new stable release work in progress...
Just to keep you informed: we planned to release the new stable grml versions during this weekend. Due to local root exploits in the Linux kernel we decided to work on an updated kernel version. So please stay tuned a little bit further, we expect to be able to provide the final stable release within the next few days. Sorry for the delays, but hopefully we can provide a rocking stable release really soon now.
new release candidates: grml 1.1-rc1, grml64 0.2-rc1, grml[64]-medium 0.1-rc1
Finally it’s done - we have new release candidates:
- grml 1.1-rc1 - Codename Skunk
- grml64 0.2-rc1 - Codename Schwammerlklauber
- grml-medium 0.1-rc1- Codename Pfuh
- grml64-medium 0.1-rc1 - Codename Pfuh
Summarizing the development of more than 7 month of development for the release notes was a pretty tough job. 7 month you might ask? Yes, for the first time we have a longer delay than the usual ~3 month between two stable releases. The reason is simple: we wrote a new build framework named grml-live and reworked the build process therefore. Thanks to grml-live we are able to autobuild grml-ISOs in several different flavours and on different architectures without the need for any further manual interaction. This allows us to provide automatically generated daily snapshots of grml to the public (as you might know already). Now we have the first releases of grml being based on the work of grml-live. Enjoy!
update of daily.grml.org and development news
The webpage of daily.grml.org has been reworked - thanks to the ideas and feedback by Henning Sprang. The page is more clearly arranged now so hopefully you’ll find the according ISO even faster. :) If you have any further ideas how to improve the webpage please let me know! Disclaimer: the daily builds are not really up2date right now because we are pretty close to a new stable release now… anyway, I’ll provide updated builds soon again…
Some news from the development front: I’m busy working on the new stable releases. Hopefully I’ll be able to provide release candidates really soon now and the final stable releases should be available within the next 1-2 weeks as well. The are only a few last release stoppers left…
grml-paste: command line interface for paste.grml.org
Thanks to Nico we have a command line interface for paste.grml.org now: grml-paste :-)
grml in c't special "Netzwerke"
You can find a pre-release of the upcoming grml 1.1 as part of “c’t special 02/2008 Netzwerke” magazine.
grml-live: ZLIB vs. LZMA
I just made some benchmarks between ZLIB and LZMA compression at squashfs, thanks to grml-live (which provides a commandline option and config option for switching) that’s a trivial task now:
- grml flavour: grml-medium
- using LZMA: 164MB ISO, build time 725 seconds
- using ZLIB: 183MB ISO, build time 254 seconds
So whereas the build time increases the benefit is a smaller ISO, which is quite important for live systems that want to ship as many useful tools as possible. :-)
New team member: Alexander Steinböck
Alexander ‘z3ttacht’ Steinböck joined the grml-team. Alexander contributed several patches (especially regarding configuration and documentation) over the last few weeks. Welcome in the grml team, Alexander!
news from the development front
No, we aren’t in holidays, instead we are busy working on a new stable release. Lots of development took place at the grml-live framework front, we have a big kernel upgrade (see grml-kernel repository for details or just grab the Debian packages from the grml-testing repository) which involves support for speakup (thanks to feadora’s speakupmodified.org). We also have support for lzma within squashfs in our toolchain now. A first release candidate of a new stable release of grml will be available soon….
Daily grml snapshots
In the last few weeks I’ve been busy working on grml-live (the build framework based on FAI for generating a grml and Debian based Linux Live system). As generating a new grml-ISO using grml-live can be done with one single command(!) we could finally build an autobuild system which generates daily snapshots of grml. Thanks to hosting by formorer and jimmy we can provide a wide range of different flavours of grml now:
- grml-small: as usual that’s the smallest version of grml; due to growing packages the ISO size is ~110MB currently - we are trying to reduce the ISO size further….
- grml-medium: a new grml flavour with the purpose of closing the gap between grml-small and normal/large/full grml. Currently it’s pending at about 140MB ISO, we want to keep the ISO size at a maximum of 200MB
- grml: as usual, the big, normal, large, full version of grml with a maximum ISO size of 700MB, providing all the grml features
That’s not all. We provide all these versions in a 32bit version (grml) as well as in a 64bit version (grml64). But stop! We even provide all the versions in a Debian/stable based and a Debian/unstable based version.
You can choose your favourite grml-ISO from a total of 3x2x2 = 12 different ISOs. They are available from daily.grml.org and are built full automatic on a daily base. This should help us in tracking down possible problems in Debian packages as well as keeping the truck factor in our team as low as possible and improve quality management furthermore. On the other side users can get brand new software for testing, or if they need a special feature (like a brand new kernel version) they can get it without the need for waiting for a new devel-/stable-release. So just grab the current snapshot for testing from daily.grml.org, or if you want to build your own Linux live-cd based on Debian and grml consider the use of grml-live.
kernel 2.6.23-grml
I just finished the first stable version of 2.6.23-grml. As usual grab the Debian packages from the grml repository (grml-testing, find the source in the mercurial repository. Check out the README for details on the patchset. If you are interested in the outstanding todos check out issue216 in our BTS.
VMware image of grml 1.0
Ja Bu mentioned on the grml mailinglist that there’s a ready-to-go VMware image of grml available at www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/899. I did not test it on my own yet but thanks to the uploader for providing that!
Hack of the day: remote-reboot
I had to clone a server to another server (1:1 copy using dd+netcat) but didn’t want to stay at the customer’s place until the task finished. So I executed ‘Start ssh; passwd’ to be able to login remotely. But how to reboot the server and get rid of the CD so the harddisk system boots instead of the grml-CD without manual interaction at customer’s place? Server systems usually don’t move in/re-insert an ejected CD on reboot - that’s nice for what we need. So all I had to do was:
eject &>/dev/null
umount -l /cdrom
eject /dev/cdrom
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
grml-live - autobuild infrastructure
Thanks to the infrastructure provided by IBM’s x305 server donation and Jimmy’s work I just finished a first prototype setup of an autobuild system for building grml-ISOs using grml-live. Currently I’ve a working system for building “grml-medium” ISOs based on etch/stable and sid/unstable on a daily base. Normal/full grml ISOs (the ~700MB version) of etch/stable and sid/unstable will follow soon. I plan to provide new develreleases as soon as I finished the autobuild setup. Hopefully we’ll find ressources for a 64bit environment (so we can provide autobuilded ISOs of grml64) as well.
grml-live - first public release
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 grmlSo what are you waiting for? Grab grml-live, build your very own grml version and send me your feedback, feature requests and bugreports. :-)
grml-live: create your own grml-ISO
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.