I have choosen a random day from 2015 to generate some stats of Super Grub2 Disk usage (and their users). I could use some better stats from a longer period of time but being exact is not the purpose of this post.
Social networks
There are people who use Google + (1), and comment on it (2). Yeah, although you might not believe it some people use Google+ (3).
Some people still use the quite old Windows 7 (4). Other people use Gentoo (11).
Summary
As you can see Super Grub2 Disk is being used daily on many parts of the globe on such distant places as Japan, USA or Iran. You can learn that Windows 10 has not been released yet because people still use Windows 7. Hopefully many of the Super Grub2 Disk are young and will never need to ask for help.
See you next year!
Approximatively in a year I will redo the stats again so that we can compare with this year’s stats.
Last week I learnt (adrian15 speaking) about other people doing live streams while programming. It sound as something stupid you doing a live streaming when you develop but as I saw all the streamings most of them where in non open source languages or non open source projects. So I told myself that I had to do it too.
The other reason is that it might help other people who are doubtful about contributing to Super Grub2 Disk to finally begin to do so. Because, it’s not as difficult as it might seem.
So last weekend I performed a public live devopment streaming which I announced in Super Grub2 Disk chat channel.
As you might see there are two things to be improved in the video:
Sound quality (I need something to remove my laptop fan noise at runtime)
Video quality. I think I will record with my second screen at 1024×768 instead of squeezing my bigger screen to 1024×768. This might improve video quality.
So I promise I’ll try to announce the live development streamings with more time, probably three or fours days in advance so that you can join by the chat.
So, here there is the video about how I managed to remove Super Grub2 Disk devices from search by default. You can find its associated commit here.
This is an exciting release. For the first time we are not relying on Debian’s grub packages but on our own grub2 build system. Yes, just like the distributions do when they build their own packages.
This improvement let us to track grub git so that we can use its latest features. Sometimes you choose to rely on an stable grub release but sometimes some features are needed as right now.
One of these features is being able of booting from EFI system from a hard disk or usb in EFI mode. (That feature was wrongly announced in the past releases of Super Grub2 Disk as being functional). And, what it’s better than that… The same disk also works for BIOS based boot and also for CDROM boot.
Let me repeat it slowly. With Super Grub2 Disk hybrid iso you will be able to boot from:
EFI mode. Cdrom or DVD media.
EFI mode. USB or hard disk media.
BIOS mode. Cdrom or DVD media.
BIOS mode. USB or hard disk media.
Another fix from upstream grub enables us to avoid showing Super Grub2 Disk device itself as a (wrongly detected) Mac OS X installation. This error arised on last beta and we discovered that grub itself did not work ok when testing two expressions if the first one was detecting if a file existed or not. You can check this grub commit if you are interested.
That same fix might make Super Grub2 Disk run faster because now our tests will work as expected. I haven’t tested Super Grub2 Disk speed myself so if you have feedback on it please report here on the comments.
Dedicated to forum.ubuntu-fr.org and malbo
I want to dedicate this release to the Communauté francophone d’utilisateurs d’Ubuntu forum people and specially to malbo who managed to make Super Grub2 Disk to boot from a USB thanks to the standalone version. Now the Super Grub2 Disk hybrid version should boot in either BIOS or EFI mode when burned to a cdrom and also when dd to a hard disk. No need to build your own usb version for that.
I know that around that community there are many great people that did find many ways of dealing with EFI specifics (Hopefully I can reuse some of these next year for Rescatux) but I chose malbo because he is great at writing howtos or step-by-step instructions so that other people can debug why their systems do not boot and hopefully they can finally boot into them.
Unfortunately Microsoft’s approved secure boot is not in my Super Grub2 Disk TODO list because of ethical reasons. That would even help even more, till then, make sure you disable secure boot when booting from Super Grub2 Disk in an EFI machine.
Changelog
Updated grub 2.02 build to commit: 8e5bc2f4d3767485e729ed96ea943570d1cb1e45
Updated documentation for building Super Grub2 Disk
Improvement on upstream grub (d29259b134257458a98c1ddc05d2a36c677ded37 – test: do not stop after first file test or closing bracket) will probably make Super Grub2 Disk run faster.
Added new grub build scripts so that Super Grub2 Disk uses its own built versions of grub and not the default system / distro / chroot one.
Ensure that Mac OS X entries are detected ok thanks to Users dir. This is because Grub2 needs to emulate Mac OS X kernel so that it’s detected as a proper boot device on Apple computers.
Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom. Use dd to put Super Grub2 Disk in your usb device if you want to make use of it.
