Debian Buster 10 + Linuxcnc + Ethercat + ISO cd Download 1.7 GB

Hi All,
I am about to start bringing up a new machine next month and getting my resources all together.
I will try using the most recent ISO that was posted here, but it leads me to ask the question "Is there a plan to include the EtherCAT support into the standard download"?

I'd love to see this happen instead of relying on frozen builds (forgive my ignorance if there is an easy way to upgrade once installed on a machine - my experience with Linux doesn't go much further than what I have learned getting LinuxCNC up and running).

I suspect the EtherCAT support would make the Raspberry Pi build work quite well too as it would eliminate the need for external Mesa Boards and the configuration that entails.

Best Regards,
Paul

This ISO  forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...or-linuxcnc-x86-only
includes the ethercat repositories and also this shows how to install ethercat on that ISO these days.
forum.linuxcnc.org/ethercat/45336-etherc...-how-to-step-by-step

I have built an image for the pi linked on the frum here but have not included ethercat repos. etherlabmaster have told me they are hosting packages for the pi but I was not certain that I could build the ethercat  hal driver and add the packages to my repository. The hal driver should build from source. Try my fork of it here whcih is what I build the debs i uploaded.  github.com/rodw-au/linuxcnc-ethercat

There are some liciencing issues preventing linuxcnc from including ethercat stuff but by including the repositorises in our sources.list should not break any rules..

Ahh bummer on the licensing.
Thanks for the info, I was wondering why this hadn't made it into the standard build.
Best Regards,
Paul

My ISO is not really frozen. to get the latest linuxcnc and ethercat, you just need to  type
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

This will get linuxcnc as of the date you do it.

OH - never considered doing that. Thanks!

I seem to be having issues using the upgrade command.
I was on LinuxCNC 2.8.4 and am prepping for a new machine build next week. decided to try the upgrade path mentioned above:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

While the procedure seems to have done "something" LinuxCNC remained at 2.8.4.
Another oddity is that when i tried to start my project (using the etherlab master that was previously installed) the ec_generic controller appears to be removed from the computer.

Startup error:
Failed to open /dev/EtherCAT0: No such file or directory
LCEC: requesting master 0 (index 0) failed
lcec: rtapi_app_main: Invalid argument (-22)

If i try to re-run teh "ethercat_installer" that comes with that ISO, it fails near the end with this error:
Compiling the linuxcnc-ethercat lcec driver
Updating EtherCAT master confiuration
modinfo: ERROR: Module ec_generic not found.

I'm going to just re-install at this point, but I have had similar issues on other computers trying to update debian, feels like i'm missing a key step somewhere.

Best Regards,
Paul