Debian installation - interested?

Debian installation - interested?

[Nikhil Nair]

Hi all,

I was talking with Bruce Perens (Debian Project Leader) a while back - he
had bought himself a DecTalk, and was toying with the idea of
speech-friendly installation.  As a blind Debian developer myself, I'm
interested in accessibility issues, and would like to see Debian become
the first distribution to provide installation disks with accessibility
add-ons, as opposed to these being provided by third-parties.

Having said all that, I'm a soft Braille user, and don't have a DecTalk,
so have no feel for the usefulness of Bruce's idea.  I'm a bit cautious,
because if the installation disk wrote directly to the DecTalk, that would
presumably interfere with any screen-reader (if there was one ...).

So what I'd like to know from you all is: what do you think would be most
useful?  Presumably many people don't have DecTalks, but do many have
second machines to use as serial terminals?  If having a serial terminal
installation procedure would be useful, should there be a choice of which
com port to use?  How should this be selected - would separate rootdisks
be needed, or would a simple choice on the main keyboard (say pressing 1
or 2) be OK?

Cheers,

Nikhil.

--
Nikhil Nair
Trinity College, Cambridge, England
Tel.: +44 1223 368353
Email: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk
       nnair@debian.org

Re: Debian installation - interested?

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, Nikhil Nair wrote:

[...]
> So what I'd like to know from you all is: what do you think would be most
> useful?  Presumably many people don't have DecTalks, but do many have
> second machines to use as serial terminals?  If having a serial terminal
> installation procedure would be useful, should there be a choice of which
> com port to use?  How should this be selected - would separate rootdisks
> be needed, or would a simple choice on the main keyboard (say pressing 1
> or 2) be OK?

What I think is best is to have a rootdisk wich starts a getty on both
COM1 and COM2.  It is also best to have a dumb terminal installation
script (easier to track with a screen review software).  It could be set
on a separate rootdisk or just make the serial port login active on an
already existing rootdisk...  But since COM1 and COM2 are driven with a
getty, the terminal could then be attached to any of those two without
having to make a selection.

I think it's also possible to configure lilo to redirect its I/O to a comm
port (in 9600 bauds).  A bootdisk could be set up with this so the
installation even from the boot time could be controlled and monitored
from an external terminal wich could be an extra PC with any kind of
access software.

It's even possible to get boot time messages on the serial port just by
defining a simbolic link like /dev/console --> /dev/ttyS0...


> Nikhil Nair
> Trinity College, Cambridge, England
> Tel.: +44 1223 368353
> Email: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk
>        nnair@debian.org

nico@cam.org
Nicolas Pitre
ing. stag.

Re: Debian installation - interested?

[Graham Swallow]

On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, Nikhil Nair wrote:
> > or 2) be OK?
> 
> What I think is best is to have a rootdisk wich starts a getty on both
> COM1 and COM2.  It is also best to have a dumb terminal installation
> script (easier to track with a screen review software).  It could be set
> on a separate rootdisk or just make the serial port login active on an
> already existing rootdisk...  But since COM1 and COM2 are driven with a
> getty, the terminal could then be attached to any of those two without
> having to make a selection.

	I don't suppose most people will have a mouse on COM1,
	but COM2 would normally be used for the extern modem
	or serial wire. LILO has low BAUD rate support,
	which means you have to mess about at 9600 BAUD
	which is plenty fast enough for screens, but as soon as you get
	pppd running, you'd switch to 11.5 K/S and
	get access to NFS files, telnet, multi-screens
	and your own system (or stay with a TTY emulator).

	As for the tty installation script, what about
		dpkg -i name1
		dpkg -i name2
	Slackware would be (something like)
		installpkg name1.tgz

	Before then sort out /etc/fstab manually,
	and run mke2fs manually. Then copy over your collection
	of /etc/hosts files (if they weren't the first thing you copied over).

	An alternative, is to install the minimum bases set that boots
	comportably, pack it into one tar file, arrange for it to
	appear on CDROM and wake up from there.

	The support you need to get the kernel boot messages onto
	the serial line is either new or pending. Good luck!

      Graham             gps@trix.dircon.co.uk
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