Release Notes for Grml 2011.12-rc1 - codename Knecht Rootrecht

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About

This release brings a downsizing and cleanup: one flavour, two architectures. The new, smaller "FULL" flavour has a 350MB ISO size target, while still delivering over 1.1GB of open source software relevant for system administrators!

New features

• EFI Boot support from CD-ROM and USB keys (amd64 only)
• mDNS support (try ping grml.local with libnss-mdns and avahi-daemon or similar enabled on your host)
• NFS Client support and d-bus start automatically

Special new features:

• grml-debootstrap, the tool of choice to install Debian, can now directly build virtual machine images.
• grml-live, our build tool, was enhanced with new features to better integrate with Jenkins. This release, as well as the current daily images are built from within Jenkins!

Important Changes

• Z-Shell configuration has been cleaned up. Quite a few functions have been removed from the default configuration.
• X11 environment has been downsized as well. The window manager is now fluxbox. idesk has been removed, all available software is now reachable from the fluxbox menu.
• The accessibility support now consists of shipping standard speakup and enabling sound during boot. A new beep sequence (4 tones) is sounded just before the quickconfig menu starts. (The boot options have been removed.)
• xterm now uses the Terminus font, like the VT consoles.
• Virtual Machines automatically get the "noprompt" behaviour.
• Ancient config files and examples have been removed from grml-etc(-core).
• Ancient scripts have been removed from grml-scripts(-core).


• Anonymous stats are collected during boot up. This includes: Grml release name, boot media type (local or remote), a random string, used boot option keys (no values) and if your CPU is 64bit-capable. You can turn this off with the nostats boot option.

Bits & bolts

• Modem support has been removed from grml-network
• VT consoles are driven by grml-runtty, our homegrown login and getty replacement for Live CDs.
• Netboot scenarios should no longer use the "nodhcp" boot option.
• grml2hd is no longer in PATH to discourage its use even further. The related boot options have been removed.
• grml2usb: compat for releases < 2009.05, grub1 and lilo support have been removed.
• Release builds are now built from Debian's testing distribution, instead of unstable.
• Linux kernel is based on 3.1.4. No additional modules are shipped.
• Fixed several bugs from the bug tracking system.

Packages

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 2011.12-rc1.

Updates

Packages are taken from Debian testing, 11th of December 2011. 1745 packages have been removed, and these new packages have been added (plus dependencies):

  afflib-tools atftp bacula-sd efibootmgr grub-efi-amd64-bin
  ia32-libs imvirt ipxe mcollective mtx multiarch-support
  netcat-openbsd python2.7 sipcalc

These Grml packages have been removed/replaced:

  grml-debugtools grml-docs grml-files grml-files64
  grml-firefox grml-laptop grml-pylib grml-rebuildfstab
  grml-rescueboot grml-sectools grml-templates grml-usleep
  grml-vpn grml grml64

Known issues

iSCSI Target support is currently in limbo, as the user land tools for the new in-kernel iSCSI target are not yet in Debian unstable/testing and shipping the old iscsitarget modules in binary form appears to be almost impossible with the new DKMS packaging.

dns bootoption does not work as expected. See issue1099 for details.

Download Grml 2011.12-rc1

Grml 2011.12-rc1 can be downloaded from grml.org/download/prerelease/.

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 the known bugs list and report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/. Please send your feedback and feature requests to the Grml team!

More Information

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

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