[pkg-cryptsetup-devel] Accessibility in the initramfs

[Andrew Pollock]

Hey,

We've got a blind user, and we've modified the cryptroot initramfs stuff so
that it issues a two-tone beep when the password prompt (for disk
encryption) is displayed, and another two-tone beep after the disk is
successfully decrypted.

We've made these changes against cryptsetup 1.0.5-2 that's in Ubuntu 8.04,
in such a way as they can be opt-out by default, and opted in by a config
file in /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d

We'd like to get the changes back in upstream so we don't have to keep
maintaining them. It means for us, we'd just opt-in via the configuration
file, but by default it wouldn't beep. The benefit for Debian: support for
blind users with disk encryption at early boot.

It looks like 1.0.6 is a bit different, notably the password prompting seems
to be unified into /lib/cryptsetup/askpass regardless of whether a boot
splash is used or not. That simplifies things and complicates things at the
same time.

I'm happy to provide a patch, my main question is are you okay with
askpass.c calling out to the beep binary from the beep package (this would
introduce a dependency on the beep package), or do we have to embed beep
functionality directly into askpass.c?

regards

Andrew
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