughout.
"Shouldn't arm your partitions"? "You will be proposed among
several actions"? Oof, that's got to go. Here's a revised version
of the whole section:
Boot from Debian GNU/Linux installation media (CD/DVD), and when
prompted, type 'rescue' to launch rescue mode. Select your
language, location, and keyboard mapping; then let it configure the
network (no matter whether it succeeds or not). After a while, you
should be asked to select the partition you want to use as the root
file system. The proposed choices will look something like:
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part5
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6
If you know which partition is your root file system, choose the
appropriate one. If you don't, just try the first. If it complains
about an invalid root file system partition, try the next one, and
so on. Trying one after the other shouldn't harm your partitions
and if you have only one operating system installed on your disks,
you should easily find the right root file system partition. If
you have many operating systems installed on your disks, it would
be better to know exactly which is the right partition.
Once you have choosen a partition, you will be offered a range of
options. Pick the option of executing a shell in the selected
partition. If it complains that it cannot do that then try with
another partition.
Now you should have shell access as user root on your root file
system mounted on /. You need access to the contents of the /boot,
/sbin and /usr directories. If these directories need to be mounted
from other partitions, do so (see /etc/fstab if you have no idea of
which partition to mount).
Jump to Section 4.8.1, "How to avoid the problem before upgrading"
and apply one of the two proposed procedures to fix the problem
permanently. Then type 'exit' to leave the rescue shell and select
'reboot' for rebooting the system as usual (don't forget to remove
the bootable media).
4.8.2.3 stage one: "and many other" is intelligible but wrong; I'd
recommend making it "(such as Debian Live, Knoppix, or Ubuntu
Live)".
4.10 - purely a suggestion, but all those lilo refugees might
welcome advance warning of the grub2 migration...
4.12 is "world domination", right? Or is that Debian Zurg?
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Reply to: