new bug tracking system available: bts.grml.org
Thanks to formorer we have a new bug tracking system (BTS) at bts.grml.org. It’s mainly meant for developers so working together without forgetting any issues is easier. The issues regarding stable releases will be available in the grml wiki as usual. So you don’t have to care about the BTS unless you want to work together with grml developers or you are one of them. ;-) Notice to all grml-developers: please register youself in the BTS so we can assign issues according… Please use the webinterface for the task and use a nickname which is the same as your grml.org mailaddress, thanks.
new developer mailinglists for grml
formorer did an excellent job in the last few days improving infrastructure of grml. One of many tasks was the setup of new mailinglists for grml. What might be interesting for you is the grml repository commits mailinglist which allows tracking of all the commits to our mercurial repositories. Thanks again, formorer!
update grml-zsh-refcard
The grml-zsh-refcard received a big update. It covers the most current zsh configuration which will be shipped with the upcoming grml release. Many thanks go to Frank Terbeck for his work!
DNS problems: subdomains of grml.org not reachable (update: solved)
You might notice problems with the subdomains (wiki, hg, lists,…) of grml.org. It’s a problem at the DNS-provider which has been informed already… Update: the problem has been solved a few hours ago. Everything should be working again…
updates in grml-packages (grml2hd, grml-autoconfig, grml-terminalserver)
Just to keep developers and beta-testers informed (assuming that you don’t follow my hg commits [time for a hg-commit mailinglist, yes]): today I spent several hours in reducing the todo list for grml 0.9. So make sure you have recent packages on your brand new develrelease (run ‘apt-get update; apt-get install $PACKAGES’) when trying out. Quoting some important stuff of the changelogs:
grml2hd: adjust /etc/default/rcS according to bootoption utc/gmt
and /etc/localtime according to bootoption tz
grml-autoconfig:
* deprecate CONFIG_KERNEL, CONFIG_LANGUAGE,
CONFIG_DMA and CONFIG_MIXER as they are not really
relevant on hd installations.
* do *not* use swap by default anymore, thanks for feedback
goes to Wolfgang Karall!
grml-terminalserver: a maintenance release to fix some outstanding issues:
* big update of linuxrc - do not use discover anymore (broken)
but instead try modprobing all available network modules
* reject tcp/113 via iptables to speed up PXE boot
I consider the current state as pretty stable, in the next few days I’ll do some more regression testing so hopefully we’ll have a first release-candidate of grml 0.9 soon…
new grml-develrelease: 0.8-5
We have a new develrelease. grml 0.8-5 is available for beta-testers and grml-developers. Quoting the main changelog:
* Added support for detection and activation of SW-RAIDs in
live-cd mode. Can be disabled via bootoption noraid (and is
disabled as well through forensic and raid=noautodetect).
* Added grml-debootstrap: wrapper around debootstrap for
installing plain Debian via grml very simple and fast
* Added script fma: shipped with grml 0.8-4 already but not yet
mentioned, provides "fast manual access" (take a look at it!)
* zsh:
- new alias hidiff (highlight important stuff in diff
output using histring) [thanks for the idea, T!]
- added power completion, thanks wuehlmaus!
See http://zshwiki.org/home/examples/zleiab for details.
Notice: this deactivates the global aliases by default now,
just use the global aliases as well but press ',.' afterwards
to expand the abbreviation! Trust me: you should know and use
it! :-)
* Fixed some issues in configuration framework handling, thanks
for the reports, Marc Haber!
* language stuff: added support for Norsk environment, thanks to
Arnt Karlsen! [not yet visible in grml-setlang though]
* grml-bootsplash: replaced the clear command with
"echo -ne '\033[H\033[25l'" to avoid flickering at bootoption'splash'. Thanks a lot, Michael Schierl!
Setup Xen within 20 minutes on Debian/grml
I wrote a small howto for setting up xen within 20 minutes on Debian/grml.
working on grml64
As written in my private blog (german article only, sorry) I own a amd64 system now. A grml64 kernel is available and I already have a first working grml64 live-cd version. I plan to be able to release a first public version of grml64 together with grml 1.0. Stay tuned.
updated kernel 2.6.18-grml - version 03
I updated the kernel 2.6.18-grml once more. Summary: inclusion of 2.6.18.2 and sync with Debian’s svn kernel repository. The patch-list in detail:
1000_2.6.18.2.patch
2400_net-netpoll.patch
2500_via-irq-quirk-revert.patch
2510_sym2-dont-claim-raid-devs.patch
4000_net-r8169-1.patch
4001_net-r8169-hotplug_loop.patch
4002_net-r8169-no_mac_adress_change.patch
4003_net-r8169-pci_id-corega.patch
4005_sky2-v1.9.patch
4010_net-forcedeth-swsusp.patch
4100_cciss-support-for-gt-2TB-volumes.patch
4105_dm-bbr.patch
4110_promise-pdc2037x.patch
4115_advansys-pci-id-table.patch
4120_buslogic-pci-id-table.patch
4150_iteraid.patch
4200_drm-i965.patch
4300_squashfs-3.1.patch
4310_fs-asfs.patch
4400_speakup-20060814.patch
4410_scsi-ahci-cleanup-1.patch
4411_scsi-ahci-cleanup-2.patch
4412_scsi-ahci-cleanup-3.patch
4413_scsi-ahci-cleanup-4.patch
4420_scsi-ahci-suspend-1.patch
4421_scsi-ahci-suspend-2.patch
4422_scsi-ahci-suspend-3.patch
4430_scsi-arcmsr-1.patch
4431_scsi-arcmsr-2.patch
4432_scsi-arcmsr-3.patch
4440_fintek-f75375.patch
5000_grml-version.patch
5001_grml_logo.patch
5002_commandlinesize.patch
More details available in the grml-kernel repository.
packaged aamath
aamath is a program that reads mathematical expressions in infix notation and renders them as ASCII art. It may be useful to send mathematics through text-only media, such as e-mail or newsgroups. The Debian package is - as usual - available from the grml repository. Thanks for pointing to aamath on the grml-user mailinglist, Mark!
grml-debootstrap: wrapper around debootstrap for installing plain Debian via grml
I assume you already know debootstrap. Quoting the package description “debootstrap is used to create a Debian base system from scratch, without requiring the availability of dpkg or apt. It does this by downloading .deb files from a mirror site, and carefully unpacking them into a directory which can eventually be chrooted into.” I already described the procedure for installing Debian sarge and etch via grml in my private blog.
