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FAQ for grml

Up2date: 2010-12-31 - applies to Grml releases version 2010.12

Index:

General:

  1. What is grml?
  2. Where do I get grml?
  3. What does grml mean?
  4. How do you pronounce grml?
  5. What about the release name?
  6. Requirements for running grml
  7. Why another Linux distribution?
  8. What's the license of grml?
  9. What's the difference between grml and $OTHER-DISTRIBUTION? What are the main goals?
  10. What's the difference between grml and Knoppix?
  11. What does accessibility at grml mean?
  12. Which bootoptions does grml support?
  13. Is it possible to run grml with $EMULATOR?
  14. How do I boot grml from a USB stick?
  15. Is it possible to store my settings?
  16. Is a persistency feature available?

grml-medium / grml-small / grml64:

  1. What is grml-medium?
  2. What is grml-small?
  3. What is grml64?
  4. What is grml64-medium?
  5. What is grml64-small?
  6. What is the difference between 32 bit grml and 64 bit grml?
  7. What is the difference between 'normal' grml and grml-small?
  8. What is the difference between grml-small and DSL?

Problems:

  1. Are there any known issues with this release?
  2. I have problems with my hardware!
  3. grml does not boot on my computer!
  4. I don't see anything when booting grml?!
  5. I have problems with UTF-8 / Unicode
  6. grml2hd seems to hang?!
  7. Booting grml-small via PXE using a CIFS share fails
  8. I noticed some files are missing on grml
  9. Bugreport

System:

  1. Where's the old bootsplash?
  2. Which tools exist to configure grml?
  3. What are the passwords of users on grml?
  4. How do I find out the version of grml
  5. Is it possible to run LiveCD and eject CD-ROM?
  6. How do I change the language/keyboard settings?
  7. KDE, Gnome, $FOO and $BAR
  8. Which window managers can I use?
  9. How do I mount a USB device / USB stick?
  10. Where are my LVM devices?
  11. Where are my Software-RAID devices?
  12. Why doesn't grml find my disks / doesn't boot?
  13. Which ways exist to boot grml?
  14. How do I configure timezone on my grml system?
  15. Is it possible to install grml to harddisk?

Kernel:

  1. Where can I find the configuration for the kernel used on grml?
  2. Are there any special components/patches in the kernel used on grml?
  3. For which platforms is the grml kernel optimized?

Software:

  1. General
  2. Which package(s) and which version is available?
  3. Init-System
  4. Why is zsh the default shell?
  5. Wasn't zsh the /bin/sh interpreter?
  6. Is a bash available?
  7. Where can I find the configuration of zsh, GNU screen,...?
  8. Why isn't Truecrypt available within grml?
  9. grub does not work on my system?!

X-Server

  1. How do I start the X server?
  2. X does not start on my box?!
  3. I don't like the resolution of X!

Support / Unanswered stuff

  1. Further questions?
  2. Commercial Support

General

What is grml?

Grml is a bootable CD (Live-CD) based on Debian. Grml includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators and users of texttools. Grml provides automatic hardware detection. You can use grml as a rescue system, for analyzing systems/networks, or as a working environment. It is not necessary to install anything to a harddisk. Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes more than 2GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Where do I get grml?

Grml is open source, you can download it from the mirrors listed at grml.org/download/. If you want to get an original grml-CD including the grml-cover, need a special amount of CDs or want your own special grml-CD (including your logo, your software and/or special settings) please don't hesitate to contact us. Take a look at Grml Solutions if you're interested in commercial support.

What does grml mean?

Grml comes close to 'argl' or 'grrr' in English. People use this when they want to express their dissatisfaction/discontentedness with software (amongst other things):

$ grep -ch grml .centericq/**/history | xargs echo | \
  sed 's/[0-9]*/& + /g' | sed 's/+ $//g' | bc -l
3746

How do you pronounce grml?

% flite -o play -t gremel

What about the release name?

Codename of Grml 2010.12 is Gebrüder Grml. It's a german wordplay on Brothers Grimm.

Requirements for running grml

Why another Linux distribution?

