Release Notes: grml64 2010.04 - codename Grmlmonster

About

Grml is a bootable live system (Live-CD) based on Debian. 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. Due to on-the-fly decompression Grml includes about 2 GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Whereas Grml is meant for use on 32 bit systems, grml64 provides support for 64 bit platforms. It is based on the amd64 port of Debian. Take a look at the 'Debian-Information'-section if you are searching for the package list.

New features

Special new features:

• vnc bootoption: booting with vnc=yourpassword and the startx bootoption automatically starts the vnc service for user 'grml' using graphical remote access with provided password
• dmraid related bootoptions: nodmraid to not enable present dmraid devices, dmraid=on to automatically enable any present dmraid devices and dmraid=off to actively try to stop any possibly present dmraid devices.
• New bootoption bootid for improving reliability of boot process. The specified argument to the bootoption is matched against a token on the ISO to make sure that only the correct Grml version gets booted.
• More robust network booting: The last Grml release (2009.10) already invented the ethdevice= bootoption which allows you to specify a specific NIC for booting. The bootoption ethdevice and its surrounding code has been extended so it is possible to specify multiple devices at once that should be configured. If you don't have any specific configuration all present NICs will be used for configuration via DHCP automatically. Visit the Grml developer blog for further information
• Providing an improved default configuration for top(1) utility when running as (non-root) user
• Improved serial console handling through /etc/inittab*. Using normal getty instead of mgetty and several baud rate settings (115200,57600,38400,19200,9600,4800,2400,1200) to let getty figure out which mode should be used.
• Reworked xinitrc handling: modularize the code into ~/.xinitrc.d/ and support configuration through ~/.config/grml/xinitrc.

New features in Grml's Zsh

• new function changed()
• zshrc: map backtab to reverse-menu-complete
• smarter C-z shortcut
• Switch `minimal-shell()' from ksh93 to mksh
• Use wrapper functions for changing title/screen
• Some minor bugfixes and code enhancements

Major changes in grml-scripts:

• grml-quickconfig: rewritten from scratch with proper customisation support, now being shipped through new Debian package grml-quickconfig
• Remove deprecated bt-audio script
• grml-lock: add support for graphical version via gdialog/zenity
• grml-setlang: do not set LC_CTYPE any longer
• grml-hostname: address xauth issue
• zsh-login: do not disable grml-quickconfig for serial console
• grml-info: improve support for customisation

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

• Mount vfat devices with explicit iocharset option
• Support bootid bootoption
• Also set GRML_DEFAULT when running with --dry-run
• Make sure that --grub-mbr requires --grub
• ... some minor bugfixes

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):

• Add support for specifying filesystem + provide /etc/network/interfaces.examples
• Introduce option --nopackages
• Display executed debootstrap cmdline when running it
• Introduce --pre-scripts to be executed before chroot-scripts
• Remove cached debs by default to reduce diskpace during bootstrap
• Support and enable per default --keyring option
• ... plus some bugfixes and minor enhancements

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

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

• Support for logging build information to database via grml-live-db
• Support new option '-d <date>' to use specified date instead of build time as date of release
• Add support for /boot/isolinux/submenu*.cfg files
• Add persistency feature to boot menu
• Simplify syslinux.cfg
• Disable PDiffs by default via /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20pdiffs
• Support DEFAULT_BOOTOPTIONS via configuration file
• Store package list on ISO
• Ignore $EXIT_ON_MISSING_PACKAGES if running a dirty build through -B
• Rename /etc/grml/fai/files to /etc/grml/fai/config/files and move /etc/grml/fai/live-initramfs to /etc/grml/fai/config
• Provide buildd as separate Debian package buildd, use nail instead of mutt in buildd for sending mails
• .... plus several software related updates and bugfixes - check out the changelog for details

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

Kernel

Based on vanilla kernel 2.6.33.2 including several patches and additional modules:

aufs iscsitarget loop-aes lzma ndiswrapper
speakup squashfs sysprof xtables-addons

Visit grml.org/kernel/ for more details regarding Grml's kernel.

