1 CHEATCODES AND HINTS FOR GRML V0.1
2 ==============================================================================
4 These options (can be combined) work from the isolinux bootprompt:
6 grml acpi=off Disable ACPI configuration in Kernel 2.6
7 grml24 [Options...] Boots with Kernel 2.4 (2.6 is default)
8 expert26 [Options...] Expert mode
9 memtest Run memtest86 instead of Linux
11 Notice: some of the following options *might* *not* work.
12 Please report any problems you encounter to the grml-team ->
15 grml lang=at|de|cn|da|es|fr|it specify language/keyboard
16 grml lang=nl|pl|ru|sk|tr|tw|us specify language/keyboard
17 grml gmt Use GMT-based time
18 grml home=/dev/sda1/grml.img Mount loopback file as /home/grml
19 grml home=scan Automatic search for grml homedir
20 grml floppyconfig Run "grml.sh" from a floppy
21 grml tz=Europe/Vienna Use this timezone for TZ
22 grml atapicd Do NOT use SCSI-Emulation for IDE CD-ROMs
23 grml alsa (or alsa=es1938) Use ALSA sound driver (at your own risk)
24 grml screen=1280x1024 Use specified Screen resolution for X
25 grml xvrefresh=60 (or vsync=60) Use 60 Hz vertical refresh rate for X
26 grml xhrefresh=80 (or hsync=80) Use 80 kHz horizontal refresh rate for X
27 grml xserver=XFree86|XF86_SVGA Use specified X-Server
28 grml xmodule=ati|fbdev|i810|mga Use specified XFree4-Module (1)
29 grml xmodule=nv|radeon|savage|s3 Use specified XFree4-Module (2)
30 grml xmodule=radeon|svga|i810 Use specified XFree4-Module (3)
31 grml no{apic,agp,apm,audio,ddc} Skip parts of HW-detection (1)
32 grml no{dhcp,fstab,firewire} Skip parts of HW-detection (2)
33 grml no{pcmcia,scsi,swap,usb} Skip parts of HW-detection (3)
34 grml pnpbios=off No PnP Bios initialization
35 grml acpi=off Disable ACPI Bios completely
36 grml usb2 Try to initialize USB 2.x controller(s)
37 failsafe Boot with (almost) no HW-detection
38 grml pci=irqmask=0x0e98 Try this, if PS/2 mouse doesn't work *)
39 grml pci=bios Workaround for bad PCI controllers
40 grml ide2=0x180 nopcmcia Boot from PCMCIA-CD-ROM (some notebooks)
41 grml mem=128M Specify Memory size in MByte
42 grml dma Enable DMA accelleration for ALL IDE-Drives
43 grml vga=normal No-framebuffer mode, but X
44 grml blind Start Braille-Terminal (no X)
45 grml brltty=type,port,table Parameters for Braille device
46 grml wheelmouse Enable IMPS/2 protocol for wheelmice
47 grml nowheelmouse Force plain PS/2 protocol for PS/2-mouse
48 fb1280x1024 Use fixed framebuffer graphics (1)
49 fb1024x768 Use fixed framebuffer graphics (2)
50 fb800x600 Use fixed framebuffer graphics (3)
51 grml keyboard=us xkeyboard=us Use different keyboard (text/X)
52 grml toram Copy CD to RAM and run from there
53 grml tohd=/dev/hda1 Copy CD to HD partition and run from there
54 grml fromhd Skip checking for grml on CD-ROM
55 grml fromhd=/dev/hda1 Boot from previously copied CD-Image
56 grml bootfrom=/dev/hda1 Access Image then boot from previously
57 copied CD-Image (enables booting from
59 grml bootfrom=/dev/hda1/GRML.iso Access image, boot from ISO-Image. ***)
60 grml grml_dir=GRML Directory to search for on the CD.
61 grml grml_name=GRML Cloop-File to search for on the CD.
