This is an update to Super Grub(2) Disk: More than 3,5 million downloads since 2005 article.
We have reached the round figure of 1,000,000 downloads on Cenatic forge.
Thank you Centro Nacional de Referencia de Aplicación de las Tecnologías de Información y la Comunicación basadas en Fuentes Abiertas !!!
Rescatux 0.40 beta 2 has been released.
Downloads:
Rescatux 0.40b2 size is about 596 Megabytes.
Some thoughts:
This release adds support for a separated /usr in case that the GNU/Linux distribution uses UsrMerge. This is again is a another feature in order to be able to support completely the Fedora, CentOS, RHEL and alike distributions.
Additionally there are three new features related to GPT support:
Finally on the technical side the gdisk package has been added and support of gpt partitions by default has been checked thanks to newest fdisk binary on Jessie that now can detect GPT partitions ok.
Although some of these GPT features are useful in some scenarios where you use old OSes that do not understand GPT partition tables but only MBR partition tables in most of the cases you won’t need to use them. Probably the most useful option would be the Check bios_grub partition on GPT which could be useful in those cases where there is a GPT partition table but, somehow, you don’t manage to install grub-efi package (Maybe because the machine is not EFI but has a GPT hard disk.) That option will encourage you to create a bios_grub partition for you to be able to install grub-pc package finally. But, once again, if possible try to install grub-efi package instead.
The great feedback from prolinux.de (it’s the only community where I gather quite useful feedback on their comments) have made me think about reconsidering UEFI boot support and, even if possible, Secure boot support.
I don’t want to support Secure boot support because of ethics but that means in practice that less people would be able to use Rescatux (more easily) in order to fix their systems. And, well, I would probably add Secure boot support to Super Grub2 Disk too. Although in that later case I’m not sure if it makes sense.
I have also noticed that the current SElinux support on Rescatux needs to be improved because, e.g. I cannot install the ssh program in it while running because of context issues. It might be a problem of Debian Jessie ssh package but I think it’s a problem on how the aufs mount in the disk is being done. This is more an issue on Debian Live accepting SELinux support patch than on Rescatux not working ok on SELinux systems. It actually works quite nicely on them.
Roadmap for Rescatux 0.40 stable release:
You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap which I’ll be reusing for Rescatux 0.40 stable release.
Fixed bugs (0.40b2):
Fixed bugs (0.40b1):
Reopened bugs (0.40b1):
Fixed bugs (0.32b3):
Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):
Fixed bugs (0.32b1):
Improvements (0.32b1):
Distro facts:
Feedback welcome:
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 !!!
Don’t forget that you can use:
Help Rescatux project:
I think we can expect four months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready. Helping on these tasks is appreciated:
If you want to help please contact us here:
Thank you and happy download!
Rescatux 0.40 beta 1 has been released.
Downloads:
Rescatux 0.40b1 size is about 596 Megabytes.
Some thoughts:
Now Rescatux is based on Debian Jessie (Latest Debian stable release)!
The great new feature in this release is the SELinux support. SELinux support is used by the Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS alike distributions. It’s not so much about adding SELinux related features which might be implemented in a far future. It’s about being able to interact with SELinux based system without damaging original contexts (contexts like additional permissions in SELinux).
Currently if you wanted to use the change password option on these systems then the system did not let you login (even if you know a password from a user different from the one its password you had changed) because these wrong contexts.
Now it should work flawlessly but please give us feedback here on the comments or in the mailing list. Anything about you detecting that Rescatux is not using the correct contexts for your files is welcomed.
It’s also welcomed feedback from people who uses non standard policy types such as the military ones. Given the nature of these systems try the options in non production machines of course.
This new beta release loses the long awaited feature about being able to select your own language, country and keyboard. The reason is that Rescatux 0.40 is based on jessie. These means that I have to use tails-greeter from Jessie and not Wheezy. The other problem on tails-greeter is that I need to hack it (this time properly thanks to the insights I have been given in Debconf 15 from Tails people) in order to fit my needs.
Finally don’t expect any new release in the next months. I am too busy. Anyway once I’ll start not being busy I will be able to speed a lot because the SELinux support improvement was very difficult to implement.
Many options have not been tested after having based Rescatux on jessie. So please use the Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 as if it was an stable release and this one as if it was a beta one. Use Rescatux 0.40 beta 1 if you have a SELinux based system of course.
In case you were asking yourself I add 0.1 to the Rescatux version either when the Rescapp program has been improved a lot or when the Debian OS has been updated to a new stable release. The latter is the reason why we jump from 0.3X to 0.4X suddenly.
I almost forgot. Thank you very much to the #fedora-devel and #selinux who helped so much on bringing SELinux support to Debian Live.
Roadmap for Rescatux 0.40 stable release:
You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap which I’ll be reusing for Rescatux 0.40 stable release.
Fixed bugs (0.40b1):
Reopened bugs (0.40b1):
Fixed bugs (0.32b3):
Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):
Fixed bugs (0.32b1):
Improvements (0.32b1):
Distro facts:
Feedback welcome:
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 !!!
