Question re repairing and reinstalling
I have a Debian version 11 system that needs repairing or reinstalling, but before I do that, I need to boot something that will let me access the system disk and copy some hard-to-reconstruct configuration files from some application directories to a holding place on another drive in the same cabinet. Should I do this with a Debian Live distribution, or can it be done from the regular Debian installation disk? In either case, am I stuck with using a desktop to find the file(s) in question and copy them to the holding location, or can I get Speakup in a shell? If I'm stuck with a desktop, which ones is most accessible? I've never been a fan of the Linux desktop environment, much preferring the CLI, but you can't always get what you want from these distros, but like the song says, if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Ultimately, that's my question--which accessible live distro do I need/should I use to effect the above?
If you want the character interface, i would recommend GRML. GRML includes the speakup modules and espeakup. All you have to do to get sofware speech is to create a bootable GRmL thumb drive or CD and once it boots, type "modprobe speakup_soft; espeakup". You can also pretty easily enable an ssh server on a system booted into GRML. So then you can ssh in and do whatever you want. We are in the process of creating a web site for blind people to document accessibility techniques but it's not live yet. The final draft version of the documentation i wrote for GRML is here: https://www.johnheim.com/articles/grml/\ I am not sure my ISP's firewall is going to allow you to get to that page. So if you can't get to it, let me know and I'll figure something out. PS: I have a version of the GRML iso that is supposed to start talking during boot. It doesn't work on all of the hardware i tried it on. If it doesn't start talking during boot, just type "espeak" after it's done booting. You won't have to load the speakup modules at least. https://people.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/GRML/soft-full-2025.05-amd64.iso On 5/29/25 10:03 AM, Steve Matzura via Blind-sysadmins wrote:
I have a Debian version 11 system that needs repairing or reinstalling, but before I do that, I need to boot something that will let me access the system disk and copy some hard-to-reconstruct configuration files from some application directories to a holding place on another drive in the same cabinet. Should I do this with a Debian Live distribution, or can it be done from the regular Debian installation disk? In either case, am I stuck with using a desktop to find the file(s) in question and copy them to the holding location, or can I get Speakup in a shell? If I'm stuck with a desktop, which ones is most accessible? I've never been a fan of the Linux desktop environment, much preferring the CLI, but you can't always get what you want from these distros, but like the song says, if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Ultimately, that's my question--which accessible live distro do I need/should I use to effect the above?
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On 29/5/25 12:17, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:
If you want the character interface, i would recommend GRML. I second the recommendation. Note that GRML also has BRLTTY preinstalled for braille display support. It's ideal for system recovery tasks, among others.
participants (3)
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Jason J.G. White -
John G. Heim -
Steve Matzura