Debian question

[John G. Heim]

This probably won't really help you much because it's expensive and it's 
not really a solution but I just thought I'd mention that there is a tool 
that is really helpful in debugging boot problems. It's a PC Weasel.

You put this card in your machine replacing the video card. The operating 
system recognizes it as a video card except that instead of video output it 
has a serial port. So you can connect a null-modem cable to it and another 
machine running a terminal emulator and get the boot messages.  I use it a 
lot when I have a machine that won't boot or when I'm trying to make a 
bootable CD. It costs like $300 though.

It really works well with speakup because it doesn't interfere with speakup 
in any way. The operating system isn't aware that there is anything 
different about the VGA card other than that it is an unrecognized type of 
card. So it treats it like a generic VGA card.  If you have some kind of 
problem, you can plug in the null-modem cable and get whatever is on the 
screen, whether it be boot messages or a login prompt or whatever.


PS: I think I have a problem  similar to yours. I  installed the speakup 
modified 2.6.12 kernel on a machine that had a unmodified 2.6.8 kernel. It 
won't boot unless my external doubletalk  LE is connected and turned on. 
And when it does boot, I get no speech. There is nothing wrong with my 
synth. And speakup appears to know it's there since if it's turned off, it 
won't boot at all. It's exam week so I haven't had time to check out what's 
really happening yet.  I was running debian sarge so I am not sure that 
you'll have any luck if you go back to sarge.

Oh, one thing I'd suggest... Make sure your disk partitions aren't full. 
Check especially / and /boot.



At 05:08 PM 10/18/2005, Scott wrote:
>Folks, I have a question regarding a Debian install.
>First seeing as I have little hope of correcting the problems with my
>current Sid install as I can't get speech from Speakup, I am
>considering reinstalling Sarge.
>What I was wondering is how possible would it be to simply install
>over the current Sid installation. My thinking is that I can keep a
>number of apps that were previously working with Sarge before
>upgrading to Sid and most if not everything would be replaced when I
>install Sarge. I know this is probably an insane approach, but I of
>course would rather figure out why Speakup hangs while probing for
>the DoubleTalk external. I do not have another synth to connect so I
>have to use this one. It was working fine before I upgraded to the
>latest version of Sid and even replacing Lilo with Grub did not
>correct the problem. It also seems to matter little what kernel I'm
>running as I even grabbed a 2.6.13 and brewed a new kernel.
>Sure am lost on this one, but before I do get into this install, I
>thought I'd ask a few questions and maybe avoid loads of setting up
>again.
>I know wishfull thinking.
>
>Scott
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

--
John G. Heim
jheim at math.wisc.edu
3-4189