Recommended download (Valid for i386, x86_64, and x86_64-efi):
As we no longer rely on Debian grub packages some of the releases have been removed (till someone teachs me how to rebuild them). The downloads you will not be finding are: coreboot, i386-efi, ieee1275, standalone i386-efi and standalone ieee1275. Help is welcome on this subject and also feedback if someone was actually using them or not. Else I might remove them completely.
How to test
Try to boot your desired operating system with this version. If it does not boot try the 2.00s2 stable version. If you can boot with the stable version but not with this beta version please report it to the bug tracker.
This is a Super Grub2 Disk tutorial that it’s not based in this beta version but that can help you understand what you can do with Super Grub2 Disk.
Development miscelanea:
This release was built in a Debian jessie system but using upstream 2.02 grub version (commit 8e5bc2f4d3767485e729ed96ea943570d1cb1e45).
Please check the new DEVELOPMENT file if you plan to build Super Grub2 Disk on your own very often.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
Note: 2.02s2-beta1 means:
2.02: Upstream Grub 2.02 version
s2 : Super Grub2 Disk scripts version (inside this Upstream Grub version)
I am going to modify Rescatux 0.32 roadmap so that it’s easier to release Rescatux 0.32 even if it lacks some importants items.
We drop UEFI Boot Support. This does not mean not being able to fix grub systems based on UEFI. What it means is that I was going to make sure that you could boot Rescatux cd in EFI mode without a problem. You will be able to boot Rescatux cd from a UEFI system if the CD is booted in legacy boot mode (BIOS) but not as EFI mode. The reason for dropping this UEFI boot support is because of Debian Live for its Debian Wheezy version not being good enough for enabling UEFI boot based on grub2. I also do not want to achieve the same result by using current SG2D and the Rescatux isolinux image as I did in the old days. I just want a plain isolinux based ISO image and that’s it. I also do not want to rebase Rescatux on Debian Jessie even if it’s tempting. Once we release the stable Rescatux 0.32 we would be able to think about rebasing Rescatux on Debian Jessie which its Live Build package will have EFI support based on syslinux / isolinux. Not yet, but I’m sure that they won’t release Debian Live for Jessie without EFI boot support because it’s a must nowadays.
Doubts about SELinux. I was about to drop SELinux support but I will make more tests and depending on the result I might drop it or not.
Well, that’s not as much as I had thought but these are some changes. Hopefully I do not rewrite release roadmap for 0.32 in the future again.
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2188] install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2190] debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
(Fixed in 0.32b3) [#2191] Change Keyboard layout
[#2192] UEFI boot support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2193] bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2199] Btrfs support
[#2205] Handle different default sh script
[#2216] Verify separated /usr support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2217] chown root root on sudoers
[#2220] Make sure all the source code is available
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2221] Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2227] Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
[#2231] SElinux support on chroot options
[#2233] Disable USB automount
[#2236] chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
[#2239]https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-step-put-rescatux-into-a-media/suppose that the image is based on Super Grub2 Disk version and not Isolinux.The step about extracting iso inside an iso would not be longer needed.”>Update doc: Put Rescatux into a media for Isolinux based cd
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2259] Update bootinfoscript to the latest GIT version
Based on Grub 2.02 (commit bac5d1a64ab4191058a8fd4c05f6b3b339e249e7 )
Added new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.
Removed no longer needed options: “Enable USB” and “Enable PATA”.
“Search floppy” and “Search cdrom” options were moved into “Extra GRUB2 functionality menu”. At the same time “Extra Search functionality” menu was removed.
Added new straight-forward option: “Enable GRUB2’s RAID and LVM support“.
“List devices/partitions” was renamed to “Print devices/partitions”.
“Everything” option was renamed to “Detect and show boot methods”.
“Everything +” option was removed to avoid confusions.
Other minor improvements in the source code.
Updated translation files. Now most translations are pending.
Updated INSTALL instructions.
Recommended download (Valid for i386, x86_64, and x86_64-efi):
About other downloads. As this is the first time I develop Super Grub2 Disk out of source code (well, probably not the first time, but the first time in ages) I have not been able to build these other downloads: standalone EFI x86_64, coreboot, i386-efi, i386-pc, ieee1275, x86_64-efi, standalone coreboot, standalone i386-efi, standalone ieee1275. Help is welcome on this subject.
How to test.
Try to boot your desired operating system with this version. If it does not boot try the 2.00s2 stable version. If you can boot with the stable version but not with this beta version please report it to the bug tracker.
This is a Super Grub2 Disk tutorial that it’s not based in this beta version but that can help you understand what you can do with Super Grub2 Disk.
Development miscelanea:
This release was built in a Debian jessie system but using upstream 2.02 grub version (commit bac5d1a64ab4191058a8fd4c05f6b3b339e249e7).
