State of accessibility on BSD systems

State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Cleverson]

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

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Kerry Hoath]

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
_______________________________________________
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Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Tony Baechler]

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.

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Alex Snow]

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

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Tony Baechler]

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.

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Alex Snow]

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

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Gregory Nowak]

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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
>

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Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Tony Baechler]

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.
>   

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Gregory Nowak]

-----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


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Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Garrett Klein]

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
>
>
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Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Tony Baechler]

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.

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Samuel Thibault]

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

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Zachary Kline]

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.

Re: State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Gregory Nowak]

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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


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Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems

[luke]

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

Re: Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems

[Tony Baechler]

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.
>   

Re: Xen - Re State of accessibility on BSD systems

[luke]

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