There already exist "some" distributions. We decided to base our work on the existing infrastructure of Debian because we don't want to reinvent the wheel. Some admins already use their own rescue CD, Knoppix works but does not bring that many important tools for admins and users of texttools out of the box. Therefor we decided to share our work with others and provide the swiss army knife for sysadmins and texttool fans.

What's the license of grml?

Anything written by the grml team is published under the GPL (GNU General Public License). You don't have to pay anything for using grml. If you want a special Live-CD or need commercial support, take a look at Grml Solutions.

What's the difference between grml and $OTHER-DISTRIBUTION? What are the main goals?

The main goal of grml is to be a distribution well suited for sysadmins and users of texttools. Grml includes all the tools for admin's daily work (lvm, mdadm, dd/ddrescue,...) as well as many important texttools (of course awk, sed, grep, ... but also zsh, mutt[ng], slrn, vim and many others). Grml uses the existing infrastructure of Debian. Grml was once based on Knoppix (see 'What's the difference between grml and Knoppix?' for more details). We are also merging useful things from other distributions/live-cds to provide a perfect environment.

What's the difference between grml and Knoppix?

Grml comes with a vastly different set of software. Missing KDE and OpenOffice provides the opportunity of shipping more than 800 packages which Knoppix does not provide on its CD version. Grml boots a recent 2.6 kernel but no X by default for faster startup. Knoppix is based on Debian/testing-experimental (using apt-pinning), but grml is basically based on plain Debian/unstable providing more current versions of software. Grml was once based on Knoppix but nowadays has nothing in common with Knoppix:

# locate knoppix
# find / -iname \*knoppix\*
#

We consider Knoppix as a brand name for live-cds nowadays and provide most of Knoppix' features as well. Grml uses (mostly) the same cheatcodes for booting as Knoppix and even provides some extra ones. So if you are used to the basic Knoppix features you usually find them on the grml system as well.

What does accessibility at grml mean?

The Grml kernel includes support for speakup and provides software like brltty (using bootoption 'grml blind brltty=type,port,tbl') and flite.

Which bootoptions does Grml support?

Check out the grml-cheatcodes file (also available via grml.org/cheatcodes/). Of course kernel-parameters.txt of the Linux kernel applies to Grml as well.

Is it possible to run Grml with $EMULATOR?

Sure, Grml works with(in) several emulators and virtual environments, like e.g. KVM, MS Virtual PC, QEMU Virtualbox and VMware.

How do I boot Grml from a USB stick?

Check out grml2usb at the usb webpage in the grml-wiki.

Is it possible to store my settings?

Yes. Grml provides a config framework, check out grml.org/config/, /usr/share/doc/grml-saveconfig/grml-config.html and 'man grml-autoconfig save-config restore-config mkpersistenthome' for more details. Starting with release 2009.05 a persistency option is available.

Is a persistency feature available?

Starting with release 2009.05 a persistency feature is available. Use live-snapshot (man live-snapshot) and the bootoption 'persistent' for enabling persistency.

grml-medium / grml-small / grml64?

What is grml-medium?

grml-medium is a grml-flavour which tries to close the gap between grml-small and normal/large/full version of grml. grml-medium is an ISO with a size of ~200MB providing the most important packages a sysadmin usually needs. It provides the same kernel version as normal grml does so you can easily integrate and use some further existing external modules as well. The X.org server is shipped as well as the window manager fluxbox. Take a look at the 'Debian-Information'-section if you are searching for the package list. accessibility features are NOT available/supported on grml-medium though.

What is grml-small?

Whereas grml provides about 2.3GB of software on a 700 MB ISO, grml-small is a flavor with about 100 MB ISO-size (~275 MB uncompressed). It does not provide a lot of software (for example no X.org and no man pages) but the essential stuff for being a rescue system on a business card CD-ROM or a small USB device. You can use the Debian package management system to install software on the fly (assuming you have network access to a Debian mirror). It provides the same kernel version as normal grml does so you can easily integrate and use some further existing external modules as well. Take a look at the 'Debian-Information'-section if you are searching for the package list.

What is grml64?

grml64 is a 64bit-version of grml, based on the amd64 port of Debian.

What is grml64-medium?

grml64-medium is the 64bit version of grml-medium.

