A little introduction, and some curiosities/questions

[Ed Greshko]

On 01/03/2021 15:49, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> I don’t know what though, and I can say that with the other distores it just worked out of the box.
>
> So my question is, has anyone experienced this problem? Does anyone know a solution to this, for me, huge deal? Using brltty 6.1, the one that comes inclooded with F33.

I don't know anything about brltty.  But, I did find this and wonder if it may have some helpful information

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/htm...

Also, I don't often use Workstation/GNOME.  But I know somethings may not work as well running under
Wayland.  Have you tried logging into a GNOME Xorg session?

[George N. White III]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 at 03:49, Francisco Tissera 
wrote:
> Good day everybody,
>
> I’m Francisco, and I’m a blind high school kid who just recently started
> using Fedora 33 Workstation, both for fun, and hopefully, with guidance
> from you guys, for actual day to day school work.
>
> I have a little bit of experience using Linux. I started with Ubuntu 3 or
> so months ago, almost immediately switched to Arch, to Debian, and now, I’m
> trying Fedora.
>
> As you can see, I switched a lot, cause all those distroes, eccept arch,
> somewhat, weren’t the distroes that were right for me, that’s the beauty of
> Linux I guess.
>
> Well anyways, everything went smoothly once I booted the iso on my macbook
> air, I just had to switch to Zorg so I could get the Anaconda installer
> talking.
>
> I managed to activate all four rpm fusion repoes, some copr once, install
> snap and enable flatpak, and all the initial stuff without a single problem.
>
> Now though, there is one problem, that I don’t like at all: being both a
> speach and braille user, I use Orca as my screen reader with Gnome, and
> BRLTTY, which you might have heard of.
>
> Now, this question is mostly for blind users that might be in here, but of
> course, everyone who has experience with this sort of thing can answer.
>
> I had to enable the bRLTTY daemon with systemctl enable brltty as sudo
> user, and that went fine.
>
> Problem is, even though BRLTTY starts up as it is supposed too, my Focus
> 40 with which I’m using the thing with, shows me “screen not in text mode”,
> which, I guess, means that something’s wrong.

My experience with a blind user was decades ago, but at that time the
available software did not support graphical
screens.  From https://github.com/brltty/brltty:

"BRLTTY is a background process (daemon) providing access to the Linux/Unix
console (when in text mode) for a blind person using a refreshable braille
display."

You may be used to switching to a console using <Ctrl+Alt F1>, but in
Fedora that gets you the GUI login like
<Ctrl+Alt F7> in other distros.  You can use <Ctrl+Alt F2> for a text
console.

I don’t know what though, and I can say that with the other distores it
> just worked out of the box.
>
> So my question is, has anyone experienced this problem? Does anyone know a
> solution to this, for me, huge deal? Using brltty 6.1, the one that comes
> inclooded with F33.
>
> Thank you all, and best regards,
>
> Francisco.

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/03/2021 15:09, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> Thanks for the link to the Redhat docs regarding accessibility, it worked. I just needed to authorize my local user and root user so BRLTTY could be enabled under them and used.
>
> Now though another problem arises.
>
> There’s this problem with this library called xbrlapi, which basically is this library that let’s BRLTTY users type with their braille keyboard. The problem is, that when i try to execute it with the command
>
> xbrlapi
>
> even with admin wrights, an error about not beeing able to establish a connection to the BRLTTY daemon is given back to me.
>
> Any suggestions?

Glad the link helped.....

Again, not knowing anything, what is the output of the command

systemctl status brltty

?

[Francisco Tissera]

Dear Ed,

I'll paste below the output that the command you suggested gave me, 
there's something disturbing indeed in that command, that I didn't try 
till you suggested it.

systemctl status brltty

● brltty.service - Braille display driver for Linux/Unix
      Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/brltty.service; enabled; 
vendor pr>
      Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-03-02 09:56:14 CET; 5min ago
     Process: 716 ExecStart=/usr/bin/brltty (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
       Tasks: 4 (limit: 9379)
      Memory: 3.8M
         CPU: 272ms
      CGroup: /system.slice/brltty.service
              └─728 /usr/bin/brltty
Mar 02 09:56:19 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: no matching user or group

This error persisted so i didn't copy it as many times as it output itself.

