April 2010 - Grml-devel

Grml 2010.04 released
by Michael Prokop 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

Hi Grml fans, on behalf of the Grml team, I'm proud to announce a new stable release: Grml 2010.04 with codename Grmlmonster, available in flavours grml, grml-medium and grml-small and all of them as 32bit and 64bit version has been released. The official release announcements providing all the relevant news are available at: grml => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-2010.04/ grml64 => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml64-2010.04/ grml-medium => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-medium-2010.04/ grml64-medium => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml64-medium-2010.04/ grml-small => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-small-2010.04/ grml64-small => http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml64-small-2010.04/ Issues regarding the releases can be found in the grml-wiki at: grml => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml_2010.04 grml64 => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml64_2010.04 grml-medium => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml-medium_2010.04 grml64-medium => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml64-medium_2010.04 grml-small => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml-small_2010.04 grml64-small => http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=grml64-small_2010.04 As usual you can get the ISO(s) via bittorrent, http and/or ftp from the mirrors listed at: http://grml.org/download/ or just visit http://download.grml.org/ to use our new GeoIP mirror setup (automatically try to figure out the best matching mirror). Have fun and enjoy the new release! As usual your feedback is highly appreciated. regards, -mika- -- http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog #grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc

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Grml USB Pen?
by Michael Prokop 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

Hi, I'm thinking about ordering Grml USB pens. I'd order ~50 of those 4GB pens: http://grml.org/screeni/gkrellShoot_10-04-07_125403.png featuring a Grml logo, providing a working multiboot setup (grml/grml64) with persistency option out-of-the-box. Would YOU pay ~30â‚¬ for such a Grml pen? regards, -mika-

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Grml at Linuxdays Graz 2010
by Michael Prokop 16 Apr '10

16 Apr '10

Hi, we'll have a Grml booth on Linuxdays Graz (http://www.linuxtage.at/) on 24th of April, I'll also hold a talk about Grml for Deployment and Desaster Recovery. People known to help out at the Grml booth; * Axel Beckert (Debian/Grml) * Gebi (Grml) * Jimmy (Grml) * Marianne (Grml) * Mika (Grml) * Rhonda (LPI/Debian/Grml) * Uli (Grml) * ... anyone else? What we'll have at the booth: * CDs (ordered 2k of them, sponsored by http://www.attingo.com/ - should arrive on 22nd) * Cups (have ~50 of them left) * Flyers (having quite a few left from our last order for Froscon) * Posters (ordered 20 of them, should arrive on 22nd) * USB keys (ordered 25 of them, should arrive on 22nd) I'll also make sure we've the according bits and pieces like clothes hanger, write utils,... Jimmy, can you please organize the computer/hardware stuff? Anything I forgot to mention? regards, -mika-

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Re: [Grml-devel] grml - package report: Defaulf for findiso boot option
by Michael Prokop 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

* Florian Kusche <flox(a)kusche.de> [Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 09:34:14PM +0100]: > is it possible to include a default value for the findiso boot > parameter in the initrd scripts? Something like "/grml.iso" would > be sufficient. > Reason: Integration of grml into multi-boot-rescue DVDs would be > much easier. One could place the grml-ISO-image at the default > location on the DVD and just chain load from the boot menu of the > rescue DVD to the grml boot loader. Actually, it already works - > you just have to enter the ISOLINUX command line and enter "grml > findiso=/grml.iso". However, it would be nice, if that would not > be necessary. Hm you mean if the user is specifying findiso without any arguments it should use /grml.iso by default? Or do you mean it should try to use /grml.iso really just by default in the default unmodified boot option? Whereas the first option doesn't bring any real benefits IMO the second option actually is quite risky. First of all because of possible unexpected behaviour as well as locating a possible wrong grml ISO, non matching kernel versions etc. (Yeah, we've a new mechanism to improve reliability for identifying the according boot device nowadays but it might become funny to debug in several situations anyway.) I do prefer explicit configuration in this situation, but adding Grml developer mailinglist to Cc in case I overlook anything. Thanks for your feedback, regards, -mika- -- http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog #grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc

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Grml startup time
by Ulrich Dangel 14 Apr '10

14 Apr '10

Hi, in my opinion the Grml startup is quite slow and I think we should address this issue for the next release. (iirc 45 seconds inside kvm) One and a quite easy but also a little problematic solution would be the parallel execution of startup scripts. But afaik this is currently not possible with file-rc but upstream (Hi Mika and formormer) is somehow working on it. The other and more easy solution would be parallelizise grml-autoconfig to some point, e.g. run all scripts parallel by just adding & to the function. Of course there have to be some exceptions like network should not be done in the background as other scripts like net{script,config} depends on it. This could be easily done but does require carefully testing to not break some usecases, e.g. do not change the order of netconfig/netscript as they could depend on each other. So my question is, is it worthwhile to put some effort into faster startup? What else could be done (iso/squashfs sort)? Shall we switch to dependency based booting at some point? regards, Ulrich

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RFH: Grml-CDs - Text for Cover
by Michael Prokop 03 Apr '10

03 Apr '10

Hi, I'm working with a sponsor and his graphic artist on a special Grml CD edition which should bring us a quite large amount of Grml CDs. The CD will be based on the upcoming 2010.04 release. Now I need your feedback: What should be part of the paper part of the CD cover? The text should be german and fit what people might expect to get from a Grml CD. :) If you have any nice ideas please let me know, and please provide feedback regarding the (german) article below ASAP! I should deliver the text to the sponsor/graphic artist today (2010-03-30). Thanks! regards, -mika- ################################################################################ Grml - die leistungsfÃ¤hige Live-CD fÃ¼r Systemadministatoren Das Debian-basierte Live-System Grml ist ein vielseitiges Werkzeug fÃ¼r Systemadministratoren und Freunde von textbasierten Tools. Grml lÃ¤sst sich nicht nur fÃ¼r alltÃ¤gliche Aufgaben in der Systemadministration, sondern auch zur Datenrettung, Deployment und dem Testen von Hardware-Support anwenden. Grml erfordert keine Installation auf der Festplatte und kann direkt von der CD gestartet werden.Grml konzentriert sich auf die fÃ¼r das Zielpublikum relevante Software: Angefangen von diversen Texteditoren Ã¼ber Netzwerktools wie Wireshark, Tcpdump, Hping und Scapy, Webserver wie Apache2 und lighttpd bis hin zu Dateisystemtools wie Ntfsrescue, Gparted und Testdisk bietet Grml insgesamt Ã¼ber 2500 Pakete auf der CD. Diese Grml-Release wurde massgeblich von den Grml-Entwicklern Ulrich Dangel, Michael Gebetsroither, Andreas Gredler, Michael Prokop, Frank Terbeck und Alexander Wirt erstellt. Zu dieser Release haben weiters folgende Personen beigetragen: Alexander Menk, Andras Korn, Axel Beckert, Christoph Biedl, Christian Hofstaedtler, Daniel Borkmann, Gregor Perner, Mark Jonas, Moritz Augsburger, Pawel Sadkowski, Richard Hartmann, Sedat Dilek, Stefan Weiss, Suhanov Maxim, Timo Boettcher, Tong Sun, XuÃ¢n Baldauf, Zoran Dzelajlija. follow @grmlproject ################################################################################

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Grml 2010.04 Testing-Day?
by Michael Prokop 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

Hi, we have to get our 2010.04 rc1 release stable ASAP. I'd like to arrange a "virtual testing day" therefore where we do nothing else than searching for bugs, bug fixing and finalizing the release through coordinating that via IRC. Any chance that we could make this happen on friday (2010-04-02), starting at ~11 o'clock in the morning? Any volunteers? Disclaimer: this is not an april fool. ;) regards, -mika-

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