mGcodeGenerator

After a long and painful search for a 3D drawing program I have committed to Blender 2.62. While there is an opinion it has a steep learning curve, I have found the program very intuitive. Once I got around the rather daunting short cut keys list I managed to get a good grasp of the modeling section which to my mind follows a logical progression in the real world. Since I am running Linux CNC and using Blender I would like to use mGcodeGenerator but cannot for the life of me load it into either Blender 2.62 loaded in Places >Home or Blender 2.49 via Applications >Graphics >Blender. I have been to (wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GcodeGenerator) and tried to follow the instructions for what appears to be Blender 2.49. " linux /usr/share/blender/scripts or ~/.blender/scripts" my file system goes usr /share /blender /scripts File wont go in there ( Error while moving "mGcodeGenerator_0.2.03.py") and /scripts has two folders blender and bpymodules so

usr /share /blender /scripts /bpymodules File wont go in there ( Error while moving "mGcodeGenerator_0.2.03.py")
usr /share /blender /scripts /blender File wont go in there ( Error while moving "mGcodeGenerator_0.2.03.py")

I have also tried to load it into 2.62 via "Addons"

cheers Paul

So, you're having a problem copying the file? Regular users generally do not have permission to alter files outside their home directory. That part of the system is owned by the root administrator. You can use ~/.blender/scripts though. ~ in Linux expands to your user's home directory. /home/chaos or whatever your regular account user name is on your system (cd ~ ; pwd). Any file with a dot in front of its name is hidden too. so if you were to list (ls) your home directory .blender wouldn't show up unless you issued the all (-a) switch with the command (ls -a). Of course the directory might not exist at all, in which case you'd have to make it yourself. (mkdir -p ~/.blender/scripts)

Sometimes I've downloaded files and the permissions of them were incorrect, stopping my regular user from reading them. It is rare but it happens. Then you have to use the root administration account to change the file's ownership, or flags. ls -l mGcodeGenerator_0.2.03.py would display all of that information. Read up on chmod and chown about how to work with that.

Mostly dealing with permissions is a hassle, until it saves you from doing something really dumb. I hope some of this clear up whatever your problem is. Of course if you really want to copy the file to use globally on your system you can always use sudo and do it as the root administrator. sudo cp mGcodeGenerator_0.2.03.py /usr/share/blender/scripts

Or just su root then have at it. But be careful!

Thanks pfred 1, to be quite honest I haven't a clue when it comes to programing, I will need to take a while to digest what you have said, and have started to explore the options of learning Python.

cheers paul

That isn't programming, all of that is just Linux file permissions. It is something that even trips up seasoned users from time to time. Just to make up a statistic I'd say 90% of all Linux headaches are permissions problems when you figure them out.

I have a machine upstairs and I was like how come the CD-ROM drive doesn't work in it? I looked at it closer and sure enough my user didn't have permissions to use it. For whatever reason one day I used it as root, and it worked fine. Then I was like ah ha! When I looked at the device file sure enough users couldn't read or write to it. I still have to figure out how to modify udev in order to make my changes persistent. I was about to reinstall the whole box over the problem!

I've been running Linux for over 15 years as my only OS too. Those darned permissions, they get me every time!

Some of file permissions is pretty dense stuff but you have to have at least a grasp of the basics or you're going to run into all sorts of things that seem like problems. I looked at a few pages online and this one seems to cover the topic fairly well:

www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/usersguide/linux_ugfilesp.html

There is more there than I know off the top of my head. But I think they present it all fairly well.

Thanks, I'll definitely be studying that up. Until I started building my gantry router about seven or eight months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about CNC machines and even less about computers other than about ten years of experience with EXCEL spreadsheets. I stumbled across Linux and EMC2 while messing with Mac3. My biggest problem is searching the right data to study up on and this is by far the most helpful, friendly and encouraging forum I have ever come across.

cheers Paul

Yeah people have been working hard for the past 40+ years to make UNIX like OSes as difficult as possible to use. I got to hand it to them, I think they're making headway! Like one of my alumni said, "UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity" – Dennis Ritchie

After about 15 years I've managed to master maybe 1% of it, but I get by So don't hesitate to ask, the worst I can say is I don't know.

I guess the hardest thing to swallow is that everything is a file. I mean everything! Your hard drives, your video card, there is a file in your machine somewhere that is basically it. Well, it gets worse because there seems to be files that govern those files anymore today. Which can make someone start to feel like they're chasing their own tail.

But to learn the file system is to learn the system. File attributes are not a bad place to start either. Just getting that is half of the battle. Well, the only half you really need to be concerned about. Then I'd say navigation is the other half. In Linux we have a few tools that help there, find, locate, and grep are the big ones for me.

Sounds easy right? Now for the bad news:

www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/find.html

Choose your poison
HTML (449K characters) entirely on one web page.

Find sure is a many splendored thing?!?

Grep isn't much better:

www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/

HTML (160K bytes) - entirely on one web page.

But look out on the web for some short introductions to those commands. They are worth knowing about.