Release Notes: grml 2009.05 - Codename Lackdose-Allergie

About

grml is a Debian-based Live-CD. It includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators and users of texttools. 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. Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes more than 2GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Main Bugfixes

• improved localtime / utc / gmt handling (thanks to Thomas Lehmann for his work)
• vimrc: enable features (like syntax highlighting) only if available

Fixed several small bugs and issues reported on grml_2008.11 @ grml-wiki and in the bug tracking system.

New features

Special new features:

• bootoption persistent: use persistency feature on grml, check out the persistency webpage in the grml wiki for further details.
• bootoption findiso: dynamic version of bootoption isofrom. findiso looks for the specified ISO file on all disks where it usually looks for the .squashfs file (so you don't have to know the device name compared to isofrom=...). Useful when booting from harddisk. Usage example: 'grml findiso=/grml_2009.05.iso'
• bootoption bsd: boot minimal MirOS BSD operating system.
• bootoption hdt: minimalistic hardware detection tool
• bootoption readonly: mark ALL /dev/[hs]*dX devices as read-only, this is important for forensic investigations and is automatically activated when booting via 'forensic'
• bootoption hwspeak: probe all available speakup hardware modules (hear all output directed to the console via special hardware)
• Zsh supports directory specific shell configuration

New grml-scripts:

• grml-chroot: wrapper around chroot with proc/sys/pts/dev filesystem handling
• grml-exec-wrapper: simple but smart program execution wrapper for executing commands which checks whether the specified program is available at all
• swspeak-setup: activate software speak(up) features (used within the swspeak bootoption)

grml2usb (install grml ISO(s) on usb device for booting):

• fresh re-implementation from scratch
• featuring multi-ISO support
• providing support for additional bootoptions
• use of grub as default bootmanager (syslinux on request)
• automatic installation of a known-to-work MBR (master boot record)

Visit the usb webpage in the grml wiki and grml.org/grml2usb for more details regarding grml2usb.

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

• support setting Debian suite components (like main, contrib,...) through $COMPONENTS
• support setting aptitude/apt-get options through $DPKG_OPTIONS.
• support selection of netinstall vs. local mirror in interactive menu
• drop $CHROOTMIRROR variable, instead use $MIRROR for debootstrap as well as inside the chroot
• provide $MNTPOINT as environment variable for usage inside /etc/debootstrap/scripts/.
• bugfixes for software RAID handling
• and more updates... check out the Debian changelog for details

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

Kernel

Based on vanilla kernel 2.6.28.10 including several patches and additional modules:

aufs drbd8 iscsitarget kqemu loop-aes lzma ndiswrapper openafs rt2400
rt73 sl-modem speakup squashfs sysprof tp-smapi virtualbox-ose-guest
xtables-addons

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

Important Changes

• speakup: modified bootoption for speakup (kernel driver to hear all output directed to the console): use speakup.synth=... for loading a specific module instead of speakup_synth=... (notice the dot instead of '_'). Usage example: speakup.synth=apollo.
• zshrc: setup merge of /etc/zsh/zshrc and /etc/skel/.zshrc into one single file, check out grml-zsh-refcard for details.
• vimrc: disable digraph by default (it's especially annoying for users not being aware of it)
• dillo was replaced with xlinks2 as dillo's dependency libgtk1.2 was removed from Debian/unstable
• madwifi drivers: the madwifi drivers have been replaced by the ath5k and ath9k kernel drivers of kernel 2.6.28.

Packages / Software

Details about shipped packages and their versions on grml are available at the Debian section. Visit dpkg_get_selections for a main package listing and dpkg_list for a more detailed list of packages shipped with grml 2009.05.

Updates

Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 19th of may 2009 (plus some further selected updates).

Removed 82 packages (excluding lib* and *2.6.26-grml*) - please notice that some of them are available under different names/in different packages:

*2.6.26-grml* lib*

bzr cheops cryopid cupsddk cupsddk-drivers cupsys cupsys-bsd cupsys-client
db4.3-util dillo dropbear elfkickers es fblogo firescope fragroute funionfs
g++-4.1 gcc-4.1 gdk-imlib11 gqcam gqview hdaps-utils honeyd hpijs hplip
hplip-data idswakeup ifupdown-scripts-zg2 igal imlib-base imlib11 ipset jmon
linux-wlan-ng lmbench lspowertweak madwifi-tools nemesis nttcp open-vm-tools
paketto potion powertweak-gtk powertweakd python-feedparser python-imaging
python-newt python-numeric python-pyogg python-urlgrabber sam shc shorewall
shorew all-common shorewall-shell sing sjog snort snort-common
snort-common-libraries snort-rules-default snownews stegdetect tetex-base tspc
ttf-bitstream-vera unionfs-tools vim-python vim-ruby waproamd xdialog xmove
xserver-xorg-input-elo2300 xserver-xorg-input-evtouch xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
xserver-xorg-video-i810 xserver-xorg-video-imstt xserver-xorg-video-ivtv
xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-vga xsteg

Added 28 new packages (exluding lib* and *2.6.28-grml*):

console-setup consolekit cowbuilder debsig-verify dvtm elfsh gcc-4.4-base
geeqie geeqie-common geoip-database gs-common icedax igal2 iw policykit
python-numpy python-repo rtbug sensible-utils speakup-tools tf tor-geoipdb
tsconf ttf-freefont u3-tool virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 xserver-common
xtables-addons-common

Major changes since release 2008.11 (20081201)

• Moritz Augsburger joined the grml-team

Known issues

Take a look at grml_2009.05 @ grml-wiki. Please report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/.

Download grml 2009.05

grml 2009.05 can be downloaded from the mirrors listed on grml.org/download/.

Feedback

Your comments, bug reports, patches, and suggestions will help fixing bugs and improving future releases. If you find a problem with the release please check grml_2009.05 @ grml-wiki and report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/. Please send your feedback and feature requests to the grml-team!

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

Thanks

Many thanks in this release go to Thomas Lehmann, Wernfried Haas, Jan-Hendrik Zab, Christian Hofstaedtler, Ralf Moll, Marc Haber, Thorsten Glaser, Lothar Speil, Michael Whapples, Andreas Korsten, Baptiste Daroussin, Ulrich Dangel and Moritz Augsburger 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.

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Further Questions?

Contact us.