Problems with Brltty

Problems with Brltty

[John J. Boyer]

hello,
I have just installed Redhat 7.1 on my second hard drive, with brltty and no
speech. When the boot process starts I quickly get a message saying "redhat
something". then amother message and another that go by too fast to read.
Then the message "looking for new hardware", then two dot 6's and the
letters a and t. If I type a letter on the computer keyboard, the login
message may come up. But sometimes I have to press the advance bars to find
it. The Braille display doesn't seem to be tracking the line where the
cursor is, though it does show dots 78 for the cursor. If I do something
like ls I usually have to press the same end of the same advance bar twice
to get the display to move. And it is beeping frequently.
Any  help would be appreciated. I really can't do much with my new Linux
until brltty behaves consistently.
Thanks.
John

Computers to Help People, Inc.
http://www.chpi.org
825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Nicolas Pitre]

One of RedHat's service wants to be clever and tries to probe for any kind 
of new hardware you might have attached to your computer.  Amongst other 
things it probes for serial mice which has the tendency to upset BRLTTY 
somehow.  This service is called "kudzu" (don't ask me why).

To prevent kudzu from interfering, just disable it as follows once logged in 
as root:

	chkconfig kudzu off

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, John J. Boyer wrote:

> hello,
> I have just installed Redhat 7.1 on my second hard drive, with brltty and no
> speech. When the boot process starts I quickly get a message saying "redhat
> something". then amother message and another that go by too fast to read.
> Then the message "looking for new hardware", then two dot 6's and the
> letters a and t. If I type a letter on the computer keyboard, the login
> message may come up. But sometimes I have to press the advance bars to find
> it. The Braille display doesn't seem to be tracking the line where the
> cursor is, though it does show dots 78 for the cursor. If I do something
> like ls I usually have to press the same end of the same advance bar twice
> to get the display to move. And it is beeping frequently.
> Any  help would be appreciated. I really can't do much with my new Linux
> until brltty behaves consistently.
> Thanks.
> John
> 
> Computers to Help People, Inc.
> http://www.chpi.org
> 825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 

Re: Problems with Brltty

[L. C. Robinson]

I think turning kudzu off is a bad idea, especially for
inexperienced users.  Undesirable behavior can be reduced or
eliminated by adding options to the invocation of kudzu (see the
man page for the choices available).  In particular, note the
following from the man page:

   -s, --safe
        Do only 'safe' probes that won't disturb  hardware.
        Currently, this disables the serial probe.

So one could add the "--safe" option to the invocation line in
/etc/rc.d/init.d/kudzu:
   /usr/sbin/kudzu -t 30 --safe
or even (not recommended):
   /usr/sbin/kudzu -t 30 --quiet  # do only configuration that doesn't require user input
(better to just wait 30 seconds)

One could also hand edit /etc/sysconfig/hwconf and add:
driver: ignore
to the appropriate sections (guesswork -- poorly documented).
Better yet, complain to RedHat about the lack of documentation,
and the need for a line oriented mode for kudzu, for use with
adaptive hardware (possibly with a patch submission, for those
who have the skills).

Best Wishes, LCR

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

> One of RedHat's service wants to be clever and tries to probe
> for any kind of new hardware you might have attached to your
> computer.  Amongst other things it probes for serial mice which
> has the tendency to upset BRLTTY somehow.  This service is
> called "kudzu" (don't ask me why).
> 
> To prevent kudzu from interfering, just disable it as follows
> once logged in as root:
> 
> 	chkconfig kudzu off


-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid

People buy MicroShaft for compatibility, but get incompatibility and
instability instead.  This is award winning "innovation".  Find
out how MS holds your data hostage with "The *Lens*"; see
"CyberSnare" at http://www.netaction.org/msoft/cybersnare.html

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, L. C. Robinson wrote:

> I think turning kudzu off is a bad idea, especially for
> inexperienced users. 

You think so?

I really feel like your suggestion about editing scripts or config files is 
more likely to frighten inexperienced users than a simple "chkconfig kudzu 
off".  I personally never needed it after the initial Red Hat installation.


Nicolas

Re: Problems with Brltty

[L. C. Robinson]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

> On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, L. C. Robinson wrote:
> 
> > I think turning kudzu off is a bad idea, especially for
> > inexperienced users. 
> 
> You think so?
> 
> I really feel like your suggestion about editing scripts or
> config files is more likely to frighten inexperienced users
> than a simple "chkconfig kudzu off".  I personally never needed
> it after the initial Red Hat installation.

You may have a point.  I hadn't thought about it from that angle.
I guess it depends on how often the user changes their hardware,
and how confident or experienced they are.  Ultimately, though,
unless one has full access the the GUI or other menu oriented
configuration interface, learning to read documentation and edit
text config files is the easiest way out (and often it is still
the easiest way, even _with_ the GUI).  But it's been too long
since I was at that level for me to say for sure -- come to think
of it, I learned at the text level, before the menu stuff even
became available.  Anyway, I can see that, for many users,
turning kudzu off is a good option.  They can always run it from
the command line, if it is needed.

LCR

-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid

Re: Problems with Brltty

[John J. Boyer]

Nicolas,
Turning kudzu off helped some. It eliminated the puzzling ,,at that was
coming up on my Braille Lite. brltty is now more stable. I also checked to
make sure I was in a text console mode. There is a message that says "init
level 3", so that should be ok. Now when i boot the login: prompt comes up
briefly and then disappears. However, the advance bars stil do not work
consistently, the window left, dot 3, and window right, dot 6, do not work
at all. Sometimes when I press ther right end of the advance bar it actually
seems to skip back a few lines.
Thanks to everyone who has helped with this problem.
John

Computers to Help People, Inc.
http://www.chpi.org
825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703


----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicolas Pitre" <nico@cam.org>
To: <blinux-list@redhat.com>
Cc: <support@redhat.com>
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 00:10
Subject: Re: Problems with Brltty


> On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, L. C. Robinson wrote:
>
> > I think turning kudzu off is a bad idea, especially for
> > inexperienced users.
>
> You think so?
>
> I really feel like your suggestion about editing scripts or config files
is
> more likely to frighten inexperienced users than a simple "chkconfig kudzu
> off".  I personally never needed it after the initial Red Hat
installation.
>
>
> Nicolas
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, John J. Boyer wrote:

> Nicolas,
> Turning kudzu off helped some. It eliminated the puzzling ,,at that was
> coming up on my Braille Lite. brltty is now more stable. I also checked to
> make sure I was in a text console mode. There is a message that says "init
> level 3", so that should be ok. Now when i boot the login: prompt comes up
> briefly and then disappears. However, the advance bars stil do not work
> consistently, the window left, dot 3, and window right, dot 6, do not work
> at all. Sometimes when I press ther right end of the advance bar it actually
> seems to skip back a few lines.

What version of BRLTTY do you have?  Did you try the latest (version 2.99 if 
I remember correctly)?

If your problems persist you may check with Stephane Doyon (e-mail address 
in CC) who worked on the BrailleLite a lot recently.


Nicolas

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Cheryl Homiak]

Actually, while there is a 2.99U, I don't think it's up on the site; I
think 2.98 is the latest on the site, at least that I can find.
John, you're sure that you aren't being
 brought up in Xwindows; I know you
mentioned checking whether you are in a text console, but double check.
What happens when you try to change consoles with alt-function key if
you're on 1 then try f2 for instance).  (on my keyboard
with its current map that has to be the left alt).
I could be totally wrong, but I think this maybe something in your
system's interaction with brltty and not just a brltty problem.

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Cheryl Homiak on November 19, 2001, at 08:44]

>Actually, while there is a 2.99U, I don't think it's up on the site; I
>think 2.98 is the latest on the site, at least that I can find.

That's just been fixed. 2.99y is now listed as the latest beta version. I'll
take this opportunity to ask people to test it, as 3.0 is just about here and
we'd like to be sure that problems have been dealt with.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

kudzu

[Cheryl Homiak]

Is this redhat specific? I've not heard of it and don't see it on my
system.

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by John J. Boyer on November 19, 2001, at 02:08]

>Now when i boot the login: prompt comes up
>briefly and then disappears.

There are, typically, two reasons that this happens. Firstly, it'll happen if
your system is set up to start the X gui (still a possibility, but not likely
since you said you noticed an "init level 3" message). Secondly, it'll happen
if something's displaying an error message after the login prompt has been
written. If it's this latter case, then pressing enter again should get the
login prompt back. Before doing that, try scrolling up with the braille display
to see if there are any error messages.

>However, the advance bars stil do not work
>consistently, the window left, dot 3, and window right, dot 6, do not work
>at all. Sometimes when I press ther right end of the advance bar it actually
>seems to skip back a few lines.

It may only appear to be that way as you may be making an incorrect assumption
regarding what's on the screen. Try going to the top-left of the screen, and
then working your way downward in order to see a logical progression of what
was written to the screen. You can even use shift+pageup to have a look at
what's already been scrolled off the top of the screen.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: Problems with Brltty

[John J. Boyer]

Dave,
The keystroke for going to top left of the screen usually does not work, but
it does sometimes. I wonder if the screen might be split and have two
columns. Something certainly seems to be interfering with brltty, or maybe
my helper changed some options in the compile. I've checked most of the
things you have suggested, but I appreciate anything that may get this
going.
Thanks.
John

Computers to Help People, Inc.
http://www.chpi.org
825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Mielke" <dave@mielke.cc>
To: <blinux-list@redhat.com>
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 10:25
Subject: Re: Problems with Brltty