Don’t forget that you can use:
Help Rescatux project:
I think we can expect four months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready. Helping on these tasks is appreciated:
If you want to help please contact us here:
Thank you and happy download!
I am not proud to announce Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 stable.
Super GRUB2 Disk is a live cd that helps you to boot into most any Operating System (OS) even if you cannot boot into it by normal means.
The former Super Grub2 Disk stable release was 2.00s2 version and released on May 2014 (one year ago). This release does not have as many new features as the previous stable version but some of them are quite interesting:
Let me repeat it slowly. With Super Grub2 Disk hybrid iso you will be able to boot from:
We are going to see which are the complete Super Grub2 Disk features with a demo video, where you can download it, the thank you – hall of fame and some thoughts about the Super Grub2 Disk development.
Please do not forget to read our howtos so that you can have step by step guides (how to make a cdrom or an usb, how to boot from it, etc) on how to use Super Grub2 Disk and, if needed, Rescatux.
Here there is a little video tour in order to discover most of Super Grub2 Disk options. The rest of the options you will have to discover them by yourself.
Most of the features here will let you boot into your Operating Systems. The rest of the options will improve the Super Grub2 Disk operating systems autodetecting (enable RAID, LVM, etc.) or will deal with minor aspects of the user interface (Colours, language, etc.).
Excluding too custom kernels from university students Super Grub2 Disk can autodetect and boot most every Operating System. Some examples are written here so that Google bots can see it and also to make more confident the final user who searchs his own special (according to him) Operating System.
Before this release we only had the hybrid version aimed at regular pcs. Now with the upcoming new EFI based machines you have the EFI standalone versions among others. What we don’t support is booting when secure boot is enabled.
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: coreboot, i386-efi, i386-pc, ieee1275, x86_64-efi, standalone coreboot, standalone i386-efi, standalone ieee1275. Help is welcome on this subject.
In order to check the former downloads you can either download:
or you can check their contents right here.
e7515b7d4e9ea90f28b7f5a534906b85 super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.02s3.iso 1538893f58fa9dbd3a1fd5a3789f7cb5 super_grub2_disk_i386_pc_2.02s3.iso 38260bfd2b93586a25b2db1a27072661 super_grub2_disk_standalone_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.EFI 247f2219579d1826cf6fbdbee37d1296 super_grub2_disk_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.iso
e1f0da49d4e600383647875f773f6182a5e3f3c4 super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.02s3.iso c4087937567d28f46f18c100ee047057d3acbac4 super_grub2_disk_i386_pc_2.02s3.iso 7af5cbbf947caa975a406b70c43fad803ba9c10d super_grub2_disk_standalone_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.EFI 1e49427f95dcff3dc0318f20bbe934b4a5eb3493 super_grub2_disk_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.iso
74def37a1208e4e2f54bbe4bd1b66337b6f026a6c553a3b8e7db8e2206fd59ed super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.02s3.iso ce46670541ed9506832d1bf255a454273ac493beee68e88f823687c8ae3cc340 super_grub2_disk_i386_pc_2.02s3.iso c4589c1d12fdf1260d025d11908f985a4e2b5c6b63e61d64ef0fc36e27613b30 super_grub2_disk_standalone_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.EFI 3ba7724f871f83d6996b74a529c79e6b7c237d7951eb642fd5fb7740f5d0464c super_grub2_disk_x86_64_efi_2.02s3.iso
Finally you can check all the detailed changes at our GIT commits.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
I want to thank in alphabetical order:
The person who writes this article is adrian15 and is proud of being responsible among other things for the rewriting of options as if they were libraries. And also for the User Interface (UI) complete redesign.
And I cannot forget about thanking bTactic, the enterprise where I work at and that hosts our site.
There has not been too much feedback for Super Grub2 Disk betas. Hopefully this new stable release come back with new bugs (Yes, it’s sad to say so). As I want to focus on new Rescatux stable if no one wants to help on Super Grub2 Disk development there won’t be any new release (stable or beta) in a long time.
I want to focus on Rescatux development on the next months so that we have an stable release on July 2015. I will probably base it on newest Debian Jessie.
(adrian15 speaking)
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.
There are people who use Google + (1), and comment on it (2). Yeah, although you might not believe it some people use Google+ (3).
Twitter (8), yeah, some twits (9) can be found on twitter (10).
There are people who record their videos on Youtube (1) or that use it (2). Actually Youtube (3) is quite popular.
Some people still use the quite old Windows 7 (4). Other people use Gentoo (11).
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.
Approximatively in a year I will redo the stats again so that we can compare with this year’s stats.
This live development is about improving grub detect script so that it does not loop so much. We will also try to do other improvements.
I would have liked to announce it more in advance but that’s you what you get. Two days or so.
It will take about half an hour or an hour. Depending on it I might do an additional live development for Rescatux after it.
So if you want to join the conversation you need to join the #sgrub channel at freenode.
March 1, 2015 at 15:00 UTC Time.
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:
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:
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
Recommended download (Valid for i386, x86_64, and x86_64-efi):
About other downloads
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:
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:
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.
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.
Roadmap for Rescatux 0.32 stable release:
You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap.
Changelog
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:
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: