Testers wanted for BATS talking rescue CD

Mon May 15 02:32:48 UTC 2017

can you install this version to a hard drive?

On 5/14/2017 6:27 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As some of you might remember, I posted test talking live CD images 
> last year. I got very little feedback, most of which was 
> understandably negative. Those old CD images are still available, but 
> I'm happy to announce the third major rebuild. Everything has been 
> redone from scratch. At least in KVM, it boots much faster and seems 
> more responsive. It no longer uses systemd and doesn't include Network 
> Manager. I really, desperately need testers. I can't test wireless or 
> Braille here. I have limited hardware. What would be helpful is for 
> people to test on as many different hardware and sound setups as 
> possible. Let me know what doesn't work. Here is what you need to know:
>
> 1. It's a 64-bit image only. I will produce a 32-bit image if there is 
> enough demand. It runs on x86_64 hardware. I tested it with 1 GB of 
> memory, but it should require less. The concept, idea and package 
> lists were borrowed from the Devuan minimal live CD. This image adds 
> many more packages and is based on plain vanilla Debian testing. It 
> uses standard sysvinit. I have no plans to switch to systemd. I tried 
> systemd on the other images and ran into lots of problems, including 
> being much less responsive and not letting people login on some hardware.
>
> 2. It includes brltty but it might not start automatically. If Braille 
> doesn't work, try starting it manually. The version is from Debian 
> stable to avoid the systemd dependency.
>
> 3. It has a lot of non-free firmware and wireless tools, so hopefully 
> your wifi should be detected. It automatically tries DHCP. It includes 
> the standard openssh server which generates new host keys at every 
> boot for better security. I haven't tested ssh login yet.
>
> 4. The boot menus still need a lot of work. It does boot, but there is 
> no audible feedback. Just press Enter to start the boot process. This 
> will be fixed soon.
>
> 5. It uses my 4.10.7 Speakup kernel, so hardware speech should work 
> without issues. You probably have to rmmod speakup_soft and modprobe 
> your synth module by hand. It uses standard syslinux, so there might 
> be a way to do this at the boot prompt. I'm not sure. Here are sample 
> commands, as root:
>
> rmmod speakup_soft ; modprobe speakup_ltlk
>
> The login user is "bats" with no password. You can't currently login 
> as root, but sudo works as expected. If you don't have networking, try 
> running setnet or setnet.sh and follow the prompts. It can be 
> installed to a hard drive, but I highly recommend against it and I 
> will offer no support for hard drive installations. Almost all 
> packages are from Debian testing. You should be able to add and remove 
> packages as normal. There is no security support. There are almost 
> certainly security issues. It should run from USB, virtual machines 
> like KVM and burning the .iso to a standard CD. You may run 
> "refractainstaller" if you want to try installing, but again, this is 
> highly discouraged. It's meant as a live and rescue CD, not an 
> installable distro. It includes several games and utilities, but if 
> you know of more which should be included, please shout.
>
> Other than hardware, wireless and Braille testing, the biggest thing I 
> need now is a list of missing packages. I tried to include everything 
> obvious, but I'm sure your favorite tool isn't there. I have about 200 
> MB left to work with, so please send suggestions. You can email me 
> privately or post here. I'm working on a mailing list for discussion. 
> The list just needs to be configured. Also, I'm looking for at least 
> one co-maintainer to release updates periodically with the latest 
> packages. Please let me know if you're interested.
>
> Here is the download link for the .iso and SHA256 checksum:
>
> http://iavit.org/~bats/
>
> Thanks to iavit.org for hosting. It's called bats64 with the snapshot 
> date. Again, let me know if it doesn't work for you or if you run into 
> problems. Thanks for your feedback!
>
> To email me privately about this CD image or for support options, 
> please write to bats at batsupport dot com.
>
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