April 2009 - Grml - lists.mur.at

the linux cookbook
by Josh 28 Oct '09

28 Oct '09

Hi, wow I did not know I could read the linux cookbook online until I did a google search for it and found it online. But here's a problem I need to overcome, and if anyone has already overcome this being blind, can you share how you did it? Ok, so for me to practically use this cookbook, I will need to: *be able to somehow read the book and then go to my computer and follow the directions. so I would need two computers? one to read the book on, and another to have grml Linux on. or *have a braille copy of the Linux cookbook so I therefore only need one computer and can read the braille copy to refer back to. Josh email: jkenn337(a)gmail.com msn: kenn6498ku(a)hotmail.com

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Can Grml tell (and repair) what Fedora did?
by Hubert Gabler 04 May '09

04 May '09

Dear experts, I have a mini-notebook Acer One with Linpus Lite installed. Playing around with this nice little toy I successfully installed Ubuntu 9.04 (replacing Linpus) and on USB-sticks Debian Live and grml 2008.11-rc1. Everything worked perfectly. Then I wanted to install Fedora 10, which semmed to take more time than expected and so I left the Acer unattended over night. Next day the display was frozen and I tried to reboot with the Grml-USB-Stick. Booting stopped quite soon, telling me "This grml image failed to boot" and "No supported filesystem images found at /live". Then came the prompt (initramfs). Hopefully I tried the (previoulsy working) Debian Live Stick. Same thing, booting stops at (initramfs). Now I decided to start from scratch and made a new setup with Acer's recovery disk. System works fine, but Grml and Debian Live still end booting with those error messages. Can it be that the unsuccessfull Fedora installation damaged for instance the buit-in RAM or did other nasty things? Can I find out with help of Ubuntu or Grml 1.1 (works both from CDROM and from a USB-stick) what is the reason and how to return to the original state? Thankful for any help, Hubert

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Specifying default soundcard for live CD
by Michael Whapples 29 Apr '09

29 Apr '09

Hello, Is there any way to set the default soundcard to use on the GRML live CD? An example why this might be needed is for those using speakup with software speech when the computer has multiple soundcards, in this case it is useful that the user can predict which card will be used as they require audio output to use the system. If such a feature doesn't exist I am not fully sure what would be the best way to define which card should be default (eg. module used isn't unique to the model of card (however ALSA modules can recieve an option index=<card number> to set the card as a particular card number, so it indicates in the main it is useful enough), but the card name as given by ALSA may not be the easiest thing to know). Any thoughts? Michael Whapples

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devel-release 2009.04.23 and xserver 7.4
by T o n g 26 Apr '09

26 Apr '09

Hi, Congratulations mika, for your new baby grml-devel-release 2009.04.23. Is it using xserver 7.4? If so, is there any tools to help generating the fdi files for input devices for the new Xserver 7.4? Any help/write-up that I can refer to? thanks -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sourceforge.net/tools/

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where is ~/.xsession-errors
by Peter 24 Apr '09

24 Apr '09

Hi I was wondering where the ~/.xsession-errors file is on my grml-medium-2008.11 It there on my debian lenny install, and I could not find any google saying where the logging to .xsession-errors has to be enable. Has it been disabled in grml ? Thanks for your help Peter

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BUG with grml2usb?
by Tube 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

I just wanted to install grml to USB using the following stick: # fdisk -lu /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 8011 MB, 8011087872 bytes 32 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7761 cylinders, total 15646656 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x7d815235 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 63 15646175 7823056+ 83 Linux After launching grml2usb, the following happens: # grml2usb /home/daten/images/grml/grml_sid_20090404.iso /dev/sdb1 Using ISO /home/daten/images/grml/grml_sid_20090404.iso Identified grml flavour "grml-daily-sid". Copying files. This might take a while.... Note: grml flavour grml-daily-sid is being installed as the default booting system. Installing default MBR Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/sbin/grml2usb", line 1648, in <module> main() File "/usr/sbin/grml2usb", line 1640, in main handle_bootloader(device) File "/usr/sbin/grml2usb", line 1590, in handle_bootloader install_bootloader(device) File "/usr/sbin/grml2usb", line 654, in install_bootloader install_grub(device) File "/usr/sbin/grml2usb", line 606, in install_grub "--root-directory=%s" % device_mountpoint, device], stdout=file(os.devnull, "r+")) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 594, in __init__ errread, errwrite) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 1153, in _execute_child raise child_exception OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory Does it have sth. to do that in the meantime I formatted the stick with ext2? TIA Tube