What is grml64-small?

grml64-small is the 64bit version of grml-small.

What is the difference between 32 bit grml and 64 bit grml?

The main difference of course is that grml64 is a 64bit-version whereas (normal) grml is 32bit-only. grml64 provides a 64bit kernel which supports 32bit userspace applications. grml64 also provides libc6-i386 and libc6-dev-i386. Due to space reasons and because some packages aren't available for amd64 (yet) some few packages are missing on grml64 compared to (normal, 32bit) grml.

What is the difference between 'normal' grml and grml-small?

The 700MB-grml brings more than 2500 software packages. grml-small includes about 300 software packages, lacks documentation and manpages on the ISO. grml-terminalserver and accessibility features are not available/supported on grml-small.

What is the difference between grml-small and DSL?

DSL (Damns Small Linux) and grml-small have different target audiences. Damn Small Linux (DSL) uses kernel version 2.4 whereas grml-small provides a recent version of kernel version 2.6. DSL provides the X window system which grml-small does not. grml-small on the other hand provides the most important packages for sysadmins and ships the original Debian package management which allows you to install packages of the Debian pool with no modifications.

Problems

Are there any known issues with this release?

We won't hide anything. Therefore, we do provide all known issues/bugs publicly available: issues regarding grml 2010.12 in the grml-wiki.

If you find another bug, or consider something a problem not yet mentioned please it.

I have problems with my hardware!

Take a look at the script grml-hwinfo. This script generates a file named info.tar.bz2 which contains important information about your hardware. If you think we might help, please run grml-hwinfo and send us the file with additional, relevant information regarding your problem.

grml does not boot on my computer!

Please take a look at the available bootparamters and cheatcodes and 'Which ways exist to boot grml?'. Especially booting with 'acpi=off noapm noapic' might help. The bootparameter 'failsafe' provides minimal hardware detection using some special bootoptions (please do NOT boot with 'grml failsafe' but with 'failsafe' as first word of the boot commandline) . If booting hangs during stage "Waiting for /dev to be fully populated" please try booting with 'grml noudev'. If you don't even see the bootsplash of the grml-ISO your BIOS might be broken (pretty common especially on old hardware). Please consider using btmgr then for booting your system. Also check out the problems webpage in the grml-wiki. You still have problems? Feel free to contact us.

I don't see anything when booting grml?!

Likely, this is a problem with the vesafb framebuffer. Try to boot with the 'Disable Framebuffer' menuentry (available behind the submenu 'Boot options for ...') or manually ad 'vga=normal' to the kernel command line (press TAB to edit a menu entry and add 'vga=normal' to it then).

I have problems with UTF-8 / Unicode

Check out UTF8-webpage in the grml-wiki.

grml2hd seems to hang?!

grml2hd seems to hang? Switch to tty12 and take a look at the syslog output. If you see something like:

SQUASHFS error: zlib_fs returned unexpected result 0x........
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read cache block [.....]
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read inode [.....]

your ISO/CD-ROM very probably is NOT ok. Verify it via booting with grml testcd if that works, or even better check your CD low-level via running:

# readcd -c2scan dev=/dev/cdrom

If the medium really is ok and it still fails try to boot with DMA deactivated via 'grml nodma ide=nodma libata.dma=0' at the bootprompt.

Booting grml-small via PXE using a CIFS share fails

When trying to boot grml-small[64] via PXE (network boot) using a CIFS share this will fail because grml-small[64] lacks cifs-utils. cifs-utils would consume >14MB of additional disk space - that's why it isn't part of the release. But there's a simple workaround: you can take the initrd and kernel from the regular grml flavour and use just the squashfs from grml-small[64].

I noticed some files are missing on grml

Yes, output of 'debsums -a 1>/dev/null' might output some failures. The reason is pretty simple: some few modification have been done either because they are required for the provided environment or because of space limitiations on the ISO. The failures are nothing to really care about, but as we don't hide anything we thought it might be worth mentioning.

Bugreport

Searching for a bug? Want to report a bug? Take a look at the bugs webpage.

System

Where's the old bootsplash?

