Februar 2007 - Grml - lists.mur.at

One more question I have to ask, sorry.
by Doug Smith 12 Feb '07

12 Feb '07

- Ok, let's try this one again. This time, a little more careful with vim and it should be fine. Now, I believe I can get the vim problem solved here. I will just be careful with it. I have one more question, rather couple of questions to ask about the mkpersistenthome script. It appears to me, and I may be totally wrong, that the mkpersistenthome script does not work. When I try to make my persistent home directory on the usb device I have, I cannot get past the part of the script where it asks you for the partition to put the image file onto. How do I move and select the item in the menu for the partition /dev/sda1 and make it go on past that? Now, the only other question I have is this. I used to use a knoppix knock-off. This is what the Oralux distribution is based on. However, there appear to be many more packages here than in this version. The good thing I miss is this: On Oralux, and you can try it by downloading the file: http://oralux.rs.sr/Oralux_0.7.iso You have this program called knoppix-mkimage, which allows you to create this kind of virtual hard disk image of your entire system. Then, through the wonders of unionfs, you can have the usb device mounted, boot the cd, and you can have this image where you can install your favorite packages on the hard drive, and the unionfs will bring it all together and put the files into the right directories. Does grml do this with þhe mkpersistenthome script? Thank you for your information. I look forward to hearing from you about this. Thank you. - I use grml (http://grml.org/)

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Well, blast, I'll have to try that one again.
by Doug Smith 11 Feb '07

11 Feb '07

To whom it may concern: My name is Doug Smith. I just want to let you know that I am really enjoying my new grml system. However, I have a few quick questions I need to ask you so that I can still get more out of it. First of all, I wish to thank you for including speech output in the system. This is the only way I have of using computers at all. I am blind, and, of course, a monitor will do me no good at all. You solved that one for me. I would also like to thank you for including brltty in here as well. This is very good for people who like to use computers by means of a braille monitor. This is the message I meant to send out last night, but, wow, I found myself trapped inside the editor with no way out. I discovered, much to my surprise, that the environment variable EDITOR is set to vim which is fine with me, except for the small problem I have of not knowing how to use vim. How, when using vim with mutt, the mail client I use, do you get into the menu which allows you to send the message. I wrote the last night's message with nano, which I can use, then tried to send it out and found myself trapped inside vim with no way to get back into mutt. Well, now that you know why you received a blank message last evening, let me continue. The next question concerns the install I did, with grml2hd, on a usb hard drive. When I did the install, I made the initrd as instructed. Now, there was something in a previous message about which file in the initrd needs to be edited to make the usb boot work as it should. Which file is that, and what needs to be changed. I have never done this before. Now, the third and final question I have has to do with the compression technology used to make the compressed GRML file. How does that work? How can so much data be put onto the cd and, then, the system know which parts to decompress to get the programs you want to use? This leads me to a new idea. Is it possible to make a new way to install software into the system? The way it would work is this: Just put the system onto the hard drive with grml tohd. Now, we need to boot with grml fromhd and we can get started. Ok, let's select a piece of software to install, for this example, the missing binary codecs for mplayer. Can this somehow be done? Why can't the image file on the hard drive have the relevant parts decompressed, just as in memory, written back to the drive, the new files introduced into these directories, then the compressed image file re-made just as it was before, except with the new files. Is this possible, using the same decompression scenario as is used with the decompression of needed programs in memory for use? Well, that's about it for now. I hope to get this one out with no problems. I appollogize for the messiness of this letter. Until I can use mutt with vim, I have to use the emulated mailx composition mode and try to press returnin the proper positions before running off the lines and losing data. Once more thank you for such a wonderful system. I am more than glad to have it. I just want to learn more about it to be able to use it better. Thank you. Doug Smith

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Network devices - stop automatic connection
by Frank Eisenblaetter 09 Feb '07

09 Feb '07

I use grml on hd. 1) I have configured my networdevices at /etc/network/interfaces. There is no automatic ifup configured in it, but if I am connected to my router the networkconnection get's automatically established on startup of the system: * Network device eth0 detected, DHCP broadcasting for IP (Backgrounding) I think the connection get's established because an init script detects my networkdevice an runs a DHCP-client butI dont't know which script it is. How can i stop the autoconnection of my network device(s)? Or is there an other grml/debian way of configuring network devices? 2) On system startup I get the message: EXT3-fs warning: maximal mountcount The message tells me that I should run e2fsck. Why isn't this done automatical as it is on any other linux I uses before? Frank

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Thank you for such a wonderful system, I just have a few questions
by Doug Smith 09 Feb '07

09 Feb '07

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Sendmail hostname error
by ][ 08 Feb '07

08 Feb '07

Hi, I wasn't able to use sendmail recently. I've now track it down that the hostname that my Sendmail uses is wrong. How can I fix it? % /usr/sbin/sendmail -bi WARNING: local host name (;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached) is not qualified; see cf/README: WHO AM I? /etc/mail/aliases: 24 aliases, longest 10 bytes, 233 bytes total % grep 'WHO AM I' -r /etc/mail/* || echo no found no found Please help. FYI, this is the respond that I got explaining why it is happening. _________________________________________________________________ You seem to be a victim of the same broken "helpfulness" as described in the (apparently misthreaded by google) thread at http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.sendmail/browse_frm/thread/7095fe4… - i.e. some install script or whatever has "configured" your sendmail with a *host name* of literally ";; connection timed out; no servers could be reached"! This is actually an error message from the 'dig' command - i.e. the script probably tries to use 'dig' to get the fully-qualified host name, and blindly accepts any output from 'dig'. The slightly different greeting comes from the fact that sendmail inserts the "ESMTP" there as the second word, under the reasonable assumption that the host name is a single word... _________________________________________________________________ -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sf.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sf.net/tools/

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Grml initrd
by ][ 08 Feb '07

08 Feb '07

Hi, I've been trying for several weeks to make my grml USB pen bootable. I think I finally found the problem, quite a simple one -- I need a initrd which has findfs to find the root device. However, I didn't find a initrd in my grml2hd disk, and neither the minirt26.gz borrowed from grml_small_0.3.iso works. So, is there anywhere I can get a grml initrd, or I have to build one myself? If so, any good source of info for the building? thanks PS. Here is what I get: Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) My grub menu.lst: title Debian Live root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=UUID=b53f0a8b-deab-40b3-a84c-0779cb8b7772 ro initrd /boot/minirt26.gz boot title From grml.live root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=grml.live ro initrd /boot/minirt26.gz boot -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sf.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sf.net/tools/

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Loop mount not automatically cleaned
by ][ 08 Feb '07

08 Feb '07

Hi, I noticed that loop mounts are not automatically cleaned in my system. Is there any way that I can fix it? Each time after I loop mount, the loop device number increased. When I do ps, I found that there are many loop process in execution: $ ps -eaf | grep loop root 5566 1 0 Jan05 ? 00:01:44 [loop0] root 5597 1 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 [loop1] root 5603 1 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 [loop2] root 10995 1 0 00:28 ? 00:01:41 [loop3] root 26656 1 0 11:42 ? 00:01:40 [loop4] root 6234 1 0 17:45 ? 00:00:00 [loop5] Previously, the loop process will be gone after I umount the loop mount. As the result, my disk space did not re-gain after deleting loop mounted iso files: sudo mount -o loop my-big.iso /mnt/tmp1 $ df /dev/sda14 79631676 52241640 27390036 66% /lfs/cache12 /dev/loop3 4571190 4571190 0 100% /mnt/tmp1 sudo umount /mnt/tmp1 $ lsof | grep my-big rm my-big.iso $ df /dev/sda14 79631676 52241640 27390036 66% /lfs/cache12 The my-big.iso is over 4G in size, but there is no space increase after it being deleted. I've checked with lsof that no one is using it. please help. thanks -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sf.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sf.net/tools/

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interfaces
by harry meyers 07 Feb '07

07 Feb '07

My wireless interface is eth1 In /etc/network/interfaces the according lines are simply: ,---- | iface eth1 inet dhcp | wpa-passphrase waaskaaner | wpa-ssid irgdnwoos `---- Under debian I had no problems with this configuration. But under grml the interfaces are often changed, so eth0 comes up instead fo eth1, which of course doesn't work. As a workaround I wrote a small script which changes everything and restarts networking but gradually it became quit annoying. What can I do? harry

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Boot by UUID or disk label
by ][ 03 Feb '07

03 Feb '07

Hi, Grml wiki indicates that grml can use disk labels/UUIDs as root= option for booting [1]. What's the correct syntax for that? [1] http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=usb&DokuWiki=88eb0d5110993c6c4d0ca5992abee… I searched hard and came up with the following, trying to boot my USB key: title GRML on 1st HD root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/b53f0a8b-deab-40b3-a84c-0779cb8b7772 ro boot title GRML on 1st HD root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-label/grml.boot ro boot title GRML on 2nd HD root (hd1,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/b53f0a8b-deab-40b3-a84c-0779cb8b7772 ro boot But all gave me root filesystem not found error (grub boot normally, just can't find root fs). I'm sure the uuid and disk label are correct. What else could be the problem? thanks -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sf.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sf.net/tools/

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