Mar 02 09:56:38 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: console control error 
5: fd=11>
lines 1-20/20 (END)

the output below, instead, is the output that is given when i type xbrlapi
openConnection: cannot connect to braille devices daemon brltty at :0
Thanks again for all the help.
Best regards.
Francisco.
On 3/2/21 8:45 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 02/03/2021 15:09, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> > Thanks for the link to the Redhat docs regarding accessibility, it 
> > worked. I just needed to authorize my local user and root user so 
> > BRLTTY could be enabled under them and used.
> >
> > Now though another problem arises.
> >
> > There’s this problem with this library called xbrlapi, which 
> > basically is this library that let’s BRLTTY users type with their 
> > braille keyboard. The problem is, that when i try to execute it with 
> > the command
> >
> > xbrlapi
> >
> > even with admin wrights, an error about not beeing able to establish 
> > a connection to the BRLTTY daemon is given back to me.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
>
> Glad the link helped.....
>
> Again, not knowing anything, what is the output of the command
>
> systemctl status brltty
>
> ?

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/03/2021 17:10, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> I'll paste below the output that the command you suggested gave me, there's something disturbing indeed in that command, that I didn't try till you suggested it.
>
> systemctl status brltty
>
> ● brltty.service - Braille display driver for Linux/Unix
>      Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/brltty.service; enabled; vendor pr>
>      Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-03-02 09:56:14 CET; 5min ago
>     Process: 716 ExecStart=/usr/bin/brltty (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
>       Tasks: 4 (limit: 9379)
>      Memory: 3.8M
>         CPU: 272ms
>      CGroup: /system.slice/brltty.service
>              └─728 /usr/bin/brltty
> Mar 02 09:56:19 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: no matching user or group
>
> This error persisted so i didn't copy it as many times as it output itself.
>
> Mar 02 09:56:38 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: console control error 5: fd=11>
> lines 1-20/20 (END)
>
> the output below, instead, is the output that is given when i type xbrlapi
> openConnection: cannot connect to braille devices daemon brltty at :0
> Thanks again for all the help

Do you have an entry for brlapi in your /etc/group?

I do, and if I start the service I don't get the error you note.

Also, it may be possible that with that line you'd need to add your user to be in that group.

[Francisco Tissera]

Dear ed,

How do I add the brlapi entry to /etc/group? i opened it in Nano, but i 
don't understand the sintacs.

Thanks again.

Best regards.

Francisco.

On 3/2/21 10:20 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 02/03/2021 17:10, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> > I'll paste below the output that the command you suggested gave me, 
> > there's something disturbing indeed in that command, that I didn't 
> > try till you suggested it.
> >
> > systemctl status brltty
> >
> > ● brltty.service - Braille display driver for Linux/Unix
> >      Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/brltty.service; enabled; 
> > vendor pr>
> >      Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-03-02 09:56:14 CET; 5min ago
> >
> > Process: 716 ExecStart=/usr/bin/brltty (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
> >
> > Tasks: 4 (limit: 9379)
> >      Memory: 3.8M
> >         CPU: 272ms
> >      CGroup: /system.slice/brltty.service
> >              └─728 /usr/bin/brltty
> > Mar 02 09:56:19 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: no matching user or group
> >
> > This error persisted so i didn't copy it as many times as it output itself.
> >
> > Mar 02 09:56:38 blueblink.blueblink brltty[728]: console control 
> > error 5: fd=11>
> > lines 1-20/20 (END)
> >
> > the output below, instead, is the output that is given when i type xbrlapi
> >
> > openConnection: cannot connect to braille devices daemon brltty at :0
> > Thanks again for all the help
>
> Do you have an entry for brlapi in your /etc/group?
>
> I do, and if I start the service I don't get the error you note.
>
> Also, it may be possible that with that line you'd need to add your 
> user to be in that group.
> -- 
> People who believe they don't make mistakes have already made one.

