Installing LinuxCNC on Debian 9

Is Debian 9 the suggested version to go with for a new install? I am in the process of building a Gatton CNC router for home use. I would prefer to stay away from a windows box and have been using Ubuntu on home machines for 8-10 years. I tried the downloadable and the live CD works fine but the installation dies. I got it past the network card hang but then it aborts while installing the system. Setting up from an iso and if needed building from sources is not a problem.

I am looking at using the Mesa 7i96. I am setting up on an old Biostar TA790 GXE board with a Phenom II x945 and 4gb ram. It is what was on the shelf that powered up

Dave

If you are using a Mesa card, then I would try Debian 9. If you are using a parallel port (or can't get good enough latency with the Preempt-RT kernel) you might be better off with the old Debian 7 based ISO. To some extent you may be better off trying both and seeing which works better for the PC you are using.

It looks like I am going to need to do some research. I got the RT kernal installed although a slightly newer version.

uname -a gives:
Linux Deb9CNC 4.9.0-8-rt-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Debian 4.9.110-3+deb9u6 (2018-10-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux


sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 3cb9fd148f374fef failed for a dependency on E: gnupg, gnupg2 and gnupg1 do not seem to be installed, gnupg was removed by the dirmngr install. I got by it by apt-get-install gnupg1.

Things fall apart on sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 3cb9fd148f374fef

cncuser@Deb9CNC:~$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 3cb9fd148f374fef
Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.H06wT6Wnh6/gpg.1.sh --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 3cb9fd148f374fef
gpg: requesting key 8F374FEF from hkp server keys.gnupg.net
gpgkeys: key 3CB9FD148F374FEF can't be retrieved
gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
gpg: Total number processed: 0
gpg: keyserver communications error: keyserver helper general error
gpg: keyserver communications error: unknown pubkey algorithm
gpg: keyserver receive failed: unknown pubkey algorithm

and that is followed by E: Unable to locate package software-properties-common

It took a bit to get the wireless to actually work too. I ended up doing a no network install and then turning on the network after the install.

Not feeling a lot of love for Debian 9 at the moment.

Dave

Hi folks,

first of all: Mery X-mas to all of you.

I want to share some experience with Debian 9 and linuxcnc:

I have a rt61pci wlan pci card. This is usually no trick, but i got some trouble with network-manager. Solution: The dhcp client scripts are under control of apparmor. This does not work. Symlink the 2 dhclient files in /etc/apparmor.d/disabled or delete them.

I have a nvidia graphics card. Normally the nouveau in Version 7 worked for me, but not in Debian 9 (unexpected ...). Solution: remove xserver-nouveau package. Do not use nvidia driver, use nouveau dri and native xserver.

Now finally after some tricky investigation the updated machine is running again.

(upgrade only to 686-pae kernel, no crossgrading to amd 64 arch)

Greetings to all of you, great job!

Wolfgang

Dave, you may need to update a second time, IIRC I had to do that once.

JT

if the live DVD starts on kernal panic it is the wrong PC i got no luck on older ones

I think I fixed it. I did a manual edit of /etc/apt/sources.list to force in all of the non-free options.

sources.list is attached as sources.txt. it wouldn't post inline due tot the number of links.

It is happily running the latency test now with cnn, a youtube video and glxgears running. I saw some 55k ns numbers at first but I reset the stats and it is hanging at 18.4k ns on the servo thread and 28.4k on the base thread. I need to go look up if that is good or bad.

Dave

the stepconf will use a 100k latency for the main Base tread
the 18k i woudt go 25k goes into the stepgen numbers

so you will se a good running 5m/min speed mashine at a 250mm/s/s speedup
Good work

I got it in the case and found an old parallel port card in my box of junk. A couple insertions to clean the contacts and linux is seeing the port. I had also installed the Radeon drivers to get rid of an error message on startup. That added about 30k ns to my jitter so I took it back off. Slightly uglier graphics are fine with me.

I am thinking that I will order a cheap $20 BOB/cable combo and get things going. I can move to a Mesa board later on if I need it.

I would like to know how did you install the Nvidia drivers on preempt-RT kernel and which Nvidia driver was used?