» Ryan Finnie

Article posted on May 9

Finnix 108 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on May 9, 2013, 7:55 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 108, which includes Linux kernel 3.8, updated Debian upstream software, bug fixes and minor feature enhancements.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_108_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Note that Finnix 108 was frozen shortly before Debian 7.0 wheezy was released, so the userland is effectively based on Debian stable for this release.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on May 2

Finnix 108 to be released May 9

Posted by Ryan Finnie on May 2, 2013, 2:12 pm

Next Thursday, May 9, Finnix 108 will be released. Finnix 108 will include Linux kernel 3.8, bug fixes and minor feature enhancements. I am experimenting with a time-based development model, and while the frequency details have not yet been finalized, this model does allow me to announce releases ahead of time.

As a reminder, Finnix releases are available several days ahead of the official release date, through BitTorrent. If you would like to get Finnix 108 as soon as possible, please see the Finnix BitTorrent page for information on how to follow the release RSS seeder feeds.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Dec 25

Finnix 107 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 25, 2012, 12:11 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 107, only two months from the previous release, but packed with new functionality and bug fixes.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_107_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Linux 3.6

Finnix 107 includes Linux kernel 3.6, and includes a fix for the (overhyped, it seems) ext4 corruption bug.

Faster startup, faster shutdown

Average Finnix startup times have been reduced even further by the cleanup of legacy code. In addition, the shutdown procedure, which largely has not changed in years, got a revamp and is now noticeably quicker.

isohybrid support included

The x86 ISO is now being built with the isohybrid method, meaning you can now write the ISO directly to a USB flash drive at the block level to boot it.

findiso support added, grub-finnix utility released

Finnix 107 includes support for searching for and mounting a Finnix ISO on a filesystem (findiso=/path/to/finnix-107.iso). This can be used to create a GRUB 2 configuration on a server/workstation to boot a Finnix ISO directly. To that end, I have released a utility for Debian/Ubuntu, grub-finnix, which hooks into the update-grub2 system to automatically handle building the necessary GRUB 2 config.

finnix-hwsubmit redesigned

The finnix-hwsubmit utility has been completely redesigned. The report format is now in a standardized machine-parsable yet easy to read format (MIME), you will be given a URL of the submitted report, and you can choose to make the report public. Public reports are available at hwsubmit.finnix.org.

New utilities included

A number of new packages have been included with Finnix 107, including: arping, bridge-utils, chntpw, cmospwd, ifenslave-2.6, sshfs, testdisk, udftools, zerofree. iPXE has also been added to the main x86 boot menu.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Nov 1

Finnix development update

Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 1, 2012, 11:33 pm

About two weeks ago, I had surgery for a somewhat serious injury. The weeks leading up to and since the surgery have given me a lot of time to work on personal projects (for the weeks before the surgery I was on strong painkillers which messed up my sleep, often keeping me up in the middle of the night, and the weeks since have been in recovery), which let me get Finnix 106 out the door earlier this week.

It has also given me time to make some long-desired architectural changes to the development environment, beginning with Project NEALE during the Finnix 105 development cycle. Here is a short update of what's changed lately.

As part of Project NEALE, all components of Finnix not contained in the compressed root (the CD layout, initrd, kernel and miscellaneous files) are now stored in udeb packages (neale-master, neale-initrd, neale-kernel and neale-stuff, respectively), which are extracted as part of build-neale. The method is slightly unusual; for example, the neale-kernel and neale-initrd source packages contain sources, as well as pre-built binaries for all supported architectures. But the net effect is all non-Debian sources are now contained in packages at archive.finnix.org. If you need the sources for a Finnix kernel from 106 onwards, grab the source package for neal-kernel.

Through Project NEALE, Finnix now has support for building ISOs with AMD64 userlands. While Finnix will not be releasing an official ISO with an AMD64 userland (for reasons explained on the Project NEALE wiki page), it is a testament to the versatility and abstraction that NEALE allows versus the old, manual method of assembling releases.

