Installing Linuxcnc on Debian Bookworm

Thank you Rod

Will take a look at it now.

Linux is sooo different to windows, first time ever using it. Would like TCP option down the track.

If you want to be overwhelmed, look at the equivalent 2.8 docs
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/getting-st...etting-linuxcnc.html
What a bloody mess!

The doc was very difficult to put together and several had input not to mention feedback from the developers in the pull request.
It takes the view that you already have debian installed and the devs wanted to see it nice and simple in a few lines which it is.
There is not really any difference between a pi and x86 machine  when it comes to installing linuxcnc on Debian 12
There was a process you could have been involved in at the outset. The opportunity has passed.
If you are not happy with them, send a pull request but don't duplicate content.

And yes,  that is why I have been working on seprate installers for X86/AMD64 and the Pi (To simplify the process further.)
I was sick of so many broken instructions, images and the like and wanted to put linuxcnc in a position it could release something
The Pi installer now deviates by using the official Raspberry kernel over which Debian 12 is added, then linuxcnc is built from source.
The Pi uses master branch as it includes a newer GPIO driver.
BOth of them have been  hard work and its very time consuming work.
 

Hi,

I try to install the latest version of LinuxCNC on Debian Bookworm using the 'Debian 12 bookworm PREEMPT-MT ISO' from the web site. (LinuxCNC=2.9.3, linux image-rt. Build 2024-07-21 21:05:42, live build 20230502)

I have the ISO on an USB drive and can boot from it. Running live (amd64) is without any problems, I can run LinuxCNC and its test tools for latency testing.
Max jitter on servo thread/base thread is around 10000/20000. I should be able to use LinuxCNC on this machine (I think).

When I boot and select 'start installer' I run into problems.
During the boot, before entering the graphics screen I see lines like
moud: mounting /dev/sda on /media failed: Invalid argument
umout: can't unmount /media: Invalid argument.

Other devices that I see are /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda5 before the graphics screen removes is all and takes over the screen.

In the past I was able to install Debian 10 on this machine (still on it but can't use it at the moment), I don't think it is a hardware problem.

I tried several USB slots to see if it makes any difference, but all fails.

Does anybody have a suggestion how to fix this?

Kind regards

Sometimes you need to select a different boot drive in the BIOS before it boots up
I had this issue this week on a PC I have used with LCNC for years

Bad luck for me, changing boot drive did not work.

I tried to install a 'standard' debian-live-12.6.0-amd64 iso and that worked without any problem. Maybe I can use that to 'upgrade' with the LinuxCNC iso or change the installation to be acceptable for LinuxCNC. I don't know yet how to do the first or the second option.

Installing linuxcnc on a standard Debian instance is described in the docs here
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/getting-st...th_preempt_rt_kernel

Thank you, your advice helped me from guessing to acting.

rodw wrote:

Installing linuxcnc on a standard Debian instance is described in the docs here
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/getting-st...th_preempt_rt_kernel
 

Just followed the procedure, it was a doddle.

I want to mention a few points I ran into. Maybe others can do there advanage with it.
First: There is a warining not to supply a root password when installing Debian. If you do give a root password then sudo is disabled.
Of cause I had supplied a root password (old habits dont die easily!)
I had two options, reinstall and don't supply a password or find out how to enable sudo. I opted for the second one.
If you search the internet then you can find several sites with advice how to do it.
In the instructions I used the command `adduser username sudo` is used. That command could not be found.
Solution: use `whereis adduser` then use the command with the full path.

The rest is just read first, check and check again then do exact what you are told to do. No further problems.

Now running kernel Linux 6.1.0-23-rt-amd64 with LinuxCNC installed.
Latency tests are a factor 2 better compared to running LinuxCNC life.
I have made some changes in the bios between testing with LinuxCNC life and the current situation but have not (yet) fully tuned this installation.
I want to try the next step, using the RTAI kernel.

Kind regards.