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/03/2021 17:29, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> How do I add the brlapi entry to /etc/group? i opened it in Nano, but i don't understand the sintacs.

Well....

You can add the line....

brlapi:x:975:

to the file.

But, just make sure that 975 is unique.

Or, you can use the "groupadd" command.

To add your your user to the group you can just append your username to the end of the line.

brlapi:x:975:yourusername

Use the "groups" command to see what groups you currently belong to.  It may be best to
logout/login to make sure your now a part of that group.

[Francisco Tissera]

Dear Ed,

I inserted the line

brlapi:x:1010:francisco

to the end of the file /etc/group with Nano as sudoer, and when i type 
groups, I apparently am in the brlapi group, but i still get this error 
for some odd reason.

Did i do something wrong?

Best regards.

Francisco.

On 3/2/21 10:40 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 02/03/2021 17:29, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> > How do I add the brlapi entry to /etc/group? i opened it in Nano, but 
> > i don't understand the sintacs.
>
> Well....
>
> You can add the line....
>
> brlapi:x:975:
>
> to the file.
>
> But, just make sure that 975 is unique.
>
> Or, you can use the "groupadd" command.
>
> To add your your user to the group you can just append your username 
> to the end of the line.
>
> brlapi:x:975:yourusername
>
> Use the "groups" command to see what groups you currently belong to.  
> It may be best to
> logout/login to make sure your now a part of that group.
>
> -- 
> People who believe they don't make mistakes have already made one.

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/03/2021 17:54, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> I inserted the line
>
> brlapi:x:1010:francisco
>
> to the end of the file /etc/group with Nano as sudoer, and when i type groups, I apparently am in the brlapi group, but i still get this error for some odd reason.
>
> Did i do something wrong?

By this error you mean starting the brltty service?

A few things....

I find it odd that the line wasn't in /etc/group to being with as that is normally done when the package is
installed.  Anyway....

It is possible the group number needs to be lower than 1000.  I forgot to mention that is normally the
case that system processes use groups lower than that.

You may have to reboot the system for the group to be recognized by system processes.

[George N. White III]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 05:30, Francisco Tissera 
wrote:
> Dear ed,
>
> How do I add the brlapi entry to /etc/group? i opened it in Nano, but i
> don't understand the sintacs.

The Changelog for version 6.3 -- Fedora 33 provides 6.1 (January 28, 2021)
-- has:

Systemd changes:
   The brlapi group is created during boot if it doesn't already exist.

[Matthew Miller]

I see that Fedora Linux 34 will contain the 6.3 release, by the way.

In the meantime, I suggest to use

sudo groupadd brlapi

to create a new group rather than editing with nano, and

sudo gpasswd brlapi -a $USER

to add yourself to that group. You will then need to log out and in again
for that to take effect.

On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 05:25:22PM +0100, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> Dear George,
>
> Thanks for the changelog, I’ll download and install 6.3 then.
>
> Would I just download the rpm and install it, or would I have to download
> the source rpm as well? Brltty.com lists both, and so I don’t know how to go
> about it the right way.
>
> I’m sorry for so many questions that might seem dum, but I’m totally new to
> Fedora, thus, I’m totally new to the rpm package management system, dnf and
> yum are next on the list as well.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Best regards.
>
> Francisco.
>
> **From:**[George N. White III][]
> **Sent:**Tuesday, March 2, 2021 4:45 PM
> **To:**[Community support for Fedora users][]
> **Subject:**Re: A little introduction, and some curiosities/questions
>
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 05:30, Francisco Tissera
> <> wrote:
> > Dear ed,
> >
> > How do I add the brlapi entry to /etc/group? i opened it in Nano, but i
> > don't understand the sintacs.
>
> The Changelog for version 6.3 -- Fedora 33 provides 6.1 (January 28, 2021)
> -- has:
>
> Systemd changes:
>    The brlapi group is created during boot if it doesn't already exist.
>
> --
>
> George N. White III
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure

[George N. White III]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 12:25, Francisco Tissera 
wrote:
> Dear George,
>
> Thanks for the changelog, I’ll download and install 6.3 then.
>
> Would I just download the rpm and install it, or would I have to download
> the source rpm as well? Brltty.com lists both, and so I don’t know how to
> go about it the right way.

You should not need the source rpm.  Try "dnf install
Downloads/brltty-6.3-1.x86_64.rpm".   If there is an
error, post the error message here for advice.  There could be issues with
a signature (if localpkg_gpgcheck
is set to True) or the version of a library (might require building the
package on Fedora 33).
> I’m sorry for so many questions that might seem dum, but I’m totally new
> to Fedora, thus, I’m totally new to the rpm package management system, dnf
> and yum are next on the list as well.

There are no dumb questions.   Linux has so many use cases and complexities
that everyone runs into
problems sooner or later.

[Ed Greshko]

On 03/03/2021 03:29, George N. White III wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 12:25, Francisco Tissera <[e-mail] > wrote:
> Dear George,
>
> Thanks for the changelog, I’ll download and install 6.3 then.
>
> Would I just download the rpm and install it, or would I have to download the source rpm as well? Brltty.com lists both, and so I don’t know how to go about it the right way.
>
>
> You should not need the source rpm.  Try "dnf install Downloads/brltty-6.3-1.x86_64.rpm".   If there is an
> error, post the error message here for advice.  There could be issues with a signature (if |localpkg_gpgcheck|
> is set to True) or the version of a library (might require building the package on Fedora 33).

Just wondering.

You're suggesting the OP download and install brltty from brltty.com why?  Has the fedora supplied
version proven not to work?

I also notice that the number of packages supplied by brltty.com for each release are different than
that supplied in the fedora repo.  Could that be significant in any way?

I also notice the brltty-xw package (XWindow driver for BRLTTY) but not sure what functionality or
purpose it serves.  Or what, if any, problems would arise if not installed.

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/03/2021 17:54, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> Did i do something wrong?

Also, there is a mailing list devoted to brltty here

https://brltty.app/mailman/listinfo/brltty

They may have greater knowledge in this area.

[George N. White III]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 16:05, Ed Greshko  wrote:
> On 03/03/2021 03:29, George N. White III wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 at 12:25, Francisco Tissera <[e-mail]
>
> > wrote:
> > Dear George,
> >
> > Thanks for the changelog, I’ll download and install 6.3 then.
> >
> > Would I just download the rpm and install it, or would I have to
>
> download the source rpm as well? Brltty.com lists both, and so I don’t know
> how to go about it the right way.
> > You should not need the source rpm.  Try "dnf install
>
> Downloads/brltty-6.3-1.x86_64.rpm".   If there is an
> > error, post the error message here for advice.  There could be issues
>
> with a signature (if |localpkg_gpgcheck|
> > is set to True) or the version of a library (might require building the
>
> package on Fedora 33).
>
> Just wondering.
>
> You're suggesting the OP download and install brltty from brltty.com
> why?  Has the fedora supplied
> version proven not to work?

Apparently the Fedora package doesn't create a group needed by brltty (a
capability added in 6.3).
The online docs mention a group with user-defined name (for access to a
"key") as well as setgid.
I'm not sure if there is more than one group needed, or whether there are
other constraints (values
less than 1000) so it is best to get groups set up by systemd.

The Fedora package may have been tested and only used system that already
had the group(s) defined.

The brltty RPM has the "linux-screen" driver which provides the simplest
useful configuration so a good
starting point.
> I also notice that the number of packages supplied by brltty.com for each
> release are different than
> that supplied in the fedora repo.  Could that be significant in any way?