Packaging for all Finnix packages are now being managed in version control via bzr on Launchpad. I sent a mail to the debian-derivatives list recently, detailing my experiences in undertaking this.

The archive at archive.finnix.org is managed by a tool called reprepro, a mid-end system for managing Debian-style apt repositories. I have written a plugin for reprepro, which takes source uploads, scans for changelog entries with "LP: #12345" (the same format Ubuntu uses), and will update the corresponding bug's status, add an "archive-fixed" tag, and add a comment with a copy of the .changes file. This is similar to what both Debian and Ubuntu do on their respective bug tracking systems.

And example of a recent Finnix bug fixed by a source upload is here. Originally the plugin was specific to Finnix, but I have expanded it to be a general purpose tool. So if you manage an apt repository with reprepro and also use Launchpad for bug tracking, this tool may be of use to you.

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Posted in Development, Finnix

Article posted on Oct 29

Finnix 106 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on October 29, 2012, 12:00 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 106, which contains an important kernel update as well as minor fixes and improvements.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_106_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Linux 3.5

Finnix 106 includes Linux kernel 3.5, and notably fixes a major bug observed in Finnix 105 where booting would freeze if the system's disk included an extended partition.

Project NEALE released

With Finnix 105, Project NEALE [http://www.finnix.org/Project_NEALE] was announced -- an effort to build Finnix releases in a completely automated and normalized way. Finnix 105 was the first release to be produced with NEALE, but the build infrastructure was not available to the public at the time. For Finnix 106, the build infrastructure has been finished and released to the public.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Jul 13

Finnix 105 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 13, 2012, 12:04 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 105, a major architectural update to the Finnix series. Finnix 105 brings major organizational changes to the build and boot systems, along with the usual assortment of software updates.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_105_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Announcing Project NEALE

Until Finnix 105, each Finnix release had been produced by hand, essentially a remaster of the previous release. This allowed for rapid development and testing, but also allowed for individual mistakes, filesystem bloat, and trouble tracking upstream Debian packages.

Finnix 105 is the first Finnix release to be produced under Project NEALE (Normalized Extraction and Assembly of LiveCD Environments), a new set of procedures to build Finnix CDs from a minimal base Debian bootstrap. All base Finnix configuration is done via deb packages, including two new packages, finnix-base and finnix-standard, which depend on all the other software packages which normally go into a Finnix release. This allows for a consistent build process each time, and between architectures. It also allows for more future options, such as a native userland AMD64 release.

Due to the new portable nature of NEALE builds, incrementing build numbers have been retired (over 3000 builds have been produced in the last 7 years!). There are still a few rough edges regarding this transition, which will be ironed out over the next release cycle. The base build system is not yet ready for public consumption, but will be released to the public when it is. Remastering via the finnix-build-stage{1,2} scripts will continue to be supported (indeed, once the base bootstrap is completed, the build stage scripts are still called to prepare and master the ISOs).

sysvinit replaced with runit

sysvinit, the classic userland init system -- the first process run as part of the main userland, responsible for running startup scripts and entering shutdown on command -- has been replaced with runit, a minimal init system. Due to the nature of Finnix's boot process, a statically-compiled init is needed. A manually-compiled sysvinit binary was previously provided for this purpose, and would often fall out of sync with the userland tools. However, runit's init binary is statically-compiled by design, requiring no alterations, and is much smaller, requiring less memory. runit's core operation is radically different than sysvinit, but its integration into Finnix has been designed to be as similar to previous sysvinit-run releases as possible, and should be transparent to the user.

New archive management system, new GPG keys

Previous Finnix deb packages were managed in a manual repository, and the repository and releases were signed by Ryan Finnie's personal GPG key. Project NEALE required a more organized repository setup, prompting the creation of archive.finnix.org, managed by reprepro. In addition, Finnix-specific GPG keys have been created for use within Finnix. Release ISOs are now signed by Finnix Release Signing Key (4356E6C2), and repositories under archive.finnix.org are signed by Finnix Archive Signing Key (A89BA58D). Both new keys are signed by Finnix Signing Key (0897797F), which in turn is signed by both Ryan Finnie (203ECA25) (the old key used for Finnix signing) and Ryan Finnie (86AE8D98) (Ryan's new personal key), maintaining the web of trust. 203ECA25 is due to be retired and revoked after the release of Finnix 105.

