Updating from LINUXCNC - 2.8.4-23, Mint 20.3 - gmoccapy lathe structure

Yes, I lost an hour or more of my life today trying to map my network drive. It was quick and easy with Mint but XFCE's Thunar doesn't like to get involved with network drives, so you have to install gigolo it seems but even that has changed since the few how-to guides were created, just to keep you guessing. The user instructions are "commendably sparce". That's working finally.

I'm clearly going to have to run pncconfig again, if only to create some placeholder files that I can edit / replace / merge, since it seems I can't simply copy the original folders over and expect it to work.

Although I previously flashed the 5i25 with the required bitfile (link below), my particular combination of boards (5i25 / 7i76 / 7i85) doesn't appear in the pncconfig screen, so I can't configure my IO. Consequently, the generated HAL file won't be right. Is there a workaround for this?
forum.linuxcnc.org/27-driver-boards/4254...nnectors-over#208828

My plan seems to be to generate a dummy gmoccapy installation, then copy the contents of my previous INI and HAL files across, then knock over the resulting errors one by one.

The original installation had closed loop axes (X&Y) and an WHB04B-6 WMPG, which took a while to set up and debug.

The issue is that you need gvfs-fuse & gvfs-backends, and to setup samba as well.

The thing is MacOS and windows only have one file manager to deal with. There's numerous file managers within Linux that are available and each has there own implementation.
And samba shares can be mounted in a variety of ways as well. an entry in fstab (and this can either be a auto or non-auto mount), via the commend line, via the address bar in a file manager......and a hundred other I've probably forgotten over the years.
And going back to XFCE or anything DE for that matter, you've probably noticed that each distro will have a different set of panels, menu implementations or what not. So XFCE on one distro will look different on onther, same for MATE Mint & Debian have a wholly different look for the menus & panels. What this will come down to is the team or person that builds the distro.
The reason the Linuxcnc desktop looks so basic is due to no customisations being made. It's just the way the package manager installs it. And when the builder of the distro does their mods they have to make sure that the mods stay between package upgrades. So there is a lot of work. This was really brought home when I was building the new RPi images. Most of the XFCE programs have their defaults set via xml files under the /etc/xdg directory, so the basic default look and feel come from those files. Then again DE are quite configurable, depends how much time the end user want to change it and how much time.

Now Muzzer:
With regards to file sharing, since I'm working within a Linux environment, I just use sftp to mount directories on other machines, in the context of Linux in the machine you want to connect has an ssh serving running there's no setup needed, as long as gvfs-backends & gvfs-fuse are installed. These locations can be bookmarked within the Linux file manager. And of course the workhorse server has NFS shares setup.
Now Thunar does have a plugin that lets you create samba shares on your Linux machine without needing root access, but of course there will have to be an instance of a samba server running, unfortunately it's a little hit and miss according to reports on the internet.
Funnily enough the only distro I've found to have samba working out of the box was when I use to use Puppy Linux, but that was prior to Windows 8,10,11.
Whilst I haven't tried it, a suitable ssh server for windows may give the same functionality.

There's also the option of using a domestic router to work as an intermediary samba server between windows and Linux.......Tho I think some may use a very early SMB protocol.

Might be best to read the github page regarding some sites using warpinator.com domain.

Why did windows dominate the market?

The PC clone, which allowed many vendors to get in, sell at competitive prices and with PCs coming pre installed with Windows it was a no brainer. Old self proclaimed Dr\Farmer Gates was pretty aggressive.
TBH it took Linux a while to have a polished Desktop. A lot of misinfo about having to be a programmer to use Linux, mostly coming from a half generation that weren't aware MSDOS was command line only for many years. I think it's only us guys old enough to grow White Whiskers remembers early Linux and would have run it on a 486.
Until the wide spread adoption of the internet any security issues weren't exposed as they would be post internet, yes there were viruses around, but their source was either from physical media or BBS's.
As for Banks, most of the behind the scenes stuff would of been carried by ancient IBM systems, or Unix. My old ma remembers working in banks where one machine would take up a whole room (1970 or there about), living Down Under the aircon was great in summer.
They are quite a few local government locales in Europe & South America that have broke away from Windows.
The whole Third World Infrastructure is probably run by the West's Ewaste running pirated copies of XP, I don't think anyone is desperate enough to run Win2k unless it's a machine that has no connection to the outside world inside a Cold War bunker. Word has it that Win2k could catch the common cold from a user.

Betamax was superior to VHS, but VHS won out. The World's an imperfect place, I'm sure the Open BSD & Net BSD guys laugh at us Linux users. I wont talk to much about the Emacs \ Vi (Vim) flame wars, alot of good people perished.

I'm back home again, having been away at work during the week. I've created an initial config using pncconfig, then edited up the contents the best I can, based on my previous working instance in 2.8.4 Of course, those old files no longer work with the current version of gmoccapy and LinuxCNC, presumably due to changes that have occurred along the way, so I have no working system.

I'm in a bit of a Catch-22 situation, as I can't start from a working copy and simply(?) make a few changes. The SIM versions have a range of extra files to fool LinuxCNC to work without a real machine and I don't know which those are. My "starter file" created in pncconfig never got as far as being fully operational, not least because the bitfile in my 5i25 for isn't listed in the pncconfig options.

When I try to run LinuxCNC with my new embryonic config, it seems to bomb out when it tries to start gmoccapy. The debug info is very curt and doesn't seem to give me much of a clue what to look for.

I'm pretty certain I'm missing some of the files required for operation but I've no idea what those are. Without a functioning example, I can't work from a "known good" example. Ideally I'd have an example of a complete file / folder set that I can compare with - is there something I can refer to?

The various gmoccapy sims work fine but as I said, they seem to come with a variety of additional files that I won't need with a real machine. Can somebody help to identify which files I need and which I don't? Many thanks!

 
 
 

Re: the above, could somebody show me what the folder structure and contents should look like in a functioning gmoccapy lathe installation please?

I want to identify the files that are missing from my system that are preventing it from working.

Many thanks.