Bugfixes

Fixed several bugs and issues reported on grml64_2009.10 @ grml-wiki and in the bug tracking system.

Important Changes

• Bootoption home has been dropped, the persistency feature present since 2009.10 replaces this option.
• Grml uses lang=en as default instead of lang=us if no 'lang' bootoption has been specified.
• CPU frequency scaling enabled on all hardware by default so it's no longer limited to laptops only.
• Grml's udev package has been dropped in favour of Debian's plain version and adding Grml specified configuration and scripts through Debian package grml-udev-config.
• As the bootoption bootid is used as default bootoption you need to make sure that you've an according and valid bootid=... entry in your kernel cmdline or use the ignore_bootid bootoption to skip the boot id check. This is especially relevant for grml2usb installations (make sure to use a recent grml2usb version) as well as booting with isofrom/findiso bootoptions from harddisks.

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 grml64 2010.04.

Updates

Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 24st of march 2010 (plus some further selected updates).

Removed 56 packages (excluding lib* and *2.6.31-grml64*) - please notice that some of them are available under different names/in different packages:

*2.6.31-grml64* lib*

3ware-cli-binary aria2 aufs-tools bash-minimal
bluez-audio bluez-gstreamer console-setup
consolekit cpp-4.3 dpkg-ftp dpkg-multicd elmo
emacs22 emacs22-bin-common emacs22-common
fatsort g++-4.3 gcc-4.2-base gcc-4.3
gcc-4.3-base gcc-4.3-multilib gcc-multilib gcom
gconf2-common gfs-tools gfs2-tools
grml-mercurial-utils grml-scanpartitions
heirloom-mailx iceweasel-webdeveloper igal2
keynav lomoco metamail mirrordir naim openipmi
policykit python-celementtree python-elementtree
python2.4 python2.4-minimal rar ras sdd sfind
sl-modem-daemon snmp star vcdtools wacom-tools
webcam-server xar xlockmore
xserver-xorg-input-hyperpen zenmap

Added 79 new packages (exluding lib* and *2.6.33-grml*):

aesutil apt-xapian-index bfa cifs-utils cmospwd
cpp-4.4 ctris deletemail docbook2odf dupseek ex
ext3rminator fakechroot fbterm febootstrap
fsarchiver ftpbackup g++-4.4 gateguardian
gcal-common gcc-4.4 gdbserver gdisk genisoimage
gifshuffle gkrellm-x86info glipper-nognome
grml-quickconfig grml-quickconfig-standard
grml-udev-config histring htcheck hwloc i855crt
icedax icmp-mtu icmp-quench icmp-reset
infiniband-diags keyboard-configuration lxc
mbuffer modem-cmd nbd-client nbd-server ncp
netsniff-ng nginx numactl perf podracer prosilla
ptfinder pyneighborhood python-glade2
python-libxml2 python-openssl python-rpm
python-sqlite python-sqlitecachec
python-urlgrabber python-xapian python2.6
python2.6-minimal qemu-kvm rootsh ruby1.9.1
secvpn shadowfs shish shmux sudosh tal ufsutils
usb-modeswitch usb-modeswitch-data xz-utils yum
zerofree

Major changes since release 2009.10 (20091031)

• Grml goes microblogging.
• New Grml developer mailinglist.

Known issues

Take a look at grml64_2010.04 @ grml-wiki. Please report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/.

Download grml64 2010.04

grml64 2010.04 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 grml64_2010.04 @ 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 (alphabetically) in this release go to Alexander Menk, Andras Korn, Axel Beckert, Christoph Biedl, Christian Hofstaedtler, Daniel Borkmann, Gregor Perner, Jordan Uggla, Mark Jonas, Martha Augsburger, Pawel Sadkowski, Richard Hartmann, Sedat Dilek, Stefan Weiss, Suhanov Maxim, Timo Boettcher, Thomas Arendsen Hein, Tong Sun, Xuân Baldauf and Zoran Dzelajlija for their contributions.

More Information

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

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If you are interested in development releases grab the daily ISOs from daily.grml.org.

Further Questions?

Please feel free to contact us.