Roboard, Linux, boot times?
by ProblemChild
Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:06 pm
Rogue Warrior remember that you can switch on the BIOS redirection out to the serial port form either the BIOS menu or the switch on the PCB. It's also relatively easy to point one of the mgetty based virtual terminals out through the serial port thus you could have the LCd display attached to the serial port which would be cool or maybe via a USB interface with a bit more work
Best of Luck John
Best of Luck John
by ProblemChild
Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:12 pm
Winchy_Matt, I had a lot of trouble getting my installations to complete.
Some of the problems were:
a) Make sure you are running i386/i486 code not 586 or above
b)Power your Disk remotely or via a seperate PSU don't rely on the 2A from the ROBOARD
c) I ended up booting the unit off a USB stick then completing the install via the DVD drive... This worked by far the best .
Other Folks have suggested that you force the board to do USB1.1 rather than USB 2 since it seems more stable
John
Some of the problems were:
a) Make sure you are running i386/i486 code not 586 or above
b)Power your Disk remotely or via a seperate PSU don't rely on the 2A from the ROBOARD
c) I ended up booting the unit off a USB stick then completing the install via the DVD drive... This worked by far the best .
Other Folks have suggested that you force the board to do USB1.1 rather than USB 2 since it seems more stable
John
by RogueWarrior65
Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:17 am
Here's a systemic problem I see with, shall we say, the business of Linux embedded development. You're often on your own in uncharted waters. Now before I get flamed for this, hear me out. My background is not insignificant. I've got a Masters in Software Engineering and I've developed and sold products from the ground up. For the most part up until this past year I've been living in the software world. Now I need to do hardware. Back before the Earth's crust cooled, I did basic hardware development on 8048's with old-fashioned EEPROMs and the like. One of my Master's projects was a computer-controlled laser light show. But I digress. Nowadays, hardware is pretty damn sophisticated yet it seems like a chicken & egg situation in that unless you've done it before, there isn't a great one-stop-shopping way to learn it. A big exception to this is Microchip. IMHO, they made a very smart business decision to make learning how to use their products a priority. After all, if you know how to use their stuff, you're more likely to buy it in the future. The Linux SBC world doesn't seem to have this. There are some half-decent books but they generalize a lot. Many of the boards I see out there have the most basic documentation and little example code which often doesn't work right. For my current project, I've rejected a number of otherwise good SBCs because there was no support for them.
So, a modest proposal to any SBC manufacturer: IMHO, if you want people to buy your products and become an industry standard, make a major investment in training and support.
Let the flaming begin.
So, a modest proposal to any SBC manufacturer: IMHO, if you want people to buy your products and become an industry standard, make a major investment in training and support.
Let the flaming begin.
by winchy_matt
Mon Aug 03, 2009 7:48 am
I concur!
Also having written software for embedded control systems for 15 years, starting with DOS and then onto micros such as the PIC, I have found that getting into the world of Linux much harder than I imagined, as you point out mostly due to the lack of support and assumption from the manufacturers. What seems to make Linux harder is the vast choice of versions.. its simply a mine field knowing where to start, and every one you ask will of course have their own opinion.
P.S., I also did a laser patter controller form my college HNC project.. PC based
Also having written software for embedded control systems for 15 years, starting with DOS and then onto micros such as the PIC, I have found that getting into the world of Linux much harder than I imagined, as you point out mostly due to the lack of support and assumption from the manufacturers. What seems to make Linux harder is the vast choice of versions.. its simply a mine field knowing where to start, and every one you ask will of course have their own opinion.
P.S., I also did a laser patter controller form my college HNC project.. PC based
by ProblemChild
Mon Aug 03, 2009 7:58 am
From another Computing Masters Degree to another I kinda get your point 
I would counter that the fact that you find PICs easy to deal with is not only because of their efforts to make it easy for you and programming environments etc but also the amount of work that's been done in this field using them. This is a field where "I see further because I stand on the backs of giants" is very much the case. PIC controllers Domains are necessarily narrow an defined with in the chipset and thus one manufacturer and we are using 10-15 years of development in robotics using them to get a little further.
The RoBoard is a general purpose platform squeezed small with some Robotic I/O.
It's still less than a year old and only been out a little while in numbers from what I see!
The problems you are having from what I see is not a Linux one or a Windows one but issues relating to people mating general purpose hardware and software. Once we have broken the back of it we shall see nice things using the ROBOARD
In this instance we can not stand on giants backs we shall have to be the Giants
Roboard Please give us a Distro of say 2GB with a working set of I/O and maybe a dev environment so you can develop RoBoard software on the RoBoard . This is a PC after all the whole point of the excessive platform is to make the development easier and less confined..... With 8GB SDHC cards at £8 and the fact you actually give a 1GB card free with the unit why limit the Xlinux to a 11MB Ghost image!!
Get some useful toys in there and sell loads of RoBoards
Good Luck All Robotiers
John
I would counter that the fact that you find PICs easy to deal with is not only because of their efforts to make it easy for you and programming environments etc but also the amount of work that's been done in this field using them. This is a field where "I see further because I stand on the backs of giants" is very much the case. PIC controllers Domains are necessarily narrow an defined with in the chipset and thus one manufacturer and we are using 10-15 years of development in robotics using them to get a little further.
The RoBoard is a general purpose platform squeezed small with some Robotic I/O.
It's still less than a year old and only been out a little while in numbers from what I see!
