Ethercat installation from repositories - how to step by step

From memory, there is now a R8125-dkms driver in bookworm .
My ethercat machine is on Bullseye and its using the default driver OK as the dkms driver does not exist.
I thought I added git to the install. I'll review that when I next look. I had a regression with some things so maybe that got lost too.
You'll need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list to add non-free-firmware and non-free to all lines starting with deb to use dkms.

I had followed your previous instructions to add the nonfree stuff, but it didn't seem to make any difference. The installer did ask if I wanted to load the correct driver (rtl_nic/rtl8125b-2.fw )from different media, but a quick google didn't find anything easily available, but from my previous tests, the default bookworm drivers seemed to work ok.

This is the driver I meant. It probably did not show on an install as its non-free
packages.debian.org/bookworm/r8125-dkms

Ok, you have an Intel NIC. That is good!. For ethercat, just use the generic driver.
4.19 is buster and I've never used it. You could adapt the how to and getting linuxcnc doc to Buster by changing a few settings.
Everything I have set up recently has been around Bookworm. A couple of guys I know have got Bookworm working with Mesa devices on 2 core machines with the 6.3 kernel. You probably should add the coalescing settings as shown in man hm2_eth. But ethercat is much more efficient so it performs better than the protocols Mesa use so it might not be necessary.

The other thing you could try is IRQ pinning and pin the NIC interrupt to the one Linuxcnc uses (likely the isolated core) You will hhave to google that but the theory is that if both the servo thread (and perhaps the ethercat master too) and NIC are all  on the same core, it will be more efficient

I think your i5 will be fine. I have a i3 that works pretty welll once optimised even with a crappy Realtek NIC.

Hi rod,

there should be some more problems with hooking up of bookworm on the machine with 2 cores ? I tested your hybrid.iso but on my vbox machine with single core it was installed at first shot and ethercat master works ... but there was problem with 



For benchtop searching project of controlling servos over ethercat I am still struggling around which hardware should be better for me... Should be better some tiny mini PC from some famous brand as 

• Lenovo ThinkCentre M93p Tiny with Intel Core i5-4570T with One gigabit ethernet port, Intel I217-LM (Clarkville)
  or
• Rb Pi 4 - b 8GB RAM

I think for digging and struglining around the development a solution for prototype machine should be better that tiny one lenovo with i5 CPU on board but what with Intel I217-LM hardware ... it looks like, it will have e1000 driver or something similar what I read just here 

After you set up the ethercat repos, can you try typing:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

There should not be any reason it won't install in a 2 core machine

I have the installer for X86 pcs and am working on the pi one
It is long slow work building variations. I'm building what I hope will be the final pi version right now
At this stage, I am unsure if the  Pi will have the ethercat repositories preinstalled
I would avoid the pi as its latency is always marginal and its not been properly supported for a long time.
Ethercat uses much more efficient network protocols so it does not seem to be affected by network latency experienced with mesa cards on some NIC hardware. But Beckhoff uses Intel NIC's exclusively...

 

I did 

After you set up the ethercat repos, can you try typing:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

What only helped me was install it manually from your manual command list 

Install the repository and driver

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/rodw-au/rodw-au/script.deb.sh | sudo bash sudo apt install linuxcnc-ethercat=0.9.4 sudo apt update

thanks for you pretty gorgeous job ...

Thanks, not sure if I will be able to do the same with th Pi Installer. Etherlabmaster say it supports the pi, but not sure If I can build and host the ethercat hal driver...
And qtpyvcp don't have pi repos.

Yes the packagecloud install method is super cool.

Hi Rod, I am reinstalling because I made a bit of a hash of things.In your setting up notes:
If you are using cia402 compatible drives: cd ~/dev did you mean ~cd /dev ?(there is no dev in ~). Under ethercat slaves only the EK1100 comes up and not the i/o modules. Is that usual?

Goodwood wrote:

Hi Rod, I am reinstalling because I made a bit of a hash of things.In your setting up notes:
If you are using cia402 compatible drives: cd ~/dev did you mean ~cd /dev ?(there is no dev in ~). Under ethercat slaves only the EK1100 comes up and not the i/o modules. Is that usual?

I used to make a folder in my home directory called ~/dev but I now call it ~/devel. This is the folder I install all of the custom stuff that has to be built to keep the home folder clean.

I found ~/dev was easily confused with /dev so I now use ~/devel.

Thanks for that. I'm quite sure all is working, the sigma7 drives come up, the EK1100 shows up but the attched modules do not(KL1408,KL2408 &KL9010).I've just got them on ebay and have no experince. If I ignore them and try to get the drives going. Can you sugest a starting point? Thanks for your help.