I could not get anyone to talk about the serial parts of speakup, I wanted to set up a conference call, but I could not get anyone to participate. As for the serial console, the point was that it was not up to kernel coding standards to patch the kernel directly, what the kernel guys want us to do is to write a driver, as though speakup were a strange piece of hardware which would register in the appropriate way and then it could do any reasonable thing. I was looking at how to do this by looking at the serial driver so I could look for any serial port, but I got involved in some other projects, so I had to postpone that work. John G. Heim <jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John, didn't you once try to form a team to get started on a rewrite > of speakup. What ever happened with that? I'm not sure who said it > but I agree with whomever said the first thing we should do is try to > get a concensus on what we need in a screen reader. > > But I am a bit confused by something you said below. Isn't the serial > console code in the kernel up to kernel coding standards? The reason I > ask is that I once asked on the kernel developers list what the right > way to access the serial port was. If speakup does it wrong, that > implies there is a right way, what is that? I didn't really get a > good answer. That's when I started poking around in the serial console > code. > > I wish there was a good way to get explanations of this stuff from the > kernel developers. > > > > > On 10/09/14 14:23, covici@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > The first serial driver I wrote for speakup was like that, I copied > > stuff from the serial console, but it had to be changed to conform to > > the kernel specs, so you didn't have to patch the actual kernel. > > > > John G. Heim <jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > >> I once spent an afternoon poking around in the serial console code > >> trying to see how it wrote to the serial port. I never did figure it > >> out though. Even so, it seems to me that what speakup does is pretty > >> similar to the serial console. > >> > >> > >> > >> On 10/09/14 11:23, Littlefield, Tyler wrote: > >>> Re: writing directly to the serial port, Is there another layer that the > >>> kernel provides that we could go through to avoid that issue entirely? > >>> How do other devices work, or is there not any other such modules in the > >>> kernel that do use the serial port like speakup does for synths? > >>> On 10/9/2014 12:08 PM, John G. Heim wrote: > >>>> Hmmm... I don't know. I have to say that I remain unconvinced. I've > >>>> never seen speakup cause a kernel panic. On the other hand, I have > >>>> witnessed the false cause effect. Something happens that causes a > >>>> kernel panic and since speakup is part of the kernel, it naturally has > >>>> problems. You were on a development server, right? Isn't it more > >>>> likely that one of the developers crashed the server amd that, in > >>>> turn, caused problems for speakup? I run some development servers here > >>>> at the UW math department and it happens all the time. Somebody causes > >>>> an OOM (out of memory) event and, yes, that crashes speakup. > >>>> > >>>> I once asked on the kernel developers list for comments on what's > >>>> wrong with the speakup code. There is that one biggie, of course, > >>>> speakup writes directly to the serial port. But all the other > >>>> criticisms were things like not following naming conventions, poor > >>>> indentation, etc. Maybe the people who mattered didn't bother to > >>>> answer my question. But there wasn't anything in there that would tend > >>>> to indicate that speakup is prone to causing kernel panics. Now, any > >>>> software package can have a bug. But I have no reason to believe that > >>>> speakup is particularly unstable. Quite the contrary in fact. > >>>> > >>>> And even if there is a bug in speakup that can cause a kernel panic, > >>>> that's an argument for finding the bug and fixing it. Not for > >>>> abandoning it entirely. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> On 10/09/14 08:34, Deedra Waters wrote: > >>>>> Janina, > >>>>> > >>>>> speakup was the cause because when bossman came down to hook up a > >>>>> monitor and look, the panick messages had something to do with speakup. > >>>>> > >>>>> As for backing up their work, they were trying to fix their fuck-up to > >>>>> begin with. The initial problem wasn't with speakup. However when i was > >>>>> helping them debug it, speakup made the kernel panick and crash. > >>>>> > >>>>> Debian i dont think likes people with root access on their box to begin > >>>>> with, but i think they kind of didn't like speakup in their kernel to > >>>>> begin with. > >>>>> > >>>>> I suspect on the other hand that if speakup was a user-space app, it > >>>>> wouldn't have mattered to them so much. If a userspace program crashes > >>>>> it doesn't take down the whole box. When speakup does though, it takes > >>>>> down the whole box. > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>> 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 -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici covici@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