I assume whoever maintains the Fedora rpm can only test a small subset of
the available devices.

I also notice the brltty-xw package (XWindow driver for BRLTTY) but not
> sure what functionality or
> purpose it serves.  Or what, if any, problems would arise if not installed.

It appears to be needed to use orca for braille display of X.org text
windows.
> --
> People who believe they don't make mistakes have already made one.
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
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[Ed Greshko]

On 03/03/2021 20:20, George N. White III wrote:
> Apparently the Fedora package doesn't create a group needed by brltty (a capability added in 6.3).
> The online docs mention a group with user-defined name (for access to a "key") as well as setgid.
> I'm not sure if there is more than one group needed, or whether there are other constraints (values
> less than 1000) so it is best to get groups set up by systemd.

That doesn't seem to be quite an accurate statement.

I just checked dnf history and apparently it was installed on my system on 12/26/2017.  That
was when Fedora 27 was around.  It seems to have been pulled in by some other package.
But, I've never had a need to use it.  So, I'm certain I never added the group manually.

brlapi-0.6.6-8.fc27 and brltty-5.5-8.fc27 were installed at that time.

The only other dnf actions on the package has been during updates and system upgrades.

[Francisco Tissera]

Dear George and Edd,

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've been reading them, but only now I 
got around to installing version 6.3 of BRLTTY.

I installed every rpm eccept the source, cause, and brlapi.

I kind of think I do need brlapi, but when i try to install it with the 
rpm -i command as sudoer, this happens.

file /usr/lib64/brltty/libbrlttybba.so from install of 
brltty-braille-br
lapi-6.3-1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package 
brlapi-0.8.0-11.fc33.1.x86_64

Now, i hope to goodness that i don't have to remove brlapi as a hole 
package, cause the first time i tried that it broke pretty bad, and i 
had to reinstall the entire Fedora system to get everything back in 
order: what happened was, speech wasn't a thing anymore. when removing 
brlapi, in fact, a lot of dependencies were removed too, and i think 
that's what caused it. so, how can i install the newer package 
overriding the error that is written above?

Another thing:

I'm seriously glad i switched to fedora.

I heard and saw online that Fedora was a distro with a strong community, 
but seeing it and experiencing it is an absolutely different thing.

So what I'm saying is, thank you everyone, for just welcoming me with 
open arms and rying your absolute best to answer my question.

it's just hard to find such a community, at least, for me it has been.

Best regards.

Francisco.

On 3/3/21 1:51 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 03/03/2021 20:20, George N. White III wrote:
> > Apparently the Fedora package doesn't create a group needed by brltty 
> > (a capability added in 6.3).
> > The online docs mention a group with user-defined name (for access to 
> > a "key") as well as setgid.
> > I'm not sure if there is more than one group needed, or whether there 
> > are other constraints (values
> > less than 1000) so it is best to get groups set up by systemd.
>
> That doesn't seem to be quite an accurate statement.
>
> I just checked dnf history and apparently it was installed on my 
> system on 12/26/2017.  That
> was when Fedora 27 was around.  It seems to have been pulled in by 
> some other package.
> But, I've never had a need to use it.  So, I'm certain I never added 
> the group manually.
>
> brlapi-0.6.6-8.fc27 and brltty-5.5-8.fc27 were installed at that time.
>
> The only other dnf actions on the package has been during updates and 
> system upgrades.

[Ed Greshko]

On 03/03/2021 21:04, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> I kind of think I do need brlapi, but when i try to install it with the rpm -i command as sudoer, this happens.
>
> file /usr/lib64/brltty/libbrlttybba.so from install of brltty-braille-br
> lapi-6.3-1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package brlapi-0.8.0-11.fc33.1.x86_64

That is the downside of installing similar packages from outside of the Fedora universe.
There are differences in the way things are packaged such conflicts are bound to arise.

That is why I would have discouraged installing the packages from brltty.com unless there
was a known reasons to do so.

