Juni 2009 - Grml - lists.mur.at

vol boot option overridden by any boot option which implies sound
by Michael Whapples 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '09

Hello, I noticed that when I use boot options which imply sound as they give speech messages in the boot process (eg. swspeak, brltty, etc) then the vol option for setting volume level doesn't work (IE. volume always ends up being 90%). This is a problem when using a system with no physical volume control (eg. a laptop using internal speakers). This is using the grml 2009.05 CD. Michael Whapples

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Bug with setting passwords when installing using grml2hd and grml-debootstrap
by Michael Whapples 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

Hello, I noticed that yesterday when I did an install of debian using grml-debootstrap it seemed to fail to set the password of the root account, it seemed to just print out the help message of the chpasswd command. This was using grml installed on a USB drive using grml2usb and the ISO image of grml 2009.05. I also encountered the same when I did the grml2hd installation using the RC2 CD. The only way I was able to log in to the installed system was to boot grml again, mount the drive where I had done the installation and remove the x from the password field of the /etc/passwd file and then reboot back to the HD installation and log in without a password and then set a new password (there may be another way but this is the one I am certain of). This seems like a critical bug to me as by default it seems grml2hd and grml-debootstrap leave the installed system unuseable. Michael Whapples

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Two patches for grml-scripts
by Ernesto Domato 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

Here I send you two patches for /usr/bin/grml-lang and /usr/sbin/grml-quickconfig that add the option for spanish keyboards, I use spanish keyboards usually :-P I don't know if they are really necessary since you can boot with the option lang=es but is nice for me when I forget that option :-) Greettings. Ernesto

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Extraction of the small and medium flavors from the full one.
by Ernesto Domato 10 Jun '09

10 Jun '09

Hi, now that the grml2iso from git is working, I was wondering is there's some way to create the small and medium images from the full one. For example, if I want to create a DVD with grml, grml-medium and grml-small on it, I'll have to download the 3 flavors even when the grml one also contains (in some way) the other two. So, if we have some way to extract the small and medium flavor from the full one, we could save some bandwidth from the mirrors. I guess that the other option is to create the images using grml-live with a local mirror so the packages are only downloaded once. Another option could be to create differential squashfs from small to medium and from medium to full, and place the three squashfs on the full CD so when you chose full for example, the system will mount the three squashfs together using unionfs to create the full version. I don't know if it's possible or if you can understand what I trying to explain, but I think could be an interesting idea. Anyway, we should also consider the performance issue of stacking several squashfs with unionfs. Greetings. Ernesto

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Creating a bootable DVD using grml and grml64
by Ernesto Domato 09 Jun '09

09 Jun '09

Hi, I'd like to create a bootable DVD from the ISOs of grml and grml64 so I can boot whichever of the two flavors or even aggregate the rest of the ISOs to the DVD (small and medium for i585 and amd64). I tried to use grml2usb doing this: 1) dd if=/dev/zero of=dvd.iso bs=1M count=2000 2) losetup /dev/loop1 dvd.iso 3) echo -en "n\np\n1\n\n\nt\n6\na\n1\n w\n" | fdisk /dev/loop1 4) mkfs.vfat /dev/loop1 5) grml2usb grml_2009.05.iso grml64_2009.05.iso /dev/loop1 But it didn't work. There's seems to be some problem when installing the bootloader. What did you think?, Is it possible to do what I want?, should I use grml-live to create custom ISOs?. Greettings and excuse for my english but it's now my native language. Ernesto PS: if it can be done, I'd like to make a CD with for example grml-medium and grml64-medium on it too

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Re: [Grml] Accessibility stuff: was: Re: I got Espeakup finally to work
by Michael Whapples 08 Jun '09

