Speakup-enabled ArchLinux install CD, version 2!

* Speakup-enabled ArchLinux install CD, version 2!
@  Chris Brannon
   ` Tyler Littlefield
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Chris Brannon @  UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: speakup

I am proud to announce the second release of a modified ArchLinux install CD
that includes Speakup.
It is mostly equivalent to the official "ftp CD", but
the system should start speaking as soon as you boot with it.
Speech is provided via the sound card, using the eSpeak software synthesizer.
This CD is only available for the i686 platform; x86-64 is not supported.
There are two versions: an Isolinux version and a Grub version.
One may obtain ".iso" images via HTTP.

Grub:
Download URL: http://cmb.tysdomain.com/talkingarch-2009.02-ftp-i686.iso
MD5 sum: 932d49d5093e50d8c5fb14527afd17fa

Isolinux:
Download URL:
http://cmb.tysdomain.com/talkingarch-2009.02-ftp-i686-isolinux.iso.1
MD5 sum: 28fa806a745e26424596259a71fc9d64

Thanks to Tyler Littlefield for hosting these files.

The following list of steps is a brief guide to installing ArchLinux
using this CD.
If anyone has trouble with it, send me a private email.
The instructions assume that your root partition will be mounted on /mnt.

0. When booting, Grub provides a very long timeout.  Press enter once the
drive stops spinning.

1. Use the installer on the CD, as per the beginner's guide.
2. Install the alsa-utils and espeak packages:
pacman --root=/mnt -S alsa-utils espeak
3. Install the speakup and espeakup packages.
These are not yet available in the community repository.
There are two ways to install them, depending on how much you trust me.

Alternative 1: Use the binary packages from my website.  I promise that
the speakup package will always match the kernel version available from
the official ArchLinux repositories.
Append the following two lines to /etc/pacman.conf and /mnt/etc/pacman.conf:
[blind]
Server = {http://members.cox.net/cmbrannon/blind/i686}
Install the packages from my custom repository:
pacman --root=/mnt -Sy speakup espeakup

Alternative 2: Build the packages from source, using the PKGBUILDs available
from the Arch User Repository.  For convenience, the URLs are:
{http://aur.archlinux.org/download/speakup/speakup.tar.gz}
{http://aur.archlinux.org/download/espeakup/espeakup.tar.gz}
If I were going to choose this option, I would probably chroot into the
newly installed ArchLinux system in order to build the packages.

4. Customize /mnt/etc/rc.conf:
Add speakup and speakup_soft to the MODULES array.  Add alsa and espeakup to
the DAEMONS array.

5. You also need to save the state of the sound card, so that it will be
retrieved on reboot.
Execute the command "alsactl store" and copy the file /etc/asound.state to
/mnt/etc/asound.state.
Alternatively, alsactl -f /mnt/etc/asound.state store

6. When you boot the system from the hard disk, it should start speaking.

The ArchLinux developers build their CD images using a set of shell scripts
and configuration files named archiso.  I added a configuration to archiso
that allows me to build accessible CDs.
If someone wants to master customized images containing Speakup, he should
do the following.

Grab sources using git:
git clone http://members.cox.net/cmbrannon/archiso.git
git checkout --track -b talkinginst origin/talkinginst
All of my work is done on the "talkinginst" branch.  The master branch
mirrors the master branch from git://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git
Now you have a copy in archiso/.  Install the scripts contained in
archiso/archiso.

In order to create the image, pacman needs to be able to find the speakup
and espeakup packages.
Add my custom [blind] package repository to /etc/pacman.conf on the host
system, as described in the instructions for installing from CD.
Change to the archiso/configs/talkinginst directory, and type "make ftp-iso".
Alternatively, "make BOOTLOADER=syslinux ftp-iso"" yields an image having
Isolinux as its bootloader.
There are several more targets for "make".  For instance, ftp-usb produces
an image suitable for a flash drive.

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with ArchLinux.
I don't even have Trusted User status in the community.
This CD image is not an official release.  It is not endorsed by anyone other
than myself.  It is provided solely for the convenience of its creator
and other blind users.      It comes with absolutely no warranty.

With kind regards,
-- Chris

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