EMC2 on Puppy linux.

Hello...

I have bunch of old laptops. They are just to weak to run UBUNTU. But the PuppyLinux (with EMC2) works.
The problem is that distro (CoolCnc05) have real old version of EMC2.
So Does someone know recipie to make new one from source on puppy?

Thanks...

Hi

I have been doing a lot of custom rtai kernel compiling, and recompiling emc etc recently, looking at latency reduction in the newer multicore computers.
(www.linuxcnc.org/component/option,com_ku.../lang,english/#14321)

The kernel and magma kernel patch version I had most success with were 2.6.32

If you sort out the most recent Puppy Linux distro that will run on your machines, preferably with a 2.6.32-x kernel (or older - not newer the patches start running out ), I can have a look to see if I can install it and compile within it, to produce a compatible kernel - rtai - emc2 set for it.

My limiting factor will probably be the reverse of yours, I may need to get something out of the loft that is old enough to install Puppy Linux on!

A lot will depend upon just how many packages etc need installing to build emc in particular, all the python, tk, tcl, minigl etc etc
The puppy might be a St Bernard before I finish!

No promises, but I can give it a try, whilst I can remember everything required!

regards

PS Give me a link to CoolCNC05 distro too - so I can see exactly what that was - cheers

I like the idea of using a lightweight distro for running EMC2.

I created an account just to reply to this post, to add that I am also interested in using Puppy/Slax or some other light weight distro since I have no need for all of Ubuntu on a CNC.

I can't speak for eslavko, but I wouldn't mind if it turned out to be a St. Bernard by the time the porting was complete.



eslavko: Perhaps it would help anyone involved if you published the specs of the laptops that you will be running it on.

For example: I would thoroughly enjoy running it on a Celeron 220 with a gig or two RAM. (ASUS ITX-220 Motherboard - Part Number: 90-MIB8W1-G0EAY0KZ link: skinflint.co.uk/436909)

Regards,
Nicholas

As I already write.

The Collcnc05 (avaible somewhere in wiki pages of emc) works.
So Rtai is not the problem. But the EMC2 bundled in that is just to old.
So the question is how to compile EMC from source on puppy.
I think that is better way as EMC is updated pretty fast and to keep another live distro is probably little out of question.
Of course the EMC on newer puppy could be good too....

About computer's
It's basicaly CPU betwen 500MHz and 1GHz. And RAM somewhere in 128 to 512Mb range.

I tested latency on two of them.
(all thing disturbing realtime in BIOS is switched off)
tested with LiveCD Ubuntu 8.04

1. Gericom Webgine MSW (800MHz CPU, 192Mb RAM)
Latency in general under 15uS. Make 200us hickup nonperiodic 1min to 1 hour period. Seems to be battery manegment as If I remove battery the 'thing' ocour and same if I put battery back. 3 hour test without battery shows 15.2us (Running 2 instances of glxgears)
Response on moving window is slow. It can't be used with UBUNTU.

2. ThinkPad T23 (1GHz CPU, 384Mb RAM)
Latency 11us with 2 instances of glxgears over 3 hour period. Battery removing and insertion doesent make think worse.
The EMC on UBUNTU seems to be just possible there...

On your Greicom, have you tried to pass acpi=off to the kernel at boot up, in an attempt to help the hiccup?

MonkeyKnight wrote:

On your Greicom, have you tried to pass acpi=off to the kernel at boot up, in an attempt to help the hiccup?

No..
... and in reality I don't care. If there is power outage the part is usaly ruined. So I power laptop without battery. But I wil check just to see result...

acpi=off doesn't help (tryed to run LiveCD again with that added to command line)

Is this where you started?

www.puppylinux.com/about.htm
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Emc_Puppy
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?CoolCnc.0.5

eslavko wrote:

As I already write.
So Rtai is not the problem. But the EMC2 bundled in that is just to old.
So the question is how to compile EMC from source on puppy.

If you have a working Puppy Linux emc install with rtai kernel, but want to upgrade EMC that should be a lot easier.

The place to start will be downloading an emc source package, put it in /usr/src/ and from the ../emc-versionxx/src directory run ./configure --enable-run-in-place and then each time it finds an un-met dependency, download that and run configure again.
There will probably be quite a lot of them, I don't know how much quite basic stuff is included in the distro.

Once a makefile is generated, make, make setuid, and then to run in place . ./scripts/emc-environment and emc.

If it works OK you can use it like that or can go back and make clean then ./configure --prefix=/usr, make, make install

Your problem is likely to be the library versions included in PL being too old for the EMC version you are trying to compile, which is why I was thinking towards getting the newest version of PL that will run on your hardware and starting from there.

In fact I have no allegiance towards PL at all and would probably rather have a debian based distro if possible, just for sheer familiarity and for ease of updating.

regards

Rick G wrote:

Is this where you started?
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Emc_Puppy
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?CoolCnc.0.5

Thanks Rick

Quite a comprehensive outline from Alex Joni and cncuser, albeit 2.4.x kernel and most of the links will be dead by now.

I had forgotten that Qemu existed! Not used it since the old king died!

My problem is going to be my hardware being too new, think I am going to have to find the lightest i386 / x86 distro (preferably debian based) that will still install and run in a basic video mode on my machines and then go from there.

regards