#1112485 live-build: Missing espeakup package ready for installation

#1112485#5
Date:
2025-08-30 00:27:02 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

While trying to reproduce the issue met in Bug#1111121, I noticed that
in the installation of installation from the live image, when running
/usr/lib/finish-install.d/06espeakup, apt is missing the espeakup.deb
package on the iso image.

It would be really useful to have it on the live iso image, so that
speech synthesis can work on the installed system on the console too.

Samuel

#1112485#10
Date:
2025-08-30 13:29:00 UTC
From:
To:
Samuel Thibault, le sam. 30 août 2025 02:27:02 +0200, a ecrit:

And we also miss the brltty, brltty-x11 and xbrlapi packages for Braille
to work after reboot.

Samuel

#1112485#15
Date:
2025-09-07 19:42:03 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Samuel,

Can you describe in a bit more detail what you were doing and what you
were expecting?

This is my guess:
* You downloaded the latest GNOME live image for trixie (or ...) from
PLACE_URL_HERE
* You used the Debian installer (Start installer with speech synthesis)
* Did you answer some questions with non-default values in the installer?
* What kind of computer/qemu did you use? BIOS/UEFI? With/Without
network card?
* After the installation finished, how can I see/hear that everything
works as intended?

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

#1112485#20
Date:
2025-09-07 19:42:03 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Samuel,

Can you describe in a bit more detail what you were doing and what you
were expecting?

This is my guess:
* You downloaded the latest GNOME live image for trixie (or ...) from
PLACE_URL_HERE
* You used the Debian installer (Start installer with speech synthesis)
* Did you answer some questions with non-default values in the installer?
* What kind of computer/qemu did you use? BIOS/UEFI? With/Without
network card?
* After the installation finished, how can I see/hear that everything
works as intended?

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

#1112485#25
Date:
2025-09-07 21:26:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

In practice, the issue is most probably related to #1113698
(debian-live-13.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso: d-i installs a nearly empty
'sources.list'). With a network mirror, the installation from the live
image will be able to fetch espeakup from the internet.

That being said, being able to properly install from the live CD without
network access would be really useful for blind users.

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/13.0.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso

Yes, the speech synthesis choice in the boot menu.

Just default answers.

qemu without any particular option beyond -device ac97 to have a sound
card.

dpkg -l espeakup brltty

will be enough.

Samuel

#1112485#30
Date:
2025-09-07 21:26:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

In practice, the issue is most probably related to #1113698
(debian-live-13.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso: d-i installs a nearly empty
'sources.list'). With a network mirror, the installation from the live
image will be able to fetch espeakup from the internet.

That being said, being able to properly install from the live CD without
network access would be really useful for blind users.

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/13.0.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso

Yes, the speech synthesis choice in the boot menu.

Just default answers.

qemu without any particular option beyond -device ac97 to have a sound
card.

dpkg -l espeakup brltty

will be enough.

Samuel

#1112485#33
Date:
2025-09-07 21:26:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

In practice, the issue is most probably related to #1113698
(debian-live-13.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso: d-i installs a nearly empty
'sources.list'). With a network mirror, the installation from the live
image will be able to fetch espeakup from the internet.

That being said, being able to properly install from the live CD without
network access would be really useful for blind users.

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/13.0.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso

Yes, the speech synthesis choice in the boot menu.

Just default answers.

qemu without any particular option beyond -device ac97 to have a sound
card.

dpkg -l espeakup brltty

will be enough.

Samuel

#1112485#38
Date:
2025-09-08 15:46:24 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Samuel,
anything from the internet while installing.

I've used the 13.1 image, since last weekend the point release was made:

https://get.debian.org/images/release/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-13.1.0-amd64-gnome.iso

I did an installation with network available and ended up with espeakup
installed, but not brltty. Already on the login screen the computer
spoke, so that's good.

My qemu settings did not configure a braille reader, so I guess that it
is OK to have an installation without brltty? (Or should that be
installed anyway, independent of the devices that were detected during
the installation?)

I also did a second installation, this time without a network card in
the qemu environment. I was stuck at the 'choose-mirror' stage, until I
found out that I could use '<' to take a step back (and then accept an
installation without mirrors). Here the speech was working fine as well
after reboot.

However, I have 'xbrlapi' installed. Is that a successor/substitute for
'brltty'?

With kind regards,
Roland

#1112485#43
Date:
2025-09-10 21:54:29 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Roland Clobus, le lun. 08 sept. 2025 17:46:24 +0200, a ecrit:

Not, it's normally only installed when a braille device was used during
the installer.

No, it's just a helper for brltty under X.

Samuel

#1112485#48
Date:
2025-09-10 21:56:38 UTC
From:
To:
Roland Clobus, le lun. 08 sept. 2025 17:46:24 +0200, a ecrit:

But you are talking about speech in the graphical environment (the orca
package), not speech in the text console (the espeakup package).

Samuel

#1112485#53
Date:
2025-09-27 10:39:05 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Samuel,

I need more information. I've tried to reproduce the issue:

* I've used the latest GNOME live image from
https://get.debian.org/images/release/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-13.1.0-amd64-gnome.iso
in qemu with UEFI secure boot
* In the GRUB boot menu, press 's'
* For location, I used 'Europe/Germany' with en_US.UTF-8 locale
* I've used my apt-cacher-ng as proxy
* After rebooting, the screen reader works in gdm and after logging in
* Switch to tty3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3)
* Log in as root
* The output of `dpkg -l espeakup brltty` is:
   un brltty
   ii espeakup 1:0.90-17
* The outout of `ps -edalf | grep espeakup` shows
   /usr/bin/espeakup --default-voice=en
* I hear no speech -> could this be the issue that pipewire in the GUI
environment and the text console cannot work together properly?

