[BRLTTY] OOOPS! something really wrong with the driver or my Optelec

[Aldo]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:10:57AM -0500, Dave Mielke wrote:
> [quoted lines by Aldo on 2009/11/11 at 11:06 +0100]
> 
> >yesterday in the evening my BC640 sudenly stopped with showing something:
> >I first thought it was too long before I touched any key on my laptop or so.
> >
> >But now this morning I started the laptop and dispaly again:
> >suddenly it hangs (freezes) 
> 
> When you restarted your laptop this morning did the BC640 start out 
>working and 
> then hang a bit later, 

Yes.

>or did it hang immediately?

No because I don't set it "on" at the boot time; if I do so, then my laptop
doesn't boots up (probably due to the disk / sd part of the Optelec, but I'm
not suer there eshould be something bootable on it?)

So I use now to start the laptop, choose for my Debian at the grub pause,
then once started, I open a console-mode,
killall brltty (for the Satellite's proces) and ./brltty to launch the
static 4.1 brltty for the Optelec.

That had worked but after having tried the up down cursor keys, i was on top
of the screen and suddenly the BC640 stopped with moving, only the text line
on top of that screen was showed but no any movement in the keys.
Power of, power on, ALVA BC640 ready etc message, but nothing more. 

> Do you recall having changed any settings on it from within its menu?

No, I don't know at all how to enter in its menu.
 
> >and my sighted partner said:
> >he's showing some message on the screen telling that maybe the usb kabel is
> >bad, or something concerning error 110.
> 
> 110 is the error code for a timeout.
Ow? 
 
> Did you recheck that both ends of the cable are firmly connected?

AFter the problem occured again this morning, I plugged out and again in the
usb cable but it doesn't restarted brltty or so, no beeps, no braille
prompt:~# or so.
 
> >And it loops because the message rizes up again every x seconds or so.
> 
> Is it brltty trying to restart the driver?
> 
> Does the problem go away, at least for a while, if you disconnect and then 
> reconnect the BC640?

As said above, no.

But I discovered that halting the laptop suddenly showed BRLTTY terminated
as message and that's very strange. 

> >Problem: where to find the log who will contain the screen message I wasn't
> >able to read by myself ?
> 
> I'm not very familiar with Debian so maybe a Debian user can help a bit here. I 
> suspect, though, that it's in one of the files within the /var/log/ directory. 
> Perhaps /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, or some such file.

It would be nice if someone who already have tested the Optelec or some
Debian user should tell me which log file to get and post here.
 
> >(I'am logged in by ssh so when even it crashes I would like to send you
> >something who may help debugging it).
> 
> Did you notice my comment yesterday regarding how you should be able to get 
> your Satellite and BC640 to run at the same time? 
>Find out the serial numbers

Yes but how ? 
 
> of the two displays. Then, ionstead of specifying -dusb:, add the serial 
> number, e.g. -dusb:12345. 

Hm, in this example you are talking about a serial 12345 while the bluetooth
param in brltty.conf specifies xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx  so its not clear to me. 
And for USB (it's currently USB connected, not bt) I don't know how I should
know the serial of my Satellite: I have always used braille-device usb:

>As long as you specify the devices in a unique way, 

? 

> you can run more than one brltty at the same time without a problem.

I don't understand what this means: is it supposed concerning
/etc/brltty.conf ?
if so can you give me an example please ?
Since English isn't my mother language I'm sure I'll much better understand 
with an example than by theory, appology. 

> >Another question is: is there any key for top of screen on the Optelec ?
> 
> Yes. SmartpadF1+Thumb1 goes to the top-left, and SmartpadF1+Thumb5 goes 
>to the 
> bottom-left.

Is smartpad f1 the key in center of the navigation pad ? if someone knowing
the Optelec better than me should give more explanations that should help: I
have no manual in braille or so.

I'll try again and hope to know which log is concerned by the mesages on
screen when something goes wrong.

Aldo.