I want to thank Jordan Uggla to teach me about what were the Grub2 native disk drivers and what nativedisk command did actually. phcoder did try once to explain it but I wasn’t smart enough to understand it. Hopefully I can help with nativedisk help text inside Grub2.
This new “Enable all native disk drivers” option unloads the usually default biosdisk drivers which talks to the bios to access hard disks (Like did MS-DOS in the old days) and replaces it with native drivers (as a normal Operating System would do). It also manages to find somehow the old Super Grub2 Disk device and define the correct $prefix variable.
In my tests this new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” aborts Virtualbox. That means that we are also testing Grub2 or maybe Virtualbox. Please check my submitted bug.
We have renamed many menues so that their purpose is more clear.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
Note: 2.02s1-beta1 means:
2.02: Upstream Grub 2.02 version
s1 : Super Grub2 Disk scripts version (inside this Upstream Grub version)
So this is the official Rescatux tutorial based on the latest 0.32 beta 3 Rescatux. Please enjoy the full show or select the section that matches your need.
If you are more interested on what Rescatux can do instead of how you are supposed to use it please check Summary .
If you want to make use of the Recover Windows boot option ( Restore Windows MBR (Beta) ) make sure to use Rescatux 0.32 beta 2 or a newest version else you might get your Windows 7 unbootable even if you use the latest stable 0.30.2 version.
My English is not perfect and I will try to improve it for the next videos.
I have recorded another video of Super Grub2 Disk Tour. It is now based on 2.00s2 version. The video is much better than the latest one (which I have just removed) because my English is better and because I had an script with what I needed to say. More than this I speak slowly for non English speakers.
Anyways my English in this video is far from optimal if you are a native English. Nobody has offered himself to record it so… I can’t do any better ;).
LXDE start menu in Spanish thanks to Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 greeter
Some thoughts:
This new beta release only has a new feature but it’s a long awaited feature. Now you will be able to select your own language, country and keyboard at boot so that, among other things, you can ask help in the integrated chat with your beloved keyboard layout.
I’m subscribed to tails-dev mailing list and I will soon ask them about how to modify tails-greeter so that we can share a common codebase between tails-greeter and live-greeter?.
I’m not convinced about them being based on gtk, and even worse, based on gdm3 which pulls quite many dependencies which I never thought were needed for a dm. Yes, I’m tempted to rewrite it into QT but maybe it’s not worth the effort.
I will probably try to modify tails-greeter so that it’s based on lightdm instead of gdm3. This task seems more feasible for me.
Finally on the translation side don’t expect Rescapp to be translated, even in Spanish, because translation subsystem is not implemented and nobody has offered to do so. I think I’m also dropping the Spanish documentation (No one has offered himself to translate it) because this way I won’t have to update it. One less task to do for the release.
What I mean is that while choosing your language, country and keyboard will affect the rest of the distribution do not expect Rescapp to be affected by the language and country settings. It will be only affected by the keyboard setting.
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2188] install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2190] debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
(Fixed in 0.32b3) [#2191] Change Keyboard layout
[#2192] UEFI boot support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2193] bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2199] Btrfs support
[#2205] Handle different default sh script
[#2216] Verify separated /usr support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2217] chown root root on sudoers
[#2220] Make sure all the source code is available
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2221] Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2227] Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
[#2231] SElinux support on chroot options
[#2233] Disable USB automount
[#2236] chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
[#2239]https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-step-put-rescatux-into-a-media/suppose that the image is based on Super Grub2 Disk version and not Isolinux.The step about extracting iso inside an iso would not be longer needed.”>Update doc: Put Rescatux into a media for Isolinux based cd
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2259] Update bootinfoscript to the latest GIT version
[#2264] chntpw – Save prior registry files
[#2234] New option: Easy Grub fix
[#2235] New option: Easy Windows Admin
Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):
Rescatux logo is not shown at boot
Boot entries are named “Live xxxx” instead of “Rescatux xxxx”
Fixed bugs (0.32b1):
Networking detection improved (fallback to network-manager-gnome)
Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
Improvements (0.32b1):
Super Grub2 Disk is no longer included. That makes easier to put the ISO to USB devices thanks to standard multiboot tools which support Debian Live cds.
Rescapp UI has been redesigned
Every option is at hand at the first screen.
Rescapp options can be scrolled. That makes it easier to add new options without bothering on final design.
Run option screen buttons have been rearranged to make it easier to read.
RazorQT has been replaced by LXDE which seems more mature. LXQT will have to wait.
WICD has been replaced by network-manager-gnome. That makes easier to connect to wired and wireless networks.
It is no longer based on Debian Unstable (sid) branch.
