Linuxcnc error

I would not worry about making changes because I would not make any changes in the original files.
Before changing anything on a supposedly working configuration, I would backup all configuration files
and only then make changes in the machine configuration. This should be done in any case so its
easier to recover from a hardware failure

i was given a backup with some notes but i did plan on making my own back up again just for peace of mind so ill do that as well. To be honest I can see this slowly becoming a nightmare as im going to have to work out how the last person has done things and also learn about all this back ground stuff. I can only hope the bloody tool changers work. it all just seems a little strange as they really knew what they where talking about and ive looked on here and they have had a lot of activity helping others out so I find it hard to believe they didnt have the machines going so these errors shouldn't be present.

Can anyone give me a quick little run down on what the linuxcnc programme is doing when it is trying to open? what is it checking?

the machine has been fitted with rapid jog buttons and two incremental jog dials as well some other buttons that im unsure on yet as they arnt labelled. am i right in thinking HAL is what is used to connect these to linuxcnc via mesa 7i73 board?

i do apologise if i seem alittle dumb on this but im trying to get alittle information to then make the reading up, make sense. as im new to linux and any programming.

In linuxCNC almost all machine specific customization is done in the HAL and INI files

In the HAL file, the various software components and hardware drivers are loaded
Once loaded, these components and drivers provide parameters and pins that are
initialized and interconnected in the HAL file. If any of these parameter or pins are
missing (because some software or hardware component failed to load properly for example)
LinuxCNC will abort with a error (typically printing the line number in the HAL file where the error occurred)
This is what happening with you missing pin errors

The "was already linked" error is a different sort of error and looks like a
HAL file syntax error where you have two pins driving a signal (a normal signal can only have 1 source)


Can you post your hal and ini files here?

ill get it all up tonight and make a back up and then post the files and have a look myself. ill have ago at solving the linked error and see what come up next.

so i powered the machine up tonight and todays error was home.sw in does not exist which is the first picture from the topic. i find this really strange. Im doing nothing different when i power the machine up or changing anything but it seems like it just picks and choose which error to bring up. surely it checks the HAL files in a logical order line by line so why dont i get the exact same error everytime.

me and my friend who has mach3 experience have tried looking over things and all we can see is that everything is fine and all points towards the coding being wrong. all of the errors so far have pointed towards home/limit switches in some way, "not existing". we have tested both limit switches and they both have 12v and tried booting linuxcnc with and without the limit switches pressed in. so this to us doesnt make sense how the error can say the pin doesnt exist but the mulitmeter says otherwise.

i didnt get the conflicting error but tried commenting out a line it made no difference as it wasnt the error that was present at the time.

7i76 jumpers to the left and as said before field power is there on all 4 pins on tb1, and even tested the vin pin to check the jumper. the only thing that jumps out is there are two cables with crimped fittings not connected to anything, these cables are from the mesa 7i73 card im not really sure how on earth i would figure out what they are for.

any help is massively appreicated because we are out of ideas

As others have suggested, there are errors in the hal files so I would start fixing them first


for example in the orac-5i25_...4-19.hal file you see

# ---jogwheel signals to mesa encoder - x axis MPG---

net x-jog-count <= hm2_5i25.0.7i73.0.1.enc0.count

# ---jogwheel signals to mesa encoder - z axis MPG---

but the same line is present in custom.hal:

# ---jogwheel signals to mesa encoder - x axis MPG---

net x-jog-count <= hm2_5i25.0.7i73.0.1.enc0.count

# ---mpg signals---

Ok cheers. I'll change that. Only thing is that doesn't help me depending on the mood of the machine. As last night the error was pins missing unless these errors are connected. But the signals are correct and present as far as we could worked out. Was thinking the setup for them pins where wrong in the Hal files?

If you have known errors in the HAL file these need to be fixed anyway and just make debugging
harder so yeah fix the obvious errors and that should make finding/fixing intermittent errors easier

I commented out the lines your highlighted in the orac Hal file and left the others in the custom Hal file.

But I'm still stuck at the home pin doesn't exist. I've commented it out to see what error was next and noticed it was an error on z motor, these lines where commented out in the x motor lines so I did the same. Next error after that is the z home pin. I'm just so baffled. I've looked back in the Hal file and there allocated to pin 19 and 20 which is correct and the right way round also. everything I'm told make sense but I don't have the knowledge to look through the files and work out what's right and wrong.

What version of LinuxCNC are you running?
"joint.0.home-sw-in" will only exist in version 2.8 (the development version)