Proposal RPi Linuxcnc Image Based on Raspi OS All welcome/encoraged to comment

f355 wrote:

which version of LinuxCNC you're on? before 2.9.5 (I think) it required /sys/kernel/realtime to be present, which is not the case in the Pi kernels. if you're on 2.9.4, you can work around it by setting LINUXCNC_FORCE_REALTIME env var to 1 (I just do 'echo "export LINUXCNC_FORCE_REALTIME=1" >/etc/profile.d/linuxcnc-force-realtime.sh'), or update to a later version.

Just built linuxcnc-2.9.7 on trixie, still appears to need the export, no big issue really.


Don't know if XFCE is the way to go or the LXDE version that comes with raspios.

interesting, the check was removed quite a while ago . I wonder what else does it want.

as to LXDE vs XFCE, I'd probably go with the latter, it's true and tried, and almost no one uses the former - Pi OS uses Wayland and some Wayland-based desktop environment by default, I don't think many people switch to Xorg apart from us.

I got pretty reasonable results on the RPi5 even with Wayland and LXDE.
Enough that software step generation might be an option for a mill. I was surprised by that.
I've had to go back to the basics with pi-gen, was having issues with it deciding to switch from the graphical target to multiuser.
I've got a bunch of images to test, so stay tuned.
But I think once this is nailed it will be easier to get reproducible results. You've convinced me regarding the kernels. So much easier. Thanks

Image version Twenty Three gazillion.
Standard raspios desktops included plus XFCE, changed lightdm chooser to the gtk-greeter, auto login is enabled, easiest way to change desktop environment is to logout and select the desktop prior to logging in. Still working with Bookworm ATM. Needs a little polishing, need to add the environment variable for realtime, will include a config for XFCE terminal that had a few options setup. And yes I will keep Midnight commander in there, great clone of the old Norton commander dos file manager, the included editor is pretty good as well.

Current state of Trixie:
Images build fine & boot, with non rt kernel.

6.12.47 kernel crashes
6.12.47 headers cant' be installed due to gcc version issues

6.12.34 kernel is good
6.12.34 headers can't be installed due to gcc version issues

Issues installing Linuxcnc built from image below wont install due to version issues with a lot of packages.

Using Trixie image downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_arm64/...-trixie-arm64.img.xz can have 6.12.34 kernel & headers installed.

I'll have to do some greater investigation.

Wanna know a secret, I did a big stupid, didn't realise the image was armf instead of arm64.

Current state of Bookworm.
All appears to be good, build process needs some tweaks, login screen and having xfce the default desktop plus a few little more odds and sods. Basically it works, just would like it a little more user friendly. Good thing regarding this build system is you can set your OS settings when using RPi-Imager, something that was not possible with the earlier build system.

Non necessary stuff (eyecandy), would like to have a linuxcnc themed splash screen (plymouth theming), login background (lightdm config) and desktop background. Just some Linuxcnc "branding".

Eyecandy is proving to be as issue, especially plymouth.

When image is initially created plymouth splash dispalys.

Using plymouth-set-default -R pix causes the boot splash to disappear. pix s the default so shouldn't be an issue.

So until this can be resolved it's KISS.

A lot has changed in time.

What was the reason for changing, if known ?

Is it a path worth checking out again ?

In other news.
It would look like the Trixie packages have been built on Bookworm for Arm, is that correct ?

Now that I have a working Trixie image, one image will work for the 4 & 5 would it be useful for package building for Trixie ?