[BRLTTY] braille doesn't work at all under Ubuntu 8.04.1

[Lee Maschmeyer]

Hello Aldo,

I started this message before I got Dave's and I didn't want to abandon all 
my beautiful writing. <Grin> So here goes anyway:

Calm down. Relax. The problems are not as big as they seem.

I use brltty on Hardy all the time so I'm living proof that it does work. 
What we have to do now is to figure out why it doesn't work for you, which 
is a much smaller issue.

Brltty comes preinstalled on Hardy. Do I get the right impression that you 
installed your own version? If so this is probably part of the problem, but 
not a big part so don't panic.

So let's try to break the problem into small steps.

I suggest the following:

Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a logon prompt. If you logged on in the GUI it 
doesn't count here.

Logon to your ID like this:

Ubuntu Login: MyID <Enter>
Password: MyPassword <Enter>

Assuming your ID and password are correct, you're logged in to a console. 
Now type:

sudo -i

Enter your password again and press Enter. You're now logged on to the 
console as root, which is necessary to start brltty.

Assuming you didn't add your own brltty, you can just type

brltty

But I think you said you're using a USB-Serial adapter. If so and you had it 
working before, add those parameters and see if they work. Something like:

brltty -b al -d ttyUSB0 (where the 0 is probably wrong)

If you did add your own brltty:

 the pre-installed one is in the /sbin directory and probably gets invoked 
instead of your new version which was probably installed in /bin, so specify 
the full path instead:

/bin/brltty -b al -d ttyUSB0

See how far you get and report back. Also I've never used a USB-Serial 
adapter so could have messed up royally here. Somebody will correct this 
where necessary.

Good luck and remember:

Running a computer requires great peace of mind. <grin> Have fun,

-- 

Lee Maschmeyer
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan, USA