Release Notes for Grml 2020.06-rc1 - codename CODENAME

About

Grml is a Debian based live system focusing on the needs of system administrators. This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian testing (AKA bullseye). As usual it also incorporates up to date hardware support and fixes known bugs from previous Grml releases.

Important Changes

The default mount point for the live system was changed from /lib/live/mount/medium to /run/live/medium. This works around a regression which appears on-again-off-again, and follows upstream changes for Debian/bullseye. If you don't have any custom tools which rely on /lib/live/mount/medium (or its ancestor /live/image), then this change is irrelevant for you
Tools like grml2usb and grml-x have been ported from Python2 to Python3 (AKA py3k).

New features

Highlighting the most relevant changes only:

Misc:
- cloud-init support (grml-full only): TODO
- qemu-guest-agent: TODO
grml-live (build system for creating Grml (based) Linux live systems):
- Support for cloud-init (via GRML_FULL)
- sudoers: set Defaults secure_path to have sane default settings
- initramfs xz-compress: use default xz compression level
- GRMLBASE/98-clean-chroot: fix resolvconf symlink handling + get rid of resolvconf workarounds
- Rebuild /var/lib/dpkg/available to install not-yet-installed packages in update runs
- Sources list setup for security: switch from testing/updates to testing-security
- Switch default mount point from /lib/live/mount/medium to /run/live/medium
grml2usb (tool to install Grml ISO to usb device)

Support more syslinux module locations and support setting custom ones via option --syslinux-libs=...
No longer explicitly list addon files, instead copy all files from /boot/addons/
Provide git-describe based version information when running from within git
Fix path to syslinux *.c32 files
Add smoke autopkgtests to Debian packaging
Abort if required logo.16 file is missing
Avoid custom boot options getting duplicated when used with multiple ISOs

grml-hwinfo (tool to collect hardware information):
- Store output of `lscpu -e` in file `lscpu_extended`
- Store cpuid output in file `cpuid`, add cpuid to Recommends
- Record uptime (/proc/uptime in `proc_uptime` and uptime(1) in file `uptime`)
- Report SecureBoot state via mokutil
- Store "$HOME"/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log (if available) as user_Xorg.0.log
- Log output of verbose lsusb run in file lsusb_verbose
- Provide output of verbose lspci run in file lspci_verbose
- Recommend acpica-tools package and provide acpidump output (as root)
grml-zshrc (Zsh configuration):
- Reset $REPLY parameter before calling prompt token functions
- Disable bracketed paste mode for dumb terminals
- Fix urxvt multi-line issue
- commit-to-history: keep escaped character
- Support PAGER='less -Mr' usage and fall back to vi if LESSOPEN is unset
grml-debootstrap (wrapper around debootstrap for installing pure Debian):
- Support BOOT_APPEND usage outside of VMs
- Support mmdebstrap via DEBOOTSTRAP=mmdebstrap
- Use new security.debian.org repository layout for bullseye and newer
- Fix detection of predictable network interface names
- Add option --sshcopyid to authorise root login
- Provide workaround for Debian bug #918590 with lvm + udev in VM installations
- /etc/fstab: provide header comment, pointing to man pages and systemctl daemon-reload
- Add DHCP setting for Predictable Network Interface Names

Bits & bolts

Linux kernel 5.6.
Fixed several bugs from the issue tracking system.

Packages

Details about shipped packages and their versions in Grml are available in the Debian section. Visit dpkg_list for a detailed list of packages shipped with Grml 2020.06(-rc1).

Updates

Packages are taken from Debian testing as of FIXME of FIXME 2020. 22 packages have been removed, and these 26 new packages have been added (excluding lib*, *-common, python3-* and kernel image):

  bind9-dnsutils
  bind9-libs (dependency of avahi-daemon, bind9-dnsutils, bind9host + libnss-mdns)
  borgbackup
  cloud-init
  cpp-9 (replacement for cpp-8)
  dnsutils
  fuse3 (dependency of borgbackup, exfat-fuse, ntfs-3g, sshfs + testdisk)
  gcc-10-base (replacement for gcc-8)
  gcc-9-base (replacement for gcc-8)
  iperf3
  logsave (dependency of e2fsprogs)
  lua-lpeg (dependency of nmap)
  ncdu
  pci.ids
  perl-modules-5.30
  python3.8 (replacement for python3.7)
  python3.8-minimal (replacement for python3.7-minimal)
  qemu-system-gui
  radvd
  ruby2.7 (replacement for ruby2.5)
  runit-helper (dependency of acpi-support, acpid, irqbalance + openssh-server)
  sound-theme-freedesktop (dependency of vim-gtk3)
  tree
  usb.ids (dependency of usbutils)
  vim-gtk3
  zstd

These Debian packages have been removed/replaced (excluding lib*, *-data, *-common, python-* and kernel image):

  ash
  cpp-8 (replaced with cpp-9)
  cryptsetup-run
  fuse
  gcc-8-base (replaced with gcc-9-base + gcc-10-base)
  gdbm-l10n
  hfsprogs
  ipsec-tools
  lilo
  linux-libc-dev
  pm-utils
  powermgmt-base
  python3-prettytable
  python3.7
  python3.7-minimal
  racoon
  rng-tools
  ruby-did-you-mean
  ruby-json
  ruby2.5 (replaced with ruby2.7)
  tasksel
  vim-gtk (replaced with vim-gtk3)

Known issues

Please visit the known bugs web page.

Download Grml 2020.06-rc1

Grml 2020.06-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!

Thanks

Many thanks in this release go to (alphabetically) Albert Dengg, András Korn, Axel Beckert, Florian Apolloner, Iru Cai, Joel Wirāmu Pauling, Lukas Prokop, Marc Haber, Michael Stone, Patrick Schleizer and Ralf Moll for their contributions.

More Information

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

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