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[arch-general] ArchLinux install CD for the blind, version 2!
by Chris Brannon 01 Apr '09

01 Apr '09

I am proud to announce the second release of a modified ArchLinux install CD that includes spoken output for blind users. 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 and the Speakup screenreader. 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 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 produce customized images containing Speakup, he can 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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[arch-general] Computer blocking due to kernel <-> userspace incompatibility?
by RedShift 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hello list Is it possible a computer gets stuck (not responding to keyboard, the only way to bring it back alive is a hard reset) because of a incompatibility between the kernel and userspace? The cursor is still flickering though, that is what leads me to believe it's software crash, not a hardware crash. This is the software in question: glibc 2.9-4 kernel-headers 2.6.27.6-2 kernel26 2.6.25.10-1 Thanks, Best regards, Glenn Matthys

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[arch-general] fortune-mod packages
by Jan Spakula 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

I've noticed that all fortune-mod packages (except fortune-mod itself) have been removed from extra (by Eric). Do you plan on uploading them to AUR, or should I just grab PKGBUILDs from svn and upload them myself if I'm interested on maintaining some of them? Thanks, Jan

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[arch-general] openjdk web plugin under proxy.
by Javier Vasquez 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hi, It happens that under the company I work for proxy (a non transparent one), the openjdk plugin doesn't seem to work. I tries to run the applet, but nothing. I read several bug reports about that (non arch), so I guess eventually it'll get fixed. However I'd like to know if there's a work around not implying tunneling neither routing. If there's anyone aware of such work around, please let me know. Thanks, -- Javier

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[arch-general] VirtualBox
by Manne Merak 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Hi all, I am new to ArchLinux, a longtime OpenSUSE and Slax user looking for a change. Before I commit I usually want to try with a LiveCD or VirtualBox. Cant find a LiveCD and VirtualBox booting the ISO gives a Kernel Panic. Anyone that can help me? Manne

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[arch-general] (no subject)
by Agus Setiawan 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

-- Regards, Agus Setiawan http://mysetiawan.net

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[arch-general] (no subject)
by xq 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

-- Yogi Berra - "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."

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[arch-general] [signoff] mdadm-2.6.9-1
by Tobias Powalowski 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Hi http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10651 http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/9122 both states raid is broken for more complex setups. According to my earlier mail about assembling raid arrays i wrote a new hook and install file. It uses mdassemble.static from mdadm tarball which is smaller than mdadm.static and does the assembling job and loading of the needed raid module. How does it work: - If a an array is defined on users system /etc/mdadm.conf, the file will be added to initramfs and used for the assembling things. - If no array was defined it falls back to commandline assembling and a madm.conf file will be created on the fly during bootup. Old command line syntax wasn't changed, uuid support is added (eg. md=0,0900878d:f95f6057:c39a36e9:55efa61b) Last Fix: -fixed booting from partitionable raid, by loading md_mod before assembling. Passed Tests: - Tested normal raid 1 setup with and without mdadm.conf modified. - Tested raid1 partitionable raid with extended and without extended partition. - Tested uuid assembling from commandline I think this is ready to move to core, please signoff. greetings tpowa -- Tobias Powalowski Archlinux Developer & Package Maintainer (tpowa) http://www.archlinux.org tpowa(a)archlinux.org

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[arch-general] /etc/fstab :no ext. hdd
by Preston C. 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

I hope that this is not to much of a noob question, but since I started using Arch I haven't been able to access my external hard drive through KDE. I posted on the forums about the problem but it seems that the other people who had the problem, had the problem in a different way. My problem is I can access my cdrom drive through the desktop but cannot access my external hdd. When I try to I get an error message concerning HAL Permission Policy. So I read back through The Beginners Guide and two things came to mind- user 'groups' and /etc/fstab. In /etc/fstab these are the devices that show: /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0 /dev/cdrom1 /media/cdrom1 auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0 /dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0 No external hdd? Also, why are there two cdrom devices when I only have 1 cd drive and 1 dvd drive? I was wondering if the external hdd doesn't exist in /etc/fstab because I did not add it as a 'group' (which I think I did) or for some other reason? Supposedly I could use HAL, in some way- although I would rather have the external hdd in /etc/fstab. How do I get the external hdd to exist in /etc/fstab , which I think it should? Thanks, Preston

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[arch-general] aufs2 patch to work for archlinux kernel
by Christopher Rogers 29 Mar '09

29 Mar '09

I fixed aufs2 to work in archlinux kernel. I had to remove some patches to aufs2-standalone.patch you guys made so it would work. This will mean we have to drop unionfs for this to work. http://arch-live.isawsome.net/devel/aufs2-standalone.patch patch for aufs2 to work with kernel 2.6.29 http://arch-live.isawsome.net/devel/aufs2-linux-2.6.29.patch Unionfs need do_splice_to and do_splice_from to be vfsub_splice_to and vfsub_splice_from. Problem was that those functions are in fs/aufs/vfsub.c file. Anyways I fixed the error since we are not using unionfs anymore if aufs2 is added in. I hope this helps.

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