Release Notes: grml 2008.11 - Codename Schluchtenscheisser

About

grml is a Debian-based Live-CD. It includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of texttools and system administrators. grml provides automatic hardware detection. You can use grml for example as a rescue system, for analyzing systems/networks or as a working environment. It is not necessary to install anything to a harddisk, you don't even need a harddisk to run it, unless you want to (use grml2hd for this). Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes about 2.1GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Bugfixes

Fixed several bugs and issues reported on grml_1.1 @ grml-wiki.

New grml-scripts:

• grml-chroot: wrapper around chroot with proc/sys/pts/dev filesystem handling
• swspeak-setup: activating software speak(up) features (used withing the swspeak bootoption)

grml-live (build system for creating a grml (based) live-cd):

• several new packages in the different flavour classes
• improve error handling
• improve checks for -[no]lzma for different squashfs-tools
• output grml version in grml's live-initramfs script
• automatically activate grml-testing repository for devel releases and daily snapshots
• and several other updates... check out the Debian changelog for details

See grml.org/grml-live/ for more details regarding grml-live.

grml-debootstrap (wrapper around debootstrap for installing plain Debian via grml):

• Provide interactive configuration dialog if the configuration file wasn't set up.
• Initial support for SW-RAID.
• Use root=UUID=... by default if possible to avoid possible race conditions with libata vs. pata
• Use stages based on target information, this gives us the possibility to run multiple instance of grml-debootstrap.
• Use policy-rc.d inside chroot to avoid startup of daemons.
• Remove stages after successful execution.
• Move stages to /var/cache/grml-debootstrap.
• Install devices using our own device tarball instead of running MAKEDEV (which is just an ungly fork bomb).
• Run aptitude with --without-recommends option.
• Copy /etc/debootstrap/[s]bin as well to the chroot if they are present
• Allow symlinks when coping existing files to chroot
• Pre-seed packages using /etc/debootstrap/debconf-selections
• Support DEBOOTSTRAP_OPT for passing extra parameters to the debootstrap command
• Support KEEP_SRC_LIST to allow user to provide their own apt sources.list from /etc/debootstrap/etc/apt/sources.list
• and a lot more updates... check out the Debian changelog for details

Special thanks to Tong Sun for his contributions and to Sipwise GmbH for sponsoring development of grml-debootstrap.

See grml.org/grml-debootstrap/ for more details regarding grml-debootstrap.

Special new features:

• integration of vcs_info within Zsh prompt (demo screenshot)
• use random password if bootoption 'ssh' doesn't have an option (thanks to Michael Holzt and Marc Haber)
• (re-)implemented the isofrom and tohd bootoptions
• moved from syslog-ng to rsyslog
• added supported for swedish keyboard (thanks to Martin Karresand)

Kernel

Based on vanilla kernel 2.6.26.8 including several patches and additional modules:

acx100 at76-usb atl2 aufs drbd8 gspca iscsitarget kqemu linux-uvc
linux-wlan-ng loop-aes madwifi ndiswrapper openafs qc-usb rt2400 rt2500
rt73 sl-modem speakup squashfs tp-smapi virtualbox-ose-guest

Notice: some more modules (like fglrx and nvidia) are not pre-installed but available through the grml-repository.

See grml.org/kernel/ for more details regarding the grml-kernel.

Important Changes

Using a new version schema: as we want to improve tracking of all the different flavours and releases of grml we decided to use "$flavour $YYYY.MM" for the stable releases. No further confusing 'grml 1.1 vs. grml64 0.2'.

Switched from old IDE drivers to libata drivers. What might have been known as /dev/hdX on your system will become /dev/sdX nowadays.

Truecrypt isn't shipped anymore Because Truecrypt is licensed under a specific license named 'TrueCrypt License 2.6' which doesn't permit us to distribute Truecrypt. See section VI/4 of the license for details.

Locales provided via /usr/share/locale have been removed due to space reasons, though /usr/share/i18n/locales hasn't been modified as well as package specific files.

Packages / Software

Details about shipped packages and their versions on grml are available at the Debian section. See dpkg_get_selections for a main package listing and dpkg_list for a more detailed list of packages shipped with grml 2008.11.