Starting with release 2009.10 Grml provides a menu based bootsplash. To adjust boot options just press the TAB-key. To directly switch to the old-style isolinux cmdline just press the escape key within 30 seconds. If you still need access to the old bootsplash layout (including the f2, f3,... pages with further information regarding available bootoptions) select the entry 'Isolinux prompt' in the menu based bootsplash (just press 'i' and ENTER for direct access to it). The timeout until either the selected entry is booted (if specified) or until the system will restore from the cmdline to the menu based bootsplash is 30 seconds.

Which tools exist to configure grml?

Grml provides several scripts and tools which should make life easier. See 'dpkg -L grml-scripts' to get an overview of some main scripts. Run 'grml-config' to get a dialog interface for the most important scripts and tasks. Or just type 'grml-' and press tab-key to get a completion menu in the shell.

What are the passwords of users on grml?

There are no default passwords - all accounts are locked by default for security reasons. Even local logins are not possible (unless you set a password or create new user accounts as root). You can create valid passwords using "sudo passwd [username]" from the shell individually.

How do I find out the version of grml

Run 'grml-version' or use the following command:

$ cat /etc/grml_version

Is it possible to run LiveCD and eject CD-ROM?

% sudo umount -l /live/image
% sudo eject /dev/cdrom # now don't run any new programs unless you booted using 'toram'
% mount /dev/cdrom      # mount it again if needed

How do I change the language/keyboard settings?

By default grml uses english settings. But it is possible to change the settings via using either the bootparam(s) lang, keyboard and xkeyboard or via executing grml-lang when grml is already running. Usage examples:

grml lang=de      # enter this at the bootprompt and you will get
                  # german keyboard layout and german $LANG, $LC_ALL,
                  # $LANGUAGE...
grml keyboard=de xkeyboard=de lang=at # enter this at the bootprompt
                  # and you will get german keyboard and austrian
                  # language variables
% grml-lang de    # enter this in the shell to switch keyboard layout
                  # and $LANG settings in a running grml-system

If you are running grml from harddisk (using grml2hd) you have several options how to set language options:

Note: run grml-setlang to get a dialog based frontend for /etc/default/locale. Run grml-setkeyboard to get a dialog based frontend for /etc/sysconfig/keyboard.

KDE, Gnome, $FOO and $BAR

Why isn't KDE, Gnome, $FOO or $BAR part of grml? grml is a distribution for users of texttools and sysadmins. If you would like to run KDE with Debian use e.g. Sidux or Kubuntu. Gnome users might find Ubuntu useful. If you would like to see a specific (software) package added to grml please report it to us!

Which window managers can I use?

Grml is shipped with a few selected window managers which are lightweight and fast - so well suited for a live system. At the moment, Grml provides the following window managers:

Tip: If you are new to grml and/or prefer an easy-to-use-desktop run 'grml-x wm-ng' for starting fluxbox with idesk and gkrellm.

How do I mount a USB device / USB stick?

Run 'mount /mnt/usb-sda1' for example if you want to mount /dev/sda1. Udev on Grml does multiplexing for USB block devices, so /dev/usb-sda1 (device for mountpoint /mnt/usb-sda1) is a symlink to /dev/sda1.

Where are my LVM devices?

LVM (Logival Volumes) is not started by default to avoid any possible damage to your data. To get access to present LVM devices just execute:

# /etc/init.d/lvm2 start

or use the shorter version:

# Start lvm2

If you want to enable LVM by default just boot using the 'lvm' bootoption which automatically enables LVM.

Where are my Software-RAID devices?

Software-RAID (usually known as the mdadm stuff) is not started by default to avoid any possible damage to your data. To get access to present SW-RAID devices just execute:

# /etc/init.d/mdadm-raid start

or use the shorter version:

# Start mdadm-raid

If you want to enable SW-RAID by default just boot using the 'swraid' bootoption which enables automatic assembling of software raid arrays.

Why doesn't grml find my disks / doesn't boot?

Since release 2008.11 grml uses libata exclusively (so no longer any old IDE code). Sadly some few (usually pretty old) systems don't boot with libata-only kernels anymore. If you think you've such a system please provide output of 'lspci' to us.

