grml development blog

Especially on grml64 we are running out of space and we are thinking about removing LaTeX from grml, which would save us 100MB of uncompressed space. We're talking about the following Debian packages:

auctex catdvi ctioga dvipng gnuhtml2latex lacheck latex-beamer latexmk latex-mk latextug latex-xcolor libkpathsea4 libtioga-ruby libtioga-ruby1.8 pdfjam pgf preview-latex-style tetex-bin tex-common texify texlive texlive-base texlive-base-bin texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-extra-utils texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-lang-german texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-recommended texpower tth vim-latexsuite

We'd like to know your opinion on this issue, so please let us know your opinion through the removal of LaTeX on grml poll.

grml 2009.05 with codename Lackdose-Allergie, available in flavours grml, grml-medium and grml-small and all of them as 32bit and 64bit version has been released. The official release announcements providing all the relevant news are available at grml.org/changelogs/. Issues regarding the releases can be found in the grml-wiki. Grab the ISOs from the mirrors listed at grml.org/download/.

If you're interested in the main changes between rc1 of 2009.05 and the stable release:

• software related changes: security updates; re-added bitlbee, dnsproxy, farpd, tor and trickle; dropped ifupdown-scripts-zg2 and open-vm-tools
• grml64: windows directory (featuring putty, psftp,...) has been removed due to lack of space
• zsh: added support for directory specific shell configuration using profiles
• bugfix: grml-autoconfig: device with label GRMLCFG without file config.tbz causes error message [issue672]
• bugfix: grml2hd: mount /dev/pts and /dev to chroot to support execution within GNU screen; fix setting password via chpasswd
• bugfix: unmount boot device when using findiso=... in combination with toram

We have new release candidates: the first release candidate of version 2009.05 codename "Lackdose-Allergie" is available. Take a look at the release announcement for details about all the nifty new features. As usual we have different flavours available: the 32bit versions grml, grml-medium and grml-small as well as the 64bit versions grml64, grml64-medium and grml64-small.

Please test the ISOs and all the stuff you usually need so we can provide rocking stable releases soon. Download the ISOs from devel directories of the mirrors listed at grml.org/download/.

• Event: Mika was talking about grml in a german talk named 'grml - das Schweizer Taschenmesser der Linux-Notfallsysteme' at the Open Source Data Center Conference in germany last week. The (german) slides of the talk are available for download: grml - das Schweizer Taschenmesser der Linux-Notfallsysteme (PDF).
• grml featured in another book: grml is featured on page 191 in the german Xen cookbook by Hans-Joachim Picht published at O'Reilly.
• grml featuring HDT (Hardware Detection Tool): current grml-live and grml2usb include support for a new bootoption named 'hdt' bringing up a minimalistic "Hardware Detection Tool". This feature is expected to be available with the upcoming stable release of grml.
• kernel update: kernel 2.6.28-grml[64] was updated to the latest stable patch 2.6.28.10
• release candidate: release candidate version 1 (rc1) of grml 2009.05 (the upcoming stable release) should be available within the next few days

I just pushed a new devel release to our mirror. Quoting the main changelog:

• updated to kernel based on 2.6.28
• grml2usb: initial public version of the redesign, providing multi-ISO support and many more features, check out grml.org/grml2usb/
• persistency feature: booting with bootoption 'persistent' activates a feature providing persistency for the ISO (so you can store all your changes on a partition and re-use them- cool, or?). Check out live-initramfs.en.7.html and live-snapshot.en.1.html (search for 'persistent' and 'live-rw') until we have our own docs/instructions available. Note: Any help in this area is highly welcome!
• grml-autoconfig: dropped /etc/grml/autoconfig.small
• grml-live: several bugfixes, integration of bsd4grml - a special version of MirBSD (available via 'bsd' on the bootprompt - more details will follow later)
• grml-etc-core: using "zsh: $REPOSNAME" as GNU screen title name when standing inside a repository of a version control system (thanks, ft!)
• re-added support for hardware based speakup modules, loadable via speakup.synth=...
• new bootoption 'hwspeak' for probing speakup hardware modules
• new bootoption 'readonly': mark ALL /dev/[hs]*dX devices as read-only, this is important for forensic investigations and automatically activated as well when booting via 'forensic'

Update on 2009-04-06: sorry, adjusted the wording. Should be *IDE* vs. LIBATA of course. Sorry for the confusion.

The GRML Team wants to collect feedback regarding the recent switch from IDE to LIBATA. IDE? LIBATA?

• IDE (CONFIG_IDE) provides the old IDE subsystem (/dev/hdX), considered as legacy code.
• LIBATA is the new subsystem (/dev/sdX - though supports IDE as well) with new features, but some old IDE systems might not work with it.

• grml2usb: initial public version of the redesign, providing multi-ISO support and many more features, check out grml.org/grml2usb and my mail to the grml mailinglist
• boot process: when using the "forensic" or the new "readonly" bootoption all local harddisks will be forced to read-only mode
• grml-autoconfig: dropped /etc/grml/autoconfig.small
• grml-live: several bugfixes, integration of bsd4grml (available via 'bsd' on the bootprompt - more details will follow later),... - check out the changelog
• grml-etc-core: using "zsh: $REPOSNAME" as GNU screen title name when standing inside a repository of a version control system (thanks, ft!)
• git-commits: the git-commits mailinglist finally provides the according hook so updates are sent to the list

• starting at 223 open bugs
• finished at 199 open bugs
• filed 3 new bugreports
• overall result: closed 27 bugreports

• Alexander 'z3ttacht' Steinböck
• Andreas 'jimmy' Gredler
• Frank 'ft' Terbeck
• Henning 'lazyboy' Sprang
• Michael 'mika' Prokop
• Ulrich 'mrud' Dangel