Updates

Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 20th of november 2008 (plus some further selected updates).

Removed 82 packages (excluding lib* and *2.6.23-grml*) - please notice that some of them are available under different names/in different packages:

*2.6.23-grml* lib*

915resolution a2ps apmd array-util automake1.8 base64 bazaar biew
bluetooth-alsa clamav-getfiles cpp-4.2 cracklib2 cupsys-common dbishell
debmake doc-base docbook-xml dumputils dvb-utils dviutils dynafont
eciadsl elfsh emelfm fileutils firmware-ipw3945 fonty fttools g++-4.2
gcc-4.2 gconf2 gconf2-common genisoimage gksu glimpse gnome-keyring
gs-esp gscanbus hydra icedax ipw3945d ipxripd isic lcap linda
linneighborhood metastore mobilemesh mozilla-imagezoom ms-sys mutella
ndiswrapper-utils ndiswrapper-utils-1.1 nmapfe nscd nufw nvclock o3read
postgresql-client-8.2 qtparted raggle rain realtime-lsm rt73-common
scrollkeeper smake sound-recorder squashfs-tools svgalibg1 syslog-ng
sysutils traceproto tss type1inst unzoo upstreamdev vifm vnc-common
xserver-xorg-video-newport xvncviewer xwatchwin zeroconf

Added 79 new packages (exluding lib* and *2.6.26-grml*):

aiccu bind9utils cciss-vol-status cnee cpp-4.3 cups cups-bsd cups-client
cups-common cupsddk cupsddk-drivers discover discover-data dnsmasq-base
dwdiff elinks-data ent espeakup ext3grep faketime fcoretools
foomatic-filters freeradius-common g++-4.3 gcc-4.3 gcc-4.3-base genext2fs
gfs2-tools gnuit grub-common i2c-tools iotop ipset john-data keynav
latencytop lynx-cur mercurial-common mpg123 mtd-utils netcat-traditional
odbcinst1debian1 openssh-blacklist openssl-blacklist openvas-client
openvpn-blacklist pinentry-gtk2 python-cairo python-clientform
python-debian python-feedparser python-gtk2 python-imaging
python-mechanize python-newt python-numeric python-ogg
python-pkg-resources qiv radvd rsyslog squashfs-lzma-tools sslscan
syslinux-common tcl8.5 texlive-extra-utils tig tk8.5 ttf-unifont unixodbc
xfonts-unifont xserver-xorg-video-geode xserver-xorg-video-mach64
xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
xserver-xorg-video-radeon xulrunner-1.9 zenmap zoo

Upgrade notes

As usual you can upgrade your grml harddisk system to the latest grml version running 'apt-get update; apt-get install grml'. Take a look at the upgrading webpage in the grml-wiki as well. Notice: If you are using grml in a productive environment and/or use a grml2hd installation we strongly recommend to subscribe to the grml-user mailinglist!

Major changes since release 1.1 (20080224)

• Migration from Mercurial to Git.
• Developer related mailinglists moved from mlmmj to mailmain setup at ml.grml.org.

Known issues

Take a look at grml_2008.11 @ grml-wiki. Please report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/.

Download grml 2008.11

grml 2008.11 can be downloaded from mirrors listed on grml.org/download/.

Feedback

Your comments, bug reports, patches, and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve future releases. If you find a problem with the release please check grml_2008.11 @ grml-wiki and report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/. Please send your feedback, feature requests and bug reports to the grml-team!

• grml.org/contact/
• #grml on irc.freenode.org

Thanks

Many thanks in this release go to Tong Sun, Martin Karresand, Ralf Schlatterbeck, Thomas Köhler, Peter Palfrader, Michael Holzt, Florian Schuele, Marc Haber, Sipwise GmbH, Charles Hewson, Thomas Lehmann, Christian Vogel, Andreas Roedl and Christian Hofstaedtler for their contributions. Many thanks also to the ones of you who donated something to the grml-team and of course to all those who have sent feedback since the last release!

More Information

You can find out more about grml on our website, IRC channel, and wiki.

To sign up for future grml announcements, please subscribe to grml's announcement list.

Further Questions?

Contact us.