[Ed Greshko]

On 03/03/2021 21:47, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> I actually need to install this specific package from brltty.com because I know for a fact that the upgraded version, 6.3, works pretty well.

Then you should remove the brlapi-0.8.0-11.fc33 package and any other associated fedora
supplied packages and install the corresponding ones listed at

https://brltty.app/download.html#current

[Francisco Tissera]

Dear Ed,

I found another way, really randomly: I just needed to add myself to the 
groups brlapi and brltty, which i did already, but didn't work, but now 
it does, maybe because i added myself to brltty as well, thanks for 
everything.

Best regards.

Francisco.

On 3/3/21 2:57 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 03/03/2021 21:47, Francisco Tissera wrote:
> > I actually need to install this specific package from brltty.com 
> > because I know for a fact that the upgraded version, 6.3, works 
> > pretty well.
>
> Then you should remove the brlapi-0.8.0-11.fc33 package and any other 
> associated fedora
> supplied packages and install the corresponding ones listed at
> https://brltty.app/download.html#current
>
> People who believe they don't make mistakes have already made one.

[George N. White III]

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 at 13:19, Francisco Tissera 
wrote:
> Dear Ed,
>
> I found another way, really randomly: I just needed to add myself to the
> groups brlapi and brltty, which i did already, but didn't work, but now it
> does, maybe because i added myself to brltty as well, thanks for everything.

Glad it is working.  I'm not sure how dnf would be able to add a user to
those groups or flag the need to do that.   There are other systems that
create groups and it is up to the "administrator" to add the appropriate
users to the appropriate groups.
There is an opportunity to assign users to groups when creating a user
account, but if the user is also the administrator the groups won't have
been created with a normal install.  Ideally there would be an installer
for blind users, but the variety of use cases is (using braille or speech,
different levels of vision, different assistive devices).  Kickstart is
used to automate installations so could be useful once you know which
packages are needed.

[Ed Greshko]

On 04/03/2021 02:07, George N. White III wrote:
> I'm not sure how dnf would be able to add a user to those groups or flag the need to do that.

In the event that what I wrote was ambiguous I just want to clarify what I was attempting to say.

Installs of brlapi and brltty packaged by fedora (as early as F27) resulted in the creation of the
brlapi group.  It did not add any users to that group.  I don't have the F27 rpm to examine.
However, the group creation was most likely done by a post installation script the packager
included in the rpm.

Just like, for example wireshark, it is up to someone with admin/root privileges to add users
to a given group.

FWIW, the "groups" command can be used to list the current groups of a user's current shell
environment.

[George N. White III]

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 at 15:49, Ed Greshko  wrote:
> On 04/03/2021 02:07, George N. White III wrote:
> > I'm not sure how dnf would be able to add a user to those groups or flag
>
> the need to do that.
>
> In the event that what I wrote was ambiguous I just want to clarify what I
> was attempting to say.
>
> Installs of brlapi and brltty packaged by fedora (as early as F27)
> resulted in the creation of the
> brlapi group.  It did not add any users to that group.  I don't have the
> F27 rpm to examine.
> However, the group creation was most likely done by a post installation
> script the packager
> included in the rpm.

Yes -- that is what how I understood the situation.   The brltty devs
maintain Debian and
RedHat packages with different post-install while creating groups with
systemd should
work across distros (but the step to move the creation so systemd is easily
overlooked, and
may not be noticed for a while since most installs will be upgrades rather
than fresh installs).
> Just like, for example wireshark, it is up to someone with admin/root
> privileges to add users
> to a given group.
>
> FWIW, the "groups" command can be used to list the current groups of a
> user's current shell
> environment.

For many users, the need to create and join groups falls in the category of
unknown
unknowns.

[Ed Greshko]

On 04/03/2021 04:12, George N. White III wrote:
> Yes -- that is what how I understood the situation.   The brltty devs  maintain Debian and
> RedHat packages with different post-install while creating groups with systemd should
> work across distros (but the step to move the creation so systemd is easily overlooked, and
> may not be noticed for a while since most installs will be upgrades rather than fresh installs).

