The Linux sdparm utility (update)
I just packaged sdparm (because the .deb on the homepage is generated by alien ;-)):
The sdparm utility outputs and in some cases modifies SCSI device parameters. When the SCSI device is a disk, sdparm’s role is similar to its Linux namesake: hdparm which is for ATA disks that usually have device names starting with “hd”. More generally sdparm can be used to output and modify parameters on any device that uses a SCSI command set. Apart from SCSI disks, such devices include CD/DVD drives (irrespective of transport), SCSI and ATAPI tape drives and SCSI enclosures.
http://sg.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html
Update: Tomas Fasth made an ITP [bug #312580], so you’ll find it in Debian soon.
shish - the diet shell (update)
I just packaged shish:
shish is a shell language interpreter and an interactive command line interpreter. This shell aims at being very small and doing its tasks in efficient ways (and not through 100 abstraction layers), which is mainly done by using the dietlibc and libowfat libraries and by design considerations according to Fefe’s excellent howto. shish will be a POSIX compatible shell language interpreter according to the IEEE P1003.2 Draft 11.2 by its 1.0 release. www.blah.ch/shish/
As usual you can find the package in the grml-repos.
Update: I just made the ITP (intend to package) [bug #312660].
dupmerge: reclaim disk space by linking identical files together
I just packaged dupmerge 1.5:
This is a utility that scans a UNIX directory tree looking for pairs of distinct files with identical content. When it finds such files, it deletes one file to reclaim its disk space and then recreates its path name as a link to the other copy. The first version of this program circa 1993 worked by computingMD5 hashes of every file, sorting the hashes and then looking for duplicates. This worked, but it was unnecessarily slow. The comparison function I use now stops comparing two files as soon as it determines their lengths are different, which is a win when you have many large files with unique lengths.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dupmerge/
As usual you can find the package in the grml-repos. Feedback welcome.
grml configuration framework
I put the new grml devel release (grml 0.4-1) online today, as already mentioned it includes mainly some bugfixing, updates and new packages.
What I’m currently working on is a configuration framework. grml 0.5 should provide a well documented and smart way of handling all the configuration stuff. I wrote down what I’m planning to provide with grml 0.5: grml.org/config/ - feedback is - as usual - welcome.
updated dmraid available, some more packages...
I just packaged dmraid so we have an up2date version on grml. As usual you can get it via the grml-repos.
grml-x isn’t part of grml-scripts anymore but got it’s own package. ddclient, fish, mondo, multi-aterm, splint, vifm and some more packages are also part of grml now.
On the weekend I’ll put a new develrelease for beta-testers and grml developers online. There won’t be really new features but just some bugfixes and updated and new packages.
grml in the news
I just read the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: May 23th, 2005 and found grml mentioned in section ‘Austria: Grazer Linuxtage was a success’. :-)
Tobias told me that grml is mentioned in the german it magazine c’t in current edition 12/2005 on page 60 with softlink 0512060.
BTW: I’m collecting all the press links on grml.org/press/. If you find another ressource where grml is mentioned please let me know.
grml on linuxdays vienna 2005
Jimmy and me were at Linuxdays Vienna 2005 on thursday and friday (the community days on 26th and 27th of mai).
I had another talk about grml: 
The german slides are available online: [grml-wien05.pdf [454k]](https://grml.org/slides/grml-wien05.pdf).
A more detailed, german report about the event is availablein my personal blog.
BTW: I won the hacktivity show on friday evening and now I’m proud owner of a SuSE box. 8-)
plans for grml 0.5
Besides replying to all the mails receiving my grml-mailbox in those days I’m trying to improve some stuff at grml of course. In the next few days we’ll have another grml-developer-meeting and we will discuss what will be main features of grml 0.5. What’s currently on the todo-list:
- improve grml2hd (automatic installation of grml to harddisk)
- more documentation (grml user guide)
- improved configuration handling If you have any special wishes or just general feedback please let me know.
rt2x00 modules available
A user asked for them in #grml on IRC and so I just built packages (including the kernel-modules and the utilities) for the Ralink rt2400 and rt2500 chipsets. You can find them in the grml-repos. Feedback welcome.
working on an usb-stick variant of grml
Yesterday I’ve been working for an USB-stick variant of grml. I could reduce the ISO from nearly 700 MB down to 307 MB:
% ls -lah grml_0.4b.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 307M 2005-05-16 12:40 grml_0.4b.iso
All the documentation, LaTeX and stuff like emacs had to leave. Booting still works as intented to, even X is running. ;-) Now I’ve to reduce the iso for another 51 MB so we can provide a grml-ISO for a 256 MB stick.
released grml 0.4
grml 0.4 - Codename Eierspass is available! The new release brings 192 new packages and many new features. For details take a look at the release announcement.
Grazer Linuxday 2005 - presented grml 0.4
Yesterday Grazer Linuxdays 2005 took place. Several grml-developers (Mika, Jimmy, Gebi, Martin and Alfie) have been there, grml has had a booth between the Debian and the Gentoo guys. Flaming was fun of course. ;-)
Mika presented the upcoming grml release 0.4 in his talk. At the grml-booth we could provide >150 grml-CDs, thanks to our sponsors Sevian7 and Agami!
grml developer day
Yesterday Gebi, Jimmy and me had a final devel-session for the upcoming grml release 0.4. We did some bugfixing, improved grml2hd once again and tested grml-terminalserver via a crossover cable from my laptop to jimmys one. We could boot grml via PXE and via floppy-disk. Gebi, you did an awfull good job on grml-terminalserver! :-)
New team member: Marcel Wichern
Marcel Wichern joined the grml-team. Marcel did a lot of testing, wrote main parts of the new network-frontend grml-network and is helping me at configuration stuff like pekwm. Welcome to the team, Marcel!
packaged dupseek and asleap
I packaged asleap (tool for penetration testing Cisco LEAP wireless access points) and dupseek (a command-line interactive perl program to find and remove duplicate files). There are several updates in grml-etc and I improved grml-lock (now it also supports locking of X). We are coming closer to grml 0.4.