RE: Grml Digest, Vol 10, Issue 14

Hello and thank you to the grml team. With the help of a friend here I have grml running nicely on a pendrive, I was even fortunate enough to have a laptop that had 1 of 3 supported wireless cards, just have to tpe dhclient and speechd-up after bootup How much like a normal linux install is grml now that I have it running on a pendrive. Have any users tried installing extra packages? Maybe we could consider a larger image specifically for pendrive users with more programs installed. Have a question though, How can I change the keyboard to Dvorak. Keep up the good work maybe after I learn linux I might have more constructive things to say. Kevin
-----Original Message----- From: grml-bounces@mur.at [mailto:grml-bounces@mur.at] On Behalf Of grml-request@mur.at Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 5:00 AM To: grml@mur.at Subject: Grml Digest, Vol 10, Issue 14
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Today's Topics:
1. new on grlm; questions about version 0.6 (william windels) 2. Re: new on grlm; questions about version 0.6 (Michael Prokop)
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 22:38:20 +0100 From: "william windels" william.windels@telenet.be Subject: [Grml] new on grlm; questions about version 0.6 To: grml@mur.at Message-ID: 051701c6359c$cdf9ac60$0264a8c0@LifebookS7010
Hello, I am new on the grml distribution but I work already 2 years with linux. I am completely blind and I use brltty as screenreader.
1: at the moment I have running the grml distribution 0.6 with mutt 1.5.11 , sendmail, procmail and postfix as mta.
Before , I was working with exim (version 3) as mta on a other distribution.
Is it not possible to configure mutt to work alone for the following things: - send and receive mail (without external mta) - sort the mail in different mailboxes conform the filters? - each user with his own <;muttrc-file?
For example, you can do this with outlook express on ms windows: to send and receive mail, you need only your login with pasword from your provider to receive your mail and the smtp-server from the provider. You can also create filters to sort the incomming mails. But, I love linux much more than windows :)
There are also such programs on the x-windows-system I think but I am completely blind and I can not work with x-windows because of that. I can only work with console-programs.
2: perhaps it should be a good idea to add some new function(s) to the user-configuration: - a way to create new users
for root: - a way to update the security packages available - perhaps a way to (re)compile the kernel on a user-friendly based system?
3: mounting devices automatically from fstab: As Michael prokop said already , I can not change mountpoints of found devices during hd_install. This is explained with the following lines:
# Warning! Please do *not* change any lines below #because they are auto-generated by rebuildfstab!
How can I simply change mount-points of found devices so that they are automatically mounted in the new mountpoints after next reboot?
If I do rebuildfstab after changing the mountpoints , I receive no message but the devices are not launched automatically.
4: text-packages: Is it not possible to add a configuration-option to the hd_install so that only text-related packages are installed? Perhaps, the packages could be stored in 2 compressed parts on the cd: one for the consolestuff and one for the x-windows system.
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Message: 2 Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 23:07:35 +0100 From: Michael Prokop mika@grml.org Subject: Re: [Grml] new on grlm; questions about version 0.6 To: grml@mur.at Message-ID: 2006-02-19T22-47-38@devnull.michael-prokop.at Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
* william windels william.windels@telenet.be [20060219 22:45]:
I am new on the grml distribution but I work already 2 years with linux. I am completely blind and I use brltty as screenreader.
1: at the moment I have running the grml distribution 0.6 with mutt 1.5.11
,
sendmail, procmail and postfix as mta.
Before , I was working with exim (version 3) as mta on a other
distribution.
Is it not possible to configure mutt to work alone for the following
things:
- send and receive mail (without external mta)
- sort the mail in different mailboxes conform the filters?
- each user with his own <;muttrc-file?
For example, you can do this with outlook express on ms windows: to send
and
receive mail, you need only your login with pasword from your provider to receive your mail and the smtp-server from the provider. You can also create filters to sort the incomming mails. But, I love linux much more than windows :)
First of all take a look at grml-mutt or grml-muttng to configure some basics of mutt or mutt-ng. (Backup your ~/.muttrc first to make sure you don't overwrite anything.)
To send mail take a look at msmtp, a sample configuration file is shipped with grml: ~/.msmtprc
Filter your mail using procmail. Take a look at
http://michael-prokop.at/computer/config/.procmailrc http://michael-prokop.at/computer/config/.procmail/sort-rc
to get an idea how to use it.
2: perhaps it should be a good idea to add some new function(s) to the user-configuration:
- a way to create new users
Just run 'adduser mynewuser'.
for root:
- a way to update the security packages available
Take a look at debsecan. It requires some scripting work to get only security related packages in Debian unstable, that's difficult by design.
- perhaps a way to (re)compile the kernel on a user-friendly based system?
Don't compile the kernel on your own unless you have a *really* good reason to do that. That's the work of the distributor, not really an end-user task with kernel 2.6.
Anyway, getting kernel sources and using 'make menuconfig' *is* user-friendly. :) Also take a look at make-kpkg.
3: mounting devices automatically from fstab: As Michael prokop said already , I can not change mountpoints of found devices during hd_install. This is explained with the following lines:
# Warning! Please do *not* change any lines below #because they are auto-generated by rebuildfstab!
How can I simply change mount-points of found devices so that they are automatically mounted in the new mountpoints after next reboot?
If I do rebuildfstab after changing the mountpoints , I receive no message
but the devices are not launched automatically.
As the manpage of rebuildfstab says:
rebuildfstab uses the tool scanpartition to scan for devices located in /dev and adds entries for devices / partitions which are not available in /etc/fstab yet.
It does not mount any partitions automatically. If you want to use /dev/hda2 as your home partition, take the entry for /dev/hda2 from /etc/fstab and move it to the top of the /etc/fstab. *Everything* below the "warning-line" will be deleted by next run of rebuildfstab. If you don't want the rebuildfstab feature set CONFIG_FSTAB='no' in /etc/grml/autoconfig.
Example how to use /dev/hda2 with filesystem ext3 as /home would be:
/dev/hda2 /home ext3 defaults 0 0
4: text-packages: Is it not possible to add a configuration-option to the hd_install so that
only text-related packages are installed?
No chance, as the installation is nothing else than copying the whole system to the disk and do some other adjustments.
Perhaps, the packages could be stored in 2 compressed parts on the cd: one
for the consolestuff and one for the x-windows system.
Sorry, that's not an option for me. Just run 'apt-get remove xserver-xorg' to remove the X-window system on your installation. Catching the other x-related stuff should be possible via using the magic of debtags.
regards, -mika-

* Kevin Jones kevin@kevinrj.net [20060221 15:15]:
Hello and thank you to the grml team. With the help of a friend here I have grml running nicely on a pendrive, I was even fortunate enough to have a laptop that had 1 of 3 supported wireless cards, just have to tpe dhclient and speechd-up after bootup
Great to hear.
How much like a normal linux install is grml now that I have it running on a pendrive.
It's Debian unstable plus some extra packages.
Have any users tried installing extra packages?
Of course you can install additional software, as it's Debian. You have full access to the Debian software pool. "aptitude update ; aptitude install $PACKAGE"
Maybe we could consider a larger image specifically for pendrive users with more programs installed.
With "more programs installed" you mean compared to grml-small? A grml-usb version is on the todolist. I have an unofficial version of grml-usb available on my developer box (about 240MB ISO) but currently I don't have the time to spend even more work on another flavour of grml.
Have a question though, How can I change the keyboard to Dvorak.
Run 'loadkeys i386/dvorak/' and press the tab-key to get a list of possible keymaps. Use the power of zsh! :)
regards, -mika-
participants (2)
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Kevin Jones
-
Michael Prokop