November 2005 - Grml - lists.mur.at

04 Dec '05

Older PCs do not have BIOS support for USB boot. Some offer USB boot, but it just doesn't work. Some machines only have USB support by means of PCI or ISA cards, and these cannot be booted. All these machines will boot GRML off CD. So, the idea is this - offer a cheatcode to transfer control to a USB/Firewire/SCSI drive. This is not the same thing as using a /home directory on the drive, it means complete Linux system transfer. Mark

3 7

apt behavior..
by Ishwar Rattan 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

I have hd-install of grml-0.5 at home that connects to school over a dial-up. It takes too long to do apt-get update every time time I have to search/install a package. I trimmed down my /etc/apt/sources.list to one repository: # Unstable deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free When I try to search or install without doing an 'apt-get update' first it complains with the following messages: W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/contrib Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_contrib_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_non-free_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems Why would it complain about source package lists when thay are not specified in sources.list? I was under the impression that apt is supposed to remember the result of last update operation.. Any ideas? -ishwar

2 1

module load at boot time..
by Ishwar Rattan 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

I am missing something obvious. I want module kqemu to be loaded at system (re)boot, so, I placed it in /etc/modules but it does not get loaded. Any ideas how to achieve this goal? -ishwar

2 1

Ubuntu = poor boot-time example
by Mark 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

Something scared me on GRML's to-do list. http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=todo Todo for grml 0.6 Ubuntu's FasterBoot The reason I am "scared" is that GRML is light years beyond Ubuntu in live booting (w/hardware detection). Ubuntu should be learning from GRML, not vice-versa. Ubuntu took 7 times longer to boot my workstation than Knoppix (let alone GRML). Others report similar results, http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11998&comment_id=36650 Ubuntu developers admit their live boot stuff is a huge mess, unmaintainable, and will be scrapped. That's what their "FasterBoot" initiative is partly about. But GRML is already there! I like very much GRML's pure-Debianized-Knoppix approach, which is so much faster and better than Ubuntu's modified-Morphix-Gnoppix junk. GRML gives all benefits of Knoppix without drawbacks in terms of Debian standards. Mark

2 1

kwrsync_backup fertig
by Kai Wilke 27 Nov '05

27 Nov '05

Hallo Leute, kwrsync_backup ist fertig. Es ist in der naechsten Release von kwtools (0.4.2) dabei. Eine Vorabversion findet ihr unter: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/netzworkk/scripts/kwtools/upload/0.4/ Ist im Paket kwtools-net und die Doku in kwtools-doc. Lest auch die Manpage (man 5 kwrsync_backup.cf) kwrsync_backup erstellt einen Snapshot von Rechnern, auch remote, und rotiert die Backup Verzeichnisse. Doku findet ihr unter: http://netzworkk.berlios.de/doku/kwtools/net/kwrsync_backup.html Berlios hat aber gerade wieder ein Webserver Problem. Was geht nicht: Das Backup Verzeichnis darf nicht in einem, mit losetup, verschluesselten Device liegen. In der Vorabversion sind die Scripts kwparted und film2film noch im devel Zustand. mfg Kiste -- ####################################################################### Netzworkk Kai Wilke kiste(a)netzworkk.de http://www.netzworkk.de http://netzworkk.berlios.de

1 0

Upgrade scenarios and GRML versions
by Mark 27 Nov '05

27 Nov '05

A new theme now, user upgrades. This note is not about grml2hd, just how to keep my users current over time. Suppose that, for my users, I execute grml2hd to install GRML; and then, on top of GRML, Debian desktop packages (mostly GNOME, maybe Ubuntu if it will work). This is my current plan. The question I have is what problems/issues you foresee in terms of upgrading users over time where GRML is the underlying Debian system. I need to avoid full system re-installs (grml2hd all over again). I believe this job is easy. I just thought I would ask. Experience teaches me that others often think of things that I do not foresee. The main items I want to keep upgraded are (1) kernel and (2) GRML h/w autodetection. These are the critical ones. Both affect driver/hardware support. Mark (p.s. I signed up as a beta tester and would be willing to use beta versions as necessary - since I only have 0.5 right now assume that as baseline)

