installing archived packages and files

Hello all, I am new to this forum and to be honest I am not that "o fay" with social media and blogging etc.
I have been an engineer for about 25 years, however to my shame this is only the second cnc project. Your help will be greatly appreciated. Hopefully one day I can return the favour.

I hope this has been posted to the right place

I have a dell Optiplex GX240 tower. This was working fine until my hard drive went pop. I have been running Lucid lynx 10.04. ts been running a few years. After fitting a new hard drive, I have reinstalled linuxcnc lucid lynx 10.04. This is the only release that seemed to work, and it worked excellently, even on a dell!.

As you are aware this version is no longer supported. I can go through the "step config wizard" and complete the machine profile, but cannot launch linuxcnc program as Axis freezes.

I know I need to install a file "libg|1-mesa-swx11.dev" but I can't run the update manager as its greyed out, and subsequently cannot install this file via synaptic package manager even if i search for it, as this version inuxcnc is no longer supported.

How do I download and install this file from the archive server. I will need an idiots guide i.e type this....type that etc, as my knowledge of linux is very limited.


Thankyou in advance.

Graham

Just because Lucid is end of life, doesn't mean that you can't use it to run a CNC machine. I have one old machine instatlation that has been running Linuxcnc for years on Ubuntu 10.04 and is running the current release version of Linuxcnc. That PC is "special" since it has an ISA card (part of the machine interface) and I have not been able to get it to work with newer OSes.

Are you sure you need to go through all that? Usually when I have to try to reinstall a Lucid based Linuxcnc, this is all I need to do. 1st install from one of the Lucid Linuxcnc live CDs. 2nd update the Ubuntu repositories to.

Hi JT and Todd,

Many thanks for your fast response.

When I said I don't understand linux and I need an idiots guide....I literally meant it. I have no idea how to carry out what you are talking about . I can cut and paste etc, but I am not familiar with linux or how to use terminal. All I need is to be able to install this file
" libg|1-mesa-swx11.dev" I really don't know how to use terminal or the commands. I have never tried to do this before, so very simple words with no abbreviations needed. Sorry to be a pain.

Graham

There are a couple of ways that you can do this.

One way is directly edit your sources.list file with a text editor. The file is located in the directory /etc/apt/. To edit this file you will need to have root privileges, so open your text editor of choice with a sudo command from a command prompt. For example to use gedit, type sudo gedit <enter> then type your root password <enter>. Simply copy and paste those lines into that file, also you may want to comment out (by putting a # in front) all the old repository references that these look like they should replace and save it. Then update the system.

Another way is buy using Synaptic. Open Synaptic, click the Settings menu, choose Repositories, select the Other Software tab. Uncheck to disable all of the old Ubuntu repositories. Then click Add at the bottom of that window. Copy and paste each deb line (the whole line including the deb) in the entry box for the APT line and click Add Source. Once you've done that for all the new repositories, click close, Now on the main tool bar of Synaptic click mark all upgrades and then Apply.

Hi Todd,

I carried out your instructions. I used your second method using Synaptic package manager and copying the files into the APT command line box .It works great I have made another install on a spare hard drive just in case this one fails so I can swap it over. Many thanks to your for your help.
Thanks
Graham