Hi list, I'm new to Arch. The other day, I downloaded the ISO mentioned in the subject line. I remastered the image, because I needed some extra programs. I'm blind. I added a screenreader and a text-to-speech engine to the ISO, so that I could have spoken feedback during the install. I also added alsa-utils, alsa-lib, and a few miscellaneous packages. I burned the CD and booted the system. Arch started talking to me, and everything seemed ok.
After a few minutes, I started noticing strange behavior. The system froze when I tried to execute a command. For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking. I also noticed that Arch is writing data to its unionfs. Most of the data seems to be written to /var/log. Should a live CD be writing to logfiles?
My problems could be caused by one of several things. 1. A broken CD-ROM drive. (I doubt it, because the drive is 3 weeks old). 2. A mistake while remastering the ISO. 3. Some sort of error from the original ISO.
Has anyone else had trouble with this image? If not, then the issue must be caused by my hardware or personal configuration.
Regards, -- Chris
I had this problem too...
-- Tomás A. Schertel tschertel[at]gmail.com tomas[at]archlinux-br.org ---------------------------------------------- Arch Linux User http://www.archlinux-br.org/ Linux Registered User #304838 ----------------------------------------------
On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 22:12, Chris Brannon cmbrannon@cox.net wrote:
Hi list, I'm new to Arch. The other day, I downloaded the ISO mentioned in the subject line. I remastered the image, because I needed some extra programs. I'm blind. I added a screenreader and a text-to-speech engine to the ISO, so that I could have spoken feedback during the install. I also added alsa-utils, alsa-lib, and a few miscellaneous packages. I burned the CD and booted the system. Arch started talking to me, and everything seemed ok.
After a few minutes, I started noticing strange behavior. The system froze when I tried to execute a command. For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking. I also noticed that Arch is writing data to its unionfs. Most of the data seems to be written to /var/log. Should a live CD be writing to logfiles?
My problems could be caused by one of several things.
- A broken CD-ROM drive. (I doubt it, because the drive is 3 weeks old).
- A mistake while remastering the ISO.
- Some sort of error from the original ISO.
Has anyone else had trouble with this image? If not, then the issue must be caused by my hardware or personal configuration.
Regards, -- Chris
Sorry, not the SAME problem.. My just recorded iso doesn't work,... Sorry again..
-- Tomás A. Schertel tschertel[at]gmail.com tomas[at]archlinux-br.org ---------------------------------------------- Arch Linux User http://www.archlinux-br.org/ Linux Registered User #304838 ----------------------------------------------
On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 23:58, Tomás Acauan Schertel tschertel@gmail.comwrote:
I had this problem too...
-- Tomás A. Schertel tschertel[at]gmail.com tomas[at]archlinux-br.org
Arch Linux User http://www.archlinux-br.org/ Linux Registered User #304838
On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 22:12, Chris Brannon cmbrannon@cox.net wrote:
Hi list, I'm new to Arch. The other day, I downloaded the ISO mentioned in the subject line. I remastered the image, because I needed some extra programs. I'm blind. I added a screenreader and a text-to-speech engine to the ISO, so that I could have spoken feedback during the install. I also added alsa-utils, alsa-lib, and a few miscellaneous packages. I burned the CD and booted the system. Arch started talking to me, and everything seemed ok.
After a few minutes, I started noticing strange behavior. The system froze when I tried to execute a command. For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking. I also noticed that Arch is writing data to its unionfs. Most of the data seems to be written to /var/log. Should a live CD be writing to logfiles?
My problems could be caused by one of several things.
- A broken CD-ROM drive. (I doubt it, because the drive is 3 weeks old).
- A mistake while remastering the ISO.
- Some sort of error from the original ISO.
Has anyone else had trouble with this image? If not, then the issue must be caused by my hardware or personal configuration.
Regards, -- Chris
Chris Brannon schrieb:
I'm new to Arch. The other day, I downloaded the ISO mentioned in the subject line. I remastered the image, because I needed some extra programs. I'm blind. I added a screenreader and a text-to-speech engine to the ISO, so that I could have spoken feedback during the install. I also added alsa-utils, alsa-lib, and a few miscellaneous packages.
I wonder whether we should have those packages on the CD by default. It is especially difficult for a blind person to use a computer, and we force you to remaster the image yourself before you can use it. Worth a thought.
For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking.
The fact that your drive is making noises indicates that either the drive, the CD or the writer that wrote the CD are broken.
I also noticed that Arch is writing data to its unionfs. Most of the data seems to be written to /var/log. Should a live CD be writing to logfiles?
It is really useful. And it only uses a few KB of memory. I don't see it as a problem.
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 2:37 AM, Thomas Bächler thomas@archlinux.org wrote:
Chris Brannon schrieb:
I'm new to Arch. The other day, I downloaded the ISO mentioned in the subject line. I remastered the image, because I needed some extra programs. I'm blind. I added a screenreader and a text-to-speech engine to the ISO, so that I could have spoken feedback during the install. I also added alsa-utils, alsa-lib, and a few miscellaneous packages.
