Hi all.
I asked my question on the debian accessibility list but this list is likely to be more relevant as it is a kernel build issue and the issue is probably not related to speakup anyway.
I have had success with installing a debian testing system from the boot floppies using speakup and installing the installer and base system and packages from the net. Aptitude worked well in upgrading to unstable. The kernel is a 2.4 kernel, and quite old. Now what I want to do is build a modern 2.6 kernel the debian way but put speakup into it. This is with the future hope of modifying the debian netinst boot CD so it works with speakup. Also maybe modifying a knopix CD or making a new cd of debian testing or unstable.
This is a worthwhile excersise as there is no boot CD like this around at the moment. I would want to put the gnopernicus and other tools on there, as well as some software synths, emacs and emacspeak etc.
I got information on doing this job from the following sites:
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html#CONFIG-KERNEL-PKG
And
http://www.desktop-linux.net/debkernel.htm
Amung others.
However, the final step with make-kpkg did not work. I will explain my steps below.
1. downloaded the kernel source with aptitude install kernel-source-2.6.9. I fot hold of a kernel config from the Knopix cd which should have support for most hardware etc. this was for a 2.6.6 kernel but I imagine it will work on the sources for the 2.6.9??? (I was given advice to use make oldconfig on the old config file for 2.6.6 before running the make menuconfig for the 2.6.9… this still did not seem to work).
2. made sure I have the latest version of the following:
kernel-package, libncurses5-dev, bzip2, cvs , module-init-tools, initrd-tools, procps
And I also have the latest of the following
binutils, e2fsprogs, gcc, make,util-linux, libc6, libc6-dev, tk8.3, fakeroot, bin86, reiserfsprogs, pcmcia-cs, PPP, modutils, xfsprogs, jfsutils, oprofile. These are the packages that the kernel sources mention in the Documentation/Changes file as ones needed to be installed.
Although, could not find isdn4k-utils in any of the debian archives, nor could I find nfs-utils or quota-tools as debian packages. I have stable, testing and unstable main contrib and non-free archives in my sources.list. And I updated them before checking with apt-cache and aptitude. Will not having these few packages be a problem? I did install other ones that seem similar.
3. As root, unpacked the sources and made sure the 'linux' sym link in /usr/src points to the right dir for the kernel sources. Also put the .config (from the knopix config) into the /usr/src/linux dir (as the linux symlink points to the kernel source dir).
4. downloaded the checkout script for speakup and run it to patch the kernel sources in the /usr/src/linux tree. This seemed to work ok
5. Run make menuconfig. And I noticed that the config was found and used. Then I made sure speakup was selected. In this case I put it in as built in (i.e. not a module). I did have to make sure that the dectalk pc card was built in as a module (as suggested by the speakup notes in menuconfig).
6. Using the make-kpkg clean and then make-kpkg --append-to-version=speakip kernel_image I tried to build the kernel.
I did all of this as root. I know that you can use fakeroot for the make-kpkg step if you are a normal user when doing it, but I did this as root… hopeing there were no problems doing that??? But the process did not finish and I got a number of errors… pasted below. Any help on this would be appreciated. Should speakup be in modules for kernel 2.6? I tried that and did not get any better results. I wonder if the knopix config for kernel 2.6.6 is ok for the 2.6.9 version??? I am using an x86 machine.
Output from the make-kpkg follows.. Showing the last screen or so where the errors occurred:
CC [M] drivers/char/agp/intel-agp.o
CC [M] drivers/char/agp/nvidia-agp.o
CC [M] drivers/char/agp/sis-agp.o
CC [M] drivers/char/agp/sworks-agp.o
CC [M] drivers/char/agp/via-agp.o
CC [M] drivers/char/drm/gamma_drv.o
In file included from drivers/char/drm/gamma_drv.c:42:
drivers/char/drm/gamma_context.h: In function `gamma_context_switch_complete':
drivers/char/drm/gamma_context.h:193: error: structure has no member named `next_buffer'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_context.h:193: error: structure has no member named `next_buffer'
In file included from drivers/char/drm/gamma_drv.c:44:
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h: In function `gamma_clear_next_buffer':
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:40: error: structure has no member named `next_buffer'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:41: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:42: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
drivers/char/drm/gamma_old_dma.h:44: error: structure has no member named `next_queue'
In file included from drivers/char/drm/gamma_drv.c:46:
drivers/char/drm/drm_drv.h: In function `gamma_release':
drivers/char/drm/drm_drv.h:808: warning: implicit declaration of function `gamma_ctxbitmap_free'
make[4]: *** [drivers/char/drm/gamma_drv.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [drivers/char/drm] Error 2
make[2]: *** [drivers/char] Error 2
make[1]: *** [drivers] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.9'
make: *** [stamp-build] Error 2
End of output.