May 2007 - Grml - lists.mur.at

Grml Beta Test Coordination
by Mark 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

> I really appreciate your feedback but you seem to prefer writing > mails instead of trying what I wrote. [Mika] Because 2.6.21 is not going to help us even if it works; I need more data; it's not the only test; and Linux ++ fixes anything but is not a distro. My users need grml repos, 0.9 or 1.0. They can't function with 2.6.21. Communication & research is all that's possible anyway. Memorial Day vacation - I'm packing now. (Incidentally: verified as kernel regression under Ubuntu 7.04; same problems.) During beta I would have done as requested to improve 1.0 final. Grml gave me no task, no suspect kernel config flags to isolate, etc. Radio silence made me hungry for info-crumbs... But a broken (from our standpoint) final release makes me ask how grml beta cycles are supposed to work. I just need to know what grml does/thinks so I can work with, or around the philosophy & constraints involved. Beta cycles are meant to catch bugs before release. Kernel regression is just another bug category. A kernel regression which, for instance, broke your laptop, would prevent a grml release. And that is how it should be. Re bisect: Other people do that coordinated by -stable. My job is sysadmin, not kernel dev. The whole point of Linux for us, rather than BSD or Open Solaris or Nexenta or whatever, is hardware support. If we have to become kernel devs too, supporting/debugging our own hardware, then we would consider other kernels to develop, with possibly more rational code. Note about USB in Linux, "the in-kernel USB interfaces have undergone at least three different reworks over the lifetime of this subsystem" (Greg Kroah-Hartman). Anyway it's not my call. The last thing my boss will allow is debugging Linux hardware drivers. What I'm asking is, do you inspect a grml bug report, and then talk to -stable to see if they have anything related in their pipeline, and then decide whether grml should wait for a patch? Looking at -stable patch-2.6.20.12, I see USB fixes relating to mutexes, IRQs, etc. - the big stuff. What -stable version is 2.6.20-grml in grml 1.0 final? Next, how does Debian fit into all this? Grml tracks Debian unstable. But grml releases are tied to Linus's kernel releases, not Debian kernel work, right? Correct me on anything. Does grml kernel customization include the possibility of using a -stable release that is not yet incorporated into Debian? Or is Debian a limiting factor? Dumb question maybe, but if I compile my own 2.6.20-x using grml source and patched from -stable, will it work with grml 2.6.20-grml repos? I'm willing to compile a kernel but if I start having to build repos too, I've already become a custom distro, and I'd rather not. Thanks - see you a week from now. Mark

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grml on USB flash drive or CF through cardbus adaptor.
by gary ng 02 Jun '07

02 Jun '07

Hi, I am wondering if there anyone has experience with this kind of usage, both in terms of performance and possibility to boot(in the case of cardbus) In the case of USB(most newer machine with 2.0 can boot without any problem), I believe it would be slower to boot comparing with USB HD(throughput difference but would still be much faster than CD) but would it be faster to use once boot as ReadyBoost on Vista relies on the much faster seek time ? As for the cardbus mode, if it cannot be boot from there, is there any support in grml boot mode where I can boot from a CD(which is slow) yet with the real meat pull from another device say USB drive or cardbus ? This can be quite useful for some older notebook/machine where the boot option is very limited(just CD or IDE). thanks for any pointer in advance. regards, gary PS. please CC if possible as I am not on the list but do read it from the archive. ____________________________________________________________________________________Luggage? GPS? Comic books? Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz

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DBUS <--> FILE-RC
by v.klemt＠online.de 31 May '07

31 May '07

Hi everybody! Is DBUS compatible with FILE-RC? On my system, originally generated with grml2hd (grml 0.9), kernel 2.6.18-grml, I got: root@acergrml: apt-get install dbus Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done The following extra packages will be installed: dbus-x11 The following NEW packages will be installed: dbus dbus-x11 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/535kB of archives. After unpacking 983kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Reading package fields... Done Reading package status... Done Retrieving bug reports... Done Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done Selecting previously deselected package dbus-x11. (Reading database ... 173918 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking dbus-x11 (from .../dbus-x11_1.0.2-5_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package dbus. Unpacking dbus (from .../archives/dbus_1.0.2-5_i386.deb) ... Setting up dbus-x11 (1.0.2-5) ... Setting up dbus (1.0.2-5) ... Starting system message bus: dbus. grep: /etc/rc2.d/S??*: No such file or directory root@acergrml: Adding the missing softlink in /etc/rc2.d, ln -s ../init.d/dbus S20dbus by hand solved the problem for me (for the time being), but certainly can't be the appropriate solution. Best regards, Vilmar Klemt v.klemt(a)online.de

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grml 1.0: grml-network hickups
by Werner Flamme 30 May '07

30 May '07

Hi all, I installed grml i386 via grml2hd onto my laptop that ran with grml 0.9 before. It is a IBM ThinkPad T23. After booting from harddisk, I used grml-network to set up a static IP address for the on-board eth card. Now I can access the laptop via ssh, everything works fine. Several hours later, my ssh connection is down, the laptop does not respond to pings. I use the console and - much to my astonishment - the static IP address was exchanged with an address from the DHCP range of my router! I used grml-network again to enter the static IP address - and next morning, it again was away and a dynamic IP address was used! Well, since that first surprise this happens all few hours. I always chose "enable at boot" at the last prompt. What can I do do have my system remember the static IP address assigned via grml-network instead of looking for a DHCP address? Regards, Werner

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followup to boot-hang
by yazdzik 30 May '07

30 May '07

Dear M and friends, So, I did the quick and ugly, violent and disgusting solution: I changed fstab first line to plain old /dev/sda4 and got rid of the uuid stuff in the lilo append. Now, I am writing from the new fangled grml 1.0. However, having done this, aside from the schuldgefuehl, I would like to know what went wrong with mounting via the uuid, why we do so in the first place, and so on. Since there are stupid things that do not work on my .9 box, like axiom(really!) and everything works here, for now, I would like to move all production laptops to grml 1, but need to know that everything will work. So, the question is: what changed to disable the mounting via uuid? I suspect it is something I disabled in the runlevel.conf to speed booting along. Also, while on that topic, there has to be a way to complete disable and remove all raid like things from boot-up for laptops, no? Warm regards to all, Martin

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boot hangs
by martin yazdzik 29 May '07

29 May '07

Dear M and friends, Can anyone think of a reason why boot hangs at: "begin searching for root file system" It worked yesteday, not today. Obviously, without being able to mount /, there is no log. Other than installing k3b, there were no changes. Best, m

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TTYS 4 and 5
by Andri Handoko 26 May '07

26 May '07

Hi, I'm using the grml-small 0.3. There are only 4 serials, ttyS0 - ttyS3, in /dev folder, and I'm trying to use /dev/ttyS4 and /dev/ttyS5. I created the ttyS4 and ttyS5 manually in /etc/init.d/bootlocal.last. Use the mknod to create the device and setserial to assign the port and interrupt channel. Please see the list of commands below: mknod -m 660 /dev/ttyS4 c 4 68 chown root.dialout /dev/ttyS4 mknod -m 660 /dev/ttyS5 c 4 69 chown root.dialout /dev/ttyS5 setserial /dev/ttyS4 irq 5 port 0x1c0 ^fourport autoconfigure baud_base 115200 -v low_latency setserial /dev/ttyS5 irq 0 port 0x1c8 ^fourport autoconfigure baud_base 115200 -v low_latency The setserial command returns "/dev/ttyS#: No such file or directory" for both devices where # is 4 and 5. Is this because the kernel only support up to 4 serial devices? if this is the case, is CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS is the variable that I have to change, "CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS=4" to "CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS=6" in the grml-small kernel configuration? Thanks a bunch.. Cheers Andri ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php

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new member intro and questions.
by Allison Mervis 26 May '07

26 May '07

Hi all! My name is Allison, and I am totally blind. I understand that grml includes some degree of screen reader support, but here is what I need to be able to do. Right now, I'm using an Acer Laptop running Windows XP home SP2. I would like to burn an image of GRML to a CD, insert it into my drive, restart the computer, and have it boot up talking in Linux. I would like to later restart the computer, and have it boot back up in windows. I don't own a hardware synthesizer, and I've been led to understand that this limits my options somewhat. Is the scenario I've just descried even possible? Thanks! Allison

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Suspend resume bugs
by Mark 26 May '07

26 May '07

Linus Torvalds : "For example, look at suspend/resume bugs. Do you realize that 99% of them are device driver issues, but how the heck do you connect a "my laptop does't resume" to the _right_ device driver maintainer?" http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/28/438 (So USB_CONFIG_SUSPEND may cause issues with hardware devices, which kernel upgrades alone won't fix, only driver upgrades, one per device.)

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2.6.21 IDE change
by Mark 21 May '07

21 May '07

Is this change in Debian too, or just RedHat? https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-April/msg01252.html The 2.6.21 kernel uses new IDE drivers which use the same 'libata' subsystem as the SATA drivers. As a side-effect, IDE devices previously named /dev/hdX will now be named /dev/sdX. This may cause problems with anything that mentions devices by name instead of by filesystem label. Anaconda should be able to detect most of these problems and help you fix them.

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