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Next stable release
by T o n g 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

Hi, > "The next stable release is expected for march 2009." (http://grml.org/ roadmap/) Will it be out soon? Any pending issues or show-stoppers? thanks. -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sourceforge.net/tools/

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Installing grml on usb stick
by Peter 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Hi I wanted to suggest some minor modifications to the instructions concerning the usb stick installation. I found that in order to install grml-medium-2008.11 , I had to adjust the lines in red. I also added some requirements that might not be available , when your build environment is not grml ( I suppose $medium can be replaced with the other flavors but I have not verified ): aptitude install syslinux # syslinux 3.71 or later must be available on your GNU/Linux system <http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/liveusb.php> aptitude install dosfstools # to get mkfs.vfat * Get the grml iso * Mount the iso loopback (e.g. mount -o loop grml_small_0.4.iso /mnt/grml-iso) * Make FAT16 filesystem on the usbstick (e.g. mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1) * Create a disklabel (e.g. dosfslabel /dev/sda1 GRML) * Mount the usbstick (e.g. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/external1) * Copy everything to the usbstick (e.g. cp -r /mnt/grml-iso/* /mnt/external1). * Move all files from /mnt/external1/boot/isolinux/ (mv /mnt/external1/boot/isolinux/* /mnt/external1) and the files linux26 and the minirt.gz (since grml1.1: initrd.gz!) from the directory named like the grml-flavour (/boot/grml, /boot/grmlmedium, /boot/grml64,...) to root of usb-stick in /mnt/external1, mv isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg #I am not sure if this is required, though <http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/usbdisk.html> * the files linux26 and initrd.gz must remain in boot/grmlmedium # this is what is said in syslinux.cfg * Umount the usbstick and the grml-iso * Run syslinux on the usbstick (e.g. syslinux /dev/sda1) * Check if the usbstick has an valid mbr, else dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/sda (mbr.bin is in the syslinux package, usually installed in /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin) * may need to set the bootable flag using parted (or fdisk) disk layout: /mnt/external1: addons f1 .. isolinux isolinux.bin syslinux.cfg ldlinux.sys live/ filesystem.module grml-medium.squashfs boot/grmlmedium initrd.gz linux26 Pleases let me know , if I am wrong of if there are better ways to do that ( I know, there is grml2usb, but I want to be sure to understand what's going on) Thanks Peter

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ASUS EEE pc
by Josh Lawrence 07 Apr '09

07 Apr '09

Hi list, Just took possesion of a brand-new ASUS EEE pc. Nice box, but it's currently running Windows, and I'd like to have grml on it. In researching this issue late last week, I ran across two posts, one that said that grml supports the EEE, and another that said that it would be "the next release" until it is supported. While I don't mind getting my hands dirty, I'd prefer not to have to compile any kernel stuff due to time constraints. Long story short, does the EEE work out of the box with the current grml release? Thanks all, Josh -- Josh Lawrence http://www.hardbop200.com

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Audio issues with grml HD installation
by Michael Whapples 07 Apr '09

07 Apr '09

Hello, I have been using GRML installed to a HD for a few months now but have started to notice that recently the audio does not always start up (it sometimes works without issue but quite a number of times in the last week it hasn't). When the audio fails to start it seems to be that the modules have not been loaded and using modprobe to load the modules and "alsactl restore" brings it back as it should be. Some info about the system: Motherboard is an Asus p4pe with the soundmax onboard sound card (snd_intel8x0 is the module for this card). I also have a terratec dmx 24/96 (module snd_ice1712) installed in the system. When the sound fails to start neither card has its modules loaded. I hope this is enough system specs. My questions are: How can I confirm whether this is a hardware issue or software issue? Should I be adding the snd_intel8x0 and snd_ice1712 modules to /etc/modules or can I rely on grml's autodetection of hardware? Any other suggestions as to the cause of the problem? One thing which I can't imagine causing the problem but I feel worth mentioning as it differs from the norm, is I use speakup (www.linux-speakup.org) and recently I switched to using the speakup_apollo module (from the software synthesiser module for speakup started with boot cheatcode swspeak) for an apollo synthesiser connected to ttyS0, although I am haven't noticed any correlation between starting using speakup_apollo and the sound issue (however this is through not paying attention to exactly when I first noticed the sound issue). Any help would be welcomed. Michael Whapples

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