I usually install plain Debian systems via debootstrap, because it’s simple, fast and just works. Especially because grml provides recent hardware detection I can often install Debian on systems where the official debian installer might not work at all. But running debootstrap is a boring task, especially if you often do this kind of installation the tasks during installation are boring. Therefore I decided to write a wrapper around debootstrap, and there we are:
% apt-cache show grml-debootstrap
Description: wrapper around debootstrap for installing plain Debian via grml
This package provides a wrapper suite around deboostrap and
cdebootstrap for installing a plain Debian system via grml.
.
All you have to do is adjust a few variables in configuration
file /etc/debootstrap/config and invoke grml-debootstrap then.
A plain and base Debian system will be installed on the given
device then. Customization of this process is possible as well.
Installation of a plain and base Debian etch system is pretty fast and easy this way. The first public version of grml-debootstrap is available in the grml repository. Just apt-get it when running the grml live-cd. As usual: feedback is welcome.
devel meeting: mercurial day
Today Gebi and me had a developer meeting and concentrated on working with mercurial. We figured out the mq-extension (Mercurial Queues, similar to quilt) for working with Linux kernel and the grml patches, improved ACL system on our repositories, set up push notification via mail and extended our mercurial documentation. Thanks for the interesting day, Gebi.
new grml-develrelease: 0.8-4
We have a new develrelease. grml 0.8-4 is available for beta-testers and grml-developers. Quoting the main changelog:
* fixed known issues from develrelease 0.8-3
* updated kernel 2.6.18-grml:
http://blog.grml.org/archives/199-updated-kernel-2.6.18-grml.html
* grml2hd has a new feature: it's possible to customize grml2hd's
execution via a configuration file named
/etc/grml2hd/customization. Using this feature you can toggle
which functions of grml2hd should be executed when running
grml2hd.
* switched to mplayer version available in Debian/unstable
* OOTB support for vmmouse driver if running grml inside vmware
* many minor updates, lots of cleanups, new shell
aliases/functions,... [just too many too mention all]
Packages removed since 0.8 (excluding lib* and *2.6.17-grml*;
notice: some of them are available under a differnet name now):
apache2-common bluez-pin bookmarkbridge camgrab cdw cdw-common
cthumb divine dnotify drbd0.7-utils gcj-4.1-base gconf2-common
grml-kerneladdons grml-reportbug ht jaxml lout-doc lpr
mozilla-mplayer mplayer-nogui ndiswrapper-utils-1.7 netkit-inetd
ppmtofb python2.3-pymad python2.3-pyopenssl python2.3-pyparsing
python2.3-twisted-bin python2.4-selinux python2.4-semanage
scanerrlog stunnel turkey xfonts-100dpi-transcoded
xfonts-75dpi-transcoded xorg x-window-system-core
Packages added since 0.8 (excluding lib* and *2.6.18-grml*):
ace-of-penguins afflib apache2.2-common aria2 automake ccontrol
cdrskin classpath-gtkpeer conntrack cupsys-bsd ddccontrol
ddccontrol-db diakonos diction drbd8-utils dwm-tools dynafont
emacs emelfm firmware-qlogic glipper grml-etc-core
grml-kerneladdons-2.6.18 guessnet ink inotail inotify-tools iwatch
konwert konwert-filters latex-ucs mathomatic medusa misdn-utils
mpg123-alsa mplayer ne obexpushd openbsd-inetd pax-utils ptfinder
python2.5 python2.5-minimal python-jaxml python-pymad
python-selinux python-semanage python-twisted-bin qtparted rake
rdoc rdoc1.8 reniced reportbug resolvconf ruby-prof sic smap
ssdeep stealth stunnel4 synergy sysvinit-utils update-inetd
vim-python vim-ruby wodim xen-utils-common xmms2 xmms2-client-cli
xmms2-core xmms2-plugin-alsa xmms2-plugin-id3v2 xmms2-plugin-jack
xmms2-plugin-mad xmms2-plugin-vorbis xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse
youtube-dl
updated kernel 2.6.18-grml
An updated version of kernel 2.6.18-grml is available. The patchlist for 2.6.18-grml:
1000_2.6.18.1.patch
2500_via-irq-quirk-revert.patch
4005_sky2-v1.9.patch
4010_r8169-8168.patch
4105_dm-bbr.patch
4110_promise-pdc2037x.patch
4150_iteraid.patch
4300_squashfs-3.0.patch
4400_speakup-20060814.patch
5000_grml-version.patch
5001_grml_logo.patch
5002_linux-2.6.17-commandline.patch
As you might notice reiser4 is not part of the kernel (and unless there’s an official patch this won’t change for the upcoming grml-release). The external modules lufs, nozomi, thinkpad and vaiostat don’t compile against 2.6.18 yet, the rest of the work has been done. I’m already running grml 0.8-3d with this kernel version. A new develrelease will be available within the next few days…
two years of grml
Exactly two years ago (on 22nd of october 2004) the first release of grml (named OS04) was released. Happy birthday. :-)