There's been some interest in running LinuxCNC on Ubuntu Precise 12.04, for two reasons. One is to get the hardware support of the newer Precise kernel, and the other is to get access to newer tools and libraries available in the Precise userspace.
Getting LinuxCNC to run on the Precise kernel is a big job, because LinuxCNC requires hard realtime extensions to the kernel, and those are currently not available for the Precise kernel. However, the kernel and userspace are fairly well separable in Linux. It's possible to run the Precise userspace with an older realtime kernel, particularly the kernel we're currently using for LinuxCNC on Lucid. This gives you access to all the new Precise libraries and tools, but does not provide any better kernel-level hardware support, obviously. Please note that this is highly experimental and new, and I don't know how well it will work. I've run our test suite in a VM set up this way, and it worked without problems, but I haven't tried to run it on a real computer, and I haven't tried to control a real machine with it. If you do this, treat it as a careful experiment, not as a "production" upgrade. And please report how it works for you! Ok, here's how to do it: Install a regular 32-bit (i386, not amd64) Precise machine. I tried it with "xubuntu", but I see no reason why it wouldn't work with the other flavours too. Add an apt source: "deb http://linuxcnc.org/ lucid base". That's the repo with the LinuxCNC realtime kernel for Lucid. Install these packages from the linuxcnc.org repo: linux-headers-2.6.32-122-rtai_2.6.32-122.35.rtai linux-headers-2.6.32-122_2.6.32-122.35.rtai linux-image-2.6.32-122-rtai_2.6.32-122.35.rtai rtai-modules-2.6.32-122-rtai_3.8.1-linuxcnc1 Tweak the grub config to boot the 2.6.32-122-rtai kernel by default, or remember to catch the grub menu at boot and manually select it each time you boot. Reboot to the realtime kernel. Fetch the linuxcnc source from git. Check out the 2.5 branch and build it. Either run-in-place or as a deb should be fine. Play around with it and let us know how it goes! Alternatively, I've successfully upgraded an existing Lucid 32-bit machine to Precise (using the normal Ubuntu distro upgrade process), and added the linuxcnc.org debian archive and installed the realtime kernel that way. That worked. Enjoy! -- Sebastian Kuzminsky ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
