Release Notes for Grml 2010.12 - codename Gebrüder Grml

About

Grml is a bootable live system (Live-CD) based on Debian. It includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators and users of texttools. Grml provides automatic hardware detection. Grml is the perfect rescue system, but you can also use it for analyzing systems/networks or as a working environment. It is not necessary to install anything to a harddisk; you don't even need a harddisk to run it. Due to on-the-fly decompression Grml includes about 2 GB of software and documentation on the live system.

Download Grml 2010.12

Grml 2010.12 can be downloaded from grml.org/download/.

New features

New Linux kernel version based on 2.6.36.2
Config-less X to take advantage of X.org's automatic configuration
Support for Kernel Mode Setting (KMS)
grml-rescueboot / loopback.cfg feature and grub-imageboot for ISO boot (more details available in 'Booting ISO images from within GRUB2')
Initial release of Kantan, an automated testing suite for continuous integration and a test environment; see grml.org/kantan/ for details (not shipped in Grml by default though)
Incremental grml-rebuildfstab triggered by udev events for faster execution time

Special new features:

Improved serial console on multiple devices (thanks to Marc Haber)
vnc_connect bootoption allowing to connect to an existing listening vnc client. Can be used to connect easily from devices behind firewalls as connection is initiated from the vnc server instead of the vnc client.
grml-terminalserver no longer needs to rebuild the initrd, default initrd/initramfs shipped on ISO is fully-featured for PXE boot.
The netscript bootoption provides the new environment variable named NETSCRIPT to provide an option to ensure that the script is executed under the according environment.
Updated manifold boot features (thanks to Thorsten Glaser): dd-ed ISOs (for booting via USB) now use isolinux as bootloader as well, so you get the same boot menu in normal CD boot as well as in USB boot.

New features in Grml's Zsh

Fully documented, see grml.org/zsh (thanks to Joerg Woelke) - available online as well as offline ('man 5 grmlzshrc')
Uses zsh's built-in vcs_info and falls back to a grml-packaged version if the current version of zsh does not come with its own implementation

Important Changes

Removed many window managers (fvwm/fvwm-crystal, ratpoison, dwm, twm, w9wm, evilwm, jwm, pekwm) due to size and out-of-the-box configuration issues. See issue897 for the discussion.
grml2hd is no longer available from grml-quickconfig, the selection dialog displayed after grml-full or grml-medium are done booting.
Reworked /etc/runlevel.conf deployment. Instead of providing runlevel.conf through grml-etc it's being deployed through grml-live to improve customization capabilities.
Rewrite of grml-x due to new xorg.conf handling, please note that some options that are now unnecessary have been removed and that all single-dash options (-force, -nostart,...) became common long options (--force, --nostart,...).
Switched from live-initramfs to live-boot based on version 2.0.12.
Switched from pump to ISC dhclient, triggered by udev events during boot (use nodhcp to turn this off).
Network configuration via /etc/network/interfaces supported during boot-up (static IP address assignment - e.g. via ip=... booption - and dhcp are both configured via /etc/network/interfaces).
Reworked sound mixer handling to improve handling of IBM hardware and multiple soundcards.

Kernel

Based on vanilla kernel 2.6.36.2 including several patches and additional modules:

  aufs iscsitarget loop-aes lzma ndiswrapper openafs
  speakup squashfs sysprof tp-smapi virtualbox-ose-guest
  xtables-addons

Visit grml.org/kernel/ for more details regarding Grml's kernel.

Bugfixes

Fixed several bugs and issues reported on grml_2010.04 @ grml-wiki and in the bug tracking system.

Packages / Software

Details about shipped packages and their versions on Grml are available at the Debian section. Visit dpkg_get_selections for a main package listing and dpkg_list for a detailed list of packages shipped with Grml 2010.12.

Updates

Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 15th of december 2010 (plus some further selected updates until 29th of december).

Major changes since release 2010.04 (20100429)

Grml developer meeting in Vienna.
Christian Hofstaedter joined the Grml team.
Grml at FrOSCon 2010.
German magazine freiesMagazin provides an article about Grml in edition 06/2010.
Grml talk at Net Culture Lab in Dornbirn.

Known issues

Take a look at grml_2010.12 @ grml-wiki. Please report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/.

Feedback

Your comments, bug reports, patches, and suggestions will help fixing bugs and improving future releases. If you find a problem with the release please check grml_2010.12 @ grml-wiki and report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/. Please send your feedback and feature requests to the Grml team!

Thanks

Many thanks (alphabetically) in this release go to Andreas Korsten, Bert Schulze, Dennis Hoppe, Johann Felix Soden, Jordi Funollet, K. Wulff, Martin Scharm, Michael Renner, Sebastian Boehm, for their contributions.

We also would like to thank everyone who made the Grml-developer meeting possible. This includes Metalab, Tarent and many unnamed generous private sponsors.

More Information

You can find out more about grml on our website, IRC channel, and wiki.

To sign up for future Grml announcements, please subscribe to Grml's announcement list.

If you are interested in development releases grab the daily ISOs from daily.grml.org.

Further Questions?

Please feel free to contact us.