Current state of grml-live with squashfs-tools and kernel
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.
initial version of kernel 2.6.26-grml
A first version of kernel 2.6.26-grml is ready to go:
% uname -a
Linux okely-dokely 2.6.26-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jul 27 00:10:16 CEST 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Now work on external modules will start, if you want to follow progress of work on kernel 2.6.26-grml check out our grml-kernel mercurial repository. If you want to get the kernel using Debian’s package management even before it’s available through grml’s repository add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list and install linux-image-2.6.26-grml then:
deb https://grml.org/2.6.26 ./
Please notice that we are testing migration to libata with this kernel so if you use root=/dev/hd.. in your bootloader config make sure to switch to root=/dev/sd.. or even better use root=UUID=… (see stable root device aka UUID for more details) instead.
starting work on kernel 2.6.26-grml
Gebi started to work on kernel 2.6.26-grml already, I’ll follow soon (currently I’m working on stuff around grml-live and a boot chain problem), so stay tuned - we are working towards a new develrelease.
news from the grml development front
First of all sorry for the long time without any news in the grml develblog. Busy weeks, sorry. In the last few weeks main work besides some bugfixing was providing a stable daily-grml service. Now we are waiting for the soon to be released stable version of the 2.6.26 linux kernel. Our plan is to provide a new development release featuring kernel 2.6.26 as soon as possible. New stable versions of grml should be available in august then. BTW: On 23rd and 24th of august some grml developers will visit FrOSCon, a two day conference on Free Software and Open Source, taking place for the third time in Sankt Augustin/Germany. We plan to make a grml booth as well as a coming-together-hacking-event. Hope to see you there!
grml at Grazer LinuxDay 2008 (Austria)
Several grml developers met at the Grazer LinuxDay (Austria) on 19th of april 2008. Alexander held a talk about Nagios3, Jimmy talked about Backups, Gebi held a talk about “Lockless Multithreading using Erlang” and I (Mika) was talking about “Systemadministration++ - What really helps”. Check out the gallery to get an idea of the event. Oh, and at the grml-booth we had a Lenovo X300, running grml of course. :)
grml 1.1 in LinuxUser 05/2008
The media edition 05/2008 of the german LinuxUser magazine provides grml 1.1. You’ll even find a german article I wrote about grml inside the magazine as well. So get it as long it’s hot off the press and available! :-)
bug #475783 - mounting loopback device fails in initrd
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.
infrastructure: migration of wiki.grml.org
Just a short note regarding our infrastructure: wiki.grml.org just moved (from host with IP 80.237.145.9) to a new system (new IP: 87.230.9.1). The TTL in DNS was set accordingly for the last few days so you shouldn’t notice any noteworthy downtimes.
grml related links
- Brad Cable: My Awesome Secure and Portable System
- Marc ‘Zugschlus’ Haber: Universal boot stick for Debian, grml and the Debian installer
You have a similar project/idea/website? Please let us know!
JFYI: comments in the develblog
JFYI: Sorry to the ones of you asking questions in the grml develblog and not getting any answer. Due to a misconfiguration I never received any notifications about new, added comments. I found a workaround for the misconfiguration of supersized.org’s mail notification so this issue should be fixed and I won’t overlook any comments from now on. Sorry again, wasn’t my intention.
grml @ Google Summer of Code 2008
grml wants to take part in the Google Summer of Code 2008 and therefor we are collecting ideas for our proposal. If you have a great idea for a project please consider putting it to the gsoc08 page of the grml-wiki. Your contribution is highly welcome.
new stable releases: grml 1.1, grml64 0.2, grml-medium 0.1 and grml64-medium 0.1
We have new stable releases: grml 1.1, grml64 0.2, grml-medium 0.1 and grml64-medium 0.1
grml at Chemnitzer Linuxdays 2008
Several grml developers will be at the Chemnitzer linuxdays 2008 on the following weekend (1st and 2nd of march). We would highly appreciate to meet grml users at the grml booth. We will present the new stable releases (CDs are being printed right now!), will sell grml-on-USB pens, a demo system and will have a developer meeting. If you have any questions, feature requests or feedback please meet us at the grml booth!
JFYI: release stopper for grml 1.1 [fixed]
We have a new release stopper, see issue 400 in grml’s BTS. Current grml release candidate doesn’t boot on older hardware. We are investigating on that issue, please read the according thread on the syslinux mailinglist for further details. If you you have an affected system as well (“my box does not boot with grml 1.1-rcX but does with grml 1.0”) please let us know!
Update: Thanks to Andrea Mayr and Wernfried Haas for testing lots of ISOs we could locate the problem finally. Read my mail on syslinux mailinglist for details. Now we are working on finalizing the ISOs and do some last regression tests. If murphy does not catch us again we will release the stable version this weekend.
kernel 2.6.23-grml addressing CVE-2008-0009/10 available
Kernel 2.6.23-grml.06 is available in the grml repository. It includes latest stable patch 2.6.23.16 which addresses the well known root exploits from CVE-2008-0009/10 and CVE-2008-0600 (see bugzilla #9924 and debian BTS #464953 and dsd’s detailed explanation for further information). Kernel 2.6.23-grml64 will be available within the next few hours as well.