Re: Problems with Brltty

["L. C. Robinson" <lcr@onewest.net>]

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