* State of accessibility on BSD systems @ Cleverson ` Kerry Hoath ` Tony Baechler 0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Cleverson @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: speakup Hello I would apreciate some info on screen readers and speech synthesisers, preferably soft synths, running on FreeBSD or other BSD variants, whether in a console or a graphical environment. Is there any blind user that uses FreeBSD for personal dayly productivity? Is it possible to install it without sighted assistance? Many thanks Cleverson ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems State of accessibility on BSD systems Cleverson @ ` Kerry Hoath ` Tony Baechler 1 sibling, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Kerry Hoath @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. As far as I know there is no support for speakup under any of the **bsd operating systems. Some of the softsynths might compile however the primary development environment for many of them is Linux. Espeak should build and run if BSD has portaudio although I am not sure on this. Orca is part of gnome, and should also function, not sure how well however. There are a few blind people who use bsd styel operating systems, however those I know use telnet or ssh to access the machines from Windows. OSX of course has voiceover. Regards, Kerry. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cleverson" <clever92000@yahoo.com.br> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 8:00 AM Subject: State of accessibility on BSD systems Hello I would apreciate some info on screen readers and speech synthesisers, preferably soft synths, running on FreeBSD or other BSD variants, whether in a console or a graphical environment. Is there any blind user that uses FreeBSD for personal dayly productivity? Is it possible to install it without sighted assistance? Many thanks Cleverson _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems State of accessibility on BSD systems Cleverson ` Kerry Hoath @ ` Tony Baechler ` Alex Snow 1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Tony Baechler @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Cleverson wrote: > Is there any blind user that uses FreeBSD for personal dayly > productivity? > Is it possible to install it without sighted assistance? > Hi, I used to use FreeBSD often until the power supply fried. It was impossible to install without sighted help. Once installed, I had to access it with ssh. There are supposed to be screen readers that work under BSD but they didn't work for me. You might have better luck with Gnome as they offer it in the ports collection and I think they include Orca. In general, FreeBSD isn't even close to being accessible. That's a real shame because it would be nice for blind people to have a choice and it is better at some things than Linux. I also prefer the BSD license but that's another discussion. If you can get sighted help and don't mind doing everything with ssh, it's fine and works as well as Linux with ssh. If you want to actually use the console, forget it. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler @ ` Alex Snow ` Tony Baechler 0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Alex Snow @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. I was able to install netbsd without sited assistence a while back, and I believe there is a way to do this with freebsd. All I did was use a serial console, with Minicom under linux. On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 02:40:56AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > Cleverson wrote: > >Is there any blind user that uses FreeBSD for personal dayly > >productivity? > >Is it possible to install it without sighted assistance? > > > > > > Hi, > > I used to use FreeBSD often until the power supply fried. It was > impossible to install without sighted help. Once installed, I had to > access it with ssh. There are supposed to be screen readers that work > under BSD but they didn't work for me. You might have better luck with > Gnome as they offer it in the ports collection and I think they include > Orca. In general, FreeBSD isn't even close to being accessible. That's > a real shame because it would be nice for blind people to have a choice > and it is better at some things than Linux. I also prefer the BSD > license but that's another discussion. If you can get sighted help and > don't mind doing everything with ssh, it's fine and works as well as > Linux with ssh. If you want to actually use the console, forget it. > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- We come to bury DOS, not to praise it. -- Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Alex Snow @ ` Tony Baechler ` Alex Snow ` Gregory Nowak 0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Tony Baechler @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Alex Snow wrote: > I was able to install netbsd without sited assistence a while back, > and I believe there is a way to do this with freebsd. All I did was > use a serial console, with Minicom under linux. > Yes, I forgot to mention use of a serial console. I don't have one and thus have no experience with using it. I read here that it can be done that way but again I haven't tried because I don't have one. How much does it cost and how does it work? Do you just plug it into a serial port and get speech? They seem to be popular and one might be useful to have if it isn't expensive. Getting back to BSD installation, I can't comment on anything but FreeBSD but it uses a text installer so perhaps it would be possible to install via an emulator such as Bochs with a curses interface. NetBSD claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it has a text installer that could run in an emulator. If I try BSD again, I think I would go with NetBSD just because it seems to be more historical regarding older BSD software and does run on platforms which I've certainly never heard of, far more than Linux. Either way, there is no chance in the near future that Speakup will run on BSD because Speakup is a set of Linux kernel modules. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler @ ` Alex Snow ` Gregory Nowak 1 sibling, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Alex Snow @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. All a serial console is is a computer running a terminal program like Minicom on unix or hyperterminal in windows. The only BSD I have had any experience installing was netbsd (I needed it to run a Mop server so I could netboot a microvax), and it had a text installer that was really easy to do over serial. On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 02:33:23AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > Alex Snow wrote: > >I was able to install netbsd without sited assistence a while back, > >and I believe there is a way to do this with freebsd. All I did was > >use a serial console, with Minicom under linux. > > > > > Yes, I forgot to mention use of a serial console. I don't have one and > thus have no experience with using it. I read here that it can be done > that way but again I haven't tried because I don't have one. How much > does it cost and how does it work? Do you just plug it into a serial > port and get speech? They seem to be popular and one might be useful to > have if it isn't expensive. > > Getting back to BSD installation, I can't comment on anything but > FreeBSD but it uses a text installer so perhaps it would be possible to > install via an emulator such as Bochs with a curses interface. NetBSD > claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it has a text > installer that could run in an emulator. If I try BSD again, I think I > would go with NetBSD just because it seems to be more historical > regarding older BSD software and does run on platforms which I've > certainly never heard of, far more than Linux. Either way, there is no > chance in the near future that Speakup will run on BSD because Speakup > is a set of Linux kernel modules. > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Anyone who thinks UNIX is intuitive should be forced to write 5000 lines of code using nothing but vi or emacs. AAAAACK! -- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler ` Alex Snow @ ` Gregory Nowak ` Tony Baechler 1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Gregory Nowak @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 02:33:23AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > Getting back to BSD installation, I can't comment on anything but > FreeBSD but it uses a text installer so perhaps it would be possible to > install via an emulator such as Bochs with a curses interface. Unless things have changed since the last time I used bochs (which isn't likely, given the goal of bochs), it's very slow. If you don't want to put freebsd/netbsd on a physical box, use something like qemu/vmware/virtualbox/one of those programs. The only draw back here would be the lack of guest additions, but you can still run without them. As for your comment about freebsd having an installer with a text interface, and therefore being possible to install on bochs, because it has a curses interface, I don't follow your line of reasoning here. The interface used by an emulator, and the interface of a install program for a specific os have nothing to do with each other. That's like saying you can dump coal in a car, because it burns, and so does gas, or is there something else you were getting at here? > NetBSD > claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it has a text > installer that could run in an emulator. Yes, when I compared the list of architectures supported by nebsd, and by linux the last time I ran netbsd, it was certainly true that netbsd ran on lots more archs, and I wouldn't be surprised if it still does. Again, regarding your comment on the text installer, see above. > If I try BSD again, I think I > would go with NetBSD just because it seems to be more historical > regarding older BSD software and does run on platforms which I've > certainly never heard of, far more than Linux. The thing that turned me off netbsd was that you had to build everything from source, other than the base system, which you could get as binaries. At the time, I was running it on a 133 MHz pentium, with 64 megs of RAM, so you can imagine how long it took to build stuff on it, especially if you wanted to customize the netbsd kernel to your hardware, which I did, just for the experience. Another thing that turned me off netbsd is the lack of dependency tracking when installing software, this was true even for the binary base system. What I'll say to those using gnu/linux who want to try out netbsd is that if you've used gentoo, and like it, then you'll probably fall in love with netbsd as well. However, if you've used gentoo, and don't like it, then I'd say the chances are high you won't like netbsd either. > Either way, there is no > chance in the near future that Speakup will run on BSD because Speakup > is a set of Linux kernel modules. Yup. Greg > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > - -- web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjW3ckACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyAnUgCg069QO6HavYyeueepzW5aQiLl Pm0AoM5Bla0zJ1ubW+wvE+9MjqMcsKNY =UX7w -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Gregory Nowak @ ` Tony Baechler ` Gregory Nowak 0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Tony Baechler @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Gregory Nowak wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 02:33:23AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > >> Getting back to BSD installation, I can't comment on anything but >> FreeBSD but it uses a text installer so perhaps it would be possible to >> install via an emulator such as Bochs with a curses interface. >> > > Unless things have changed since the last time I used bochs (which > isn't likely, given the goal of bochs), it's very slow. If you don't > want to put freebsd/netbsd on a physical box, use something like > qemu/vmware/virtualbox/one of those programs. The only draw back here > would be the lack of guest additions, but you can still run without > them. As for your comment about freebsd having an installer with a > text interface, and therefore being possible to install on bochs, > because it has a curses interface, I don't follow your line of > reasoning here. The interface used by an emulator, and the interface > of a install program for a specific os have nothing to do with each > other. That's like saying you can dump coal in a car, because it > burns, and so does gas, or is there something else you were getting at here? > > Hi, OK, I was unclear obviously. What you say is correct in most cases that an emulator interface has nothing to do with the guest OS. However, at least when I played with Bochs a long time ago, Bochs was different. If you didn't need graphics, you could set it to only use a curses interface for the emulated OS and it worked. It comes with a sample 10 MB Linux disk image. If you tell it to not use a GUI but to run the image with the curses interface, you have a very minimal emulated Linux system. There isn't a lot you can do with it, but I verified that it in fact worked. I tried with other images but didn't get anywhere. Maybe that has changed but it used to work. Being that there was no GUI, I don't think it was that slow but I don't remember. >> NetBSD >> claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it has a text >> installer that could run in an emulator. >> > > Yes, when I compared the list of architectures supported by nebsd, and > by linux the last time I ran netbsd, it was certainly true that netbsd > ran on lots more archs, and I wouldn't be surprised if it still > does. Again, regarding your comment on the text installer, see above. > > Again, see above but I would also add that I know of at least two Vax emulators which are text-based and do in fact work great with ssh. I played a demo version of Zork for mainframes which told you to buy the commercial series now available from Infocom. I don't remember the date on that particular Zork but it was from 1980-ish, clearly after the Apple II version was published. It also had Adventure. It was tops10 I think. Now I'm not remembering the name of the emulator but it was specific to the Vax arch. I found instructions for getting NetBSD working on it. If this is something you're interested in, you can of course use Google or apt-cache search, but I could try to find the name of it. I know there are at least two that work great from a console and at least one is in Debian. > The thing that turned me off netbsd was that you had to build > everything from source, other than the base system, which you could > get as binaries. At the time, I was running it on a 133 MHz pentium, > with 64 megs of RAM, so you can imagine how long it took to build > stuff on it, especially if you wanted to customize the netbsd kernel > to your hardware, which I did, just for the experience. Another thing > Huh? Yes, the ports collection builds everything from source but you can download precompiled packages as well, at least on FreeBSD. The dependency tracking isn't the best but it wasn't that bad. I would check ftp://ftp.XX.netbsd.org/ again, replacing XX with your country code. I'm sure you'll find installable packages. There is pkgsrc (or pkg-src, not sure which) which builds from source but you should also see a packages directory with a ton of installable software. I know OpenBSD and FreeBSD do provide packages, but perhaps NetBSD doesn't because of the number of arches it supports. I've installed FreeBSD packages before. Yes, I used Gentoo first and I did like it, so it was no adjustment when I tried FreeBSD. Gentoo is based on the BSD ports collection as you can imagine. I never tried building a custom kernel. > that turned me off netbsd is the lack of dependency tracking when > installing software, this was true even for the binary base > system. What I'll say to those using gnu/linux who want to try out > netbsd is that if you've used gentoo, and like it, then you'll > probably fall in love with netbsd as well. However, if you've used > gentoo, and don't like it, then I'd say the chances are high you won't > like netbsd either. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler @ ` Gregory Nowak ` Garrett Klein ` Tony Baechler 0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Gregory Nowak @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 03:49:47AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > OK, I was unclear obviously. What you say is correct in most cases that > an emulator interface has nothing to do with the guest OS. However, at > least when I played with Bochs a long time ago, Bochs was different. If > you didn't need graphics, you could set it to only use a curses > interface for the emulated OS and it worked. Yes, this was even true for installing/running win95/wineyes back when I tried it. The biggest problem I found here was the lack of keyboard usability, (I.E. the tab key, the win/menu keys, ETC.), but that's a different story. > It comes with a sample 10 > MB Linux disk image. If you tell it to not use a GUI but to run the > image with the curses interface, you have a very minimal emulated Linux > system. There isn't a lot you can do with it, but I verified that it in > fact worked. I tried with other images but didn't get anywhere. Maybe > that has changed but it used to work. I never tried the provided images. I just made an hd image, and tried a clean install of win95 on it. > Being that there was no GUI, I > don't think it was that slow but I don't remember. You might have been running bochs on a system with higher specs than mine. I was running it at the time on a 600 MHz pentium III system, with 256 megs of RAM, and I don't recall how much swap. Even so, whether or not you used a gui wouldn't have mattered much I don't think in terms of speed. As I said, speed depends on the goal of the bochs project, which is to emulate every single x86 instruction, rather than letting the native cpu do some of the work. This approach makes sense if you want to for example run windows, an x86 OS on a non x86 arch, like Sun sparc for example. >>> NetBSD claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it >>> has a text installer that could run in an emulator. Yeah, in an emulator, or a physical machine. > Huh? Yes, the ports collection builds everything from source but you > can download precompiled packages as well, at least on FreeBSD. - From all of my research, you could get only the base system as binaries on netbsd. If there were binary builds for everything else besides that, I never found where you could get them from, and I did look all over the netbsd repos, like you suggested. Maybe this has changed now, but it was certainly true as far as I could tell, back when I was running netbsd. Also, it's probably not a good idea to assume that just because freebsd has something, that netbsd will have it too, (I'm referring specifically to binary packages here). There are reasons for why one is called freebsd, and the other is called netbsd, rather than being the same os identically, right down to the last detail. I can't speak for freebsd, I never tried it. > The > dependency tracking isn't the best but it wasn't that bad. I would > check ftp://ftp.XX.netbsd.org/ again, replacing XX with your country > code. Thanks for the suggestion, but I blew away my netbsd install about a year or more ago now, and don't plan to bring it back in the near future. Greg - -- web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjX8WIACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyAyBQCfRpU63OID0ej8u1VZCVT9uK2F kOEAn0ChS6bRNS3PgS+VIjS4/ZO/AXOg =y9dV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Gregory Nowak @ ` Garrett Klein ` Tony Baechler 1 sibling, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Garrett Klein @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Hello, kvm/qemu also have ncurses interfaces. Try kvm -curses or qemu -curses. Hth, Garrett Gregory Nowak wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 03:49:47AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: >> OK, I was unclear obviously. What you say is correct in most cases that >> an emulator interface has nothing to do with the guest OS. However, at >> least when I played with Bochs a long time ago, Bochs was different. If >> you didn't need graphics, you could set it to only use a curses >> interface for the emulated OS and it worked. > > Yes, this was even true for installing/running win95/wineyes back when > I tried it. The biggest problem I found here was the lack of keyboard > usability, (I.E. the tab key, the win/menu keys, ETC.), but that's a > different story. > >> It comes with a sample 10 >> MB Linux disk image. If you tell it to not use a GUI but to run the >> image with the curses interface, you have a very minimal emulated Linux >> system. There isn't a lot you can do with it, but I verified that it in >> fact worked. I tried with other images but didn't get anywhere. Maybe >> that has changed but it used to work. > > I never tried the provided images. I just made an hd image, and tried > a clean install of win95 on it. > >> Being that there was no GUI, I >> don't think it was that slow but I don't remember. > > You might have been running bochs on a system with higher specs than > mine. I was running it at the time on a 600 MHz pentium III system, > with 256 megs of RAM, and I don't recall how much swap. Even so, > whether or not you used a gui wouldn't have mattered much I don't > think in terms of speed. As I said, speed depends on the goal of the > bochs project, which is to emulate every single x86 instruction, > rather than letting the native cpu do some of the work. This approach > makes sense if you want to for example run windows, an x86 OS on a non > x86 arch, like Sun sparc for example. > >>>> NetBSD claims to run on anything including the Vax so I'm sure it >>>> has a text installer that could run in an emulator. > > Yeah, in an emulator, or a physical machine. > >> Huh? Yes, the ports collection builds everything from source but you >> can download precompiled packages as well, at least on FreeBSD. > > - From all of my research, you could get only the base system as > binaries on netbsd. If there were binary builds for everything else > besides that, I never found where you could get them from, and I did > look all over the netbsd repos, like you suggested. Maybe this has > changed now, but it was certainly true as far as I could