November 2006 - Grml - lists.mur.at

Suggestions
by Michael Schierl 08 Nov '06

08 Nov '06

Hi, some things I noticed when using grml 0.8 recently that might be changed some day to make grml even better: 1. When loading grml on older machines there is a noticable delay (and cdrom activity) when there are loaded lots of screen and zsh instances into the virtual consoles. I'd like to have a cheatcode (or a runlevel) that only loads programs for console 1 at startup. Other consoles are loaded after a key has been pressed there. For those consoles that use rungetty, its --prompt option could be used to archieve this. 2. Having GRUB available on GRML is great. However, I'd like to have a few "Grub keyboard layouts" included for people who, unlike me, cannot find all that special chars like = or / on an American keyboard layout. You can find a German and a French layout on my bootdisk (or its config files) available at <http://home.arcor.de/mschierlm/bootdisk/>. On the other hand, you can save about 1MB on CD by using a 360KB floppy image instead of a 1.44MB one. (I tested it and chainloading a 360KB GRUB disk image from memdisk works.) 3. When, for some reason, I need grml booted on two machines and cannot use the grml-terminalserver (for example because I may not interfere with DHCP servers in the network and do not have a crossover network cable with me either) I like to use the toram option. But, obviously, it needs lots of RAM and time to get started. In these cases grml-small would be better. But I want to carry around as few disks as possible. So I thought if it is possible to splitting the squashfs image into two images that are merged by unionfs, where the smaller one contains a basic system that includes all stuff from grml-small (which may be larger than 50MB, but as small as possible) and have a cheatcode to load only the small part into ram (and not use the large part at all). I do not know if this is feasible in the grml build process (obviously it will require some extra work of splitting the image), but it would be cool. I don't know any live cd that tries to do things like this, so perhaps it is not possible...? 4. The bootsplash flickers quite a lot. You might reduce flickering by replacing the »/usr/bin/clear« by »echo -ne '\033[H\033[25l'« which will not clear the screen but move the cursor to top and set the cursor invisible. Another nice thing would be having boot messages scrolling in a small "window" inside the bootsplash, like it can be done by »ESC [ first ; last r« (see »man console_codes | less +/region«), but since I do not know how many users are using bootsplash anyway (I usually do not), this is just eye-candy and very low priority for me :-) Feel free to flame me now ;-) Michael

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Clean installs?
by s. keeling 07 Nov '06

07 Nov '06

I've done about four grml-small (latest version) installs so far. None of them have survived "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" (and friends). Each time, a different package failed to install, holding up the rest of the upgrade. I have managed to get X installed, but it's sad that the rest of it won't go. I'll keep playing with it. My only real complaint is that grml2hd assumes my rtc is set to localtime. "utc" and "tz=Canada/Mountain" are quietly ignored. Nice system, and lots of fun to play with. :-) -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Please don't Cc: me. - -

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Grml/Grml-small sort of progress report.
by s. keeling 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

A while back, I got the latest grml, burned it, and have now finally returned to it. Contrary to the last (0.7) version, this one actually sees a valid partition on my second hard drive, /dev/hdc. Grml proceeds to install and continues 'til it's killed. My disk is only 2 Gb, and Grml wants 2.7 Gb. So, I download grml-small, boot into it, and grml2hd[*] reports: ----------------------------------- Error: partition=/dev/hdc1 does not seem to be an existing partition. Please use a program like cfdisk to create partition partition=/dev/hdc1 and restart grml2hd. ----------------------------------- Both fdisk and cfdisk show the partition, and full Grml took it and ran with the install. So, what's grml-small's problem? Disk is a Seagate ST32122A [*] grml2hd partition=/dev/hdc1 mbr=/dev/hdc filesystem=ext2 \ user=keeling root=/dev/hdc1 -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Please don't Cc: me. - -

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aamath - ascii art for math
by Mark 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

http://fuse.superglue.se/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."

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ipw2200 monitor mode
by carli graph 03 Nov '06

03 Nov '06

hi, i have grml@hd, ipw2200 modules -1.0.8 with linux-headers-2.6.16-grml, so i think it's grml 0.7 and don't know witch driverversion... and monitor mode doesn't work: # iwconfig eth0 mode monitor Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) : SET failed on device eth0 ; Invalid argument. please, does anyone know how to get working this? thanks, markus.

