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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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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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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 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 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.)

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_104_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Oct 23

Finnix 103 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on October 23, 2011, 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 103, the nineteenth release of Finnix, and marks three months since the release of Finnix 102, and six years since the relaunch of Finnix 86.0 in 2005. Finnix 103 includes a new forensic mode, RNG entropy gathering, a minor kernel update, a large number of bug fixes, new packages and new minor features.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_103_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Forensic mode

Finnix 103 includes a new forensic mode. When booted with the "forensic" or "forensics" boot flags, Finnix changes its behavior to minimize the chance of loading suspect code or writing to suspect media. These changes include cryptographic hash verification of discovered Finnix CD media, locking block devices, and avoiding swap, LVM, RAID, crypt and network autodetection. For more information, see the Forensics page on finnix.org.

Entropy generation added

Modern Linux distributions add to their random number generator (RNG) entropy pool by saving some random data before shutdown, and adding it back into the pool during startup. A LiveCD cannot normally do this, so Finnix includes a new feature to generate random data to be fed into the pool via a method that relies on the separation of a computer's CPU and RTC. By default 8 bytes are generated during each Finnix startup (due to the time it takes to generate data via this method), but a new utility wrapper, "finnix-generate-entropy" is included to generate a full pool's worth of entropy (currently 4096 bytes). For more information, see this blog post on finnie.org.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Jul 23

Finnix 102 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 23, 2011, 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 102, the eighteenth release of Finnix since its beginnings over ten years ago. Finnix 102 includes Linux kernel 3.0, a smaller distribution size, new Xen pvops and 486 support, and minor bug fixes.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_102_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

Linux 3.0

Finnix 102 includes the recently-released Linux 3.0 kernel, and is a slight departure from usual Finnix method of closely following Debian kernel development. Config management was based on Debian pre-release kernels, but patch management was handled internally, basing only partly on Debian. Linux 3.0 support was tested heavily throughout the Linux 3.0-rc process.

Smaller size

Finnix 102 includes XZ (LZMA2) compression of the compressed root and initrd, resulting in distribution savings of more than 20% over previous Gzip compression, and no measurable reduction of boot times.

Xen pvops guest support

While Finnix has included Xen guest recognition since Finnix 86.1, Finnix 102's AMD64 kernel now includes built-in Xen pvops guest support. Therefore, Finnix may now be booted in a Xen environment with no extra building or configuration. Simply use the included linux64 kernel file, the initrd.xz initial ramdisk, and the Finnix 102 ISO as a virtual block device.

486 support

Finnix 102 is the first Finnix release, including Finnix 0.03 way back in 2000, to include 486 support, though it has not been tested. This is done by not including PAE support in the x86 kernel. The downside is x86 computers with more than 4GB of RAM can only use 4GB with the x86 kernel. However, nearly all computers with over 4GB RAM are also 64-bit capable, so the AMD64 kernel (default on capable platforms) may be used.

Anyone sending photographic proof of Finnix being booted on a 486 (showing Finnix boot plus the output of /proc/cpuinfo on the screen) will be given a free Finnix full-color CD and free Finnix stickers.

G5 support reaffirmed

While the PowerPC G5 platform has remained a supported platform since PowerPC support was introduced in Finnix 88.0, it was never tested before release, due to lack of hardware. Now a Power Mac G5 DP/DC model is available for testing. The full list of platforms tested include: 586, 686, AMD64, G3 NewWorld, G4, G5, Xen.

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Posted in Announcements, Finnix

Article posted on Dec 25

Finnix 101 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 25, 2010, 12:00 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the eggnog-induced release of Finnix 101, the seventeenth release of Finnix since its beginnings over ten years ago. Finnix 101 includes major behind-the-scenes architectural changes, the re-introduction of PowerPC support, new features, and minor bug fixes.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
Download: http://www.finnix.org/Download
Release notes: http://www.finnix.org/Finnix_101_release_notes
Free stickers! http://www.finnix.org/Free_stickers

PowerPC support returns

After a show of public support, Finnix is once again producing PowerPC releases. Finnix is one of the only dedicated Linux LiveCDs with PowerPC support, and we are happy to continue serving the PowerPC community. Note that PowerPC releases are still not considered release goals, but in the future a lack of a PowerPC release will only happen under extraordinary circumstances.

Behind-the-scenes re-engineering

While using Finnix still has its same familiar look, much of the core infrastructure which comprises Finnix has been re-engineered. Many of the changes are intended to make development and re-development (remastering) easier and more powerful, and to help with deployment by Virtual Private Server (VPS) providers. Changes include a new CD filesystem layout, an enclosed remastering environment, a Finnix-specific SysV-compatible RC system, and componentized Finnix RC scripts.

Linux 2.6.36

Due to Debian testing being in deep freeze, the most recent kernel in either "testing" or "unstable" is 2.6.32. Therefore, a set of 2.6.36 kernels have been compiled based on 2.6.36-1~experimental.1 from Debian "experimental". Despite the "experimental" name, these kernels have been tested more heavily than the average Finnix release, and have proven to be very stable.

Hardware Detection Tool (HDT) added

On the X86 CD, Hardware Detection Tool has been added to the boot menu. This allows users to view system information (processor, memory, PCI devices, etc) quickly, without booting into a full operating system.

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Article posted on Oct 28

Finnix 100 released

Posted by Ryan Finnie on October 28, 2010, 12:20 am

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of Finnix 100, the sixteenth release of Finnix since its beginnings over ten years ago.

Finnix 100 comes over a year since its previous release, Finnix 93.0, and introduces a new version scheme, with future versions incrementing numerically. Finnix 100 includes updated upstream Debian software, and Linux kernel 2.6.32. The finnix-thumbdrive utility has been removed in favor of UNetbootin, which can take a Finnix ISO and extract it to a bootable USB drive without needing to boot Finnix first. PowerPC support has been officially dropped, though future PowerPC releases may be made on a one-off basis. The last PowerPC release, Finnix 93.0, will continue to be distributed through finnix.org and should continue to be useful for some time.

The Finnix store has been discontinued, and in its place is a free sticker service. High quality vinyl stickers can be obtained by sending a donation to Finnix, sending a self-addressed stamped envelope, or sending trinkets. Please see the free sticker page for more details.