Speakup patched kernel pauses while booting

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
What I think is going on is that speakup is still handing speech output to 
the synth (although it is not there at boot up as it is a software synth you 
are using) so is waiting for the output to be spoken. What makes me think 
this is that if using a hardware synth, it will pause while the speech 
catches up with the screen output.

Now for how you can fix this. One thing is that as the computer starts to 
boot linux, press numpad enter, this mutes speakup until the next key press 
(rather than until the next screen output like control), now things should 
continue to boot without pausing. The other (I haven't tested this, but I 
think it should work) is to set the default synth to None (and issue no 
speakup_synth command on the boot line (append option in lilo, or at the 
lilo prompt if you have one)), and in a script before speechd-up is loaded 
(even in the speechd-up (eg. /etc/init.d/speechd-up) before the command for 
speechd-up), add the following with quotes "echo sftsyn > 
/proc/speakup/synth_name".

Also you are right, it is harmless, if boot time is not a problem, then you 
can just leave it, but it may take a long time.

From
Michael Whapples