[Grml] new on grlm; questions about version 0.6

[Michael Prokop]

* william windels <william.windels at 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-
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