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autopano-sift on grml?
by Lars Schimmer 03 Nov '06

03 Nov '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi! I try to use hugin anf autopano-sift from debian-multimedia.org on my grml HD install. But if I try to run autopanog I just get the error: "zsh: fehler im Format der Programmdatei: autopanog" Has anyone a tip for me? MfG, Lars Schimmer - -- - ------------------------------------------------------------- TU Graz, Institut für ComputerGraphik & WissensVisualisierung Tel: +43 316 873-5405 E-Mail: l.schimmer(a)cgv.tugraz.at Fax: +43 316 873-5402 PGP-Key-ID: 0x4A9B1723 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32) iD8DBQFFSzxImWhuE0qbFyMRAqpUAKCJspvmYCITOdkLzKgAZFRwwy5sEACfaAxn jvVHp3fPJqyySUgYZAZziLY= =48e2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Grml] Is accessing striped "dynamic disks" from GRML possible?
by Ulrich Dangel 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

* Michael Schierl wrote [02.11.06 22:14]: Hi Michael, i resend this to the list, because probably you get some cool and nice suggestions for an console calculator :) > <offtopic> > Windows Internal, but it works... > </offtopic> Nice :-) > > Try the link above and build it on you're own. > But: What calculator to use in grml for all that hex/decimal conversions > (and multiplications and additions)? Try python. Just enter 0xfa or something and you get the corresponding decimal value. If you want the hex value of a decimal number, use hex($numer) and it works. You can calculate with hex values in bc when you set the base. Just do an ibase=16 and it should work. > There is no orpie (great console RPN calculator) and GNU Calculator > for Emacs is not there either. Okay, dc/bc is there, but I don't know > (and could not figure out by grepping the man page) how they can > handle hex numbers... Hm, i just tried orpie and i think python is much nicer, especially if you use ipython. > libgcc and libstdc++ are too old when "dpkg -i"-ing it from the > grml-0.8 CD. Thanks anyway. Hm, i used grml 0.8.3 or something like that, and it worked out of the box. I can rebuild it, if you really need it. > Michael Uli -- WARNING: RAID-6 is currently highly experimental. If you use it, there is no guarantee whatsoever that it won't destroy your data, eat your disk drives, insult your mother, or re-appoint George W. Bush. /usr/src/linux/drivers/md/Kconfig - 2.6.8

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Is accessing striped "dynamic disks" from GRML possible?
by Michael Schierl 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hi, I wanted to rescue some files from a broken Win2000 install with grml. The data to rescue were stored on a striped partition on a dynamic disk (Windows' equivalent to a software raid0). However, I did not manage it to reassemble or mount this partition. it appeared as two separate partitions (one on each drive). Google suggested to run ldminfo, but that tool is not there, and I could not find it :( I eventually managed to rescue the files by booting from a BartPE disk and using the commandline "diskpart" tool to reassemble the RAID and assign a drive letter to it. Does anyone know a way to access these files from grml? Or is it impossible to do this from Linux and I have to include a BartPE disk in my rescue disk set as well? TIA, Michael

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Re: [Grml] BadRam/BadMem Kernelpatch
by devzero＠web.de 01 Nov '06

01 Nov '06

>So IMO this would only be useful for private use. i don`t think so - at least i wouldn`t say it`s only usefule for private use if you mean "home use" - think of developing countries where people cannot afford replacing their ram because of just "one bit out of millions" is bad - think of companies with large test/development environments which are not mission critical. we have many boxes out of service contract at work - and we still use them until they die or getting too old - think of a server which constantly crashes during a recover you try with grml - due to bad ram. should you really buy new ram for that machine if it gets replaced, anyway - and you just need it being running stable for the recovery process ? maybe this is just a theoretical scenario, but the discussion about the pro`s and con`s of badram patch is very controversial. anyway - i heard there will be an request for inclusion into mainline soon. roland > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: Andreas Gredler <jimmy(a)grml.org> > Gesendet: 30.10.06 13:55:46 > An: grml(a)mur.at > Betreff: Re: [Grml] BadRam/BadMem Kernelpatch > On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 03:02:15PM +0100, devzero(a)web.de wrote: > > Description: > > > > BadRAM: Linux kernel support for broken RAM modules Summary: This page > > proposes an approach to support RAMs with defective addresses, This > > may open interesting business perspectives, where those RAMs can be > > sold under a white label for less money rather than discarded of > > without any profit. > > If you talk about business... Broken RAM always gets replaced by new > modules, since this is mission critical and covered by warranty and/or > service contracts. Additionally, "real" servers mirror RAM and have spare > RAMs installed. > So IMO this would only be useful for private use. > > greets Jimmy > > -- > Andreas "Jimmy" Gredler > ,'"`. http://www.jimmy.co.at/ | jimmy(a)g-tec.co.at > ( grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins > `._, http://www.grml.org/ | jimmy(a)grml.org > _______________________________________________ > Grml mailing list - Grml(a)mur.at > http://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml > join #grml on irc.freenode.org > grml-devel-blog: http://grml.supersized.org/ _____________________________________________________________________ Der WEB.DE SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! http://smartsurfer.web.de/?mc=100071&distributionid=000000000066

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Starting domain name service bind failed
by T 01 Nov '06

01 Nov '06

Hi I used to use a caching only name server under Debian. When I start the same setting under grml, I get: % /etc/init.d/bind9 restart Stopping domain name service...: bindrndc: connection to remote host closed This may indicate that the remote server is using an older version of the command protocol, this host is not authorized to connect, or the key is invalid. failed! Starting domain name service...: bind failed! What could be wrong? Or, how to setup a caching only name server under grml? Thanks -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sourceforge.net/

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