Which ways exist to boot grml?

The most common way to boot grml is, of course, running from CD-ROM, but grml provides many more ways to boot grml:

It is possible to boot grml via USB (e.g. USB stick or harddisk), firewire, or running from a Compact Flash disk. It works out of the box; you don't need to modify anything. Check out the usb webpage in the grml-wiki for more details.

Your computer can not boot from CD-ROM but provides a floppy disk? Take a look at btmgr, ubcd4win or sbm. They provide support for booting from CD-ROM via a special floppy disk.

grml-terminalserver makes it possible to boot your system via network using PXE (Preboot Execution Environment). If your network card does not provide support for booting via PXE you can still boot it either using the provided grub image by grml-terminalserver (for example via floppy drive) or using gPXE. For more information, refer to the grml-terminalserver webpage.

How do I configure timezone on my grml system?

Available bootoptions relevant in live-cd mode:

Configuration options relevant on harddisk installation:

Run: 

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

to adjust /etc/timezone and /etc/localtime according to the provided information.

/etc/default/rcS: set variable UTC according to your needs, whether your system clock is set to UTC (UTC='yes') or not (UTC='no')

/etc/localtime: adjust zoneinfo according to your needs:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$WHATEVER_YOU_WANT /etc/localtime

The zoneinfo directory contains the time zone files that were compiled by zic. The files contain information such as rules about DST. They allow the kernel to convert UTC UNIX time into appropriate local dates and times. Use the zdump utility to print current time and date (in the specified time zone).

/etc/adjtime: This file is used e.g. by the adjtimex function, which can smoothly adjust system time while the system runs.

If you change the time (using 'date --set ...', ntpdate,...) it is worth setting also the hardware clock to the correct time:

# hwclock --systohc [--utc]

Remember to add the --utc -option if the hardware clock is set to UTC!

Still problems?

Check your current settings via:

cat /etc/timezone
zdump /etc/localtime
echo $TZ
hwclock --show
grep hwclock /etc/runlevel.conf
grep '^UTC' /etc/default/rc

Further information:

Manpages: hwclock(8) tzselect(1) tzconfig(8); Debian GNU/Linux System Administrator's Manual Chapter 16 - Time and TimeZoneChanges in the Debian-Wiki.

Is it possible to install grml to harddisk?

Yes. Grml provides a tool called grml2hd (see 'man grml2hd'). grml is developed on a box running the grml-system itself, and we - the grml-developers - especially like grml2hd because it gives us a working Linux box within 10 to 30 minutes. grml2hd is perfect for prototyping: test hardware support of Linux, test a specific setup, ... You can even use grml2hd in a fully automatic mode without any further interaction.

But please note: grml2hd does NOT provide a Linux distribution for newbies and should be installed to hard disk only if really know what you are doing (or don't care about maintainability, seriously). Please install grml using grml2hd only if can answer all of the following questions with 'sure, YES':

Tip: If you want to get a plain Debian system take a look at grml-debootstrap.

Note: If you are using grml in a production environment and/or use a grml2hd installation, we strongly recommend you subscribe to the grml user mailinglist!

Kernel

Where can I find the configuration for the kernel used on grml?

See /boot/config-`uname -r` and on the kernel-webpage.

Are there any special components/patches in the kernel used on grml?

Grml uses the most current stable vanilla Linux kernel from www.kernel.org with some additional patches. More information and an all-in-one patch is available on the kernel-page.

For which platforms is the grml kernel optimized?

Plain i586 compatibility-mode with SMP enabled. (Note: of course it works for uniprocessor systems as well)

Software

General

Want to run a program as root? Just use "sudo $PROGRAM". To get a root-shell run "sudo -i".

Problems with a specific package? Please try "dpkg-reconfigure $foo". Still encountering difficulties? Please send us a bugreport.

Which package(s) and which version is available?

If you want to get details about the provided packages and the package versions without booting the grml ISO check out the dpkg_... files in the Debian-Information section on grml.org/files/.

Init-System

Why is grml using runlevel 2 as default? Because runlevel 2 is 'the textonly one' and it is Debian's default.

Where are all the /etc/rc#.d-directories? grml doesn't use sysv-rc but file-rc. This means you can configure the init system in one single file named /etc/runlevel.conf with your favourite editor. No symlink-hell anymore.

Why is zsh the default shell?

Short answer: because Zsh rocks, really!

Longer answer taken from ZSH FAQ: 1.2: What is it?:

Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) which of the standard shells most resembles the Korn shell (ksh); its compatibility with the 1988 Korn shell has been gradually increasing. It includes enhancements of many types, notably in the command-line editor, options for customising its behaviour, filename globbing, features to make C-shell (csh) users feel more at home and extra features drawn from tcsh (another `custom' shell).

If you don't know zsh take a look at ZSH FAQ: How does zsh differ from ...?, 'man zsh | less -p COMPATIBILITY', the grml zsh reference card and 'man zsh-lovers'.

If you are a bash user and don't know zsh yet, don't be afraid. bash is largely a subset of zsh and you don't have to throw away your knowledge about shell stuff.

Wasn't zsh the /bin/sh interpreter?

Yes, until Grml 0.6 zsh was the interpreter for /bin/sh. Starting with release 0.7 Grml used /bin/bash as /bin/sh and nowadays /bin/dash is used for /bin/sh (that's what Debian does as well). The reason? Using zsh as default /bin/sh interpreter leads to some problems, especially since Debian does not care to support zsh as /bin/sh overall. Take a look at #329288 and #340058 for example.

Is a bash available?

Grml uses zsh as the default interactive shell but, of course, a current version of bash (and many other shells as well) is provided by grml.

Where can I find the configuration of zsh, GNU screen,...?

Check out 'Make console work comfortable'.

Why isn't Truecrypt available within grml?

Because Truecrypt is licensed under a specific license named 'TrueCrypt License' which doesn't permit us to distribute Truecrypt (since at least license version 2.6). See section VI/4 of the license for details. The Ubuntu version from truecrypt.org/downloads is known to work under Grml.

grub does not work on my system?!

Looks like you used mkfs.ext3 from grml but are using an old grub version. Notice that older versions of grub do not support 256 byte inodes on ext3, being the default in recent versions of mkfs/e2fsprogs. More information is available at #463236 in the Debian bug tracking system.

X-Server

How do I start the X server?

Please use 'grml-x' as user grml for starting X on the live-cd. It generates the config file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and lets you start commands on startup (see ~/.xinitrc). Use it, for example, via switching to TTY4 (press Alt+F4) and run the following command to start wm-ng (window manager fluxbox with idesk and gkrellm):

grml-x wm-ng

If you have /etc/X11/xorg.conf already you can use 'startx' instead of grml-x of course. Adjust ~/.xinitrc to your needs.

X does not start on my box?!

grml-x supports several options. If you want to set some special options please take a look at the grml-x manpage (man grml-x). Some usage examples:

grml-x --module vesa fluxbox        # start fluxbox and use vesa module
grml-x --mode '800x600' fluxbox     # set resolution to 800x600 and start fluxbox
grml-x --display 8 fluxbox          # start fluxbox on display 8
grml-x --force --nostart fluxbox     # force creation of xconfig file and don't start X server
grml-x --hsync 60 fluxbox           # set horizontal frequency and start fluxbox
grml-x --hsync 60 --vsync 40 fluxbox # set horizontal and vertical sync frequencies and start fluxbox

I don't like the resolution of X!

Just run xrandr to switch the resolution during runtime of X. For example: 'xrandr -s 1024x768'.

Support / Unanswered stuff

Further questions

Do you have a question which is not answered in the FAQ or in the provided documentation (execute "grml-info" on your grml-system for offline documentation)? Also check out 'grml-tips $KEYWORD' on your grml-system. Take a look at the grml website and the grml-wiki. A good place to become part of the community is the grml mailinglist. Please don't hesitate to contact us.

Commercial Support

You want to deploy Grml in your data center, use it as part of your business or have an emergency case? You're happy with Grml but would like to get your very own live cd (providing your favourite software selection, special configuration, setup and your bootsplash)? As part of our business we do provide commercial support, feel free to contact us at Grml Solutions.

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