GRML and Speakup

[Edgar Lozano]

Hi,

Just wondering if someone could provide me with the steps to get grml
talking with Speakup? I'm using the 2014.11 iso image. I heard a
well-done podcast in which the command "grml swspeakup" was provided
as a boot command. Does this still work? It was an informative one
over the installation of Arch using this live environment.
Unfortunately, it seems a bit out of date. Otherwise, what steps are
needed to get this thing speaking to me? Also, just as an aside, has
anyone tried following through with one of those Linux from Scratch
(build-it-yourself) projects? Is it worth doing? Is there potential
accessibility support with Speakup? that is, can the program be
incorporated into a custom Linux environment? I read somewhere that
the live LFS live distribution has Speakup on it. Sorry, I've been
growing somewhat obsessed with Linux and want to understand as much as
possible about building and deploying live environments that provide
spoken feedback upon boot for system administration.

Thanks in advance.

[c***@ccs.covici.com]

The instructions you saw are out of date. What you do is at the tone
that you hear after booting from the cd, just hit enter and wait for
another beep. Now just hit return and you will be at a root prompt
with no speech. Now type modprobe speakup_soft and hit enter and then
type espeakup. Your sound may be very low volume at this point, but you
can type alsamixer and hit up arrow a number of timesand then if
necesary hit right arrow and type up arrow a few times and do this again
and you should hear sound.

Post by Edgar Lozano
Hi,
Just wondering if someone could provide me with the steps to get grml
talking with Speakup? I'm using the 2014.11 iso image. I heard a
well-done podcast in which the command "grml swspeakup" was provided
as a boot command. Does this still work? It was an informative one
over the installation of Arch using this live environment.
Unfortunately, it seems a bit out of date. Otherwise, what steps are
needed to get this thing speaking to me? Also, just as an aside, has
anyone tried following through with one of those Linux from Scratch
(build-it-yourself) projects? Is it worth doing? Is there potential
accessibility support with Speakup? that is, can the program be
incorporated into a custom Linux environment? I read somewhere that
the live LFS live distribution has Speakup on it. Sorry, I've been
growing somewhat obsessed with Linux and want to understand as much as
possible about building and deploying live environments that provide
spoken feedback upon boot for system administration.
Thanks in advance.
--
Thanks for reading.
Have a good day.
If you ever get the chance, go to http://www.realrandomradio.com and
check us out.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[Steve Matzura]

Post by c***@ccs.covici.com
The instructions you saw are out of date. What you do is at the tone
that you hear after booting from the cd, just hit enter and wait for
another beep. Now just hit return and you will be at a root prompt
with no speech. Now type modprobe speakup_soft and hit enter and then
type espeakup.

Some enterprising soul should come up with the mods which will do this
automatically. Try as I might, I absolutely could not hear the
internal speaker beep on either of the two systems I tried this on.
Turns out, the speaker itself is buried deep, and I mean really deep,
in the case, covered up by lots of other components. Therefore, having
grml come up talking would be, to say the least, most efficacious.

[Techswing33]

Hello,

I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

Thanks.
Dave.

Post by Steve Matzura

Post by c***@ccs.covici.com
The instructions you saw are out of date. What you do is at the tone
that you hear after booting from the cd, just hit enter and wait for
another beep. Now just hit return and you will be at a root prompt
with no speech. Now type modprobe speakup_soft and hit enter and then
type espeakup.

Some enterprising soul should come up with the mods which will do this
automatically. Try as I might, I absolutely could not hear the
internal speaker beep on either of the two systems I tried this on.
Turns out, the speaker itself is buried deep, and I mean really deep,
in the case, covered up by lots of other components. Therefore, having
grml come up talking would be, to say the least, most efficacious.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[Gregory Nowak]

Did you verify the checksum/gpg signature/both of the iso before
burning it? Did you verify the disk burned correctly before trying to
boot from it? I assume your pc's BIOS is set to boot from the dvd
drive before booting from the hard drive. I think the grml iso can
also be booted from a usb drive, but don't quote me on that. You do of
course need to be using the full iso here, not the small iso.

Greg

Post by Techswing33
Hello,
I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

[Tony Baechler]

Post by Techswing33
I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

I am working on a rescue CD based on Debian. That is to say it is 99%
Debian packages with very minor adjustments for accessibility. It now even
includes the Debian Installer, so you can install an official Debian system
on your machine. It comes up talking on two real machines and in a VM, but
it needs wider testing. I do have brltty enabled, but I don't have a
Braille display. It has most standard tools you would expect, plus you can
install others if you want. If you want a talking system out of the box,
you can install the live system to your hard drive, but I don't recommend
this. Unlike other CDs, it should come up talking automatically and
includes non-free firmware, so your wireless network should be detected.

There is just one small problem. That is the bandwidth. I hesitate to give
out a download location here because I don't want my server to get flooded
with hits. Therefore, if you want it, please write off list. I will
eventually find a better hosting solution, but mirrors are welcome. It's
currently 64-bit only, but once it's stable, I plan to produce a 32-bit
version and DVDs with a GUI. I am guessing I'll need about 12.5 GB total,
but not for now.

If this interests you, please test. It needs testing on as much hardware as
possible. I think I included most important packages, but if you think
something is missing, please let me know. I plan to eventually set up a
mailing list, but not until it gets more testing.

[Jude DaShiell]

It's possible to use debian-testing nonfree firmware edition to install
debian. Unfortunately that worked on my amd system and failed on my
acer system on acer the firmware wouldn't install even though the
firmware was already on the media in that instance the media acted like
the official debian media. On the amd machine though once the
installation was done it was impossible to configure the rt2870 wifi
adapter and connect to the internet. The installation does not run
wpa_passphrase and update /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf the way debian has it
set up. When I booted the system after installation I got a message in
dmesg that the wlx link was not ready. I could repeat installation and
execute a shell and run wpa_passphrase but wonder if that would even
help. For the record, I'm running wifi on Talkingarch since Talkingarch
was able to configure the wifi adapter and get out to the internet after
installation. The netctl script is archlinux specific and was very
helpful once I figured out how to use it. I lost access to ethernet and
will be without it until at least December of this year since equipment
had to be moved so another person could live in that space.

Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2015 04:57:13
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: GRML and Speakup

Post by Techswing33
I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

I am working on a rescue CD based on Debian. That is to say it is 99%
Debian packages with very minor adjustments for accessibility. It now even
includes the Debian Installer, so you can install an official Debian system
on your machine. It comes up talking on two real machines and in a VM, but
it needs wider testing. I do have brltty enabled, but I don't have a
Braille display. It has most standard tools you would expect, plus you can
install others if you want. If you want a talking system out of the box,
you can install the live system to your hard drive, but I don't recommend
this. Unlike other CDs, it should come up talking automatically and
includes non-free firmware, so your wireless network should be detected.
There is just one small problem. That is the bandwidth. I hesitate to give
out a download location here because I don't want my server to get flooded
with hits. Therefore, if you want it, please write off list. I will
eventually find a better hosting solution, but mirrors are welcome. It's
currently 64-bit only, but once it's stable, I plan to produce a 32-bit
version and DVDs with a GUI. I am guessing I'll need about 12.5 GB total,
but not for now.
If this interests you, please test. It needs testing on as much hardware as
possible. I think I included most important packages, but if you think
something is missing, please let me know. I plan to eventually set up a
mailing list, but not until it gets more testing.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

--

[Rob]

I can host it for you if you want. I have a vps offsite.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Baechler" <***@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<***@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2015 3:57 AM
Subject: Re: GRML and Speakup

Post by Tony Baechler

Post by Techswing33
I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

I am working on a rescue CD based on Debian. That is to say it is 99%
Debian packages with very minor adjustments for accessibility. It now
even includes the Debian Installer, so you can install an official Debian
system on your machine. It comes up talking on two real machines and in a
VM, but it needs wider testing. I do have brltty enabled, but I don't
have a Braille display. It has most standard tools you would expect, plus
you can install others if you want. If you want a talking system out of
the box, you can install the live system to your hard drive, but I don't
recommend this. Unlike other CDs, it should come up talking automatically
and includes non-free firmware, so your wireless network should be
detected.
There is just one small problem. That is the bandwidth. I hesitate to
give out a download location here because I don't want my server to get
flooded with hits. Therefore, if you want it, please write off list. I
will eventually find a better hosting solution, but mirrors are welcome.
It's currently 64-bit only, but once it's stable, I plan to produce a
32-bit version and DVDs with a GUI. I am guessing I'll need about 12.5 GB
total, but not for now.
If this interests you, please test. It needs testing on as much hardware
as possible. I think I included most important packages, but if you think
something is missing, please let me know. I plan to eventually set up a
mailing list, but not until it gets more testing.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[John G. Heim]

The International Association Of Visually Impaired Technologists would
make space available on our server for that. See www.iavit.org.

Post by Rob
I can host it for you if you want. I have a vps offsite.
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2015 3:57 AM
Subject: Re: GRML and Speakup

Post by Tony Baechler

Post by Techswing33
I second this. I've tried to do this in the past, but all the isos
I've made then tried to boot have been nnonbootable.

I am working on a rescue CD based on Debian. That is to say it is
99% Debian packages with very minor adjustments for accessibility.
It now even includes the Debian Installer, so you can install an
official Debian system on your machine. It comes up talking on two
real machines and in a VM, but it needs wider testing. I do have
brltty enabled, but I don't have a Braille display. It has most
standard tools you would expect, plus you can install others if you
want. If you want a talking system out of the box, you can install
the live system to your hard drive, but I don't recommend this.
Unlike other CDs, it should come up talking automatically and
includes non-free firmware, so your wireless network should be detected.
There is just one small problem. That is the bandwidth. I hesitate
to give out a download location here because I don't want my server
to get flooded with hits. Therefore, if you want it, please write
off list. I will eventually find a better hosting solution, but
mirrors are welcome. It's currently 64-bit only, but once it's
stable, I plan to produce a 32-bit version and DVDs with a GUI. I am
guessing I'll need about 12.5 GB total, but not for now.
If this interests you, please test. It needs testing on as much
hardware as possible. I think I included most important packages,
but if you think something is missing, please let me know. I plan to
eventually set up a mailing list, but not until it gets more testing.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[Tony Baechler]

Thanks very much. Do I have to join? I looked at your pages
(iavit.org/~john/) and got nothing. See my previous post. If you can give
me preferrably ssh access or at least rsync, I'm interested. If you just
want to automatically mirror, that could be fine, but it would probably have
to be with rsync. I'm not even close to coming up with docs or any kind of
release schedule yet. Since it's based on Debian testing, packages should
be updated fairly often, but I haven't determined an update schedule either.
The point is I would need to be able to push updates somewhat often. I
would probably also need a writable directory for at least a basic web page
and the various images, checksums, etc.

The International Association Of Visually Impaired Technologists would make
space available on our server for that. See www.iavit.org.

Post by Rob
I can host it for you if you want. I have a vps offsite.

[John G. Heim]

There is really nothing to join. It's not like there are dues or
anything. We have both a mediawiki wiki and a wordpress blog. I don't
know anything about posting files with either mediawiki or wordpress
although I'm sure it can be done. I would think having either a wiki
page or a blog would be important regardless of how the upload is done.
When people ask about a talking version of debian, you'd point them to
the wiki or to your blog.

You know what might be cool would be for me to set you up as a blogger
and you could write a debian accessibility blog. Possible topics could
be your own talking distro, the grub-init-tune script I wrote, and
patching a kernel for speakup. I can help you with ideas for topics and
with the technical stuff. Not to say you need technical help but I could
make it so at least some of your blog posts didn't take a whole lot of
work on your part. I'm sure the people on this list would help too.

I can give you ssh access and create a blog for you. Or you can just
sign up at the wiki yourself. I think if you really want to do it right,
what you might want to do is write a blog at www.iavit.org and post the
downloads at sourceforge or someplace. I used to have a sourceforge
account but they broke accessibility for a short time years ago and I
haven't been back since. But it seems a lot of people post their files
there. Must be something to it.

Post by Tony Baechler
Thanks very much. Do I have to join? I looked at your pages
(iavit.org/~john/) and got nothing. See my previous post. If you can
give me preferrably ssh access or at least rsync, I'm interested. If
you just want to automatically mirror, that could be fine, but it
would probably have to be with rsync. I'm not even close to coming up
with docs or any kind of release schedule yet. Since it's based on
Debian testing, packages should be updated fairly often, but I haven't
determined an update schedule either. The point is I would need to be
able to push updates somewhat often. I would probably also need a
writable directory for at least a basic web page and the various
images, checksums, etc.

The International Association Of Visually Impaired Technologists would make
space available on our server for that. See www.iavit.org.

Post by Rob
I can host it for you if you want. I have a vps offsite.

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[Tony Baechler]

There is really nothing to join. It's not like there are dues or anything.
We have both a mediawiki wiki and a wordpress blog. I don't know anything
about posting files with either mediawiki or wordpress although I'm sure it
can be done. I would think having either a wiki page or a blog would be
important regardless of how the upload is done. When people ask about a
talking version of debian, you'd point them to the wiki or to your blog.

I have used WP before. I found the accessibility fair. I think Drupal has
better accessibility, but I haven't tried it in years. For a basic
download, either a wiki or WP content upload is more effort than I want to
go through, especially for minor updates. That's why I would really prefer
the rsync option. All I need is hosting for the images and chroots. I have
a server and lots of web space, but it's the bandwidth for the images that
worries me.

You know what might be cool would be for me to set you up as a blogger and
you could write a debian accessibility blog. Possible topics could be your
own talking distro, the grub-init-tune script I wrote, and patching a kernel
for speakup. I can help you with ideas for topics and with the technical
stuff. Not to say you need technical help but I could make it so at least
some of your blog posts didn't take a whole lot of work on your part. I'm
sure the people on this list would help too.

Thanks, but no. I'm working on starting my own business and I can host my
own blog on my site when I'm ready, but I'm not to that point yet. I'm not
much for writing long blog posts anyway. I am happy to offer my CD images
as a public service, but when Debian gets a talking live CD which works like
D-I, my CD images will serve no purpose. To go back to an earlier
discussion on this list, I built my rescue CD for two reasons. First,
because I had a request. Second, I needed one and one wasn't easily
available. The Debian 8.2.0 live CD images don't currently include a rescue
CD, or if they do, I missed it. My ultimate goal, quite frankly, is to get
people interested in Linux and sell Linux support services.

I can give you ssh access and create a blog for you. Or you can just sign
up at the wiki yourself. I think if you really want to do it right, what you
might want to do is write a blog at www.iavit.org and post the downloads at
sourceforge or someplace. I used to have a sourceforge account but they
broke accessibility for a short time years ago and I haven't been back
since. But it seems a lot of people post their files there. Must be
something to it.

Yes, I took a look at Source Forge. They seemed to have good accessibility.
I don't know if there is a limit on how much I can upload. That is
certainly a viable option and worthy of further consideration. I'm still
refining my build process and am not ready to produce source images. A
requirement of SF is full sources must be included. I'm not clear from the
above paragraph if you're actually offering hosting for the images or not.
Yes, ssh access would be appreciated, but if I can't host images for
download, there probably is little point.

--------------------
Tony Baechler, founder, Baechler Access Technology Services
Putting accessibility at the forefront of technology
mailto:***@batsupport.com
Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]

[Tony Baechler]

Thanks. I'll need to be able to upload modified versions on a somewhat
regular basis. I'll eventually have both 32-bit and 64-bit CD images. I'm
hoping to have DVD images with live desktops, but I'm not to that point yet.
Since things are still in the testing phase, new images with relatively
small corrections come out on a semiregular basis, so probably rsync access
is best. Also, how much transfer bandwidth do you get per month? With each
CD image at about 700 MB, I don't expect a ton of downloads, but if a few
dozen people download it, it adds up fast. Finally, where is the VPS
located? I would want international mirrors and reasonably good download
speeds due to the large image sizes.

Post by Rob
I can host it for you if you want. I have a vps offsite.

[mike]

Hi,

I have built a Linux from scratch with a debian host but never got Speakup to work with it. I could not find any good instructions for enabling it in the kernel or the best way to go about building the sound system.

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-***@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Edgar Lozano
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 10:11 PM
To: ***@linux-speakup.org
Subject: GRML and Speakup

Hi,

Just wondering if someone could provide me with the steps to get grml talking with Speakup? I'm using the 2014.11 iso image. I heard a well-done podcast in which the command "grml swspeakup" was provided as a boot command. Does this still work? It was an informative one over the installation of Arch using this live environment.
Unfortunately, it seems a bit out of date. Otherwise, what steps are needed to get this thing speaking to me? Also, just as an aside, has anyone tried following through with one of those Linux from Scratch
(build-it-yourself) projects? Is it worth doing? Is there potential accessibility support with Speakup? that is, can the program be incorporated into a custom Linux environment? I read somewhere that the live LFS live distribution has Speakup on it. Sorry, I've been growing somewhat obsessed with Linux and want to understand as much as possible about building and deploying live environments that provide spoken feedback upon boot for system administration.

Thanks in advance.

--
Thanks for reading.
Have a good day.
If you ever get the chance, go to http://www.realrandomradio.com and check us out.

[Rob]

Post by mike
I have built a Linux from scratch with a debian host but never got Speakup
to work with it. I could not find any good instructions for enabling it in
the kernel or the best way to go about building the sound system.

I built LFS 7.7 and have it running with both speakup and Brltty. All you
have to do is select the staging drivers/speakup and the sound support item
in the kernel configuration. Install alsa-stuff. Add your appropriate kernel
modules in the appropriate files; the book tells you where to add modules,
should you need them that aren't autoloaded by the kernel. What I then did
was copy my voxin libs from the host into my new system, add the right init
script to have the connector come up and bingo. I had speakup going.

