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Live Usability Tests

I’m planning to run “live usability tests” with the grml-system within the next few weeks. grml is mainly used by sysadmins and texttool-freaks (as those users are the target audience ;-)). But it seems that a lot of people use grml because “it just works” even though they are neither sysadmins nor texttool-geeks.grml shouldn’t be only a distribution with good hardware recognition and “lots of the right tools” but also be comfortable to use. Running usability tests should help us to improve handling of grml. I’m interested in your opinion regarding what kind of tests might be useful for grml. I already wrote down some basic steps but would like to get your feedback. Last but not least: I’m searching for people in Graz/Styria who would like to be part of the usability study. It does not matter whether you are a sysadmin or texttool-user, I’m searching for people from all kinds of background. It won’t take longer than 30 minutes per person and you will get one of the limited special-edition CDs of the grml 0.5-release for free. Don’t hesitate to contact me.

grml in the distrowatch podcast

grml is mentioned in the podcast of distrowatch.com - to be more precise in dww20051024.mp3 at position 9 minutes and ~40 seconds. :-) Thanks for the pointer, Bernd Haug.

grml on soekris

Kevin Krammer just let me know that he is running grml on his Soekris box:

grml@grml ~ % cat /proc/cpuinfo  
processor : 0  
vendor_id : Geode by NSC  
cpu family : 5  
model : 9  
model name : Unknown  
stepping : 1  
cpu MHz : 266.695  
fdiv_bug : no  
hlt_bug : no  
f00f_bug : no  
coma_bug : no  
fpu : yes  
fpu_exception : yes  
cpuid level : 2  
wp : yes  
flags : fpu tsc msr cx8 cmov mmx cxmmx  
bogomips : 534.63  

grml@grml ~ % uname -a  
Linux grml 2.6.13-grml #1 Sat Oct 22 11:05:29 CEST 2005 i586 GNU/Linux  
grml@grml ~ % grml-version  
0.5 Release Codename Tokolytika [2005-10-24]  
grml@grml ~ %

Rocking :-)

grml 0.5 - codename Tokolytika - available

grml.grml.There we go: grml 0.5 is available. To keep it short (a more detailed, but german announcement is availble in my private blog): lots of new features! Take a look at the official release announcment for more details.

grml 0.5 is coming...

We are “in the freeze phase” since sunday with pre-release grml 0.4-9. I fixed some minor stuff in the last few days and now I’m bringing documentation up to date and running some final checks. Tomorrow (friday) will be a last develmeeting before the new release is going to be published (planned for 24th of october). There have been so many improvements since grml 0.4 that writing the changelog is a really heavy task. :-) BTW: Using the latest unionfs-release provides a working module-assistant even on live-CD. This means that you will be able to build your own kernelmodules in live-cd-mode of grml 0.5 now. :-) Ok, probably and hopefully this was the last status message before grml 0.5 will be available - so stay tuned! :-)

Many updates...

Today I updated all my packages to latest upstream version. The following packages got up2date:

csync2, ded, dupseek, dmraid, ex, gateguardian, heirloom-sh, libacme-eyedrops-perl  
md5deep, mwcollect, pmtools-acpi, shadowsfs, sudosh, yersinia

grml 0.5 is definitely coming closer. ;-) Now I’ll update documentation, finish work on the new config framework and then the prerelease will be available for beta-testers. A few more days of bughunting and grml 0.5 will be available. :-)

zsh-lovers in universe pool of Ubuntu

I just took a look at ubuntu-5.10 live-cd. Our zsh-lovers Debian package is part of the universe pool of Ubuntu (thanks to Reinhard Tartler!). :-)

Timeline for grml 0.5

The latest build of the grml-kernel (2.6.13-grml) has been integrated in the grml-ISO. Currently I’m updating all software packages, finish work on grml2hd and the config-fw. And of course I’m bugfixing and updating documentation.

The timeline for the upcoming release (if everything works like intended):

  • ~15th of october: pre-release grml 0.4-9: available for beta-testers and developers; freeze of packages (no more updates, only fixes for grml-packages); Notice: last chance to get your software and updates into the upcoming release!
  • ~24th of october: grml 0.5 will be released

zsh geeks out there: zsh glob qualifiers explained by Oliver

Thanks for the hint, Clint: “Oliver wrote an article about file metadata, including some tips about zsh glob qualifiers. Registration required.” I can recommend the article also. :-)

grml-ized debian: apt-get install grml

Yesterday I installed a plain Debian sarge system, added the grml-repository to apt’s sources.list and did an “apt-get install grml”. And it worked :-)

The debian system now uses grml’s hardware recognition system. Even grml-x works right out of the box with Debian’s XFree86 (grml provides X.org). I will create a script which does all the necessary steps to get a “debian system grml-ized”. The “create a grml system out of a debian system” was a long time goal, but we are already very close to it. :-)

grml and Robocup

Great news. Now I’m part of the Robocup team “Mostly Harmless” at Graz University of Technology, Austria. I will be working on kernelstuff, building debian packages and doing hardware recognition using grml technologies. An embedded system will be used with hardware like a CAN Dongle, compact flash cards, WLAN, serial connection and so on. This means I will work on grml as part of my studies at university at least for this semester.

