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Kernel

The kernel 2.6 provided by the grml system is based on the latest stable(!) vanilla kernel (taken from kernel.org) we consider 'useful and working'. The grml-kernel includes several patches and modules. If you experience any problems please don't hesitate to contact us!

grml / grml-medium / grml-small 2009.10

The 2009.10 releases of grml provide kernel 2.6.31:

grml@grml ~ % uname -a
Linux grml 2.6.31-grml #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 23 01:58:23 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

The kernel configuration of 2.6.31-grml is available online.

grml64 / grml64-medium / grml64-small 2009.10

The 2009.10 64bit releases of grml provide kernel 2.6.31:

grml@grml ~ % uname -a
Linux grml 2.6.31-grml64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 23 10:30:17 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The kernel configuration of 2.6.31-grml64 is available online.

Notice: grml-small does not ship any further extra kernel packages besides the core kernel packages and lacks speakup support.

Kernel Patches of 2.6.31-grml[64]

The kernel 2.6.31-grml[64] is based on 2.6.31.5. Find more information about the patches used in the grml-kernel in the grml-kernel repository.

Modules shipped with grml 2009.10

Additionally to the patched kernel you'll find some extra modules on your grml-system.

aufs

Another Unionfs implementation, being an advanced multi layered unification filesystem, check out the feature section on the project homepage for further details.

drbd8

RAID 1 over TCP/IP for Linux. Drbd is a block device which is designed to build high availability clusters by providing a virtual shared device which keeps disks in nodes synchronised using TCP/IP. This simulates RAID 1 but avoiding the use of uncommon hardware (shared SCSI buses or Fibre Channel). It is currently limited to fail-over HA clusters.

iscsitarget

The aim of the project is to develop an open source iSCSI target with professional features, that works well in enterprise environment under real workload, and is scalable and versatile enough to meet the challenge of future storage needs and developements. We provide this kernel module for backwards compability, you might want to use the iscsi driver named stgt of 2.6.20 as well.

kqemu

The QEMU Accelerator Module increases the speed of QEMU when a PC is emulated on a PC. It runs most of the target application code directly on the host processor to achieve near native performance. It is very useful when you want to run another Operating System (for example Windows) on a Linux desktop.

loop-aes

loop-AES can be used to encrypt disk partitions, removable media, swap space and other devices. It provides measures to strengthen the encryption: Passphrase seeds, multiple hash iterations, MD5 IV and use of alternating encryption keys.

lzma

LZMA is a compression algorithm, based on the famous Lempel Ziv compression method. The main characteristics of the algorithm are very good compression, fast decompression, use of lot of RAM for compression and low usage of RAM for decompression. LZMA provides high compression ratio and very fast decompression, and is used in combination with Squashfs at grml.

ndiswrapper

Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a linux driver for their wireless network cards. ndiswrapper provides a linux kernel module that loads and runs Ndis (Windows network driver API) drivers supplied by the vendors.

openafs

The AFS distributed filesystem. AFS is a distributed filesystem allowing cross-platform sharing of files among multiple computers. Facilities are provided for access control, authentication, backup and administrative management.

Notice: the module is named libafs.ko on grml 0.7. Running 'modprobe openafs' works because of a symlink, but the loaded module is named libafs anyway so run 'rmmod libafs' to remove it.

sl-modem

Low-level drivers for the software modems produced by Smart Link Ltd. It supports PCI and USB models.

speakup

Speakup is a screen reader/speech access system for the GNU/Linux Operating System, used by people who are blind.

squashfs

Squashfs is a compressed read-only filesystem for Linux. Squashfs is intended for general read-only filesystem use, for archival use (i.e. in cases where a .tar.gz file may be used), and in constrained block device/memory systems (e.g. embedded systems) where low overhead is needed.
Via using the module loop it is possible to mount a filesystem file. squashfs is a "loop" with (de)compression (Compressed Loopback Device) and it is possible to mount a compressed filesystem like a block device and seamlessly decompress its data while accessing it.
Whereas Knoppix uses the cloop mechanism, grml is based on the newer mechanism squashfs. The filesystem has been compressed into the file "/live/grml.squashfs" and is mounted by the initial init process using squashfs.

sysprof

Sysprof is a sampling CPU profiler that uses a Linux kernel module to profile the entire system, not just a single application. Sysprof handles shared libraries and applications do not need to be recompiled. In fact they don't even have to be restarted.

tp-smapi

The tp_smapi kernel module exposes some features of the ThinkPad hardware/firmware via a sysfs interface. Currently, the main implemented functionality is control of battery charging and extended battery status. The underlfying hardware interfaces are SMAPI and direct access to the embedded controller.

virtualbox-ose

VirtualBox is a free x86 virtualization solution allowing a wide range of x86 operating systems such as Windows, DOS, BSD or Linux to run on a Linux system. The ose-version is the Open Source Edition of Virtualbox. The kernel modules for VirtualBox (virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.31-grml) and the VirtualBox guest addition modules (virtualbox-ose-guest-modules-2.6.31-grml).

xtables-addons

This package contains the set of loadable kernel modules for the xtables-addons project. It contains new targets for iptables, such as TARPIT, CHAOS, TEE, geoip, ipset, IPMARK, DELUDE, condition, etc..

Any further wishes, feedback, bug reports? Please contact us.