Maybe we should change the discussion toward trouble shooting techniques.
Suppose you are the one and only linux systems admin where you work. You
come in one morning and there are 8 people at your office door saying
they can't get to their email. You ping the email server and get
nothing. What do you do next?
On 10/09/14 03:08, Kelly Prescott wrote:
I am not sure I am a fan of this upcoming change, but I believe we can
find ways to continue without much more inconvenience than we already have.
First, I agree with Brian, I never install speakup on a server I manage,
and I manage lots of them.
They are all managed through the network.
Second, I actually see a possible advantage in the systemd interface as
it does lots of detailed logging of the boot process.
I think we have all known for years that the hardware synthesizers are
going the way of the land-line telephone... ;) <smiles>
With that said, however, I have a few thoughts:
1: either use yasr or rewrite speakup to be in userspace.
2: Take Chris's idea of a ramdisk approach and maybe write a little
thing for systemd to hold and either echo the boot messages or put them
somewhere they can be read by the user.
Most distributions already place them in /var/log anyway.
3: why not look at writing something to go with a UEFI boot loader to
speak the early boot screens.
I am not a UEFI expert, but it looks like it might be possible to get
boot loaders to push text out a serial port or maybe a USB interface.
This would only leave a small gap between the loading of the kernel and
enabling speech from the ramdisk.
I have done some checking and I get software speakup speech with systemd
between 8 and 13 seconds into the boot.
The time difference is related to which distribution I use.
I welcome all thoughts or constructive criticism.
-- Kelly prescott
On Wed, 8 Oct 2014, Kyle wrote:
According to Al Sten-Clanton:
# My knowledge of this business is minimal, but I thought that one
# advantage of the current approach, if you can use a hardware speech
# synthesizer, is that you can get at least some of the boot-up
# messages--not as early as sighted folks get them, but well before
# software speech can kick in. If this is true, wouldn't the proposed
# change be a very builty-in reduction in non-visual access?
This was a lot more true in the early days of Linux than it is now.
Computers have evolved to the point where most of them, especially home
computers, no longer have dedicated serial ports, which is the only type
of port over which Speakup is able to communicate with a hardware speech
synthesizer. To add to the problem, very few hardware speech
synthesizers are currently being made these days, and those that are
still being produced only have a USB interface. So in order to take
advantage of receiving every kernel message from startup to shutdown,
one must have an old computer or a server, as well as an old hardware
synthesizer purchased used, probably something like an old DECTalk
Express, accent SA, DoubleTalk LT, etc. And sadly no, a USB to serial
converter will not solve the problem of getting a serial port onto a
laptop or most desktop computers, as Speakup has no knowledge of this
type of device, nor does it know how to communicate through it, as I
believe it has to be enumerated by udev or similar, meaning it isn't
*always* going to have the name /dev/ttyS1 or /dev/ttyS2 or similar. I
hope this answers your question.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
--
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
