Intro

[Mike Ray]

Hello Brandon,

What seems to happen is variable. Most of the time I have to work pretty 
hard to make it crash. The best test I have found is opening the SpeakUp 
help and scrolling up and down as quickly as I can.

But it has crashed on occasions with less taxing stuff.

So far I have compiled speakup_soft and speakup_dummy as kernel modules. 
Tonight I am trying compiling the speakup_soft right into the kernel.

I don't really know much about kernel internals or kernel debugging but 
I have been reading up about the kernel debugger (kgdb). I now have an 
idea of connecting two Raspis together via a serial cable and running a 
kernel debug session to see if I can trap exactly where it is crashing.

I'm also trying to get hold of a hardware synth, even just for loan to 
see if I can make it more stable with an external synth.

As a point of interest...I am cross-compiling kernels on a Vinux virtual 
machine. When I first compiled a kernel I did it on the Pi and it took 
13 hours.

Mike

On 04/05/2013 21:44, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
> Are there any actions common to each crash?
> E.g. an application running, a certain amount of time spent idle, an attempt to copy and paste with speakup?
> I've ggot an RP here; if I can get an sd card and writer, I'll put on a kernel and give it a whirl.
>
> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>
>
> On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 07:29:57PM +0100, Mike Ray wrote:
>> Hello Gene,
>>
>> Thanks for the welcome.
>>
>> Although I have SpeakUp running in Raspbian, there are some serious
>> stability issues.  Sometimes the tty I'm logged in to crashes and
>> occasionally the kernel crashes, or I assume it does as once this
>> happens there's no way I can tell what has happened.
>>
>> In getting this far I have had to look at the source quite closely
>> and I noticed the changes over the last few years following some
>> fundamental kernel changes.
>>
>> It looks to me as if a lot of the distros are making patches to the
>> source and these patches don't seem to find their way back to the
>> SpeakUp source repo.
>>
>> In an effort to solve the stability issues in the Pi kernel version
>> 3.6.11 I took the SpeakUp source from kernel.org's 3.8.11 tree but
>> it doesn't seem to have solved the problem.
>>
>> I don't know if these stability problems are specifically Raspberry
>> Pi problems, possibly relating to the lower resources on the little
>> machine, or whether SpeakUp is unstable in some desktop distros.
>>
>> Opinions and any help would be welcomed.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>>
>> On 03/05/2013 19:03, acollins at icsmail.net wrote:
>>> Hello Mike!  Welcome aboard!  I'm not a raspberry user, but I'm glad to
>>> hear you have yours up and running.  You'll find most topics fair game
>>> for discussion here.
>>>
>>> Gene Collins
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I've just joined the list.
>>>>
>>>> I have recently managed to get SpeakUp going for the Raspberry Pi using
>>>> Raspbian.
>>>>
>>>> In doing so I've had to do a lot of reading about kernel versions and
>>>> SpeakUp source etc. so I thought I'd join the list.
>>>>
>>>> Mike
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Michael A. Ray
>>>> Analyst/Programmer
>>>> South-east UK
>>>>
>>>> Interested in accessibility for the Raspberry Pi?
>>>> Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/
>>>>
>>>>  From where you can join our mailing list for visually impaired Pi hackers
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers