Release Notes: Grml 2026.09 - codename Hättiwaritätti

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About

Grml is a Debian-based live system focusing on the needs of system administrators. The 2026.09 release provides fresh software packages from Debian testing/forky. As usual it also incorporates up to date hardware support and fixes known bugs from previous Grml releases.

About the codename.

Important changes

• This release is based on Debian testing/forky as of September 2026.
• GNU Screen 5.0.1 landed. The required configuration changes are not backwards compatible. Users of our grml screenrc must either upgrade or use the screenrc_v4 file with GNU Screen 4.9.

New and removed features

New software since the Grml 2026.04 release is included, and we continued to clean up the house. Noteworthy changes are:

grml-live - build system for creating Grml (based) Linux live systems:

• grml-live now requires Linux user namespaces in the build environment. Unfortunately docker and other containerization tools do not provide Linux user namespaces inside containers. This was prompted by systemd changes, and took a substantial effort. Daily images were not built between 2026-06-10 and 2026-09-02.
• Reading configuration from grml-live.conf was removed.
• New command line syntax. chroot-based workflows are temporarily unsupported and will be restored at a later time.
• Not shipped on grml-full anymore. Please use grml-live directly from git.
• Remaining 32-bit i386 architecture support was removed.

Detailed changes: grml-live v0.56.0 to d37c392

grml-debootstrap - Debian system install tool:

• Debian “forky” can now be selected in the dialog frontend
• /etc/kernel-img.conf is no longer created in the target system, rely on Debian defaults instead.
• FIXED_DISK_IDENTIFIERS=yes was implemented for GPT and Raspberry Pi images, and the identifiers are derived from SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

Detailed changes: grml-debootstrap v0.127 to v0.130

Bits & bolts

• Linux kernel 7.1.8
• exfat support is now available in the initramfs, for booting from exfat-formatted USB devices.
• grml2usb: when grub-install fails, add hint for required GNU GRUB packages.
• GRUB now sources hook files and respects ${extraopts}.
• GRUB boot_hybrid.img is bundled in the ISO9660 filesystem for easier remastering.
• The very old save-config and restore-config scripts have been removed.
• Fixed 19 issues and 144 PRs.

Packages

Details about shipped packages and their versions in Grml are available in the Debian section.

Packages for individual Grml software is now also available directly from their GitHub release pages, for example grml2usb.

Updates

Packages are taken from Debian testing/forky, as of September 3, 2026.

The following packages have been added (excluding e.g. lib*, fonts*, *-{base,bin,common,core,data}, {gcc,cpp}-*, perl*, python*, ruby* and kernel image):

• 3cpio: a dependency of initramfs-tools
• ovmf (amd64) and qemu-efi-aarch64: EFI Firmware for QEMU, useful to verify EFI bootloader setup. Thanks to Sebastian Pipping for the suggestions.
• pydf

The following packages have been removed/replaced (excluding lib*, fonts*, *-{base,bin,common,core,data}, {gcc,cpp}-*, perl*, python*, ruby* and kernel image):

• speedtest-cli: removed from Debian
• squashfs-tools: dependency of grml-live
• tpm-udev: removed from Debian testing

Known issues

Please visit the known bugs web page.

Download Grml 2026.09

Grml 2026.09 can be downloaded from the download page.

In 2026.04 ISOLINUX was replaced with GRUB 2 for BIOS boot. When using grml2usb to install Grml to USB media, make sure to use at least version 0.20.14.

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/. We also welcome feature requests and any kind of constructive feedback. If you want to reach out to the Grml team, please visit our contact webpage.

The next stable Grml release is scheduled for the end of 2026.

The Grml team is available also for commercial support and services. If you are interested in our consulting services, need a special feature in Grml or a custom branded Grml version with your company logo, please reach out to business (at) grml.org

Thanks

Many thanks in this release go to (alphabetically)

Aaron Rainbolt, cacin, Christopher Bock, Dr. András Korn, Marc Haber, Paul Buonopane, and Sebastian Pipping, for their contributions. ❤️

Once again netcup contributed financially, this time specifically to this release. Thank you, netcup ❤️

We also want to thank our individual sponsors donating through GitHub. If you like what we are doing, please join in!

No new sponsors joined in for this release.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to Grml and this release, stay healthy and happy Grml-ing! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

More Information

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

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