I wonder whether we should have those packages on the CD by default. It is especially difficult for a blind person to use a computer, and we force you to remaster the image yourself before you can use it. Worth a thought.
I agree. At the very least, we can offer an alternate "accessibility" version which would have tools like this for blind users and the like.
Chris, what software do you need, or think others may need, when it comes to things like this?
For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking.
The fact that your drive is making noises indicates that either the drive, the CD or the writer that wrote the CD are broken.
The other option is that remastering the CD was goofy. I expect the iso was unpacked, and software added to it which may or may not have been built against the same libraries. I am assuming Chris did not go through the process of building the ISO with archiso.
Aaron Griffin schrieb:
I wonder whether we should have those packages on the CD by default. It is especially difficult for a blind person to use a computer, and we force you to remaster the image yourself before you can use it. Worth a thought.
I agree. At the very least, we can offer an alternate "accessibility" version which would have tools like this for blind users and the like.
Chris, what software do you need, or think others may need, when it comes to things like this?
We could simply add an extra squashfs overlay to the ISO. Do we have support for selecting or deselecting squashfs overlays on the boot prompt? Can a blind person even read the boot prompt (I think not, but then I don't know what possibilities there are).
"Aaron Griffin" aaronmgriffin@gmail.com writes:
I agree. At the very least, we can offer an alternate "accessibility" version which would have tools like this for blind users and the like.
Chris, what software do you need, or think others may need, when it comes to things like this?
Thank you so much for your interest! I hope that the following discussion is concise, because this is complex.
Software necessary for a talking boot: * alsa-utils (to unmute the soundcard at boot) * espeak (a text-to-speech engine available in [community]) * speakup (a kernel-based screenreader, not currently available in Arch) * speech-dispatcher and speechd-up (see below)
Speakup is only available from a git repository. There is a tarball somewhere on their website, but it is terribly stale. I mirror the git repo, so I could send a tarball of the recent sources. Previous versions required one to patch the kernel, but the latest version can be built without applying patches, as long as one is using a 2.6.26 (or later) kernel.
There's also a user-space screenreader for the console, and that is what I used on my remastered ISO. It has to be started after logging in, so most blind people don't like it. OTOH, Speakup gives one a talking login prompt. If one uses a hardware synthesizer, he can have speech as soon as the modules are loaded. If he uses a software speech synthesizer like espeak, then speech can start from the init scripts.
We also need software to communicate between speakup and the espeak TTS engine. That's what speech-dispatcher and speechd-up are for. Speakup just sends text to a character device called /dev/softsynth. The tarball for speech-dispatcher is here: http://www.freebsoft.org/pub/projects/speechd/speech-dispatcher-0.6.7.tar.gz The tarball for speechd-up is stale (late 2006). The CVS version has quite a few improvements and bugfixes.
I've built and installed all of these packages from source on other distros, so I'll gladly learn to use makepkg and contribute some pkgbuilds.
Thomas asked about squashfs overlays and boot options. Plenty of other distros require that we type something at the boot prompt to get speech. We can't read the prompt, but we can listen for the CD drive to stop spinning. A long timeout from the bootloader helps here.
The other option is that remastering the CD was goofy. I expect the iso was unpacked, and software added to it which may or may not have been built against the same libraries. I am assuming Chris did not go through the process of building the ISO with archiso.
Aaron is correct. I linked some programs against libraries from Debian, and I didn't go through the archiso process. Bet this is the problem. The drive and media seem good, because I can copy the data back to the HD without issues.
-- Chris
To me, it looks like the drive is having difficulties reading the cd, which should be unrelated to your customizations. A solution might be to try different media, drive combinations for reading or writing.
If those are not available, you can also try installing arch from within your current distro, or some other live cd. Here is a guide for that:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_From_Existing_Linux
* On Thursday, September 25 2008, Chris Brannon wrote:
After a few minutes, I started noticing strange behavior. The system froze when I tried to execute a command. For instance, after typing "ps" at the bash prompt, the system locked up. It was unable to load the ps executable or one of its shared libraries from the CD. Sometimes, it would print the message "input-output error", and return to a working bash prompt. I could hear my CD-ROM drive clicking whenever it tried to load the executable. It just sat there for five or more minutes, spinning and clicking. I also noticed that Arch is writing data to its unionfs. Most of the data seems to be written to /var/log. Should a live CD be writing to logfiles?
My problems could be caused by one of several things.
- A broken CD-ROM drive. (I doubt it, because the drive is 3 weeks old).
- A mistake while remastering the ISO.
- Some sort of error from the original ISO.
Has anyone else had trouble with this image? If not, then the issue must be caused by my hardware or personal configuration.
Regards, -- Chris
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