In /var/log/installer/syslog I have the following entries (I've filtered
for espeakup and brltty):

Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: (process:674): sh: missing ]
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: (process:674): sh: missing ]
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: INFO: Menu item 'brltty-udeb' selected
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: INFO: Menu item 'espeakup-udeb' selected
Sep 27 09:42:07 main-menu[663]: (process:2168): sh: missing ]

Sep 27 09:49:07 finish-install: info: Running
/usr/lib/finish-install.d/06espeakup

Sep 27 09:49:11 finish-install: info: Running
/usr/lib/finish-install.d/07brltty

Attached is the full installer syslog which contains some more
warning/error messages.

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

#1112485#56
Date:
2025-09-27 10:39:05 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Samuel,

I need more information. I've tried to reproduce the issue:

* I've used the latest GNOME live image from
https://get.debian.org/images/release/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-13.1.0-amd64-gnome.iso
in qemu with UEFI secure boot
* In the GRUB boot menu, press 's'
* For location, I used 'Europe/Germany' with en_US.UTF-8 locale
* I've used my apt-cacher-ng as proxy
* After rebooting, the screen reader works in gdm and after logging in
* Switch to tty3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3)
* Log in as root
* The output of `dpkg -l espeakup brltty` is:
   un brltty
   ii espeakup 1:0.90-17
* The outout of `ps -edalf | grep espeakup` shows
   /usr/bin/espeakup --default-voice=en
* I hear no speech -> could this be the issue that pipewire in the GUI
environment and the text console cannot work together properly?

In /var/log/installer/syslog I have the following entries (I've filtered
for espeakup and brltty):

Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: (process:674): sh: missing ]
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: (process:674): sh: missing ]
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: INFO: Menu item 'brltty-udeb' selected
Sep 27 09:42:04 main-menu[663]: INFO: Menu item 'espeakup-udeb' selected
Sep 27 09:42:07 main-menu[663]: (process:2168): sh: missing ]

Sep 27 09:49:07 finish-install: info: Running
/usr/lib/finish-install.d/06espeakup

Sep 27 09:49:11 finish-install: info: Running
/usr/lib/finish-install.d/07brltty

Attached is the full installer syslog which contains some more
warning/error messages.

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

#1112485#61
Date:
2025-09-27 10:56:17 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Roland Clobus, le sam. 27 sept. 2025 12:39:05 +0200, a ecrit:
related to #1113698 which was making network mirrors not available.

With a network mirror, that does work, indeed. But without network
access, espeakup will not be installed since the deb is not on the ISO
image.

Unless booting the installer with a braille device connected, brltty
will not be installed indeed. If you want to try it with an emulated
device, it's documented :

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Accessibility

But again, with a network mirror enabled, things will already work, it's
when network access is not available that brltty will not be installed
since the .deb is not available on the live ISO image.

Yes, that's a separate issue, not related to the live images.

Samuel

#1112485#66
Date:
2025-09-27 10:56:17 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Roland Clobus, le sam. 27 sept. 2025 12:39:05 +0200, a ecrit:
related to #1113698 which was making network mirrors not available.

With a network mirror, that does work, indeed. But without network
access, espeakup will not be installed since the deb is not on the ISO
image.

Unless booting the installer with a braille device connected, brltty
will not be installed indeed. If you want to try it with an emulated
device, it's documented :

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Accessibility

But again, with a network mirror enabled, things will already work, it's
when network access is not available that brltty will not be installed
since the .deb is not available on the live ISO image.

Yes, that's a separate issue, not related to the live images.

Samuel

#1112485#69
Date:
2025-09-27 10:56:17 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Roland Clobus, le sam. 27 sept. 2025 12:39:05 +0200, a ecrit:
related to #1113698 which was making network mirrors not available.

With a network mirror, that does work, indeed. But without network
access, espeakup will not be installed since the deb is not on the ISO
image.

Unless booting the installer with a braille device connected, brltty
will not be installed indeed. If you want to try it with an emulated
device, it's documented :

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Accessibility

But again, with a network mirror enabled, things will already work, it's
when network access is not available that brltty will not be installed
since the .deb is not available on the live ISO image.

Yes, that's a separate issue, not related to the live images.

Samuel

#1112485#72
Date:
2025-09-28 10:01:19 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Bug #1112485 in live-build reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/commit/7ed41a1a0561c089b12615298ce91981fb6b1980
------------------------------------------------------------------------
rebuild: Allow offline installation with speech enabled in the installed
system (Closes: #1112485)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/1112485

#1112485#79
Date:
2025-09-28 10:10:08 UTC
From:
To:
clone 1112485 -1
tags 1112485 -moreinfo
retitle -1 live-build: support brltty after offline installation
submitter -1 sthibault@debian.org
severity -1 wishlist
thanks

Hello Samuel,

Thanks, that was the missing information. I've prepared a MR which fixes
this issue [1].
This fix will also become available for the 13.2 point release of trixie.

I've split this bug report into 2 parts, the new bug number will address
the brltty part of this issue.

And regarding pipewire, I've seen #1115893, so that's covered already.

This bug report is then only about having speech during offline
installation of a live image.

I've tested with a local GNOME, Mate and standard image.
All of them will have espeakup installed in the installed system when
performing an offline installation.
For the standard image, since it does not have pipewire, the speech
worked in the console.

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/merge_requests/441

#1112485#86
Date:
2025-09-28 12:28:41 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Bug #1112485 in live-build reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/commit/7ed41a1a0561c089b12615298ce91981fb6b1980
------------------------------------------------------------------------
rebuild: Allow offline installation with speech enabled in the installed
system (Closes: #1112485)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/1112485