It seems that the file /etc/init.d/festival contains a typo which prevents it from correctly starting and stopping the festival server, and therefore also prevents it from running /etc/festival/server.scm on startup. Currently the start() function reads start() { ebegin "Starting festival" start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background --make-pidfile --pidfile /var/run/festival.pid \ --exec /usr/bin/festival -- --server -b /etc/festival/server.scm eend $? } but this results in the /etc/festival/server.scm not being executed. No matter what is put in there, what voice is changed, it has no effect. The fix is to remove a spurious "\" before "--exec" in the start() so that the new version reads start() { ebegin "Starting festival" start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background --make-pidfile --pidfile /var/run/festival.pid --exec /usr/bin/festival -- --server -b /etc/festival/server.scm eend $? } Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
And another question is why is there "--" before "--server" not followed by any flag in the options passed to festival? Either some option is missing or the extra "--" perhaps could be deleted as it is only confusing to the festival when parsing it. /usr/bin/festival -- --server -b /etc/festival/server.scm
That \ escapes the newline. If it was a problem with that, /usr/bin/festival wouldn't even run. And it's working foe me... did you perhaps not restart he festival server after changeing /etc/festival/server.scm?
the options following the -- are options passed to the --exec arg (ie, they are options for festival rather than start-stop-daemon). Therefore, the festival command being executed by the script is: usr/bin/festival --server -b /etc/festival/server.scm
Yes I thought "\" was for breaking a new line but somehow this was the only way to get the script to work properly on my machine (it's not a strange PC in any way!). Actually restarting the festival with the init script following any changes, or even after not making any changes was causing the start-stop daemon to fail to kill the pid of the festival. I have now come back to using the original festival init script (with "\") and it seems to be working fine. It is able to start/stop/restart festival without any incidents and the script server.scm is being executed OK ( I know this because I've put an entry to say "Hello there" everytime it is run). So in short I'm changing the status of the "bug" to fixed as the original script is now working correctly. Perhaps it was all late in the evening/at night and I might have done something wrong like misstyping something. In an effort to get festival server to execute correctly I was playing with running the start-stop daemon manually from the command line. Maybe the mixture of using both the init.d/festival and hand-modified start-stop daemons was a deadly one! But it's working now as it should so I'm sorry for bothering you/worrying you! Regards Chris
