Back in the linux world again

Back in the linux world again

[Arthur Pirika]

Hi all, I've been in and out of the linux world for a while, and decided to 
check back in a few months ago with ubuntu 7.04, when it was in late beta. A 
little disappointing to see gentoo and ubuntu drop speakup, but never mind. 
Actually, it's all accodemic for me, as i have no hardware, either speech or 
braille to begin with. I have a question though. I'd like to switch from 
ubuntu to either slackware or gentoo, as I'd like a little bit more control 
over what gets installed, and not have to worry about incompatibilities 
between locally built and pre-packaged stuff. My question is, is it possible 
to install slackware from another distribution? In theory, I can see this as 
beeing possible, but not sure what slackware's setup script depends on. My 
plan was to boot the ubuntu install cd with orca loaded, and then proceed 
from there.
btw, has any progress been made on porting speakup to 2.6.22?

thanks,
Arthur.

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Doug Sutherland]

Arthur,

It may take some playing around in the final steps, but slackware 
packages are simple tar gzip files with directories relative to root,
and each package has an install script inside the archive. So you 
should be able to create a partition for slackware, extract the 
files there, and run the scripts. If you use the chroot command 
you can "change root" to the target partition and fool linux into
believing it is root. For further inspiration on this, see how the 
linuxfromscratch process creates a new linux system in this 
manner. 

  -- Doug

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Katie Durden]

yes....as I don't own a hardware synth, this is exactly how I installed
slackware 12.0

the important file to start with is
on the linux install disk, slackware/a/pkgtools-12.0.0-noarch-4.tgz
assuming you're using slackware 12...

in that package is a /sbin/installpkg script you need

set up your partitions, mount the one you want to use as / somewhere,
and run that script with the following options:
installpkg -root <path to /} <path to tgz file in a directory>*.tgz

so for example, assuming you have mounded your / partition
on /mnt/slackware, and have the slackware disk mounted at /mnt/cdrom,

installpkg -root /mnt/slackware /mnt/cdrom/slackware/a/*.tgz

since you're running this from another distro it might give you a few
errors because things aren't where slackware expects them, that's ok
because you're going to do it again...

once those all finish, mount bind proc into the new root,

mount -o bind /proc /mnt/slackware/proc

and also the slackware install disk

mount -o bind /mnt/cdrom /mnt/slackware/mnt/cdrom

then chroot into the new root

chroot /mnt/slackware /bin/bash

cd /mnt/cdrom/slakware/a

installpkg *.tgz

when that finishes cd .. and repeat the process with all the package
series folders you want. 
You can skip k, kde and kdei. k is just kernel source and if you plan on
making your own kernel you can still skip because its 2.6.21.5, might as
well get 2.6.21.6...
so from within a/ ap/ d/ e/ f/ / n/ t/ tcl/ x/ xap/ and y/ run
installpkg *.tgz

you'll also have to put your chosen kernel in place, configure lilo, set
a root password, and copy your timezone from /usr/share/zoneinfo
to /etc/localtime.
Oh and of course configure your fstab...can't forget to do that...

that's the basic slackware install...as far as getting a speakup-patched
kernel if you don't use the one on slackware's disk, a software synth,
and all that working that's pretty much the same as any other time you
set that stuff up so i won't repeat how to do them...


I think that's everything....

Katie

On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 22:48 -0400, Doug Sutherland wrote:
> Arthur,
> 
> It may take some playing around in the final steps, but slackware 
> packages are simple tar gzip files with directories relative to root,
> and each package has an install script inside the archive. So you 
> should be able to create a partition for slackware, extract the 
> files there, and run the scripts. If you use the chroot command 
> you can "change root" to the target partition and fool linux into
> believing it is root. For further inspiration on this, see how the 
> linuxfromscratch process creates a new linux system in this 
> manner. 
> 
>   -- Doug
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Back in the linux world again

[cody]

2.6.22 kernel is broken...
het
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arthur Pirika" <arfy@andrelouis.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 7:02 PM
Subject: Back in the linux world again


> Hi all, I've been in and out of the linux world for a while, and decided 
> to
> check back in a few months ago with ubuntu 7.04, when it was in late beta. 
> A
> little disappointing to see gentoo and ubuntu drop speakup, but never 
> mind.
> Actually, it's all accodemic for me, as i have no hardware, either speech 
> or
> braille to begin with. I have a question though. I'd like to switch from
> ubuntu to either slackware or gentoo, as I'd like a little bit more 
> control
> over what gets installed, and not have to worry about incompatibilities
> between locally built and pre-packaged stuff. My question is, is it 
> possible
> to install slackware from another distribution? In theory, I can see this 
> as
> beeing possible, but not sure what slackware's setup script depends on. My
> plan was to boot the ubuntu install cd with orca loaded, and then proceed
> from there.
> btw, has any progress been made on porting speakup to 2.6.22?
>
> thanks,
> Arthur.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

No, it isn't.  I'm using 2.6.22 right now and have been using it for over a month.

Speakup doesn't work with it, but that's a speakup problem not a kernel problem.  Since I don't use speakup any more,
it isn't a problem for me.

          Kenny
On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 06:19:32AM -0700, cody wrote:
> 2.6.22 kernel is broken...
> het

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Arthur Pirika]

Hey, what are you using now, orca, or another console sollution? I've just 
got ubuntu working successfully with speech-dispatcher, all be it through 
the gnome-speech driver. Currently trying to get it working with orca's 
native speechd interface. Everything seems to be fine, i have speechd 0.64 
beta, and orca from svn. However, one thing that is odd is the python 
library reports 0.3. Could this be why it's not showing up? Import speechd 
from python does work though.

thanks,
Arthur.

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Tomas Cerha]

Arthur Pirika wrote	:
> i have speechd 0.64 beta, and orca from svn. However, one thing that 
> is odd is the python library reports 0.3. Could this be why it's not
> showing up? Import speechd from python does work though.

Hi Arthur,

yes, you probably still have an older version of the python speechd
interface installed.  Just remove the package python-speechd and make
sure your newly installed library is in your python path.  See a recent
discussion on the Speech Dispatcher mailing list for more information.

http://lists.freebsoft.org/mailman/listinfo/speechd

Best regards, Tomas

Re: Back in the linux world again

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

I'm using Orca.  I do have brltty installed, but haven't used it since I got Gnome working.  Brltty provides
Braille support for Orca.  It is there if I need to return to a console, but I haven't needed to that.
Actually, I rarely use Braille.  The display is off most of the time.

          Kenny