[DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

Thu May 26 20:36:09 EDT 2016

Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the beep 
command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified frequency and 
length. I've found it very useful to have different tones indicate different 
things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this? Something 
that would involve typing only one command and would do all the steps 
needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't think I've 
seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux could do different 
beep tones, then they could be used to indicate different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot so this 
may or may not work.

On Thu, 26 May 2016, Gregory Nowak wrote:

> Hi KatolaZ and the speakup list,
> KatolaZ, I'm sending a cc to the speakup list, which is full of blind
> GNU/Linux speakup user's. I have my own thoughts on your comments
> below, but my preferences aren't everyone else's. So, I think it's a
> really good idea to give you more feedback at this point in our
> discussion. Fellow speakup listers, the images that KatolaZ is
> working on can be found at:
>
> <http://devuan.kalos.mine.nu>
>
> As I type this, we have a beep at the isolinux boot prompt, which
> sounds to me like three beeps. You can either press enter here, or
> wait a few seconds more. If you are booting from a burned cd, it will
> spin for a bit. If you are booting some other way, wait maybe three
> minutes at most, probably less. Either way, then type "root", and
> "toor" as the password to login. Then to start speakup, type:
>
> modprobe speakup_soft
>
> followed by
>
> service espeakup start
>
> You should then hopefully get software speech. The images also include
> brltty, which is started by default, and configured for a usb
> display. Since brltty and speakup both want to use the numpad, you
> will have to do service brltty stop to stop brltty, so speakup can
> control the numpad. The alternative is to use speakup's laptop layout,
> which does work just fine. The images include yasr as well, which I
> haven't tested yet.
>
> Comments are inline.
>
>
> On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 06:54:09AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
>> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 03:33:05PM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
>>> Hi again,
>>> as far as getting agetty to play ctrl+g ... I don't know of a way to
>>> do that. You can however simply edit /etc/issue, and put a ctrl+g into
>>> that. The way I do this in vi is to do vi /etc/issue.
>>> Then I do "i" to insert at the beginning, and then I do ctrl+v ctrl+g
>>> to insert a ctrl+g into the file. Then I just do esc, followed by
>>> ":wq" to save the file.
>>>
>>
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>> thanks you very much for your reply. I am actually trying to find a
>> solution that is somehow configurable, but maybe that just putting a
>> ^G in issue is just fine.
>>
>> I have also scripted a simple daemon that "beeps" every second during
>> the boot, and emits a certain beep sequence when the boot is complete
>> (basically, when getty has been spawned). I will now test it and if
>> everything works fine I will include it in the next release.
>
> Ok, thanks. I have tested so far with the
> Devuan_1.0_Jessie-Beta_minimal-live_amd64-20160523_0028.iso image. At
> the boot prompt, there are what seem to be three beeps one after the
> other. I'm personally think that's probably longer than it needs to
> be. I would say that a single beep is good enough. I'm also not sure
> that progress during boot is necessary. I think that a beep at the
> isolinux boot prompt, and another at the login prompt would be enough,
> but that's just my personal opinion, others might find progress beeps
> useful. I don't think such a a thing has been tried on a livecd before.
>
>>
>> I was also thinking of "marking" the bootloader entries with beeps,
>> but I don'w know what is the best way to do that. Basically, at the
>> moment we have a single beep in each of the "bootable" entries. Maybe
>> it might be useful to have 1 beep for the first entry, 2 for the
>> second one, and so on? I am not sure though, since we also have in the
>> boot menu two or three "special" entries (one is memtest, the other is
>> a call to the chainloader, to boot whatever is found in the first
>> disk), which should be somehow marked differently.
>>
>
> I have always found it sufficient to know what was in
> the boot menu, and to count arrow key presses to get what I wanted to
> get to. Having different beeps for each boot entry is another concept
> which I don't think has been tried before. I'm not sure
> what the majority of blind
> users would prefer. Perhaps you will get some feedback here.
>
>> I would appreciate your take on this aspect. I was thinking to have
>> something like:
>>
>> 1) a single beep for each "normal" boot entry
>>
>> 2) two beeps for the special "memtest" entry
>>
>> 3) three beeps for the chainloader
>>
>> A visually impaired user might just scroll through the first four
>> options (a single beep for each line), then bump into the memtest (two
>> beeps), then find the chainloader options (three beeps), then come
>> back to the first bootable option (one beep)
>
> That sounds reasonable to me.
>
>>
>> Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.
>
> Thanks again for your work.
>
> Greg
>
>
>>
>> HND
>>
>> KatolaZ
>>
>> --
>> [ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
>> [ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
>> [ GNU/Linux User:#325780/ICQ UIN: #258332181/GPG key ID 0B5F062F ]
>> [ Fingerprint: 8E59 D6AA 445E FDB4 A153 3D5A 5F20 B3AE 0B5F 062F ]
>>
>
> -- 
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