Linux 3.4

Finnix 105 includes Linux 3.4, using kernel configurations based closely on Debian's Linux 3.4 sources.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Apr 1

April Fools

Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 1, 2012, 10:45 pm

Yes, yesterday's announcement was an April Fools joke, but I am humbled that enough people were convinced I could sell my company to a Fortune 500 company.

For background, the funny part is Finnix really is a product of Velociraptor Aerospace Dynamics, a sole proprietorship consulting company I set up in 2011. This is mainly to make taxes easier; VAD owns the Finnix domains, pays the bills and takes the donations, at least on paper. But organizationally, it's still mostly a personal project of mine.

(The company name is an in-joke, with a secondary goal of eventually getting Department of Defense contracts based on the name alone. The company logo is a raptor riding a bomb, Slim Pickens style.)

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Posted in Finnix

Article posted on Mar 31

Boeing acquires Finnix, VAD

Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 31, 2012, 5:00 pm

(April Fools!)

### PR EMBARGO ... DO NOT DISSEMINATE PRIOR TO MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012 ###
### RELEASE:BA_VAD_FINNIX ###

Seattle, Wash., April 2, 2012 -- The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) today announced an agreement to acquire Velociraptor Aerospace Dynamics, the parent company of Finnix, a LiveCD Linux operating system distribution. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

"Boeing and VAD are perfect for each other," said Ryan Finnie, president of Velociraptor Aerospace Dynamics. "The acquisition of the Finnix operating system brings a wealth of opportunities to Boeing, and the resources available from Boeing are an invaluable complement to VAD's mission to bring open source system administration tools to the aerospace industry."

With the acquisition, Finnie will be retained and will head the Strategic Aeronautics and Open Source (SAOS) division of Boeing, a group focused on open source implementations of firmware for turbine and missile nose cone circuitry. Finnix will continue to be maintained as an open source product, but will benefit from the Boeing acquisition with support contracts available to leading corporations and governments. No employee reductions are anticipated.

The Boeing Company, founded in 1916, is a leading multinational aerospace and defense corporation. Velociraptor Aerospace Dynamics, formed in 2011 as the parent company of Finnix, is a rising defense contractor and technology consulting company. Finnix was created in 2000 as a Linux LiveCD designed for system administrators, with a small size and low system requirements.

Resources:

###

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Posted in Finnix

Article posted on Mar 14

BitTorrent RSS feeds now available

Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 14, 2012, 12:48 am

RSS feeds of Finnix ISO BitTorrent releases are now available. These feeds allow you to (with supported clients) automatically download and seed the latest versions of Finnix. There are several feeds available, but the recommended feed is here:

http://www.finnix.org/rss/bittorrent/seeder.rss

This feed contains the last two releases in both x86 and PPC flavors. The approximate download size is 450MB for the 4 ISOs. Additionally, before Finnix releases are made, this feed will be updated with the unreleased version, usually at least a few days before release. This way, you automatically help build the seeds in preparation for a release, and you can get new Finnix releases before they are officially released!

For more information, see the BitTorrent page on finnix.org.

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Posted in Finnix

Article posted on Feb 14

Finnix 104 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on February 14, 2012, 12:00 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of Finnix 104, the twentieth release of Finnix. Since the first public release of Finnix 0.03 in March 2000, there have been twenty releases and 37 ISOs released to the public, totalling 4.5GB . (All releases have included x86 and PowerPC ISOs, with the exception of Finnix 0.03, 86.0, and 100.)

Finnix 104 is a maintenance and rollup release, including updated upstream Debian software, Linux kernel 3.2, small functionality updates and a large number of bug fixes.

(Finnix 104 is being released on Valentine's Day, and while Finnix releases are sometimes timed to specific dates, today is otherwise a coincidence. However, rest assured that Finnix does love you.)