[Edgar Lozano]

Thanks for those instructions on enabling Speakup within GRML. It
definitely works. However, is there a way to turn the beep volume down
before booting? I was startled by the very loud four-beep sequence
that my laptop generated upon entering the root prompt.
Rob, you make it sound so easy. That is, building LFS with Speakup.
Are there any concrete example you may be able to give to accomplish
this. Maybe like a short summary of the commands you had to enter to
enable the staging tree driver? I must admit, I am a relative newcomer
to the Linux world, and probably the most advanced task that I've done
has been to install Arch successfully on an old computer, with the aid
of the Talking Arch image, of course. However, I want to dig deeper
into the Linux development structure so that I can start creating and
tinkering with live images with speech in mind. I've made a few useful
apps here and there for use within the console, but remastering and
such is a whole different area that I want to understand.

Post by Rob

Post by mike
I have built a Linux from scratch with a debian host but never got Speakup
to work with it. I could not find any good instructions for enabling it in
the kernel or the best way to go about building the sound system.

I built LFS 7.7 and have it running with both speakup and Brltty. All you
have to do is select the staging drivers/speakup and the sound support item
in the kernel configuration. Install alsa-stuff. Add your appropriate kernel
modules in the appropriate files; the book tells you where to add modules,
should you need them that aren't autoloaded by the kernel. What I then did
was copy my voxin libs from the host into my new system, add the right init
script to have the connector come up and bingo. I had speakup going.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[c***@ccs.covici.com]

The beep volume is out of the internal speaker -- mine is pretty low, in
fact.

Post by Edgar Lozano
Thanks for those instructions on enabling Speakup within GRML. It
definitely works. However, is there a way to turn the beep volume down
before booting? I was startled by the very loud four-beep sequence
that my laptop generated upon entering the root prompt.
Rob, you make it sound so easy. That is, building LFS with Speakup.
Are there any concrete example you may be able to give to accomplish
this. Maybe like a short summary of the commands you had to enter to
enable the staging tree driver? I must admit, I am a relative newcomer
to the Linux world, and probably the most advanced task that I've done
has been to install Arch successfully on an old computer, with the aid
of the Talking Arch image, of course. However, I want to dig deeper
into the Linux development structure so that I can start creating and
tinkering with live images with speech in mind. I've made a few useful
apps here and there for use within the console, but remastering and
such is a whole different area that I want to understand.

Post by Rob

Post by mike
I have built a Linux from scratch with a debian host but never got Speakup
to work with it. I could not find any good instructions for enabling it in
the kernel or the best way to go about building the sound system.

I built LFS 7.7 and have it running with both speakup and Brltty. All you
have to do is select the staging drivers/speakup and the sound support item
in the kernel configuration. Install alsa-stuff. Add your appropriate kernel
modules in the appropriate files; the book tells you where to add modules,
should you need them that aren't autoloaded by the kernel. What I then did
was copy my voxin libs from the host into my new system, add the right init
script to have the connector come up and bingo. I had speakup going.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

--
Thanks for reading.
Have a good day.
If you ever get the chance, go to http://www.realrandomradio.com and check us out.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

[Gregory Nowak]

On my desktop systems it isn't bad. My laptop is a different story
though. This is especially true if I'm doing something late in the
evening when I'm the only one awake with headphones on. If I forget
about that beep sequence it's loud, and doesn't go through my
headphones. I've winced and whispered oops under my breath more than
once. Once the OS boots though, the beep volume is controllable, and
does go through headphones if they're connected. It's only when the
BIOS is in control that this is a problem. Even when everyone is awake
during the day, I've been asked more than once if that was me.

Greg

Post by c***@ccs.covici.com
The beep volume is out of the internal speaker -- mine is pretty low, in
fact.

[mike]

Hi,

I will have to look closer at this I can get the system build accept for that part.

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-***@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Rob
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 10:06 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <***@linux-speakup.org>
Subject: Re: GRML and Speakup

Post by mike
I have built a Linux from scratch with a debian host but never got Speakup
to work with it. I could not find any good instructions for enabling it in
the kernel or the best way to go about building the sound system.

I built LFS 7.7 and have it running with both speakup and Brltty. All you
have to do is select the staging drivers/speakup and the sound support item
in the kernel configuration. Install alsa-stuff. Add your appropriate kernel
modules in the appropriate files; the book tells you where to add modules,
should you need them that aren't autoloaded by the kernel. What I then did
was copy my voxin libs from the host into my new system, add the right init
script to have the connector come up and bingo. I had speakup going.

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
***@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup