packages

Thanks to Nico we have a command line interface for paste.grml.org now: grml-paste :-)

Time for an update on the grml-live front. I just uploaded the first public version of grml-live to the grml-repos.

Lots of development took place. New features include support for local mirrors (thanks to Michael Schmitt for providing test infrastructure), new command line options and unified classes. Oh, and you ever wanted to use grub as bootloader instead of isolinux on your grml ISO? Now it's as trivial as setting BOOT_METHOD=grub in /etc/grml/grml-live.conf before running grml-live itself, giving you something like:

grub as bootloader for grml

So what are you waiting for? Grab grml-live, build your very own grml version and send me your feedback, feature requests and bugreports. :-)

Ever wanted to build your very own grml-ISO without having to deal with all the remastering details? Want to include your very own kernel? Want to change configuration of some files? Then grml-live might be what you ever dreamed of. :)

Check out the grml-live documentation to get an idea what I'm talking about. As you might notice grml-live is based on FAI (Fully Automatic Installation), this will provide us the possibility to deploy grml even faster, better and more customized than we already do (using grml2hd, grml-debootstrap and grml-terminalserver).

Want to get an idea how fast you can build an ISO using grml-live? Check out:

So all I did was invoking 'grml-live'. Not even 7 minutes later I've a working grml live-CD which is based on Debian-stable, providing kernel 2.6.22-grml and all the basic grml features:

Stay tuned for an official release of grml-live. We are working on reducing the todo list - like porting it to other architectures, providing different flavours, some more customisation hooks and finally providing a full-grml-built using grml-live.

Thanks to formorer we have a grml-debian-keyring Debian package now. This package provides the GnuPG archive key of the grml.org repository for using the GPG signature checking with apt >=0.6. More details can be found in the Debian webpage in the grml-wiki.

Gebi and me packaged zfs-fuse for Debian/grml. ZFS is an advanced modern general-purpose filesystem from Sun Microsystems, originally designed for Solaris/OpenSolaris. zfs-fuse is a port of ZFS to the FUSE framework for the Linux operating system. Just get the debian package from grml-testing pool or just wait for grml 1.0. :-)

I just uploaded a new version of grml-debootstrap to the grml-testing pool providing many new features. One nifty feature is setting variables via commandline. This allows you to install Debian with just one command and 2 keystrokes(!) (one 'y' for starting execution of grml-debootstrap and another one for setting the password of user root, this can be automated as well of course if you want to). I just installed a plain Debian system via running:

# grml-debootstrap --target /dev/hda2 --grub hd0 --groot hd0,1

But that's not all. You can install a plain Debian system full automatic(!) via bootoption debian2hd. I just did a full automatic installation with grml-debootstrap 0.7 and grml-autoconfig 0.6.39 running on grml-small via booting with:

debian2hd target=/dev/hda1 grub=hd0 groot=hd0,0 mirror=ftp://ftp.tugraz.at/mirror/debian password=foobar

Not a single keystroke behind the commandline on the bootprompt. Rocking! :-)

I just wrote a small script named dirvish-setup which sets up basic configuration for use with the rsync based backup software named dirvish. Testers welcome, please report feedback.

I just finished main work of supporting grub directly within grml2hd and uploaded grml2hd_0.9.3_all.deb to the grml-testing pool in those minutes. Now there's a new dialog in grml2hd which lets you choose between lilo and grub as bootloader:

Notice:

• using grub on SW-RAID devices is not yet supported
• grub configuration does not provide artwork currently. I'd be happy if someone could contribute a nice bootsplash for grub at grml!
• please do not use the testing version of grml2hd on your productive environment yet! It needs some further heavy testing before entering stable... any feedback is welcome of course.

Oh, and another nifty feature within grml2hd: installation now uses root=UUID by default. This feature requires an initrd/initramfs so we use initramfs by default now (a dialog less within grml2hd) but you can make sure booting your grml system always choses the right partition, no matter how you are booting your system (like via external usb device):

It was on my todolist for ages, thanks to Christian 'strcat' Schneider we have the zsh-lovers manpage in asciidoc format now. asciidoc provides much smoother output than my nroff hacks. :-) Adding new tips is much easier now as well, especially since we maintain the manpage within a mercurial repository (hg.grml.org/zsh-lovers). Get the zsh-lovers manpage in manpage format, as HTML or PDF from grml.org/zsh/, a Debian package is available via the grml-testing pool as well of course.

I created a Debian package of advchk, a tool for monitoring the security of installed software. Advisory Check gathers security advisories using RSS / RDF / XML feeds, compares them against a list of known software, and alerts you if you`re vulnerable. As usual the Debian package is available via the grml-testing pool.

I packaged incron, an inotify cron system. As usual the debian package is available in the grml-testing repository.

Today I finished work on packaging gatling, a high performance web server. Get the Debian package from the grml testing repository.

Just to keep developers and beta-testers informed (assuming that you don't follow my hg commits [time for a hg-commit mailinglist, yes]): today I spent several hours in reducing the todo list for grml 0.9. So make sure you have recent packages on your brand new develrelease (run 'apt-get update; apt-get install $PACKAGES') when trying out. Quoting some important stuff of the changelogs:

grml2hd: adjust /etc/default/rcS according to bootoption utc/gmt
              and /etc/localtime according to bootoption tz

grml-autoconfig:
              * deprecate CONFIG_KERNEL, CONFIG_LANGUAGE,
                CONFIG_DMA and CONFIG_MIXER as they are not really
                relevant on hd installations.
              * do *not* use swap by default anymore, thanks for feedback
                 goes to Wolfgang Karall!

grml-terminalserver: a maintenance release to fix some outstanding issues:
             * big update of linuxrc - do not use discover anymore (broken)
                but instead try modprobing all available network modules
             * reject tcp/113 via iptables to speed up PXE boot

I consider the current state as pretty stable, in the next few days I'll do some more regression testing so hopefully we'll have a first release-candidate of grml 0.9 soon...

aamath is a program that reads mathematical expressions in infix notation and renders them as ASCII art. It may be useful to send mathematics through text-only media, such as e-mail or newsgroups.

The Debian package is - as usual - available from the grml repository. Thanks for pointing to aamath on the grml-user mailinglist, Mark!