LinuxCNC 2.5 will not install to USB drive

Hi,

Yesterday I installed the CF card and in about 5 hours had it up and running my CNC machine.

The proplems I encountered were, the Bios did not recognize the CF card and I had to tell the Bios to find the card. The next problem was more difficult, when I tried to run the LinuxCNC machine it gave me pages of errors. I had seen this before and had to look up how to install the missing lapic comand.

The next problem was when I double clicked on the icon for Axis the program would only load partway and freez up the computer. This problem was solved by resaving the configuration file.

I then ran the LinuxCNC Logo and the CNC machine moved correctly.

Today I will try cutting something.

Thanks for your help.

Well done

Sounds like persistence overcame all the computer could throw at you!

Next time it will be a breeze

regards

The LinuxCNC 2.5 is running correctly from the CF card but when I went into the fstab file to make LinuxCNC run from RAM I found the fstab file does not match exactly the installation instructions for the CF card.

These are the lines of code from the fstab file on my computer. You can see there are differences from the CF installation guide.
On the UUID line there is no relatime word. Should I add it?

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=155bd6fb-87f2-4e4f-b2df-13e82549dd28 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Hi

No, because it is rendered null and void by the use of noatime

atime is what sets the stamp on files so that accesses can be tracked

relatime works by updating the atime field on disk only if the file hasn't been accessed since the last time it was accessed, or when the last access was more than 1 day ago
so that cuts down a lot of writes.

If you use noatime the atime updating for accesses is stopped altogether, so no need for relatime

regards

Hi,

I am attaching my fstab file with the modifications I think are correct. I added the noatime after the ext4.

Is the UUID line correct?


# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=155bd6fb-87f2-4e4f-b2df-13e82549dd28 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/run tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/lock tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/lib/dhcp3 tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /home/les/.mozilla/firefox/vkuuxfit.default/Cache tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0

Hi

Is the UUID line correct?

It is as before, I assume you mean do you need to change it too?

You don't need the noatime switch, that is not applicable to swap space.

You might want to try without a swap partition though. I did not install one deliberately on the small footprint computer we were testing, to extend the card life.
With 1GB RAM it worked fine without, with less memory that may not maintain

regards

Hi,

I really don't know how to change this fstab file. The question I have is will this file run the program in RAM or do I need to make some changes.

If it needs changes what do I need to do?

Regards

toolmaker wrote:

I really don't know how to change this fstab file. The question I have is will this file run the program in RAM or do I need to make some changes.
If it needs changes what do I need to do?

Sorry I don't understand the question.

fstab is a file systems table that lets the system know how to mount the drives and devices on the system without specifying it all at runtime.
You have followed the wiki, boot your computer and look at /etc/mtab to check what was mounted.
This measure is only to stop premature failure of the CF card because the system writes every time a file is read, even though it is unaltered.
It also stops some of the logging functions etc. doing the same.

Whether a program can be run wholly in RAM depends upon how much you have and how big the program is, if you start running out that is where the swap file comes in.

For a single use computer just running just Linuxcnc, with 1GB min RAM, it is pretty near impossible that it would need to swap out pages, but even if it does the active program is still running in RAM, it is just unused data that is swapped out.

regards

Hi,

I installed the fstab file and ran the machine. It seems to be running fine.

Here is the mtab file. I'm not sure what it all means but thanks very much for all your help.


/dev/sda1 / ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
none /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /var/run tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
none /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/kenneth/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,user=kenneth 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/3773-B074 vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush 0 0

Best Regards
Toolmaker

andypugh wrote:

ArcEye wrote:

It doesn't have to be huge or costly if you just run Linuxcnc on it. The system will install in about 2.4GB, so anything 4GB + will suffice.

In fact, if you have an SATA motherboard something like
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KingSpec-8GB-SATA-DOM...&hash=item2c66d4f920
is ideal (I have two development machines running from them, production machines would have ample space)

Is there any setup required like the CF cards or is it plug and play?