grml development blog

Last wednesday I uploaded the new grml develrelease 0.7-5. Quoting the changelog:

* 2.6.17-grml:
  http://grml.supersized.org/archives/163-2.6.17-grml.html

  - reiser4 is *not* part of the kernel. Anyone out there missing it?
  - ipw3495 is part of the kernel, the daemon is missing though
[...]
  - I'm thinking about integration of swsusp2 - any votes?

  TODO-list for 2.6.17-grml:
  http://dufo.tugraz.at/~prokop/grml-kernel/2.6.17-grml/TODO

* integrated fvwm-crystal-minimal (packaged by myself, you can find
  it in the grml-repos; replaces fvwm-crystal for space-reasons)

* dropped gcc/g++ 4.0, providing 4.1 instead as the kernel is
  compiled with 4.1

* vi points to vim instead of elvis (thanks, Wolfgang Karall)

* updated packages to debian-pool by 2006-06-21

Now I've finished work on the ipw3495 stuff: ipw3945-ucode and ipw3945d are available in the grml repository. The ipw3495 module works out-of-the-box on grml now.

Running some more tests with different kernel configurations showed that swsusp2 very probably won't find its way to the grml-kernel. On the other hand the tests with SMP were very good, so we might have SMP-support in grml 0.8. Stay tuned. :-)

The TODO list for the the current build of 2.6.17-grml is also very short now: only ivtv and linux-wlan-ng are missing. I'll package truecrypt, tpm-emulator and grml-kerneladdons for 2.6.17-grml as soon as the final build of 2.6.17-grml is available.

Being back from Robocup 2006 I've been working on 2.6.17-grml:

% uname -a
Linux grml 2.6.17-grml #1 PREEMPT Tue Jun 20 19:39:46 CEST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

The first public build of 2.6.17-grml including some additional modules is available online now.

The current patch-list (extracted from the README):

• 1000_2.6.17.1.patch
• 2200_acpi-nsxfeval-flood.patch
• 2300_usb-insufficient-power.patch
• 4000_ipw3945-1.0.5-for-2.6.17.patch
• 4100_dm-bbr.patch
• 4110_promise-pdc2037x.patch
• 4120_iteraid.patch
• 4130_libata-acpi.patch
• 4300_squashfs-3.0.patch
• 4400_speakup-20060618.patch
• 5000_grml-version.patch
• 5001_grml_logo.patch
• 5002_linux-2.6.17-commandline.patch

Notes:

• the kernel has been built using gcc 4.1.2. So make sure you have debian packages gcc-4.1 and g++-4.1 on your box if you plan to compile additional modules
• reiser4: is not yet part of the grml-kernel; anyone out there needing a reiser4 enabled kernel?
• VMware-users: 2.6.17-grml works using vmware-any-any-update101

Do you think a patch should find its way to the grml-kernel? Please let us know so we can put the patch to our review list.

I've been in Bremen at Robocup 2006 for the last 8 days as member of the ROBOCUP 'Mostly Harmless' team (Graz University of Technology, Austria). I was responsible for all the IT-stuff. Of course our roboters were powered by grml. Take a look at the webgallery to see our grml-powered roboters in action.

Some days ago I visited "Linuxwochen Wien". Of course I held a lecture about grml (including a presentation of the great Zsh): 'grml - Linux Live-CD für Sysadmins und Geeks', see the picture on the left (thanks go to Sven Guckes for the shot). On the second day of the event I had a talk about 'Erfolgreiche OpenSource Projekt-Maintenance'. I was pretty amazed that so many people attended my talks, even though I had the first slot in the morning for the grml-talk and the last slot in the evening for my opensource project maintenance talk. Some people even had to stand because they didn't get a seat. Nice. :-)

If you're interested in the slides of my talks you can get them now:

• grml (2.3MB, pdf)
• opensource project maintenance (358kb, pdf)

I also met several people for the first time in reallife, to name some of them: Klaus 'koki' Ita, Markus 'markus23' Raab, Pablo 'redtux' Hoertner, David 'DavidS' Schmitt, Fabian 'lefant' Linzberger, Christian 'Greek0' Aichinger. And of course I met Alfie (AKA Rhonda). I really enjoyed meeting all of you!

We had a grml-booth too. It was fun to share the booths of grml and debian. Usually the grml-booth had to answer debian related questions and people behind the debian-booth had to provide grml-support. ;-) I was *really* amazed how many people already use grml.

Because of the presence at the grml-booth I visited only few talks. Some interesting stuff:

• Versionskontrolle mit svk: nice to see how svk works, you can bypass some limitations of svn
• WIENUX - und was die Stadt Wien noch mit Linux und Open Source tut: very nice talk, very interesting to see how much open source software is being used in Vienna's government
• socat - Verkehr mit Sockets aller Art: socat is a multipurpose relay you might consider as netcat++, definitely worth a look!
• Bildbearbeitung per Shell: nothing new for me, but a nice presentation by Sven Guckes of all the tools available on grml (convert, identify of the imagemagick suite, iimage, jhead,...) :)

Stuff I learned at the event:

• sudoedit rocks (thanks, DavidS)
• xscreensaver has a nice 'switch user' feature for gdm-users (thanks, koki)
• Decr_Console and Incr_Console work out-of-the-box on Debian and grml: just press alt-cursor-left and alt-cursor-right to switch between plain consoles (thanks for the hint, Sepp)
• SubMaster rocks. Clifford showed me how it's used at RockLinux and I'm really impressed.
• ice-spray and grml can rescue harddisks (thanks to anonym, please contact me if you read this line)
• Maschu-maschu really has the 'best Falafel in town' (at least it tastes like that ;))

If you want to browse some pics, thank Sven Guckes for his online gallery of linuxdays vienna:

• first day (wednesday)
• second day (thursday)
• third day (friday)

I really enjoyed the event. The only bad news: I got ill in the night to friday, seems like a small burn-out hit me. :-(