Any News on cut-and-paste bug?

[covici at ccs.covici.com]

I would not accept that fix in the kernel, either -- nice workaround,
but its just hiding the real problem.

John G. Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 05/01/13 10:45, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > John G. Heim, le Wed 01 May 2013 10:42:39 -0500, a écrit :
> >> All I wanted to do was get rid of what I suspected was a call to a function
> >> that apparently did nothing and the subsequent erroring out. But nobody
> >> seemed to know what the function did or if they did, they weren't sharing.
> >> They did, however, take the time to criticize the speakup code itself.
> >
> > Do you have a reference of the thread? (like the precise date when it
> > happened, or the subject, etc.)
> 
> Here are 2 of the messages I posted. I haven't found an archive of the
> linux-kernel list. But I haven't looked too hard.  But these messages
> show the exact date and subject line of the 2 threads  on the list.
> 
> On 03/03/12 11:18, John G. Heim wrote:
> >Subject: speakup bug
> > I need help fixing a bug in the driver for serial hardware  speech
> > synths in the speakup screen reader. According to the comments in the
> > code, it is in a part of the code that is trying to "steal" the serial
> > port.
> >
> > First it calls request_region and when that fails (it always fails), it
> > calls         __release_region(&then it calls release_region again to
> > see if __release_region worked. But it never works because the region
> > being requested is already taken.
> >
> > The code in question is in 2 source code files in
> > drivers/staging/speakup. It starts in serialio.c on line 38. Here it
> > calls a function named synth_request_region which in turn, calls
> > request_region. On line 41 it calls __release_region, and on line 42 it
> > calls synth_request_region again. The function synth_request_region
> > (which calls request_region) is in a file named synth.c. But this code
> > always fails.  Here is a kind of simplified version of it...
> >
> > int error;
> > struct resource tmp;
> > tmp .name = "ltlk";
> > tmps.start = 0x3F8;
> > tmp.end = 0x3FF;
> > tmp.flags = IORESOURCE_BUSY;
> > error = request_resource (&ioport_resource, &tmp);
> >
> > The error returned is always -16. I looked at the code in
> > kernel/resource.c where the request_region function is  defined. It
> > builds a linked list of resources with start & end addresses. If you
> > request a region that is already within the start-end range of a
> > resource already in the list, it returns an error code. But it looks as
> > if the region for a serial port, 0x3f8 - 0x3ff,  in ioport_resource
> > cannot be reserved because the entire range from 0x000 through 0xcf7 is
> > already taken by something named "PCI Bus 0000:00".  Therefore calling
> > request_resource always fails and the driver for the speech synth errors
> > out.
> >
> > And therefore I can't use my hardware speech synth without modifying the
> > kernel code.  If you comment out the line that checks the return code
> > from request_region, it works. So you have to modify  the kernel code
> > and compile a custom kernel to use a hardware speech synth. That's not
> > such a problem for me but it is for a lot of people. Plus, the grml live
> > CD doesn't work with hardware speech.  That is a problem for me.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me how to fix this so it can be patched in the official
> > kernel code?
> >
> 
> 
> On 05/11/12 10:36, John Heim wrote:
> >Subject: patch for speakup serial hardware synths
> > A few weeks ago I asked about a problem with the speakup screen reader
> > code. It does not work with serial hardware speech synthesizers. But I
> > managed to get it working. How can I submit my fix for integration into
> > the kernel code. The patch file can be downloaded here:
> > http://www.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/downloads/patch-2012-03-06.patch
> >
> > To install it you cd to the linux source directory and do this:
> > patch -i patch-2012-03-06.patch drivers/staging/speakup/serialio.c"
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici at ccs.covici.com