Release Notes: Grml 2017.05-rc1 - codename Freedatensuppe

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About

Grml is a Debian based live system focusing on the needs of system administrators. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian testing (AKA stretch) and is the first Grml release using systemd as its init system. As usual it also incorporates up to date hardware support and fixes known bugs from the previous Grml release.

Important Changes

• Switch from file-rc to systemd as init system. grml-live (the build system for creating Grml (based) Linux live systems) still supports non-systemd systems using file-rc, though we don't plan to maintain this in the long run. For the reasons why we actually switched to systemd please visit the FAQ. Due to the change to systemd some boot options in the current release might not work as before and some further issues might have been unnoticed yet. Please let us know if you should stumble upon any such issues.
• New Grml repository signing key: 4096R/21E0CA38EA2EA4AB. If you're using the Grml repositories (deb.grml.org) please make sure to use a current version of the grml-debian-keyring package. The GPG key is also available via https://deb.grml.org/repo-key.gpg.
• Following Debian's switch, the 32-bit PC support (known as the architecture 'i386' and what's provided by 'grml32') now no longer covers a plain i586 processor. The new baseline is the i686, although some i586 processors (e.g. the 'AMD Geode') will remain supported. The following shell script may be a useful indicator (assuming only one processor is installed in the machine):

    if grep -q '^flags.*\bfpu\b.*\btsc\b.*\bcx8\b.*\bcmov\b' /proc/cpuinfo; then
       echo "OK (assuming all CPUs are of the same type)"
    else
       echo "NOT OK: Missing one or more of the required CPU extensions"
    fi
  

New features

Highlighting the most relevant changes only:

• grml2usb (tool to install Grml ISOs to USB devices):
  • Support usage of grml2usb on EFI systems
  • New option --skip-usb-check to skip check whether target looks like a USB device
  • New option --rw-blockdev for usage with read-only/forensic like devices
• grml-live (build system for creating Grml (based) Linux live systems):
  • Systemd support, providing backwards compatibility (non-systemd using file-rc) via FILE_RC class
  • Provide wayback machine via "-w <date>" to install Debian packages from specific date
  • Add support for netboot.xyz
  • Add SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes
  • Generate /etc/issue with Grml release information
  • Switch from aptitude to apt usage for software installation
  • Output to "./grml" in current working directory by default
  • If locales-all package is installed skip locales generation
  • GRMLBASE/21-usersetup: add grml user to vboxsf group
  • New script 94-update-smart-drivedb to update smartmontools' drive database
  • templates: use net.ifnames=0 by default
• grml-hwinfo (tool to collect hardware information):
  • Support options --force + --quiet for usage with cron
  • Provide `acpi --everything` output in file `acpi.everything`
  • ip: also store table specific route information
• grml-zshrc (Zsh configuration):
  • Fall back to journalctl with llog + tlog aliases if /var/log/syslog doesn't exist
  • Make some ambiguous aliases optional via GRML_NO_APT_ALIASES + GRML_NO_SMALL_ALIASES
  • Sync zsh-lookup with its upstream repository
  • Add more robustness to completion caching setup
  • Drop 'setopt nonomatch' configuration
  • Rewrite large parts of persistent dirstack handling
  • No longer explicitly set SHELL
  • Add support for `fetch' in simple-extract()
  • Several updates to the bk function, e.g. new option '-ra' to remove all (even hidden) backups
  • Drop j alias (used for 'jobs -l')
• grml-debootstrap (wrapper around debootstrap for installing pure Debian):
  • Support Debian stretch and use Debian stretch as the new default release
  • Provide EFI support via --efi <device> option
  • Drop sysfsutils from default software package list
  • Don't generate rootfs entry in /etc/fstab if we don't know its UUID
  • Don't fiddle around with /etc/hosts
  • Honor GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true and don't set root=UUID then
  • Export TARGET_HOSTNAME before running post-scripts
  • Disable '^metadata_csum' feature when creating ext filesystem for jessie and older Debian releases
  • Ensure that grub-pc/install_devices is pointing to the requested device
  • Use parted to create partition table
  • Rename --scripts to --post-scripts for consistency, accordingly disable SCRIPTS by default, replaced by POST_SCRIPTS
  • Provide new option --remove-configs to delete grml-debootstrap configuration files from installed system
  • Ensure that grub-pc is installed in VMs even when using --nopackages
  • Provide hostname to pre-scripts by setting up /etc/hostname
  • Make it more friendly to install on non-Debian distributions
  • Drop contrib + non-free from default COMPONENTS, support --contrib + --non-free cmdline options
  • Install firmware-linux only when non-free is among the COMPONENTS
  • Use full fingerprint instead of short GPG key ids for Grml repository

Bits & bolts

• Linux kernel is based on 4.9.17.
• Fixed several bugs from the bug tracking system.

Packages

Details about shipped packages and their versions in Grml are available in the Debian section. Visit dpkg_list for a detailed list of packages shipped with Grml 2017.05(-rc1).

Updates

Packages are taken from Debian testing as of 7th of May 2017. 63 packages have been removed, and these 64 new packages have been added (excluding lib* and kernel image):

apt-transport-https bats binwalk btrfs-progs cpp-6
distro-info-data espeak-ng-data exif firefox-esr
firmware-amd-graphics firmware-cavium firmware-intel-sound
firmware-misc-nonfree firmware-ti-connectivity freeipmi-common
gcc-6-base gnome-icon-theme gnupg-agent graphicsmagick
graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat gtk-update-icon-cache
initramfs-tools-core iptraf-ng keyutils linux-cpupower lynx
lynx-common nethogs nilfs-tools nvme-cli partclone
perl-modules-5.24 perl-openssl-defaults physlock pinentry-curses
policykit-1 python3-binwalk python3.5 python3.5-minimal rake
ruby-deep-merge ruby-did-you-mean ruby-minitest ruby-net-telnet
ruby-nokogiri ruby-pkg-config ruby-power-assert ruby-rgen
ruby-test-unit ruby2.3 sg3-utils-udev stress syslinux-utils
systemd systemd-container systemd-sysv uml-utilities vim-gtk
vim-gui-common wireshark-qt xorriso xserver-xorg-input-libinput
xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu xxd

These Debian packages have been removed/replaced (excluding lib* and kernel image):

alsa-base aufs-tools cpp-4.9 file-rc firmware-ralink
gcc-4.8-base gcc-4.9-base genext2fs iceweasel initscripts
insserv iptraf manpages mcollective mcollective-common multitail
netcat-traditional nfacct perl-modules puppet-common
python-configobj python-configshell python-epydoc python-ipaddr
python-netifaces python-ntdb python-prettytable python-pyparsing
python-rtslib python-simpleparse python-simpleparse-mxtexttools
python-six python-support python3.4 python3.4-minimal ruby-hiera
ruby-stomp ruby-systemu ruby2.1 samba-dsdb-modules startpar
sysvinit sysvinit-core targetcli traceroute vlock
xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-mouse
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse
xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-intel
xserver-xorg-video-mach64 xserver-xorg-video-mga
xserver-xorg-video-modesetting xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
xserver-xorg-video-trident

Known issues

Please visit the known bugs web page.

Download Grml 2017.05-rc1

Grml 2017.05-rc1 can be downloaded from grml.org/download/prerelease/.

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 the known bugs list and report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/. Please send your feedback and feature requests to the Grml team!

Thanks

Many thanks in this release go to (alphabetically) Andras Korn, Andreas "Jimmy" Gredler, Andrey Borzenkov, Antoine Beaupré, Axel Beckert, Ben Finney, Bernd Zeimetz, Bernhard Tittelbach, Brian M. Carlson, Carsten Hey, Christian Hesse, Christian Hofstaedtler, Christian Sturm, Christoph Berg, Daniel Hahler, Darshaka Pathirana, Dmitri Vereshchagin, Eric Keller, Felipe Sateler, Gregor Zattler, Guillem Jover, Haudegen, Karl Voit, Laurent Bigonville, Michael Vetter, Nicolas Braud-Santoni, Patrick Schleizer, Paul Menzel, Philip Hands, Sebastian Boehm, Sebastian Pipping, Stefan Schlesinger, Tamas Csillag, Thiago Perrotta, Thilo Six, Thomas Berger, Thomas Stewart and Yves-Alexis Perez for their contributions.

More Information

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

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