I don't known anything about Debian.  But I did check the rpm's from F27 and the rpm's from
brltty.com.

The rpm's from britty.com do not contain any scripts.

The rpm's from Fedora do contain scripts and the script which creates the group is within
the brlapi rpm and the group is created in the "normal" way.  I don't know what you mean
by "creating groups with systemd".

The PREIN script contains

getent group brlapi >/dev/null || groupadd -r brlapi >/dev/null

Additionally F34 will have brltty-6.3-1.fc34 which includes brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34 and that contains
the same PREIN script.

[George N. White III]

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 at 18:25, Ed Greshko  wrote:
> On 04/03/2021 04:12, George N. White III wrote:
> > Yes -- that is what how I understood the situation.   The brltty devs
>
> maintain Debian and
> > RedHat packages with different post-install while creating groups with
>
> systemd should
> > work across distros (but the step to move the creation so systemd is
>
> easily overlooked, and
> > may not be noticed for a while since most installs will be upgrades
>
> rather than fresh installs).
>
> I don't known anything about Debian.  But I did check the rpm's from F27
> and the rpm's from
> brltty.com.
>
> The rpm's from britty.com do not contain any scripts.

One of the advantages of systemd was supposed to be collecting some of the
hidden magic of package installers into more visible and less
distro-dependent
systemd files.
> The rpm's from Fedora do contain scripts and the script which creates the
> group is within
> the brlapi rpm and the group is created in the "normal" way.  I don't know
> what you mean
> by "creating groups with systemd"
> The PREIN script contains
>
> getent group brlapi >/dev/null || groupadd -r brlapi >/dev/null

The Changelog at britty.com for the 6.3 release says
the systemd component was changed to create the brlapi group if it
doesn't exist, so the same functionality as the script.  Maybe the change
was a response to systems that failed to run the install script.   What
creates the brltty group?
> Additionally F34 will have brltty-6.3-1.fc34 which includes
> brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34 and that contains
> the same PREIN script.

I live in a world that includes Ubuntu, macOS,  and Windows.  Organizations
I work
with use CentOS for large scale batch processing but make the users run
Windows, so
anything that makes it easier for developers to support multiple platforms
is of interest.

Thanks for checking the Fedora rpms.   It looks like visually impaired
users will be
encountering lots of changes for Wayland and the sound system going forward.

[Ed Greshko]

On 04/03/2021 09:15, George N. White III wrote:
> The Changelog at britty.com http://britty.com for the 6.3 release says
> the systemd component was changed to create the brlapi group if it
> doesn't exist, so the same functionality as the script.  Maybe the change
> was a response to systems that failed to run the install script.   What
> creates the brltty group?

Seems to me that changelog only applies to the packages supplied by britty.com.
At britty.com there includes a brltty-systemd-6.3-1.noarch.rpm which is what I believe is being
referenced in the changelog comment.

Systemd changes:
       The brlapi group is created during boot if it doesn't already exist.

The brltty service file included with that rpm has a size of 2827. Fedora's service file has a size of
217 and comes with brltty-6.3-1.fc34.

The britty.service supplied by britty.com includes a call to /usr/libexec/brltty/systemd-wrapper.
That file doesn't exist in the Fedora world.  So, I don't think documentation on the brltty site is a
faithful mirror of things included in Fedora.

I don't understand your question about what creates the group.  The britty.com rpms don't contain any scripts.
I've already mentioned that the packages supplied by Fedora include a PREIN script that creates the group.

