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Trial to install after the manual : grml-tips sarge
by Erich Minderlein 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hello After a lot of fooling around with this one year old hardware amilopro I do not come to an end with getting a homogenous computer landscape, as all other systems at locoware.de have sarge, (with gnome, firefox, evolution except for the firewall) and a very low maintenance load. I would like to keep it that way. But this notebook does not like the old kernels of sarge. Installation is somewhat possible. I tried original sarge installation, It did not work because of kernel now with a DVD of sarge stable , sata_via cannot be loaded and this is needed for HDD. It did something other bad with an old cdrom from the times, when sarge was testing. some more info : floppy, via_sata (error) and generic ide support stalls the installation on this sarge stable DVD I tried then knoppix(4.01), which charged 240000 files on my HDD and is just a huge collection of lots of sources, started nicely as the DVD came with the notebook and recommendation by knoppix is anyhow to not install on a HDD. Then I tried grml with the known compatibility problems of xservers. So I tried `grml-tips sarge`. What is a general problem with CDROM Live systems : reply: 1. locatedb older than 8 days, very helpful, but I knew that before, I want to know if this-> or that-> file is there. going along the manual of grml-tips sarge installation was very helpful, also sda1 was found and a filesystem made with mkfs.ext3. there is an output of mkfs.ext3 : Dateisystem wird geprÃ¼ft alle .., je nachdem ..., verÃ¤nderbar mit tune2fs -c oder -t must be verÃ¤nderbar mit tune2fs -c oder -i =================================^ lots of downloads going on, install is fine. but after the chroot TROUBLE vi : unkown terminal type screen.linux so lets use some other editors: pico, nano, nvi what there is in the same directory, all the same reply: unkown terminal type screen.linux As I did the chroot in a second console, I could continue to do the editing work in the first console with longer directory strings. in the chroot : no tab completion, but for a few commands okay, and no paths are found. apt-get, mount works and that is needed. horrible flashing of the whole screen when pressing cursor direction keys and backspace in position one after the prompt. perl continued to complain LANGUAGE unset, lots of messages also i have given lang=de at the grml boot and the keyboard understands german. LC_TYPE, LC_MESSAGES and LC_ALL are all de_DE , fine. mkinitrd.conf was not there, apt-get initrd-tools fixed it. I continued through the script, and probably made a mistake : installed kernel-image-2.6.8-2 from sarge edited lilo but did not edit the kernel line as vmlinu? in chroot: did /sbin/lilo added linux* looked okay. Surprise at the reboot kernel 2.6.17-grml shows up. a sarge like font, a grml like kernel. Actually this is what I wanted to have, but not in this completely uncontrolled manner. the kernel still sits somewhere on the HDD, not over written and I ask myself Did lilo content itself when finding this kernel ??????? (this happened actually twice.) BACK TO THE ROOTS ! 1. I need a working system as reference : grml2hd -untouched ! 2. I need a sarge stable business environment with adaptions to actual hardware : sarge + 2.6.17-grml + Xserver XFree86 VESA or VESAFB 3. maybe I install a testing environment for grml 0.9. erased all partitions : made 1 swap (sda1), one for grml 0.8 (sda2), one for sarge(sda3) just in time info that grml 0.9 is coming, erased sda3, and made sda3 and sda4 (all primary partitions) sda3 for grml 0.9 sda4 for sarge mkfs.ext3 does not read sda4 as primary partition!!! ls does not show it either , so I make a "Erweitere" partition and eliminate sda4, sda3. this is the typescript of the session: Script wurde gestartet: Mi 29 Nov 2006 18:47:12 CET root@amilopro #fdisk /dev/sda Die Anzahl der Zylinder fÃ¼r diese Platte ist auf 4864 gesetzt. Daran ist nichts verkehrt, aber das ist grÃ¶ÃŸer als 1024 und kann in bestimmten Konfigurationen Probleme hervorrufen mit: 1) Software, die zum Bootzeitpunkt lÃ¤uft (z. B. Ã¤ltere LILO-Versionen) 2) Boot- und Partitionierungssoftware anderer Betriebssysteme (z. B. DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): p Platte /dev/sda: 40.0 GByte, 40007761920 Byte 255 KÃ¶pfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 4864 Zylinder Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 Ã— 512 = 8225280 Bytes GerÃ¤t boot. Anfang Ende BlÃ¶cke Id System /dev/sda1 1 62 497983+ 82 Linux Swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 63 671 4891792+ 83 Linux /dev/sda3 672 4864 33680272+ 5 Erweiterte /dev/sda5 672 1280 4891761 83 Linux /dev/sda6 1281 4864 28788448+ 83 Linux Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): d Partitionsnummer (1-6): 6 Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): d Partitionsnummer (1-5): 5 Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): n Befehl Aktion l Logische Partition (5 oder grÃ¶ÃŸer) p PrimÃ¤re Partition (1-4) l Erster Zylinder (672-4864, Vorgabe: 672): Benutze den Standardwert 672 Letzter Zylinder oder +GrÃ¶ÃŸe, +GrÃ¶ÃŸeK oder +GrÃ¶ÃŸeM (672-4864, Vorgabe: 4864): +5000M Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): n Befehl Aktion l Logische Partition (5 oder grÃ¶ÃŸer) p PrimÃ¤re Partition (1-4) l Erster Zylinder (1281-4864, Vorgabe: 1281): Benutze den Standardwert 1281 Letzter Zylinder oder +GrÃ¶ÃŸe, +GrÃ¶ÃŸeK oder +GrÃ¶ÃŸeM (1281-4864, Vorgabe: 4864): Benutze den Standardwert 4864 Befehl (m fÃ¼r Hilfe): w Die Partitionstabelle wurde verÃ¤ndert! Rufe ioctl() um Partitionstabelle neu einzulesen. WARNUNG: Neueinlesen der Partitionstabelle fÃ¼hrte zu Fehler 16: Das GerÃ¤t oder die Ressource ist belegt. Der Kernel benutzt noch die alte Tabelle. Die neue Tabelle wird beim nÃ¤chsten Neustart verwendet. Synchronisiere Platten. root@amilopro # init 0 Script beendet: Mi 29 Nov 2006 18:48:24 CET ls /dev/sd* does not show /dev/sda4, /dev/sda5, /dev/sda6 ! I cannot mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda5/ dev/sda6 ! no devices. /dev/sda4 cannot be found not as p-partition, nor /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6 as l-partition. This is Wednesday 19:08 Lots of backfeed regards -- Erich Minderlein <erminderlein(a)locoware.de> MARC Mannheim Rail Commerce GmbH

