Intro and newbie questions

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Gary, and welcome to life as a native Speakup user. I think you'll
find that you'll wonder what took you so long once you get past your
configuration issue.

To answer the historic question, Speakup was provided with every boxed
set of Red Hat 8. Those were the days. Don't ask about the politics that
followed. Long story and a diversion at this time. Suffice it to say
that some of us haven't given up on having Speaklup back in the box for
each and every distro.

Now, for the problem at hand ...

I don't honestly know what to tell you. I think we need to have Kirk
explain how we pass a port parameter when building an initrd image,
which is the better way to have Speakup start nowadays.

If you can put the port parameters into your /etc/modules.conf and start
that way, you should be able to build an initrd and have it pick up the
port. The mkinitrd command is usually:

;mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-[version].img --with=speakup_[synth.word]
[kernel-version]

You might try creating this image. Try temporarily disconnecting
whatever you have in /dev/ttyS0 to see if the mkinitrd finds the
appropriate port.

Please write back on how you go with this. I am working on the revised
HOWTO and need to know. Also, I'm sure we can figure this out with you.

Garry Turkington writes:
> From: Garry Turkington <garry.turkington at acm.org>
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Firstly a greeting to all on the list from a newcomer.  My name is Garry 
> Turkington and though I'm new to Speakup I've been using and developing on 
> Linux since about 1995 or so.  In that time I've used a DOS screen reader 
> and accessed a Linux box as a dumb serial console.  However, having to 
> keep my main desktop as an eternal dual boot finally frustrated me enough 
> to want to do something about native access to Linux.
> 
> Which implies I really should know enough to get Speakup working!  Despite 
> this though I've a few questions which hopefully someone can clear up for 
> me.
> 
> As I've already got a number of established RedHat or Fedora installs I 
> just want to add Speakup to one or more of these, not do a fresh install 
> from the modified Shrike ISOs on the website.  Apart from the -spk2 kernel 
> packages are there any other differences between these disks and the stock 
> RH 9?
> 
> WWhen looking to build Speakup into a kernel tree I firstly did some 
> poking around the RH/Fedora kernel config files and noticed that the 
> Speakup definitions are in there but never used.  Memory also seems to 
> suggest that at one point, (maybe around RH 7.3 or 8?) that Speakup was 
> fully built into the 'out of the box' kernel?  Any pointers to the history 
> here and what's going on?
> 
> Finally, to bootstrap things I installed the latest -spk2 kernel from the 
> Shrike ISOs into a running RH9 system and then tried a "modprobe 
> speakup_decext" to use my Dectalk Express.  I think though that Speakup is 
> trying to grab /dev/ttyS0, which is my current serial console and things 
> get a bit messed up from that point.  Losing the serial console also makes 
> it hard to debug.  /dev/ttyS1 should be properly set up, does the speakup 
> module take parameters to tell it which serial port to use?
> 
> Many thanks for any info/help,
> Garry
> 
> -- 
> Garry Turkington   
> garry.turkington at acm.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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-- 
	
Janina Sajka
Email: janina at rednote.net		
Phone: (202) 408-8175

Director, Technology Research and Development
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
http://www.afb.org

Chair, Accessibility Work Group
Free Standards Group
http://accessibility.freestandards.org