tell, back > when I was running netbsd. Also, it's probably not a good idea to > assume that just because freebsd has something, that netbsd will have > it too, (I'm referring specifically to binary packages here). There > are reasons for why one is called freebsd, and the other is called > netbsd, rather than being the same os identically, right down to the > last detail. I can't speak > for freebsd, I never tried it. > >> The >> dependency tracking isn't the best but it wasn't that bad. I would >> check ftp://ftp.XX.netbsd.org/ again, replacing XX with your country >> code. > > Thanks for the suggestion, but I blew away my netbsd install about a > year or more ago now, and don't plan to bring it back in the near future. > > Greg > > > - -- > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc > skype: gregn1 > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) > > - -- > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkjX8WIACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyAyBQCfRpU63OID0ej8u1VZCVT9uK2F > kOEAn0ChS6bRNS3PgS+VIjS4/ZO/AXOg > =y9dV > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Gregory Nowak ` Garrett Klein @ ` Tony Baechler ` Samuel Thibault ` (2 more replies) 1 sibling, 3 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Tony Baechler @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Hi, I've confirmed that NetBSD does in fact have binary packages for apparently all supported arches and has had them for several years. The Vax packages haven't been maintained since 2005 from what I can gather but the I386 packages seem current. The recommended thing is of course to build from source, but there are many binaries available for those who can't or don't want to. Also, I checked and found at least one emulator called simh which claims to emulate the Vax but the microcode isn't available. That's not the one I was thinking of but it would probably work. All it needs is the standard C library so there should be no accessibility issues. I'll find the other one if anyone else cares besides me. I looked in Debian and there is no qemu-curses package. The regular qemu requires X. Even if Qemu has a curses setup, is that also supported in the guest OS? In other words, can it not use a GUI when launching say DOS or the BSD installer? When I tried it, I never got it to do anything at all. My processor can't use kvm unfortunately. Does anyone know about xen? It can apparently run both BSD and Linux and has console tools for administration, but I don't know anything besides that. Will it support multiple VMs such as a Linux host with BSD guest or does one need to reboot into a new OS? How would one install BSD on a xen VM? I suppose I should install the xen-docs-3.2 package but I would like to get a general idea of how it works and if it's accessible first. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler @ ` Samuel Thibault ` Xen - Re " luke ` Zachary Kline ` Gregory Nowak 2 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Samuel Thibault @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Tony Baechler, le Tue 23 Sep 2008 03:27:52 -0700, a écrit : > I looked in Debian and there is no qemu-curses package. The regular > qemu requires X. Use the qemu from Lenny, it has the ncurses patch. > Even if Qemu has a curses setup, is that also supported in the guest > OS? As long as the OS doesn't start a graphical environment, qemu -curses works fine. > In other words, can it not use a GUI when launching say DOS or the BSD > installer? These are text mode, so that should work. > Does anyone know about xen? It can apparently run both BSD and Linux > and has console tools for administration, Actually Xen doesn't have anything but console versions for the tools. The XenSource sells a graphical interface, but everything can be done from the opensource console tools. > Will it support multiple VMs such as a Linux host with BSD guest Of course, that's the point of virtualization :) > How would one install BSD on a xen VM? I don't know if there is a xen flavor of the BSD installer. Debian will have one in Lenny. Samuel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Samuel Thibault @ ` luke ` Tony Baechler 0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: luke @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Tony Baechler apparently wrote: > Does anyone know about xen? It can apparently run both BSD and Linux > and has console tools for administration, Both are true. I use it heavily for running multiple Linuxes inside Linux. Beautiful system, Xen. > Will it support multiple VMs such as a Linux host with BSD guest Such is the theory behind virtualization.:) Yes. > How would one install BSD on a xen VM? One method which _might_ work, is to setup a guest image which simply contains the installation CD. Boot it with what you need to get it into text mode, and start a xen console on it, and you just might be able to use the installer to install on to a virtually exported hard drive partition, which you could later boot as its own guest. I think that some such scheme is described in the Xen user's Manual, although it's been a couple years since I read that thing. A tip for using Xen and Linux virtualization in general: LVM2 is a near must, if you're doing anything speculative. Yes, you can use loop file systems, and probably want to for the installer that we're talking about here, but they are said to be slow for routine use, and I have no reason to doubt that. Luke ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Xen - Re " luke @ ` Tony Baechler ` luke 0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread From: Tony Baechler @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Hi, Sorry