2 1

USB boot success: grml-big-0.5 + grml2hd-0.5.5
by Mark 27 Nov '05

27 Nov '05

Good news: grml2hd 0.5.5 worked on my test user's USB hard drive. The USB drive booted a system from power up to GRML user login prompt with full hardware autodetection. Here are some observations. In general I'm very happy, I just want to offer some thoughts on room for improvement in grml2hd. GRML is beautiful, don't get me wrong. * The yaird install dialog box mentions SCSI, but not USB or Firewire. It should mention all three explicitly. I know they are all SCSI to Linux, but please help the user. It's an easy string change. * The installer undoes its own work. It spends lots of time copying, as it must, but some of what it copies it later deletes - services like apache, mysql. Note that I kept all the default selections. * I got lots of error and warning messages during this stage - can't stop process, can't delete file, permission denied, things like that; several pages of it; very worrisome and confusing. * A better way (?) is to copy only what the user wants, rather than asking what to delete after it has all been copied over. Show the menu before the copy, not after. Should save lots of time and errors. * The chroot jail question is weird and I didn't know how to answer it. There was another question about MySQL that probably shouldn't be there. If the user doesn't want MySQL, just get rid of everything associated. * The video came out bad. Video for booting from CD-ROM was fine, my font and video scale just what I would expect (without any cheatcodes, just default CD boot). However the USB boot produced an ugly (larger) font size and/or video scale that was also painfully mashed to the left (leftmost character columns not even visible). This was on the same monitor. I don't understand why the difference. CD-ROM video defaults would have been fine for the USB install. We're not talking X here, just text GRML. I did create the X config at the install dialog prompt, but the ugliness lies in the basic GRML screen, not X per se. * I used ReiserFS 3.x and it worked fine, though there seemed to be some miscellany error messages at boot time about accessing this or that (can't remember what). * Just before install, I did a full apt-upgrade on the CD-ROM boot system. It seems there are lots of patches since grml-big-0.5. I mention this only so you know what I actually intalled to the hard drive. * The USB bootup process flashed the screen a few times more than the CD-ROM boot. This flashing must have to do with initrd and all that. It was a little bothersome, that's all. If you can minimize the flashing and jumping, it would be nice. Just keep scrolling the boot text, don't flash around so much. * Some of our older PCs don't have USB boot support in BIOS. They need "helper boot floppies." It would be nice if the installer could create one as an optional step. I'm eagerly awaiting grml-big 0.6. I will hold off configuring my user systems until 0.6 is released. How close is it? Last I heard a few more days... Thanks for this excellent distro and USB support. Regards, Mark

4 15

Fragen nach einer hd Installation
by Andreas Kalex 26 Nov '05

26 Nov '05

Hallo, 1. wie kann ich nach einer grml2hd Installation den Tastenstandard auf das deutsche Layout setzen? Bei den bootoptionen gebe ich es per grml lang=de an aber nach der grml2hd Installation wird bereits beim booten gemeldte dass das us layout benutzt wird. Temporär kann ich es mit grml-lang de ändern. Doch wie dauerhaft? dpkg-reconfigure console-data hat nicht den gewünschten Effekt 1.a Nach der temporären Änderung ist die Änderung nur auf der Konsole aktiv nicht unter X. In der xorg.conf ist dies:"XkbLayout" "de" enthalten. 2. ich möchte die Auflösung unter X auf 1024x768 setzen. Der Aufruf grml-x -mode 1024x768 fluxbox funktioniert nur wenn die Live-CD läuft, nicht von der HD-Installation. Wo kann ich das ändern? 3. Ich will eine feste IP Adresse vergeben aber beim Start wird immer der dhcp benutzt; wenn ich den über die autoconfig nicht starten lasse, wird überhaupt keine IP Adresse gesetzt. Nutze ich dann netcardconfig so stehen die schon mal benutzten Werte bereits als Vorgabe drin. hmm? Gruss Andreas

2 6

Grml-0.5
by Ishwar Rattan 22 Nov '05

22 Nov '05

Two queries: 1. Is there a way to reconfigure ispell for us_english dictionary? 2. Is thre a music CD palyer (need not be gui)? Thanks, -ishwar

4 3

Vshnu (Mix out of shell, perl and mc) maybe for an upcimong release of grml?
by Michael Cracauer 22 Nov '05

22 Nov '05

In the current Linux-Magazine is a report about Vshnu. Vshnu exist now for several years, but was anknown for me and many others. Have a look: http://www.linux-mag.com/content/view/2332/ It´s a nice program, maybe it can be added to grml, as an alternative to zsh and mc. Would really like it. --------------------------------- Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB kostenlosem Speicher

2 1