packages

grml-live 0.9.22, grml2usb 0.9.10 and grml-etc-core 0.3.75 just entered the grml-testing pool.

News from grml2usb: I just implemented the feature to be able to install the currently running grml system to a USB device running 'grml2usb /live/image /dev/sdx1'. This means the rewritten grml2usb script provides all the features the old script used to provide and will become part of the upcoming stable release therefor. Of course the new grml2usb script provides several new, additional features - like support for multi-ISOs, specifiying default bootoptions,... (so you can even run 'grml2usb --bootoptions="persistent" /live/image /home/grml/grml_2009.05.iso /dev/sdx1'!). Check out grml.org/grml2usb/ for further details and make sure to grab grml2usb 0.9.6.

Thanks to the work of Frank 'ft' Terbeck we have a zsh prompt featuring useful information about different version control systems found inside the current working directory. That's what it looks like on my developer system:

The according zsh configuration can be found in the hg repository, standalone or as Debian package grml-etc-core version >=0.3.52 in the grml-testing repository as well.

I was busy working on getting grml-live in a good shape together with squashfs-tools, live-initramfs and the new kernel version 2.6.26-grml. A new squashfs-tools package is available as well as an updated live-initramfs package. It does not support LZMA compression (yet) but it's working fine with ZLIB compression so far. Right now I'm building an updated 2.6.26-grml kernel, 2.6.26-grml64 will follow.

As soon as the new kernels are ready-to-go I will upload them together with grml-live 0.9 to the grml-testing repository. Updating our daily.grml.org buildhost will provide daily ISOs featuring 2.6.26-grml . New development versions of grml will follow so we can provide a new stable release in the near future.

See the "Current state of grml-live with squashfs-tools and kernel" section if you are interested in further details.

Using current versions of busybox (1:1.9.2-2) fails with kernel 2.6.23-grml and grml-live, see my bugreport #475783 for more details. I've just uploaded an older version of busybox (1:1.1.3-5) to the grml-live repository for use with grml-live which brings back a working setup.

Thanks to Nico we have a command line interface for paste.grml.org now: grml-paste :-)

Time for an update on the grml-live front. I just uploaded the first public version of grml-live to the grml-repos.

Lots of development took place. New features include support for local mirrors (thanks to Michael Schmitt for providing test infrastructure), new command line options and unified classes. Oh, and you ever wanted to use grub as bootloader instead of isolinux on your grml ISO? Now it's as trivial as setting BOOT_METHOD=grub in /etc/grml/grml-live.conf before running grml-live itself, giving you something like:

grub as bootloader for grml

So what are you waiting for? Grab grml-live, build your very own grml version and send me your feedback, feature requests and bugreports. :-)

Ever wanted to build your very own grml-ISO without having to deal with all the remastering details? Want to include your very own kernel? Want to change configuration of some files? Then grml-live might be what you ever dreamed of. :)

Check out the grml-live documentation to get an idea what I'm talking about. As you might notice grml-live is based on FAI (Fully Automatic Installation), this will provide us the possibility to deploy grml even faster, better and more customized than we already do (using grml2hd, grml-debootstrap and grml-terminalserver).

Want to get an idea how fast you can build an ISO using grml-live? Check out:

So all I did was invoking 'grml-live'. Not even 7 minutes later I've a working grml live-CD which is based on Debian-stable, providing kernel 2.6.22-grml and all the basic grml features:

Stay tuned for an official release of grml-live. We are working on reducing the todo list - like porting it to other architectures, providing different flavours, some more customisation hooks and finally providing a full-grml-built using grml-live.

Thanks to formorer we have a grml-debian-keyring Debian package now. This package provides the GnuPG archive key of the grml.org repository for using the GPG signature checking with apt >=0.6. More details can be found in the Debian webpage in the grml-wiki.

Gebi and me packaged zfs-fuse for Debian/grml. ZFS is an advanced modern general-purpose filesystem from Sun Microsystems, originally designed for Solaris/OpenSolaris. zfs-fuse is a port of ZFS to the FUSE framework for the Linux operating system. Just get the debian package from grml-testing pool or just wait for grml 1.0. :-)

I just uploaded a new version of grml-debootstrap to the grml-testing pool providing many new features. One nifty feature is setting variables via commandline. This allows you to install Debian with just one command and 2 keystrokes(!) (one 'y' for starting execution of grml-debootstrap and another one for setting the password of user root, this can be automated as well of course if you want to). I just installed a plain Debian system via running:

# grml-debootstrap --target /dev/hda2 --grub hd0 --groot hd0,1

But that's not all. You can install a plain Debian system full automatic(!) via bootoption debian2hd. I just did a full automatic installation with grml-debootstrap 0.7 and grml-autoconfig 0.6.39 running on grml-small via booting with:

debian2hd target=/dev/hda1 grub=hd0 groot=hd0,0 mirror=ftp://ftp.tugraz.at/mirror/debian password=foobar

Not a single keystroke behind the commandline on the bootprompt. Rocking! :-)

I just wrote a small script named dirvish-setup which sets up basic configuration for use with the rsync based backup software named dirvish. Testers welcome, please report feedback.

I just finished main work of supporting grub directly within grml2hd and uploaded grml2hd_0.9.3_all.deb to the grml-testing pool in those minutes. Now there's a new dialog in grml2hd which lets you choose between lilo and grub as bootloader:

Notice:

• using grub on SW-RAID devices is not yet supported
• grub configuration does not provide artwork currently. I'd be happy if someone could contribute a nice bootsplash for grub at grml!
• please do not use the testing version of grml2hd on your productive environment yet! It needs some further heavy testing before entering stable... any feedback is welcome of course.

Oh, and another nifty feature within grml2hd: installation now uses root=UUID by default. This feature requires an initrd/initramfs so we use initramfs by default now (a dialog less within grml2hd) but you can make sure booting your grml system always choses the right partition, no matter how you are booting your system (like via external usb device):

It was on my todolist for ages, thanks to Christian 'strcat' Schneider we have the zsh-lovers manpage in asciidoc format now. asciidoc provides much smoother output than my nroff hacks. :-) Adding new tips is much easier now as well, especially since we maintain the manpage within a mercurial repository (hg.grml.org/zsh-lovers). Get the zsh-lovers manpage in manpage format, as HTML or PDF from grml.org/zsh/, a Debian package is available via the grml-testing pool as well of course.