[DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

Discussion:

Gregory Nowak

2016-05-26 23:23:51 UTC

Hi KatolaZ and the speakup list,
KatolaZ, I'm sending a cc to the speakup list, which is full of blind
GNU/Linux speakup user's. I have my own thoughts on your comments
below, but my preferences aren't everyone else's. So, I think it's a
really good idea to give you more feedback at this point in our
discussion. Fellow speakup listers, the images that KatolaZ is
working on can be found at:

<http://devuan.kalos.mine.nu>

As I type this, we have a beep at the isolinux boot prompt, which
sounds to me like three beeps. You can either press enter here, or
wait a few seconds more. If you are booting from a burned cd, it will
spin for a bit. If you are booting some other way, wait maybe three
minutes at most, probably less. Either way, then type "root", and
"toor" as the password to login. Then to start speakup, type:

modprobe speakup_soft

followed by

service espeakup start

You should then hopefully get software speech. The images also include
brltty, which is started by default, and configured for a usb
display. Since brltty and speakup both want to use the numpad, you
will have to do service brltty stop to stop brltty, so speakup can
control the numpad. The alternative is to use speakup's laptop layout,
which does work just fine. The images include yasr as well, which I
haven't tested yet.

Comments are inline.

Hi again,
as far as getting agetty to play ctrl+g ... I don't know of a way to
do that. You can however simply edit /etc/issue, and put a ctrl+g into
that. The way I do this in vi is to do vi /etc/issue.
Then I do "i" to insert at the beginning, and then I do ctrl+v ctrl+g
to insert a ctrl+g into the file. Then I just do esc, followed by
":wq" to save the file.

Hi Greg,
thanks you very much for your reply. I am actually trying to find a
solution that is somehow configurable, but maybe that just putting a
^G in issue is just fine.
I have also scripted a simple daemon that "beeps" every second during
the boot, and emits a certain beep sequence when the boot is complete
(basically, when getty has been spawned). I will now test it and if
everything works fine I will include it in the next release.

Ok, thanks. I have tested so far with the
Devuan_1.0_Jessie-Beta_minimal-live_amd64-20160523_0028.iso image. At
the boot prompt, there are what seem to be three beeps one after the
other. I'm personally think that's probably longer than it needs to
be. I would say that a single beep is good enough. I'm also not sure
that progress during boot is necessary. I think that a beep at the
isolinux boot prompt, and another at the login prompt would be enough,
but that's just my personal opinion, others might find progress beeps
useful. I don't think such a a thing has been tried on a livecd before.

I was also thinking of "marking" the bootloader entries with beeps,
but I don'w know what is the best way to do that. Basically, at the
moment we have a single beep in each of the "bootable" entries. Maybe
it might be useful to have 1 beep for the first entry, 2 for the
second one, and so on? I am not sure though, since we also have in the
boot menu two or three "special" entries (one is memtest, the other is
a call to the chainloader, to boot whatever is found in the first
disk), which should be somehow marked differently.

I have always found it sufficient to know what was in
the boot menu, and to count arrow key presses to get what I wanted to
get to. Having different beeps for each boot entry is another concept
which I don't think has been tried before. I'm not sure
what the majority of blind
users would prefer. Perhaps you will get some feedback here.

I would appreciate your take on this aspect. I was thinking to have
1) a single beep for each "normal" boot entry
2) two beeps for the special "memtest" entry
3) three beeps for the chainloader
A visually impaired user might just scroll through the first four
options (a single beep for each line), then bump into the memtest (two
beeps), then find the chainloader options (three beeps), then come
back to the first bootable option (one beep)

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.

Greg

HND
KatolaZ
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Shawn Kirkpatrick

2016-05-27 00:36:09 UTC

Permalink

Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the beep
command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified frequency and
length. I've found it very useful to have different tones indicate different
things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this? Something
that would involve typing only one command and would do all the steps
needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't think I've
seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux could do different
beep tones, then they could be used to indicate different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot so this
may or may not work.

Post by Gregory Nowak
Hi KatolaZ and the speakup list,
KatolaZ, I'm sending a cc to the speakup list, which is full of blind
GNU/Linux speakup user's. I have my own thoughts on your comments
below, but my preferences aren't everyone else's. So, I think it's a
really good idea to give you more feedback at this point in our
discussion. Fellow speakup listers, the images that KatolaZ is
<http://devuan.kalos.mine.nu>
As I type this, we have a beep at the isolinux boot prompt, which
sounds to me like three beeps. You can either press enter here, or
wait a few seconds more. If you are booting from a burned cd, it will
spin for a bit. If you are booting some other way, wait maybe three
minutes at most, probably less. Either way, then type "root", and
modprobe speakup_soft
followed by
service espeakup start
You should then hopefully get software speech. The images also include
brltty, which is started by default, and configured for a usb
display. Since brltty and speakup both want to use the numpad, you
will have to do service brltty stop to stop brltty, so speakup can
control the numpad. The alternative is to use speakup's laptop layout,
which does work just fine. The images include yasr as well, which I
haven't tested yet.
Comments are inline.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

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Glenn

2016-05-27 00:49:37 UTC

Permalink

I wish GRUB would do this by default, and perhaps do an increasing tone beep
as one arrowed down the screen.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shawn Kirkpatrick" <***@shawnk.ca>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<***@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2016 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the beep
command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified frequency and
length. I've found it very useful to have different tones indicate different
things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this? Something
that would involve typing only one command and would do all the steps
needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't think I've
seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux could do different
beep tones, then they could be used to indicate different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot so this
may or may not work.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

--
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tim

2016-05-27 05:22:53 UTC

Permalink

I remember opensuse 11.0 had a speaking boot menu, there isn't much
docks on it or even how to get it set up, but apparently they use either
grub or G something the name escapes me at the moment, but if you hit
f11 after the POST, and I believe a beep, it would speak and also speak
as you arrowed threw what device/etc you wished to boot from.

Post by Glenn
I wish GRUB would do this by default, and perhaps do an increasing tone beep
as one arrowed down the screen.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2016 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version
Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the beep
command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified frequency and
length. I've found it very useful to have different tones indicate different
things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this? Something
that would involve typing only one command and would do all the steps
needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't think I've
seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux could do different
beep tones, then they could be used to indicate different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot so this
may or may not work.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

--
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Shawn Kirkpatrick

2016-05-27 08:03:59 UTC

Permalink

Grub does have a play command that can be used to play different tones. I
use it to let me know when the grub screen is up and when an entry has been
selected. I don't think there's any way to have it beep as you arrow around
thoe but maybe the developers would be willing to put in this feature since
all the needed parts are already there.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

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Gregory Nowak

2016-05-27 01:03:54 UTC

Permalink

Post by Shawn Kirkpatrick
Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the
beep command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified
frequency and length. I've found it very useful to have different
tones indicate different things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this?
Something that would involve typing only one command and would do
all the steps needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't
think I've seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux
could do different beep tones, then they could be used to indicate
different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot
so this may or may not work.

Thanks for that suggestion. Yes, it would be nice if isolinux was more
flexible. I also wasn't aware that some machines had their pc speaker
disabled by default. We can only do so much as far as that goes. As
for starting speakup automatically, I didn't think that was a good
idea. What if the user wants to use a hardware synth (once those work
again), instead of software speech? I personally like the approach
that grml takes these days, let the user start speakup in whatever way
the user wants, software or hardware speech. What if the user doesn't
want speakup, but wants brltty or yasr instead

Also, KatolaZ isn't on this list, so please either cc your thoughts to
KatolaZ, or send them directly.

Greg

Zachary Kline

2016-05-27 01:07:56 UTC

Permalink

Post by Gregory Nowak
Thanks for that suggestion. Yes, it would be nice if isolinux was more
flexible. I also wasn't aware that some machines had their pc speaker
disabled by default. We can only do so much as far as that goes. As
for starting speakup automatically, I didn't think that was a good
idea. What if the user wants to use a hardware synth (once those work
again), instead of software speech? I personally like the approach
that grml takes these days, let the user start speakup in whatever way
the user wants, software or hardware speech. What if the user doesn't
want speakup, but wants brltty or yasr instead

One thing which should be addressed is multiple sound cards. My current HP laptop has (what also thinks of), as two, since there’s a digital HDMI port. Often, I’d boot a bistro only to find no sound because the HDMI grabbed card0.

Talking ArchLinux has a decent solution to this, but I’ve never seen anything like it employed for other distros.

Gregory Nowak

2016-05-27 02:00:27 UTC

Permalink

Post by Zachary Kline
One thing which should be addressed is multiple sound cards. My current HP laptop has (what also thinks of), as two, since there’s a digital HDMI port. Often, I’d boot a bistro only to find no sound because the HDMI grabbed card0.
Talking ArchLinux has a decent solution to this, but I’ve never seen anything like it employed for other distros.

Good point which I haven't thought of. I haven't used talking
arch. From what I understand though, it plays a file on all detected
sound cards one by one asking the user to press enter to activate that
particular sound card. Is that about right? Such a file could easily
be generated with espeak, or even espeak itself could be used directly
to keep the squashfs size to a minimum.

We also need to keep in mind that these are images meant for everyone,
including sighted users. I imagine they being the majority would find
it annoying every time they were asked to press enter to activate a
sound card, especially if they didn't understand the point. It would
probably be much like the boot process stopping every time asking
sighted users to select which video output they wanted to use. They
would probably appreciate it, but the majority of us would probably
find that annoying. KatolaZ has already made the first boot option
with no framebuffer as the "accessible" option. Perhaps this sound
card detection could run only if the system is booted using that
particular choice, but not on any of the other choices? Maybe someone
has an even better idea?

Greg

Post by Zachary Kline
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Chris Brannon

2016-05-27 04:42:01 UTC

Permalink

Post by Gregory Nowak

Post by Zachary Kline
Talking ArchLinux has a decent solution to this, but I’ve never seen anything like it employed for other distros.

That's the quick and dirty solution I came up with about three years
ago. I don't know if they've optimized it any further.

Getting this to work on an image that is meant for everybody seems like
a more difficult problem. The best bet is to have a "speech"
option in the boot menu, rather than trying to overload the no
framebuffer option.
Or alternatively, does this image automatically log you into root on
tty1? If so, just play a beep sound on all of the cards once the image
is booted, and let the user be responsible for starting Speakup
manually, perhaps by running a script named startspeakup.

When I did the first Talking Arch, my basic philosophy was that the user
should be able to boot with as little "blind typing" as possible,
preferably none at all. At the time, I had a computer without a console
speaker, so I didn't have any way to know when I was at the boot prompt,
aside from trying to guess using the mechanical sound from my CD-ROM
drive. When booting from USB, you don't even get the mechanical
feedback. These days, I only use USB, and I carry a TalkingArch flash
drive in my wallet.

If you end up at a root shell as soon as a live image has been
booted, then it isn't too onerous to have to type something like
startspeakup, especially if you know you're sitting at a shell prompt.

Having to select your audio output every time is definitely a bit of a
chore. I don't know of a good way around it.
Perhaps an option could be made available to only select among certain
classes of audio devices, like PCI, USB, or HDMI?
E.G., startspeakup --sound=pci only tries your PCI audio
devices, while ignoring all the rest?
Anyway, alsa selecting the wrong default audio device is a real problem
in the wild, and I don't know a better way to handle it than manual
selection.

-- Chris

Kelly Prescott

2016-05-27 17:01:11 UTC

Permalink

I would be interested in seeing better feedback at the initial boot prompt.
If that comes from multiple beeps, different tones, or some combination, I would like to see that.
If That happens, I suspect we would incorporate it into the TalkingArch distribution.
I also have TalkingArch every where I go. I am also probably a little biased about TalkingArch as I am one of the maintainers, but I have found it has saved my bacon so many times.
It is my primary distro on both my laptops and I have a custom backup solution I use for customers which is based on the TalkingArch distro.
All of the scripts etc for the sound card stuff is open source so you could certainly integrate it with another distribution.

Kp

Jude DaShiell

2016-06-02 18:15:49 UTC

Permalink

That's right, and you can even have talkingarch play over usb speakers.

Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 22:00:27
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

One thing which should be addressed is multiple sound cards. My current HP laptop has (what also thinks of), as two, since there?s a digital HDMI port. Often, I?d boot a bistro only to find no sound because the HDMI grabbed card0.
Talking ArchLinux has a decent solution to this, but I?ve never seen anything like it employed for other distros.

Good point which I haven't thought of. I haven't used talking
arch. From what I understand though, it plays a file on all detected
sound cards one by one asking the user to press enter to activate that
particular sound card. Is that about right? Such a file could easily
be generated with espeak, or even espeak itself could be used directly
to keep the squashfs size to a minimum.
We also need to keep in mind that these are images meant for everyone,
including sighted users. I imagine they being the majority would find
it annoying every time they were asked to press enter to activate a
sound card, especially if they didn't understand the point. It would
probably be much like the boot process stopping every time asking
sighted users to select which video output they wanted to use. They
would probably appreciate it, but the majority of us would probably
find that annoying. KatolaZ has already made the first boot option
with no framebuffer as the "accessible" option. Perhaps this sound
card detection could run only if the system is booted using that
particular choice, but not on any of the other choices? Maybe someone
has an even better idea?
Greg

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Hart Larry

2016-05-27 01:03:49 UTC

Permalink

Well Shawn-and-All, I seem to remember Jupitor having helpful progress beeps,
but its been many years since now Jupitor won't work with my DecTalk USB
Hart

Jude DaShiell

2016-06-02 18:04:31 UTC

Permalink

aplay is probably available and creation of a login.wav file could be
done with a command left in rc.local too. I did get espeak talking and
have a doubletalk so can probably test yasr with that. Unfortunately
since I have only a wifi connection in computer's location now, I
couldn't get the wifi adapter up yet. If this computer could boot from
a usb port I could put the image on a flash drive then do configuration
on that flash drive and boot the computer from that flash drive.
Unfortunately it's an old amd k8 athelon machine that won't boot from
usb. If I get to an ethernet connection though this ought to work fine
as a live disk.

Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 19:23:51
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version
Hi KatolaZ and the speakup list,
KatolaZ, I'm sending a cc to the speakup list, which is full of blind
GNU/Linux speakup user's. I have my own thoughts on your comments
below, but my preferences aren't everyone else's. So, I think it's a
really good idea to give you more feedback at this point in our
discussion. Fellow speakup listers, the images that KatolaZ is
<http://devuan.kalos.mine.nu>
As I type this, we have a beep at the isolinux boot prompt, which
sounds to me like three beeps. You can either press enter here, or
wait a few seconds more. If you are booting from a burned cd, it will
spin for a bit. If you are booting some other way, wait maybe three
minutes at most, probably less. Either way, then type "root", and
modprobe speakup_soft
followed by
service espeakup start
You should then hopefully get software speech. The images also include
brltty, which is started by default, and configured for a usb
display. Since brltty and speakup both want to use the numpad, you
will have to do service brltty stop to stop brltty, so speakup can
control the numpad. The alternative is to use speakup's laptop layout,
which does work just fine. The images include yasr as well, which I
haven't tested yet.
Comments are inline.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

--
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gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
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If we haven't been in touch before, e-mail me before adding me to your contacts.
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Glenn

2016-06-03 01:37:02 UTC

Permalink

Jude,
Can you install GRUB on that older computer and update it with the thumb
drive in, and thus have included in the GRUB menu?
Otherwise, there are GRUB ISO's for CD's too, for finding thumb drives.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jude DaShiell" <***@panix.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<***@linux-speakup.org>; "KatolaZ" <***@freaknet.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2016 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

aplay is probably available and creation of a login.wav file could be
done with a command left in rc.local too. I did get espeak talking and
have a doubletalk so can probably test yasr with that. Unfortunately
since I have only a wifi connection in computer's location now, I
couldn't get the wifi adapter up yet. If this computer could boot from
a usb port I could put the image on a flash drive then do configuration
on that flash drive and boot the computer from that flash drive.
Unfortunately it's an old amd k8 athelon machine that won't boot from
usb. If I get to an ethernet connection though this ought to work fine
as a live disk.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

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gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
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Jude DaShiell

2016-06-03 13:02:59 UTC

Permalink

I can put the thumbdrive in and run update-grub, thanks for the

Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 21:37:02
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version
Jude,
Can you install GRUB on that older computer and update it with the thumb
drive in, and thus have included in the GRUB menu?
Otherwise, there are GRUB ISO's for CD's too, for finding thumb drives.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2016 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version
aplay is probably available and creation of a login.wav file could be
done with a command left in rc.local too. I did get espeak talking and
have a doubletalk so can probably test yasr with that. Unfortunately
since I have only a wifi connection in computer's location now, I
couldn't get the wifi adapter up yet. If this computer could boot from
a usb port I could put the image on a flash drive then do configuration
on that flash drive and boot the computer from that flash drive.
Unfortunately it's an old amd k8 athelon machine that won't boot from
usb. If I get to an ethernet connection though this ought to work fine
as a live disk.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.
Greg

--
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