[Asterisk-Users] Festival on RH9, now working

[Rich Adamson]

festival v1.4.3 is now working with RH9 and asterisk.

As a followup for others that might read the archives, here's a summary
of the problems encountered, some of which is buried in the archives.

http://www.marko.net/asterisk/archives/0209/0389.html was a help with
the following exceptions:

1. When festival is started from the command line, it "does" need to
have its location in the path. If it is not there, festival appears to
be running but not fully functional (don't know why, but the startup
script attempts to kill any existing instances and is looking for
*.pid files that require the path statement. I'd guess whoever wrote
the script intended for the implementor to modify it first, but didn't
mention it.)

2. Where ever festival is started from by the user, the default startup 
script will figure it out and write a festival_server.log file in that 
directory. If you are use to starting things by specifing a full path, 
you might have log files in strange places. The log files "are" helpful 
if you know one exists and where its at.

3. The *.diff patches supplied in the asterisk src directory where taken
by an individual that kept the festival source code in a directory like
/usr/src/festival-1.4.3 while the default installation of festival is
in a directory "without" the version (eg, usr/src/festival). Either one
has to rename the festival directory, or, modify the contents of the
*.diff file. (I noticed several people posting got caught with that
one.)

4. The url referenced at the start of this email was helpful, but not
totally correct. For example, it doesn't mention the diff problem or
why only certain festival tar files are installed (or not installed).
If one renamed the default install directory (for #3 above), untarring
the additional files won't go in the correct directory. The example 
exten code is not complete and will not work. What worked for me was:
exten => 555,1,Answer
exten => 555,2,Festival(mary had a little lamb)
exten => 555,3,Hangup
(I'd have to guess that changes have been made to either festival and/or
asterisk since that Sept 2002 posting.)

5. If the text is quoted (eg, Festival("mary had a little lamb") ), festival
displays a short message (barely considered an error message) on the
screen, and ceases to function correctly after that. Festival must be
restarted to restore proper operation.

Hopefully this will help others...

Rich