62 grml testcd Check CD data integrity and md5sums
63 expert Interactive setup for experts
65 The following options are probably broken:
67 grml noeject Do NOT eject CD after halt
68 grml noprompt Do NOT prompt to remove the CD
69 |-> grml 0.1 does not eject the CD
70 grml myconf=/dev/sda1 Run "grml.sh" from a partition
71 grml myconf=scan (or config=scan) Try to find "grml.sh" automatically
73 *) Try "grml pci=irqmask=0x0e98" if (you have a notebook and) your
74 PS/2 mouse doesn't work. (Possibly caused by a BIOS-flaw on your board,
75 BIOS updates can help.) Sometimes, switching to the text console with
76 Control-Alt-F1 and back to the X-screen with Control-Alt-F7 solves the
77 problem without rebooting, since the X server reinitializes the mouse
78 driver during that procedure.
80 *) Bootfrom needs access to a running grml-System with the same Kernel
81 as the Bootkernel, before it is able to mount the partition / ISO-Image.
82 This should allow a poor mans install from NTFS-Partitions and makes it
83 also possible to boot an ISO-Image directly. You can also use wildcards
84 in the ISO-Filename, but it must be unique. So: If you have just one
85 GRML.iso on /dev/hda1 you can access it as: bootfrom=/dev/hda1/G*.iso,
86 but if there are several, you need to make clear, which one you want.
87 (Feature added by Fabian Franz.)
89 If your GRML CD makes strange noises during boot, or you see frequent
90 errors like "cloop: read error", or programs are crashing randomly, then
91 your CD image is probably defective or incomplete, or your CD-burner
92 created a defective CD due to wrong writing speed or bad media. This is
93 the most common error reported. Please boot with "grml testcd" to check
94 if the CD is OK, and/or even better, verify the MD5 checksums that are
95 present on the mirrors before writing the CD. In some cases, defective
96 IDE controllers cause this error if you have DMA enabled. Also, please
99 In case of a failing hardware autodetection, try booting with any of
100 the "no-" options as shown in the table above, like in
101 grml noagp noaudio noapm noapic acpi=off nodma nopcmcia noscsi nousb
102 to skip some critical parts of the autodetection system.
104 The "noswap" option is useful for a forensic analysis without touching
105 existing swap partitions.
107 Some Boards apparently don't pass the proper memory size to the
108 linux-kernel. It may cause the message "Panic: cannot mount root file
109 system" and the system hangs. Use "grml mem=128M" to solve that
110 problem if your system has 128MByte memory for example (caution:
111 you MUST use a capital "M" here).
113 The "expert" mode provides a very simple interface to loading additional
114 Kernel modules from floppy disks (ext2 or vfat), plus interactive
115 configuration of mouse/keyboard/soundcard/xserver. "expert" mode supports
116 the same boot options as "grml".
118 The "floppyconfig" or "(my)config=/dev/partition" options allow you to
119 reconfigure the system after autoconfiguration by running a bourne shell
120 script called "grml.sh" from the root directory on the given device (or
121 floppy). The shell script will also be executed at startup.
122 |-> Important: the option might be broken in this version of grml.
124 SCSI-Emulation is active for all CD-ROMs (unless you switch it off by
125 using the "atapicd" option), so IDE CD-Writers should work with the
126 installed versions of cdrecord and cdrdao.
128 If your BIOS does not support el torito booting from CD, you can create
129 two bootable floppy disks by issuing (from grml running on a different
130 machine) the command "mkbootfloppy", which will create a bootable
131 Kernel-disk plus a disk containing the initial ramdisk, which will be
132 prompted for at boottime.
134 If you wish to remaster the CD, please don't forget to specify
135 -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
136 -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat
137 as option to mkisofs. Otherwise your CD won't be bootable. The
138 directory GRML, containig the compressed filesystem file "GRML",
139 must be located in the top level directory of the CD.
141 Caution: X-Screensaver: Don't start xlock or any screensaver that
142 requires a password. There are no default passwords on GRML,
143 i.e. all accounts are LOCKED unless you explicitly set a password.
144 See also README_Security.txt about this issue.
145 If you accidentially started a screensaver switch to one of the
146 textconsoles by Control-Alt-F1 and kill the screensaver (or just set a
147 password for the grml user).