The problems you are having from what I see is not a Linux one or a Windows one but issues relating to people mating general purpose hardware and software. Once we have broken the back of it we shall see nice things using the ROBOARD
In this instance we can not stand on giants backs we shall have to be the Giants
Roboard Please give us a Distro of say 2GB with a working set of I/O and maybe a dev environment so you can develop RoBoard software on the RoBoard . This is a PC after all the whole point of the excessive platform is to make the development easier and less confined..... With 8GB SDHC cards at £8 and the fact you actually give a 1GB card free with the unit why limit the Xlinux to a 11MB Ghost image!!
Get some useful toys in there and sell loads of RoBoards
Good Luck All Robotiers
John
by ProblemChild
Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:18 am
Winchy to your question about USB yes It's a BIOS option but not the one I was describing ..That's for the Console redirection 
Lots of companies embed Linux into their product because it's simply very good for the purpose and also the right price FREE!!! Yippie!!
I agree there are many variations on the theme but we must understand they are only variations and take them as such rather than make a religion out of them like most insist.
Since most of my time is with Fedora I can be working on a cut of that for may robots ..
Any one interested give us a shout!
John
Lots of companies embed Linux into their product because it's simply very good for the purpose and also the right price FREE!!! Yippie!!
I agree there are many variations on the theme but we must understand they are only variations and take them as such rather than make a religion out of them like most insist.
Since most of my time is with Fedora I can be working on a cut of that for may robots ..
Any one interested give us a shout!
John
by winchy_matt
Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:55 am
Ok, my latest snag: I want to enable sftp, so I see there is a script to do this "sftp" if I try to run this I get the following error:
can anyone help with this?
- Code: Select all
sftp: error while loading shared libraries: libssp.so.0 cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
can anyone help with this?
by winchy_matt
Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:10 am
I'm using the Xlinux distro, straight from the .GHO image.
scp?
In fact, being that I am only used to debian, to install ssh on that I would use the apt-get ...... what would I need to do within the Xlinux install?
Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I am pretty new to this
scp?
In fact, being that I am only used to debian, to install ssh on that I would use the apt-get ...... what would I need to do within the Xlinux install?
Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I am pretty new to this
by ProblemChild
Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:52 am
Good point!
I really can't remember if I used telnet or ssh to log into the box...Just try ssh root@<ROBOard> then login if it lets you with the same password as the normal console logon.
If that works you should be able to use scp ( use the web for the syntax)
If not i think you are on the way to having to compile ssh which should have everything on it.... This is easy on a normal platform however since I think you will be cross compiling on your desk top for the Roboard you will have to deal with differing Kernels/Libraries etc. This was the reason I wanted to use fedora every where and make an environment good enough to develop on.
Maybe Roboard will inform us on the requirements for a cross-compiling dev environment for Xlinux .
John
I really can't remember if I used telnet or ssh to log into the box...Just try ssh root@<ROBOard> then login if it lets you with the same password as the normal console logon.
If that works you should be able to use scp ( use the web for the syntax)
If not i think you are on the way to having to compile ssh which should have everything on it.... This is easy on a normal platform however since I think you will be cross compiling on your desk top for the Roboard you will have to deal with differing Kernels/Libraries etc. This was the reason I wanted to use fedora every where and make an environment good enough to develop on.
Maybe Roboard will inform us on the requirements for a cross-compiling dev environment for Xlinux .
John
by ProblemChild
Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:59 am
Just did the obvious and Googled "xlinux" and got
http://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/os-xlinux/
where they claim ssh compatibility so try that scp thing to get your files accross ok!
John
http://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/os-xlinux/
where they claim ssh compatibility so try that scp thing to get your files accross ok!
John
by winchy_matt
Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:22 am
Ok, maybe I should have explained why I need the sftp functionality, I'm use sftp to upload files from within my dev environment in Eclipse, e.g. Remote Systems. I have this working well on my Debian target. And I thought it would be pretty painless to get going on the RoBoard, seeing that it is supposed to have sftp installed... but then I get the error previously described.
by winchy_matt
Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:23 pm
quick update:
I managed to get the .GHO XLinux image to ghost to the 1Gb µSD card, however to do this I had to remove the card from he RoBoard, and ghost it to a USB->SD converter I had plugged in to one of the usb ports. Every time I tried ghosting to the µSD card installed in the RoBoard SD slot.. it failed!
Once ghosted I installed it back into the SD slot.. worked fine!
I almost got debian 4 installed from my USB DVD-ROM, I tweaked some settings in the bios, I'm not sure which one of my tweaks got the DVD-ROM working.. will make some further checks. Anyway, the debian installation hung when it got to "setting system clock"...
So I'm back to the XLinux install, haven't managed to get sftp working yet, but have got gdbserver installed and running so I can remote debug my app.
I managed to get the .GHO XLinux image to ghost to the 1Gb µSD card, however to do this I had to remove the card from he RoBoard, and ghost it to a USB->SD converter I had plugged in to one of the usb ports. Every time I tried ghosting to the µSD card installed in the RoBoard SD slot.. it failed!
Once ghosted I installed it back into the SD slot.. worked fine!
I almost got debian 4 installed from my USB DVD-ROM, I tweaked some settings in the bios, I'm not sure which one of my tweaks got the DVD-ROM working.. will make some further checks. Anyway, the debian installation hung when it got to "setting system clock"...
So I'm back to the XLinux install, haven't managed to get sftp working yet, but have got gdbserver installed and running so I can remote debug my app.