08 Jun '09

On 08/06/09 09:35, Hermann wrote: > On 08.06.2009 10:12, Michael Whapples wrote: > [...] > >> In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty) >> there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly). > > No it can't. You have to use SD in order to use Espeak. So SD is > important for non-English speaking users. > I stand corrected, I just assumed as it supports, flite, festival, swift, viavoice, etc directly that espeak might be, no the docs don't mention espeak support. >> I >> would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech >> output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I >> think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA >> support) makes me personally want to back away from it. > > Yes, but unfortunately the SD team cannot find what causes this. It > does not appear on all machines, so it is difficault to figure out > what's going on. > Moreover: It seems to be an Espeak problem, since other synts don't > crash at all or very seldom (for example Voxin). > I am sure I have had voxin crash on me when using speech-dispatcher. Anyway it seems like it will be a hard bug to track down. >> Although I have >> my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to >> use it so would say it should stay if possible. >> > I agree, but in addition I would prefere to have drivers for synths > that communicate directly with the apps, such as Espeakup. > But perhaps that's what I'm familiar from Windows. Hardcore Linux > users seem to prefer server solutions. I'm not saying don't have direct drivers like espeakup, particularly at the moment when speech-dispatcher still has some bugs which impact on useability. I just consider speech-dispatcher should be treated like SAPI is on windows. I thought that on windows when an application added speech output they tending to add SAPI support first before adding direct drivers for the synths. I also have to say although server processes can be useful at times, I think there are times it seems to go too far on linux. Michael Whapples > Hermann

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Re: [Grml] Accessibility stuff: was: Re: I got Espeakup finally to work
by Michael Whapples 08 Jun '09

08 Jun '09

I would agree. As far as I know for self voicing emacs there's either emacspeak which requires either a hardware synth or viavoice which is commercial, or speechd-el which can use speech-dispatcher, so speechd-el and speech-dispatcher seems to be the best free solution for software self voicing of emacs. In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty) there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly). I would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA support) makes me personally want to back away from it. Although I have my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to use it so would say it should stay if possible. Michael Whapples On 07/06/09 21:41, Hermann wrote: > Just one brief remark regarding Speech-dispatcher: > It should stay on GRML, because it is used as speech output by other > a11y apps, above all Brltty. It is also supported by other screen > readers like Suse-Blinux. > But besides that, Espeakup is good stuff. > Hermann > (No need for quoting in this case, I think).

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I got Espeakup finally to work
by Hermann 07 Jun '09

07 Jun '09

Hi, just let you know: Espeakup now works in German. I had to pull the latest from GIT, and after compiling I had to type: espeakup -V de or espeakup --default-voice=de Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice. I got the tip from the Speakup list archive. Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version (0.60)? Second note: the modified characters file is still needed. Hermann --

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Still no start of the CD on my desktop machine
by Hermann 02 Jun '09

02 Jun '09

Hi, just downloaded and burned the latest GRML CD, and I had to notice that I still cannot start it on my desktop machine like all the others since 2008-11. So has anything changed regarding this bug? Hermann

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The installed GRML boots very slow
by Hermann 02 Jun '09

02 Jun '09

Hi, while checking out your list archive, I found that this was brought up some months ago, but I repeat it: I installed the release candidate of GRML 2008-11 on my desktop machine, and since that I had to observe a slow boot process. My hard drive start spinning and then stops for a long time till it starts moving again. I guess that in the meantime there runs the hardware detection. But why lasts this procedure so long? Below I put the results of: cat /proc/partitions and ll /sys/block major minor #blocks name 8 0 39099375 sda 8 1 15358108 sda1 8 2 1 sda2 8 5 16386268 sda5 8 6 48163 sda6 8 7 7301511 sda7 insgesamt 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram0 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram0/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram1 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram1/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram10 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram10/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram11 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram11/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram12 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram12/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram13 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram13/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram14 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram14/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram15 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram15/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram16 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram16/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram17 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram17/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram18 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram18/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram19 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram19/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram2 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram2/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram20 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram20/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram21 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram21/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram22 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram22/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram23 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram23/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram24 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram24/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram25 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram25/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram26 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram26/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram27 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram27/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram28 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram28/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram29 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram29/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram3 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram3/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram30 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram30/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram31 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram31/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram4 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram4/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram5 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram5/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram6 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram6/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram7 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram7/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram8 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram8/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 ram9 -> ../devices/virtual/block/ram9/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 sda -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 sr0 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.1/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0/block/sr0/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 22. Mai 15:15 sr1 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.1/host1/target1:0:1/1:0:1:0/block/sr1/ Anything wrong with that entries? What can I change? I remember that deactivating udev detection is no good idea. Hermann --

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