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PXE-Boot Parameter
by Ralf Moll 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hi, I'm using GRML via PXE on my debian sarge server. Everything runs perfect, but I noticed, that there is the cheatcode "nodhcp" in the PXE-Docu on http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=terminalserver#booting_grml_without_grml-t… ( LABEL grml KERNEL linux26 APPEND ramdisk_size=16384 root=/dev/ram0 rw init=/etc/init nfsdir=<YOUR IP>:/mnt/nfs/grml \ nodhcp noprompt noeject apm=power-off nomce initrd=minirt26.gz vga=791 ) If I remove the "nodhcp", the client gets an IP and the DNS-Server. With the standard config including "nodhcp", the client gets an IP and is booting, but it gets only manually a DNS-Server entry by running dhcp-client manually. So what is the reason for the nodhcp-entry? BTW: Knoppix uses this entry for pxe-booting, too! cu, ramon

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Boot USB sans IDE noise
by Mark 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

One user noticed that older IDE drives (CD, HDD) make noise, depending on age, case vibrations. His USB drive is very quiet. He boots grml from that. Can he boot from USB without powering IDE drives? Grml has an orderly IDE power-off procedure at shutdown. You hear the IDE hard drives click off one by one. The question is best method to invoke the commands at boot time. Of course he can always unplug the power cables manually :-) But customers don't like that. :-) Software control is better anyway.

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A thought about modules
by Juergen Fiedler 28 Nov '06

28 Nov '06

Maybe it is already there and I just managed to miss it this far; if so, I apologize. Here is my thought, anyway: Wouldn't it be neat to have modules containing data and/or executables that can be added to or removed from the system at runtime? I tried the following from the 0.8 live CD with a HD mounted on /mnt/hda1: ------- root@grml:/root# mkdir -p /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml root@grml:/root# unionctl /UNIONFS --add /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml root@grml:/root# unionctl /UNIONFS --mode /ramdisk ro root@grml:/root# aptitude install mtx # [much output omitted] root@grml:/root# unionctl /UNIONFS --mode /ramdisk rw # [wait a few seconds for things to settle] root@grml:/root# unionctl /UNIONFS --remove /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml root@grml:/root# rm -rf /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml/var/ root@grml:/root# rm -rf /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml/root/ # [more cleanup, if necessary] root@grml:/root# mksquashfs /mnt/hda1/tmp/grml /mnt/hda1/tmp/mtx.squashfs ------- This creates a squashed filesystem image that can be added to /UNIONFS: ------- root@grml:/root# mkdir -p /mnt/hda1/tmp/mnt/mtx root@grml:/root# mount -o loop -t squashfs /mnt/hda1/tmp/mtx.squashfs /mnt/hda1/tmp/mnt/mtx root@grml:/root# unionctl /UNIONFS --add --after /ramdisk --mode ro /mnt/hda1/tmp/mnt/mtx ------- After that, mtx is available for use, just as if it was part of the real live CD. Would something like that be useful for grml? Useful enough to create an official set of scripts to create, add and remove such modules? Just wondering, --j

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first release candidate of grml 0.9: grml 0.9-rc1
by Michael Prokop 28 Nov '06

28 Nov '06

Hoi, I'm proud to be able to announce the presence of the first release candidate of grml 0.9 (known as 0.9-rc1). For details about the new release take a look at the release announcement: http://grml.org/files/README-0.9-rc1.php Please give it a try and test all the stuff you usually need so we can provide a rocking stable 0.9 release soon. Known issues for 0.9-rc1 can be found at the grml-wiki: http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=release_candidate Notice: get the ISO from the directory named 'devel' of the mirrors listed at http://grml.org/download/ regards, -mika- -- http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog #grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc

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Console screen rotation
by Mark 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Is there a way to boot grml with the screen rotated. Once X starts there is xrandr, but console is puzzling. M.

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Nice alias - screenoff
by Mark 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Maybe this could go into grml. We call it "screenoff" - it blanks the screen, saves LCD pixels from burn-in. Can be tied to a GUI button on the user desktop if desired. #! /bin/sh sleep 2 xset s activate

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Sugestion - zshl logout
by Erich Minderlein 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Hi Since my first Linux Day sometimes in 1997 I was a bash shell user, made a lot of scripting and was happy. Now I found grml and its zsh and it is sssssssssssuuuuuuuuupppppppppeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr. Small suggestion : in the /etc/zsh/logout I added the small word "reset" which automatically leaves a clean console when logging out. I like that and nobody nosing around. also security concern. regards -- Erich Minderlein <erminderlein(a)locoware.de> MARC Mannheim Rail Commerce GmbH

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grml-small on a usb stick
by Tube 26 Nov '06

26 Nov '06

hi list, hi mikap, is it possible to install a grml-small on a usb-stick from an ordinary grml2hd'ed system? my intention is not to waste a whole CD only for that installation. TIA tube

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Debian repos based on locale
by Mark 26 Nov '06

26 Nov '06

Default apt sources for grml are .de & .at domains. For grml proper, ok. For external Debian packages, default apt sources based on locale would be nice. (Debian.org subdomains make this fairly easy, yes?) The user should get continental selection between Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America. The big problem is going over ocean cables for apt updates. No need for separate files. Have all repos listed in one file, commented out. Scripts like grml2hd can comment-in as appropriate to finalize. M.

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