to overquote here, but I'm confused by your message. I do understand what virtualization is, but I wasn't 100% sure that Xen is in fact a virtualization product. It looked like it requires special kernels with Xen patches, but the manual says it runs Windows XP. I know what loop files are, but what is LVM or LVM2? I know it stands for logical volume management, but how does that have to do with this? Other than knowing what LVM stands for, I have no clue what it does or why one would want it. I noticed the Lenny installer offered it when I was setting up partitions but again with no explanation. I would think that a CD image would be a .iso file which in turn would be a loop filesystem, so again how does LVM enter into it? I did read a bit of the manual and it said nothing about any of this. It said that one must use grub as a boot loader. Does that mean that lilo won't work or are they suggesting grub because it's more flexible? A step by step guide of exactly what to do to set up a basic VM would be helpful. I see that there are special xen kernel images and modules, but I'm not sure how I would set up a primary and secondary linux VM setup. For example, I would want to run a virtual Linux server inside a host server. How? Once I get that working, I would like to play with NetBSD again since the manual says it has a Xen installer. This still doesn't address how accessible all of this is. With VMWare for example, I have no speech once I start even a text OS like FreeDOS unless I load a screen reader. Would this still apply in Xen? If so, would that mean I would need sighted help? The point for me would be to do this on my own, at least with BSD. Sorry for so many questions, but Xen seems different than other VM solutions I've seen and I think I'm not grasping important things here. luke wrote: > Tony Baechler apparently wrote: > > >> Does anyone know about xen? It can apparently run both BSD and Linux >> and has console tools for administration, >> > > Both are true. I use it heavily for running multiple Linuxes inside > Linux. Beautiful system, Xen. > > >> Will it support multiple VMs such as a Linux host with BSD guest >> > > Such is the theory behind virtualization.:) Yes. > > >> How would one install BSD on a xen VM? >> > > One method which _might_ work, is to setup a guest image which simply > contains the installation CD. Boot it with what you need to get it into > text mode, and start a xen console on it, and you just might be able to > use the installer to install on to a virtually exported hard drive > partition, which you could later boot as its own guest. > > I think that some such scheme is described in the Xen user's Manual, > although it's been a couple years since I read that thing. > > A tip for using Xen and Linux virtualization in general: LVM2 is a near > must, if you're doing anything speculative. Yes, you can use loop file > systems, and probably want to for the installer that we're talking about > here, but they are said to be slow for routine use, and I have no reason > to doubt that. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler @ ` luke 0 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: luke @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Tony Baechler wrote: > Sorry to overquote here, but I'm confused by your message. I do understand > what virtualization is, but I wasn't 100% sure that Xen is in fact a > virtualization product. It is. > It looked like it requires special kernels with Xen > patches, but the manual says it runs Windows XP. It requires OS modifications, and thus the patched kernels. I know that people have caused it to run XP. I have never had reason to try that, however, nor have I had any reason to investigate it, so I have no idea how to do that, or how well it works. > I know what loop files are, > but what is LVM or LVM2? I know it stands for logical volume management, but > how does that have to do with this? Other than knowing what LVM stands for, I > have no clue what it does or why one would want it. Logical Volume Manager, I believe. Its value is that it removes the major necessity to partition in advance. I'll give you a bit of an example. I built a server, with a set of 300 gig drives. The first partition on each, was a RAID1 volume of about 256 MB, for /boot. The second on each was a RAID1 volume of about 50GB. In that 50 gig partition, I created 3 logical volumes, using LVM. The first was 4 gig. I put an EXT3 file system on that, and mounted it on / (I.E. the root dir). The second was 4 gig, which I allocated to /home. The third was all of the remaining space, which I mounted under /var. I shouldn't ever have to change those, but let's just say that for some reason, I one day decide that I need ten gig under /home instead of four. How can I get it without installing another drive with ten gig on it, and making a new partition formatted with EXT3, and remounting /var on it? and, if I were to do that, I have just wasted four gig on the original drive. Well, with LVM, what I can do, is find a block of six gig somewhere, and tell LVM that said block of six gig, is a physical volume, in the same volume group as the existing /home partition. I can then expand the logical volume underlying /home, to fill that additional six gig, and then expand the EXT3 partition into the new space. Without wasting any space, and without moving my current /var files, I have made that partition span two disks in a completely transparent way, and increased the size of the partition. That is a simple example, and in practice I probably wouldn't do something quite like that. That is a sort of JBOD system, if you understand RAID. Now, on that same server, I have this setup. In addition to a volume group for swap partitions, I have a huge chunk of space, allocated to a volume group for Xen virtual machines. Let's say that I want to create a virtual mail server. I might decide that I want that mail server to have a 1 gig partition for system data, and a 5 gig partition to store mail on. If I was using fdisk and real partitions, I could probably create those, although I would eventually run out of partitions. Additionally, when I deleted one which was between others which I was not deleting, I could not reclaim that space except with a smaller or equally sized partition, and I would have to calculate that every time, and keep track of where the blank spots were on the drive. With LVM: no problem. I tell LVM to make me a 1 gig partition, and a 5 gig partition. I don't care where it puts them, as long as they are in the right volume group, which may consist of a single drive with a single partition, or multiple drives, growing to arbitrary size. It creates them, and I tell Xen that these are the available partitions to build the virtual machine on. I format those partitions with ext3 or what ever, and then mount the 1 gig partition under /mnt or something, copy a basic Debian (Ubuntu, actually) system on to it, tweak a few files (fstab, hosts, network/interfaces, and maybe a few others), unmount it, and I am ready to boot the new virtual mail server. Oh, I also create a swap partition of what ever size I think is reasonable. If I have granted the virtual mail server a memory chunk of 256 MB of physical RAM, then I might give it a 768 MB swap partition, which I would include in the list of partitions which Xen would give to the virtual, and I would list it in the virtual's fstab. If I screw up, I can do anything up to and including blowing away those logical volumes. In short, if you do a lot with virtual machines, and don't have a fixed number of them, or periodically build and destroy virtuals, I think LVM is essential. You can use loop file systems--make a ten gig partition in a loop, formated with ext3, but there is a definite speed penalty in doing this, and if you are doing it seriously, that is not acceptable. > [.] I would think that a CD image would be a .iso file which in turn > would be a loop filesystem, so again how does LVM enter into it? I did read a The CD iso would definitely be a loop FS. However, you are trying to install that FreeBSD/NetBSD system on to *something*, right? That is where LVM would enter into it. Create a 5 gig or 10 gig or what ever logical volume, and tell Xen that the drives this virtual has access to, is first the iso loop, and second the partition created with LVM. Now, in all fairness to you, I probably shouldn't have brought this up. Since you are just getting started with Xen, and don't already understand LVM or understand why you might want it, it might make more sense for you to play with loop filesystems, until you get comfortable and serious. I realized early on that I would need LVM (even though I had never worked with it, I knew what it made possible), and so I made it a point to learn LVM at the same time I learned Xen. I was going from zero to a fullly virtualized server in twelve hours flat, and knew that I couldn't plan out all of those partitions ahead of time. It just semed like the "logical" thing to do, and I don't regret it--I have done things on that server because of LVM, that I never could otherwise. For example, I had a user on that 4 gig /home partition I talked about before, who needed 30 gig for a while, to backup one of his machines during some major maintenance. I created and formatted a 30 gig logical volume, and mounted it under his home partition, and then went on with my day. Took 30 seconds to setup, and a couple minutes to format with ext3. When he is done with it, I can unmount and delete it, and that space is ready again for some other use. > bit of the manual and it said nothing about any of this. It said that one > must use grub as a boot loader. Does that mean that lilo won't work or are > they suggesting grub because it's more flexible? You've got me on that one. I have no idea why you should have to use grub. However, I haven't used LILO in years, so I may be forgetting some of its limitations. You don't actually use grub or LILO to boot guests, only the host OS. It may be that grub supports loading the kernel in stages, and LILO does not. I am no expert in what is going on here, but there is the main kernel, the ramdisk, and another section which is the host OS kernel. >From the grub config file on that server I described above: title Xen 3.0-i386-pae / Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.19-4-server root (hd0,0) kernel /xen-3.0-i386-pae.gz module /vmlinuz-2.6.19-4-server root=/dev/mapper/vg--main-lv1 ... module /initrd.img-2.6.19-4-server > A step by step guide of > exactly what to do to set up a basic VM would be helpful. I see that there > are special xen kernel images and modules, but I'm not sure how I would set up > a primary and secondary linux VM setup. For example, I would want to run a > virtual Linux server inside a host server. How? Once I get that working, I I read the user manual, as well as these sites: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XenVirtualMachine?action=show&redirect=XenVirtualMachine%2FXenOnUbuntuFeisty#head-41ae8193818ca2e2ae26ad3d893a680fb6c718f8> (Note that the above page is claimed to be "old junk". It didn't have that warning when I read it. The page it links to is probably better, but I haven't read it. You can find it