GRUB 1.97 released

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

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Hi,

I'm proud to announce the release of GNU GRUB version 1.97.

GRUB, also known as the GRand Unified Bootloader, is a modular, portable
bootloader that supports a number of platforms, including standard BIOS-based
PCs, IEEE-1275 platforms (such as the OLPC and some PowerPC/Sparc64 hardware)
and coreboot, the free (as in freedom) pre-boot initialization framework.

  <http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/>

This release of GRUB is a significant breakthrough compared to GRUB 1.96.
Among a long list of improvements (excerpt from NEWS file is attached),
GRUB 1.97 includes support for booting the kernels of FreeBSD, OpenBSD
and NetBSD, it detects the Ext4 filesystem which is commonly used with
the kernel Linux, and it implements a robust mechanism for booting from
GPT drives, by embedding itself in the BIOS Boot partition.

A source tarball for the new release can be found at:

  http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-1.97.tar.gz

and its GPG detached signature [*]:

  http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-1.97.tar.gz.sig

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact.  First,
be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball.
Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify grub-1.97.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys DEA2C38E

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.61
  Ruby 1.8.7

GCC 4.4 is the recommended version for building it, although any version
starting with 4.1.3 is supported in this release.

I hope you enjoy using GRUB as much as we enjoyed developing it.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."

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* Add support for loading XNU (MacOS X kernel).

* ACPI override support.

* Integrated gptsync.

* Password protection support.

* Partition manipulation tool.

* Add `keystatus' command.

* Unicode fonts are now used by default.

* Add `hdparm' command.

* Add support for getting the current date and time from CMOS as variables.

* Add `drivemap' command.

* Add support for RAID levels 4,6 and 10.

* update-grub is replaced by grub-mkconfig.

* When booting from PXE, PXE can be used to load files.

* High resolution timer support.

* Image loaders now support IO buffering.

* Add `crc' command.

* Add Cygwin support.

* Add x86_64 EFI support.

* Use LZMA compression instead of LZO.

* Support for saving the environment from and loading the environment
  from a file.

* Allow the UUID to be used as device name.

* The `search' command can use UUIDs now.

* Add support for IEEE 1275 on i386.

* Create partmap.lst and use it to automatically load partition map
  modules.

* grub-mkconfig supports os-prober to add operating systems to the
  boot menu.

* The ATA driver supports devices bigger than 2 TiB.

* Add support for the UDF, AFS and EXT4 filesystems.

* The ISO9660 filesystem supports the Joliet extension

* Add support for loading kernels of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.

* Add new command `sleep'.

* Support for direct access to AT keyboards.

* New utility `grub-fstest'.

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