Release Notes for Grml 2011.12 - codename Knecht Rootrecht

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About

This release brings a downsizing and cleanup: one flavour, two architectures. The new, smaller 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)

with libnss-mdns and avahi-daemon or similar enabled on your host) NFS Client support and d-bus start automatically

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

The live-media-path=... bootoption is mandatory now. If you're booting Grml via PXE or from harddisk (e.g. using findiso) please make sure to add live-media-path=/live/$FLAVOUR to the kernel commandline. Further details are available at the terminalserver page and the rescueboot page in the Grml-Wiki.

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 isolinux menu will beep once, and the grub menu will beep three times. (The accessibility boot options have been removed.)

iSCSI Target is now provided by LIO. The configuration tool targetcli is included.

is included. 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 3.1.6 . No additional modules are shipped.

. No additional modules are shipped. Fixed several bugs from the bug tracking system.

Packages

Updates

Packages are taken from Debian testing, 23rd of December 2011. More than 1700 packages have been removed, and these new packages have been added (plus dependencies):

afflib-tools atftp bacula-sd boot-info-script efibootmgr extundelete grub-efi-amd64-bin hsetroot ia32-libs imvirt ipxe libnss-myhostname lio-utils mcollective mtx multiarch-support netcat-openbsd python2.7 sipcalc targetcli

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

None at the time of the release!

Take a look at the known bugs list. Please report problems using information on grml.org/bugs/.

Download Grml 2011.12

Grml 2011.12 can be downloaded from grml.org/download/.

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) Brad Cable, Christoph Biedl, Christoph Lupe, Charles A. Hewson, Hans BKK, John G. Heim, Jordan Uggla, Julius Plenz Malte Simon, Marek Malevič, Michael Gissing, Pawel Sadkowski, Ralf Moll, Richard Hartmann, Sedat Dilek, Thomas Koehler, Uli Martens for their ideas and patches - as well as to our new contributors.

More Information

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

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