Concerning what sounds like a font problem in using braille displays on Red Hat 9: I don't have access to a braille display, or know anyone who does, but I can pretty well guess where the problem lies, so that by pointing to the proper package, you can find the particulars of the right solution, and since this sort of thing comes up more regularly these days, you can post the actual solution, and maybe contribute it to the FAQ. The kernel has long had the ability to have various fonts installed into the text consoles; you can get some idea of the number of these by doing: locate consolefonts | less or more breifly: locate consolefonts | wc -l 234 for a simple count of the possibilities. Red Hat and other distributions are moving more and more toward internationalization, so that the default fonts are likely to be problematic. That means that it will be more necessary than ever to load a stripped down font for the console, for devices that are non-standard (you mentioned "console", so I assume you are not talking about a serial device, which are controlled by terminal description files, pointed to by the TERM variable -- note that there should be terminfo and termcap description files for specific displays in this case). If you do, for example: rpm -qilf /lib/kbd/consolefonts/iso01.16.gz | less (replace the "l" in "-qlif" with "d" for just the documentation) you will find that these all come from the kbd package, which includes all the utilities and their documentation for listing, installing, and modifying these fonts. Presumably you would want to use a fairly stripped down one, such as the last mentioned file, which contains only the following: In iso01.16.gz: # combine partial fonts none.00-17.16 ascii.20-7f.16 none.00-17.16 8859-1.a0-ff.16 So maybe that one would be ok? Or even more basic, only the second (ascii) one in the list? Sorry about taking so long in answering this: I was hoping someone more qualified could give a more specific, apropos answer, but that seems not to be likely now. Hope this helps, LCR On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Lee Maschmeyer wrote: > I had approximately the same results. I could > not read titles, footers, check boxes or > highlighted items in Braille; they came out as > all question marks. I could read most of the > non-highlighted items. Since the cursor (still!) > hangs out on the line below the highlighted one > just like in Red Hat 8 install, it further adds > to the interest. Fortunately with a combination > of Braille and Optacon and sweat I muddled > through to victory. Other consoles were > completely question marks; I don't think I tried > the Optacon on them. > > I was afraid it was the way I built the hacked > initrd. Glad (well, sad!) I'm not the only one > with the problem. Apparently they're not really > going into text mode; the screen is 29 lines > high, though still 80 columns. Maybe it's > missing Braille font maps or something... > > On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 12:01:09AM +0200, Tobias > Vinteus wrote: > > Hi all, For those who are using older > > hardware-driven braille displays be warned > > that the RedHat 9 text mode installation > > Doesn't work properly from the console. My > > braille display cannot read the screen even > > though I've typed "linux text" on the boot > > prompt. But serial installation works fine > > though. By the way, is it possible somehow to > > view the other consoles in serial mode. I get > > a hang during partition detection and would > > very much like to read the diagnostic messages > > from the other consoles. -- L. C. Robinson reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx People buy MicroShaft for compatibility, but get incompatibility and instability instead. This is award winning "innovation". Find out how MS holds your data hostage with "The *Lens*"; see "CyberSnare" at http://www.netaction.org/msoft/cybersnare.html _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list