Did you ever complain because of not being able to write in your own keyboard layout when asking for help in the integrated chat? Don’t miss your chance on testing if it works ok for your language and report us feedback !!!
I think we can expect two months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready, probably half of it because I manage to fix bugs very quick lately. Helping on these tasks is appreciated:
Making a youtube video for the new options.
Make sure documentation for the new options is right.
Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.
Rescatux 0.32b2 updated options : Restore Windows MBR, Blank Windows password, Promote Windows user to Admin and Unlock Windows user.
Some thoughts:
Update as 25th October 2014. I had mistakenly thought that install-mbr was a program from syslinux package. So, so sorry syslinux guys. Actually it is from the mbr package and the bug about turning a Windows 7 partition unbootable is already reported at: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=725417 . Now that I know what a disk id is I might write a tool on fixing these kind of problems, specially if you think that current stable Rescatux generates these errors.
I have had a hard work trying to make the winunlock command (for unlocking windows passwords from command line) because original winpasswd command was not working ok! I have sent an email to upstream chntpw so that it fixes it. Hopefully there is a new upstream release and we can enjoy it both fixes in Debian soon. Here there is my fork: chntpw-ng .
As you might imagine the biggest improvement in this release is that resetting windows password, promoting a windows user to Administrador and unlocking a windows user uses the latest version of chntpw which makes easier and more safe to add users to the admin group. It also fixes a bug that prevented a promoted admin user to be demoted from windows.
The other big improvement is that lilo is being used instead of mbr package syslinux so that you can finally solve this:
grub rescue>
( grub rescue > ) problems when you remove GNU/Linux partition from Windows itself. Unfortunately that only works if Windows boot partition is in the first hard disk. This is the Restore Windows MBR option which it’s going to be still BETA till many of you report me that it works ok. The difference is that the old version did break working Windows seven (and probably others) boot when used. So that it’s fixed.
There is not Super Grub2 Disk available from boot menu but, as you can see per, the pending bugs there will be one.
Finally you can boot Rescatux from Super Grub2 Disk thanks to its loopback.cfg file which I hope will be accepted upstream in Debian Live soon although they seem to be busy with Jessie freeze.
In the development arena I have removed old scripts and add new build folders so that everything is easier to understand when developing Rescatux.
This release is very needed so that we can all test this new 140201 chntpw version before I release the stable version in probably less than three months. So please report any bug if you find them. So, contrary to other versions I encourage to download it so that we can debug it.
I almost forgot that we have a new background for you to enjoy!
This is the first time that I recycle older changelog so that you can see the full changes as a whole (well, actually only from Rescatux 0.32b1).
There has been other improvements in this release so I encourage you to click on the Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap link so that you get more detailed information about them.
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2188] install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2190] debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
[#2191] Change Keyboard layout
[#2192] UEFI boot support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2193] bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2199] Btrfs support
[#2205] Handle different default sh script
[#2216] Verify separated /usr support
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2217] chown root root on sudoers
[#2220] Make sure all the source code is available
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2221] Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2227] Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
[#2231] SElinux support on chroot options
[#2233] Disable USB automount
[#2236] chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
[#2239]https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-step-put-rescatux-into-a-media/suppose that the image is based on Super Grub2 Disk version and not Isolinux.The step about extracting iso inside an iso would not be longer needed.”>Update doc: Put Rescatux into a media for Isolinux based cd
(Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2259] Update bootinfoscript to the latest GIT version
[#2264] chntpw – Save prior registry files
[#2234] New option: Easy Grub fix
[#2235] New option: Easy Windows Admin
Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):
Rescatux logo is not shown at boot
Boot entries are named “Live xxxx” instead of “Rescatux xxxx”
Fixed bugs (0.32b1):
Networking detection improved (fallback to network-manager-gnome)
Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
Improvements (0.32b1):
Super Grub2 Disk is no longer included. That makes easier to put the ISO to USB devices thanks to standard multiboot tools which support Debian Live cds.
Rescapp UI has been redesigned
Every option is at hand at the first screen.
Rescapp options can be scrolled. That makes it easier to add new options without bothering on final design.
Run option screen buttons have been rearranged to make it easier to read.
RazorQT has been replaced by LXDE which seems more mature. LXQT will have to wait.
WICD has been replaced by network-manager-gnome. That makes easier to connect to wired and wireless networks.
It is no longer based on Debian Unstable (sid) branch.
Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.
I think we can expect three months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready, probably half of it because I manage to fix bugs very quick lately. These are some of the funny tasks that anyone can easily contribute to:
Making a youtube video for the new options.
Make sure documentation for the new options is right.
Translate the documentation of new options to Spanish.
Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.
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