brltty not starting in GUI when using sysvinit-core

[Gregory Nowak]

Hello.

In preparation to release devuan 4 based on debian 11, it has been
discovered that brltty is displaying "screen not in text mode" when
the graphical desktop (in this case mate) with lightdm as the login
manager starts. I have determined that the problem exists also if gdm3
is used as the login manager. I also therefore suspect the problem
isn't limited to just mate, but to any desktop enviornment.

If brltty is restarted once the lightdm/gdm3 login screen appears,
output on the braille display resumes, and is shown from then on. A
solution to start braille at boot, and have it available in the GUI
also is to change the permissions of /etc/brlapi.key to 0644. However
since brlapi.key seems to be depricated in favor of policy kit, it is probably best to find out what is causing the issue,
and fix it without changing the permissions of brlapi.key for every
install.

I have also confirmed that the issue happens when installing
sysvinit-core under debian 11. So, this seems to be a problem in
debian as well, not just in devuan. On a fresh install of debian 11,
here are steps to reproduce:

1. Create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list with the following
   contents:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

2. Run: apt-get update

3. Run: apt-get install sysvinit-core libpam-elogind-compat brltty-x11

The brltty-x11 package seems to be necessary since brltty complains
about missing libraries, and doesn't output in the graphical desktop
even when restarted. This is not the case in devuan.

4. Reboot the system.

5. What happens is that brltty runs fine at the text console, but
   doesn't display output from the lightdm screen. This can be fixed
   as described above. I have also found that upon logging in as a
   normal user into the graphical desktop, there is no braille, or
   speech. Since this isn't an issue in devuan, and since simply
   getting to the lightdm screen demonstrates the bug I'm describing, I
   didn't investigate further.

Here is relevent output from /var/log/auth.log:

Sep  4 20:12:12 debian elogind-daemon[1288]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event15 (BRLTTY 6.3 Linux Screen Driver Keyboard

after brltty restart:

Sep  4 20:13:41 debian elogind-daemon[1288]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event15 (BRLTTY 6.3 Linux Screen Driver Keyboard)

Here is relevent output from /var/log/daemon.log:

Sep  4 20:12:12 debian dbus-daemon[1263]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1' requested by ':1.1' (uid=0 pid=617 comm="/bin/brltty -q ") (using servicehelper)
Sep  4 20:12:12 debian polkitd[1284]: started daemon version 0.105 using authority implementation `local' version `0.105'
Sep  4 20:12:12 debian dbus-daemon[1263]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1'

--snip--

Sep  4 20:12:14 debian brltty[617]: NoSpeech Speech Driver:

--snip--

Sep  4 20:12:14 debian brltty[617]: HIMS Braille Driver:

after restarting brltty

Sep  4 20:13:35 debian brltty[617]: select: Interrupted system call
Sep  4 20:13:40 debian brltty[1515]: BRLTTY 6.3 rev BRLTTY-6.3 [http://brltty.app/]
Sep  4 20:13:40 debian brltty[1515]: executing as the invoking user: root
Sep  4 20:13:41 debian brltty[1520]: BrlAPI Server: release 0.8.2
Sep  4 20:13:41 debian brltty[1520]: Linux Screen Driver:
Sep  4 20:13:46 debian brltty[1520]: NoSpeech Speech Driver:
Sep  4 20:13:46 debian brltty[1520]: HIMS Braille Driver:

I don't see anything obvious in the above which would point at the
cause of the problem. Should I file an official bug report against
brltty, or is this not advised since sysvinit isn't debian's default
init system anymore? Any help in resolving this issue would be much
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Regards
Greg Nowak


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