Thanks to Mabu for his investigations!

request for help: SCSI

I’m preparing the development release for the upcoming grml 0.5 release. As we have a kernel upgrade in this release (using 2.6.13-grml) and I’m still lacking hardware using SCSI-controllers for booting I request your help. If you have access to a computer which is able to boot via SCSI please help me. You just have to send me the file ‘/proc/pci’ and which module is used for the device (if you don’t know which one is used just send me output of ’lsmod’ and the kernel configuration). Just drop me a mail (mika [at] grml.org), your help is appreciated!

grml-vpn

We just have a developer meeting in Graz and Gebi wrote a script namend grml-vpn. grml-vpn is a program to establish encrypted communication channels in a network. We just tested it and it really rocks. :-) It’s very easy to use, take a look at the usage example: Gebi (root@gebi) starts grml-vpn on his laptop with key/passphrase ’test’ and uses his and my ip for the encrypted communication channel:

root@gebi # grml-vpn -k test add 1000 192.168.1.104 192.168.1.101

I (root@mika) am using the same command line on my laptop:

root@mika # grml-vpn -k test add 1000 192.168.1.104 192.168.1.101

To demonstrate that it’s working let’s use IPsec’s setkey command:

root@mika # setkey -D
192.168.1.101 192.168.1.104  
        esp mode=transport spi=1000(0x000003e8) reqid=0(0x00000000)  
        E: aes-cbc  d8e8fca2 dc0f896f d7cb4cb0 031ba249  
        seq=0x00000000 replay=0 flags=0x00000000 state=mature  
        created: Sep 22 15:15:02 2005   current: Sep 22 15:19:40 2005  
        diff: 278(s)    hard: 0(s)      soft: 0(s)  
        last: Sep 22 15:15:14 2005      hard: 0(s)      soft: 0(s)  
        current: 1488(bytes)    hard: 0(bytes)  soft: 0(bytes)  
        allocated: 12   hard: 0 soft: 0  
        sadb_seq=1 pid=20148 refcnt=0  
192.168.1.104 192.168.1.101  
        esp mode=transport spi=1001(0x000003e9) reqid=0(0x00000000)  
        E: aes-cbc  d8e8fca2 dc0f896f d7cb4cb0 031ba249  
        seq=0x00000000 replay=0 flags=0x00000000 state=mature  
        created: Sep 22 15:15:02 2005   current: Sep 22 15:19:40 2005  
        diff: 278(s)    hard: 0(s)      soft: 0(s)  
        last: Sep 22 15:15:14 2005      hard: 0(s)      soft: 0(s)  
        current: 768(bytes)     hard: 0(bytes)  soft: 0(bytes)  
        allocated: 12   hard: 0 soft: 0  
        sadb_seq=0 pid=20148 refcnt=0

Now let’s check whether it’s really encrypted:

root@mika # ping 192.168.1.104  
[...]  
root@gebi # tcpdump  
15:16:26.066885 IP 192.168.1.101 > 192.168.1.104: ESP(spi=0x000003e8, seq=0xa)  
15:16:26.067040 IP 192.168.1.104 > 192.168.1.101: ESP(spi=0x000003e9, seq=0xa)

Bingo! :-)

fullautomatic grml-installation

I just implemented the code for running grml2hd in full automized mode. This means you can run:

# GRML2HD_NONINTERACTIVE=yes grml2hd

… drink some coffee and some minutes later - without any further interaction - you have a full functional linux system on your harddisk. Configuration of grml2hd is possible via /etc/grml2hd/config. You can even run pre- and post-commands to partition your harddisk automatically, run upgrades without interaction or whatever you like. Now I will implement a bootoption ‘grml2hd’ which allows booting and installing grml without any further interaction right out of the box. This means it will be possible to set up a cluster of - let’s say for example - 30 computers in a computer lab without any further interaction just via using grml with grml2hd and grml-terminalserver.