here: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Xen>.) http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/CoolConfigurations (More graphically orientated than you want, but probably some useful stuff) > would like to play with NetBSD again since the manual says it has a Xen > installer. This still doesn't address how accessible all of this is. With At least with Linux as the host, and Linux as the virtual machines, it is most highly accessible. To start a guest machine called "parasite", which you had previously setup, and to then have your current terminal become its console, you could type: xm create -c parasite You will see the boot messages, and eventually a login prompt, usually followed by more boot messages. I usually run screen when doing this, so I can switch over to another shell, and do other things, while leaving xm consoles running to my various guests. However, I could also press control right bracket to dump out of that console and back to my original shell; and then "xm console parasite" to get back to where I left off. It is generally better to go in via ssh, however, as the xm console can do abnormal things with ncurses apps. > VMWare for example, I have no speech once I start even a text OS like FreeDOS > unless I load a screen reader. Would this still apply in Xen? If so, would No. As long as your guest OS runs in text mode, you will not have a problem there in most circumstances of which i can think, although i stand to be corrected. > that mean I would need sighted help? The point for me would be to do >this on my own, at least with BSD. I did it completely on my own. Well, there was praying, but I don't think that's what you meant. > Sorry for so many questions, but Xen seems > different than other VM solutions I've seen and I think I'm not grasping > important things here. Benchmarks say it is faster, so in that way it is certainly different.:) I have never used VMWare, because I understand that it is quite inaccessible in Linux. Or at least it was. Never tried hardware virtualization, because I didn't have the chips. HTH Luke ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler ` Samuel Thibault @ ` Zachary Kline ` Gregory Nowak 2 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Zachary Kline @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. Tony Baechler wrote: > Hi, > > I've confirmed that NetBSD does in fact have binary packages for > apparently all supported arches and has had them for several years. > The Vax packages haven't been maintained since 2005 from what I can > gather but the I386 packages seem current. The recommended thing is of > course to build from source, but there are many binaries available for > those who can't or don't want to. > > Also, I checked and found at least one emulator called simh which > claims to emulate the Vax but the microcode isn't available. That's > not the one I was thinking of but it would probably work. All it needs > is the standard C library so there should be no accessibility issues. > I'll find the other one if anyone else cares besides me. > > I looked in Debian and there is no qemu-curses package. The regular > qemu requires X. Even if Qemu has a curses setup, is that also > supported in the guest OS? In other words, can it not use a GUI when > launching say DOS or the BSD installer? When I tried it, I never got > it to do anything at all. My processor can't use kvm unfortunately. > Does anyone know about xen? It can apparently run both BSD and Linux > and has console tools for administration, but I don't know anything > besides that. Will it support multiple VMs such as a Linux host with > BSD guest or does one need to reboot into a new OS? How would one > install BSD on a xen VM? I suppose I should install the xen-docs-3.2 > package but I would like to get a general idea of how it works and if > it's accessible first. > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > Hi, I've actually used SIMH to emulate and run NetBSD VAX before on many occasions. IT works quite nicely, and the microcode is available, even if only in binary form. The neat thing about SIMH is that the interface is console-based and therefore completely accessible. (It doesn't even emulate any graphics cards.) Hope this helps, Zack. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems ` Tony Baechler ` Samuel Thibault ` Zachary Kline @ ` Gregory Nowak 2 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread From: Gregory Nowak @ UTC (permalink / raw) To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 03:27:52AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > I've confirmed that NetBSD does in fact have binary packages for > apparently all supported arches and has had them for several years. That's good to know. I dumped my netbsd install sometime in late 2005/early 2006. When I looked at that time, I couldn't find a complete set of binaries for everything in the netbsd collection for i386. I don't know if they weren't available at that time, or if they were there, and I just didn't look hard enough. At any rate, it's good to know they're available now. Greg - -- web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjZPeYACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyD3sgCfXpNtGcBNLxZcny/wYrsSGT3n Q4YAn0QhntYXi6JtfVk2f66oMlyKVaQy =AdD2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
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State of accessibility on BSD systems Cleverson
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` Gregory Nowak
` Tony Baechler
` Gregory Nowak
` Garrett Klein
` Tony Baechler
` Samuel Thibault
` Xen - Re " luke
` Tony Baechler
` luke
` Zachary Kline
` Gregory Nowak
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