> [quoted lines by John J. Boyer on November 19, 2001, at 02:08]
>
> >Now when i boot the login: prompt comes up
> >briefly and then disappears.
>
> There are, typically, two reasons that this happens. Firstly, it'll happen
if
> your system is set up to start the X gui (still a possibility, but not
likely
> since you said you noticed an "init level 3" message). Secondly, it'll
happen
> if something's displaying an error message after the login prompt has been
> written. If it's this latter case, then pressing enter again should get
the
> login prompt back. Before doing that, try scrolling up with the braille
display
> to see if there are any error messages.
>
> >However, the advance bars stil do not work
> >consistently, the window left, dot 3, and window right, dot 6, do not
work
> >at all. Sometimes when I press ther right end of the advance bar it
actually
> >seems to skip back a few lines.
>
> It may only appear to be that way as you may be making an incorrect
assumption
> regarding what's on the screen. Try going to the top-left of the screen,
and
> then working your way downward in order to see a logical progression of
what
> was written to the screen. You can even use shift+pageup to have a look at
> what's already been scrolled off the top of the screen.
>
> --
> Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is
the
> Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
> EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about
Hell.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Janina Sajka]

Not that anyone asked ...

But I though I'd throw in my 2 cents regarding kudzu.

I have turned it off on my portable system. I find it's just a nuisance 
when I need to boot because it comes up too often asking me to remove 
something that it will then ask me to add next time I have the system 
docked. I find it easier to simply run kudzu from the command line when I 
truly have new hardware that requires configuration. It's not hard to 
remember this.

Frankly, I don't do this on my office systems, because it's not a problem 
there. I rarely boot them, and when I do, it's usually a matter of new 
hardware, so I appreciate kudzu at those times.

But the other question in the current circumstance with John seems to be 
that the braille display should be registered somehow with linux as a 
recognized and supported device, so that it will not be probed and reset 
by kudzu. Am I wrong about this?

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Janina Sajka on November 19, 2001, at 10:58]

>But the other question in the current circumstance with John seems to be
>that the braille display should be registered somehow with linux as a
>recognized and supported device, so that it will not be probed and reset
>by kudzu. Am I wrong about this?

Even if it were registered with Linux, kudzu wouldn't be able to know what it
was without probing it. The problem is that the device (the braille display) is
already up and running, so, when kudzu sends probing data to it, it gets out of
sync with what BRLTTY is doing with it.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Cheryl Homiak]

Hi everyone!
While John is new to linux, he is an experienced unix user so I don't know
that he'd find editing a file, if he knows what he needs to change,
frightening.
As for me, as a total newbie to linux when I started, it was frightening
the first time I had to edit something, but I had patient helpers like
people on this list who told me exactly what to do (and reminded me not to
do my linux editing in DOS) and I got over being frightened of it pretty
quickly. I've learned when in doubt to make a backup of the file I'm going
to edit, even if I think my editor is also going to do so, so that I can
allways get back to status quo if something goes wrong.
As for the need for kudzu once installation is over, that's something of
which I have no knowledge so I won't even try to comment.

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Jude DaShiell]

You know what I can't figure out?  Why it is any of these versions of
Linux were ever sold that omitted the bsd learn utility package.  When I
started learning unix, I got a pointer from a friend to go and try that
out.  Admittedly it didn't cover such sysadmin things like permanently
disabling the portmap server and what could happen to your system if you
didn't get that done, but it was written at least the version I used
before 1989 and viruses were not then as they are now.  I got infested
with linsniffer by the way.  Not a pleasant experience.  I'll try exportfs
-ua to handle the portmap server since I really don't need it on.  Maybe
it will be needed for ethernet but I can't figure how.  If anyone does a
search for linsniffer, the info on it is on attrition.org.

Jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net>

Re: kudzu

[L. C. Robinson]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Cheryl Homiak wrote:

> Is this redhat specific? I've not heard of it and don't see it on my
> system.

Copied from the:
Kudzu FAQ:
----------

1) So, what is kudzu?

kudzu is the hardware autodetection & configuration tool, originally
introduced in Red Hat Linux 6.1. It detects changes in the system's
hardware configuration, and gives the option of configuring
added or removed devices. It's set up by default to run at
each boot.

-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid

Re: Problems with Brltty

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by John J. Boyer on November 19, 2001, at 10:26]

>The keystroke for going to top left of the screen usually does not work, but
>it does sometimes. I wonder if the screen might be split and have two
>columns.

Linux doesn't present a split login screen, so that wouldn't be it.

>Something certainly seems to be interfering with brltty,

If you're able, try logging in as root, and then stopping and restarting brltty
manually. You can stop it with: killall -INT brltty

Also, if you're able, check /var/log/messages for any brltty logs which
indicate some sort of problem.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.