[egreshko@f34k ~]$ grep brlapi /etc/group
[egreshko@f34k ~]$ sudo dnf install brltty
Last metadata expiration check: 1:26:29 ago on Thu Mar  4 09:17:28 2021.
Dependencies resolved.
==================================================================================
  Package              Architecture    Version Repository       Size
==================================================================================
Installing:
  brltty               x86_64          6.3-1.fc34 fedora          1.5 M
Installing dependencies:
  brlapi               x86_64          0.8.2-1.fc34 fedora          177 k
  pcre2-utf32          x86_64          10.36-4.fc34 fedora          203 k

Transaction Summary
==================================================================================
Install  3 Packages

Total download size: 1.9 M
Installed size: 8.3 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/3): brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64.rpm             700 kB/s | 177 kB     00:00
(2/3): pcre2-utf32-10.36-4.fc34.x86_64.rpm        691 kB/s | 203 kB     00:00
(3/3): brltty-6.3-1.fc34.x86_64.rpm               3.1 MB/s | 1.5 MB     00:00
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                             1.0 MB/s | 1.9 MB     00:01
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
   Preparing :                                                          1/1
   Installing       : pcre2-utf32-10.36-4.fc34.x86_64                          1/3
   Installing       : brltty-6.3-1.fc34.x86_64                                 2/3
   Running scriptlet: brltty-6.3-1.fc34.x86_64                                 2/3
   Running scriptlet: brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64                               3/3
   Installing       : brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64                               3/3
   Running scriptlet: brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64                               3/3
   Verifying        : brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64                               1/3
   Verifying        : brltty-6.3-1.fc34.x86_64                                 2/3
   Verifying        : pcre2-utf32-10.36-4.fc34.x86_64                          3/3

Installed:
   brlapi-0.8.2-1.fc34.x86_64 brltty-6.3-1.fc34.x86_64
   pcre2-utf32-10.36-4.fc34.x86_64

Complete!
[egreshko@f34k ~]$ grep brlapi /etc/group
brlapi:x:979:

So, the install process creates the group.  And, of course, users need to be added as needed.

[George N. White III]

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 00:33, Ed Greshko  wrote:
> On 04/03/2021 09:15, George N. White III wrote:
> > The Changelog at britty.com http://britty.com for the 6.3 release says
> > the systemd component was changed to create the brlapi group if it
> > doesn't exist, so the same functionality as the script.  Maybe the change
> > was a response to systems that failed to run the install script.   What
> > creates the brltty group?
>
> Seems to me that changelog only applies to the packages supplied by
> britty.com.
> At britty.com there includes a brltty-systemd-6.3-1.noarch.rpm which is
> what I believe is being
> referenced in the changelog comment.
>
> Systemd changes:
>        The brlapi group is created during boot if it doesn't already exist.
>
> The brltty service file included with that rpm has a size of 2827.
> Fedora's service file has a size of
> 217 and comes with brltty-6.3-1.fc34.
>
> The britty.service supplied by britty.com includes a call to
> /usr/libexec/brltty/systemd-wrapper.
> That file doesn't exist in the Fedora world.  So, I don't think
> documentation on the brltty site is a
> faithful mirror of things included in Fedora.

Packages often deviate from upstream configurations, but each deviation can
be more work for distro
packagers, or less work if they are able to recycle an existing .spec.  A
basic problem is that distro
packagers can't possibly test all use cases for a complicated package like
brltty (the remote sensing
applications I use are impossible to package due to reliance on particular
configurations of
third party libraries like hdf4, hdf5, and netcdf4 that vary across
distros).
>

I don't understand your question about what creates the group.  The
> britty.com rpms don't contain any scripts.
> I've already mentioned that the packages supplied by Fedora include a
> PREIN script that creates the group.

The docs mention two groups: brltty and brlapi.  I don't expect Fedora
packages to keep the britty.com rpm
mechanisms, and it isn't a surprise to me that some steps get overlooked
(low hanging fruit for Murphy's law)..
> [...]
> [egreshko@f34k ~]$ grep brlapi /etc/group
> brlapi:x:979:
>
> So, the install process creates the group.  And, of course, users need to
> be added as needed.

But a step too far for inexperienced users managing their own system.