Check config without running Linuxcnc

Hi,
Two questions please.
1: Is there a way to check the config without loading the whole system?
2: Where can I find a list of utilities, programs or functions provided with LinuxCnc?

mariusl wrote:

Hi,
2: Where can I find a list of utilities, programs or functions provided with LinuxCnc?

start here:
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/
if something is missing or wrong, e-mail the mailinglist or post here. patches are welcome.

I was not really referring to the run of the mill things (I have the manuals and use them extensively) but rather tools and utilities that the gurus might use but are not mentioned anywhere. Command line stuff etc. Anything extra that might make life a bit easier.

1: Is there a way to check the config without loading the whole system?

Depends rather on what exactly you want to check.

One thing worth looking at is halrun and halcmd
Together they enable you to load the realtime system, load components, start threads, link pins, change values etc etc from the command line.

They are in the manuals, nothing is hidden for gurus only, but very few people will have the occasion to use them.

If you are writing a component for example, it makes far more sense to try loading it this way, examine its pins and params to ensure they are working as they should be, before inserting all the necessary entries into a .hal file from a config

A couple of the links from the docs to be going on with
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/hal/tutorial.html#cha:HAL-tutorial
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/hal/tools.html

regards

Thanks ArcEye, I was looking for something to do a sanity check on the HAL configuration if possible.
The problem is that I am developing a very complex HAL configuration for an machine that is 100km away from me. I would have liked to know that the config is sound programmatically before going to site with it. I cannot test it at home as I dont have a similar setup to work from.

What I have done in the past when writing a toolchanger component, where I could not test with the actual hardware, was to write a userspace component which simulated the hardware signals and responses.

You could do the same thing manually, connecting up pyvcp buttons to replace the various machine switches and signals and run the config as a simulation.
You can reduce the complexity by breaking down the config into areas of operation and testing one at a time

It does not take too much to convert a real config to a sim that will run with nothing attached.
( comment out anything to do with charge pump, limit switches, restrict estop to user input only and possibly something like setp iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in true to force it into an enabled state)

My development machine in the house does not even have a parport, so I test everything as a simulation before putting it on one of the workshop machines.

regards

It would seem that I need to get a simulated dev environment and set it up to suit my projects. No quickie here.