#linuxcnc Logs
Oct 12 2023
#linuxcnc Calendar
02:02 AM Deejay: moin
04:08 AM Tom_L: morning
04:16 AM travis_farmer: Morning :-)
04:40 AM JT-Cave: morning
06:53 AM * JT-Cave attempts to get the heater going
07:00 AM Tom_L: windy here
07:00 AM Tom_L: still out of the south but that will change overnite and get cold
07:02 AM JT-Cave: 47°F
07:03 AM JT-Cave: gotta debug the C8, I think it picked up 10 bugs per mile
07:04 AM JT-Cave: and get the BP to run again...
07:05 AM travis_farmer: 42F here
07:06 AM Tom_L: 64F
07:06 AM travis_farmer: show-off ;-)
07:10 AM Tom_L: that will be the high tomorrow ~midnight and fall from there
08:23 AM -!- #linuxcnc mode set to +v by ChanServ
09:29 AM travis_farmer: what a fight i am having, trying to get my Maine medicade re-instated... they are so screwed up that now my hospital bill is over $1400, and some has gone to collection, while waiting for my medicade application to go through... i am about three steps away from telling both the hospital and Maine DHHS to "go be fruitful, and self-multiply"...
09:43 AM CloudEvil: :/
09:44 AM bjorkintosh: sorry travis_farmer. It's a malignant system that actively hates its users.
09:45 AM bjorkintosh: and we just sigh and say "it is shitty but that's just how it is. what can we do"
10:44 AM NoSpark: I think I'm going to have to use a different MPU for my "Low cost linuxcnc controller" project
10:44 AM NoSpark: I'm not sure if the AM625 will have enough compute power
10:45 AM NoSpark: ig I could just by a beagleplay and test it....
10:45 AM NoSpark: but I think 4x Cortex-A53 for linux/linuxcnc and a cortex m4 for remora might not be enough
10:48 AM NoSpark: don't suppose anyone knows of a cheap >2 core a72/a73 with a secondary cortex M4 or M7 MCU and gigabit ethernet, a a decent GPU, support for 2 MIPI CSI + ISP and a dual 1080 60fps displays?
11:09 AM solarwind: Certainly takes some practice to get good with 3D parametric CAD, but I want to be come super fluent with it
11:09 AM solarwind: it's so powerful
11:10 AM solarwind: NoSpark raspberry pi has 2 MIPI connectors
11:10 AM solarwind: NoSpark the latest model raspberry pi 5 can output on both interfaces
11:11 AM solarwind: But why are you digging at the bottom of the barrel? Your local used enterprise computer shop has loads of old Xeons which are 10x as powerful for like $100
11:11 AM roycroft: but the rpi 5 is still made of pre-obtanium, iirc
11:12 AM solarwind: like any of the tower HP/Dell/Lenovo workstations can be had for super cheap and are very reliable out of the box
11:12 AM solarwind: they run on an insanely well-supported chipset and 100% board support for all features on Linux out of the box
11:13 AM solarwind: generally have very low latency NICs too, perfect for industrial control. Lots of them come in small form factors too
11:13 AM solarwind: Idle power consumption is very very very low
11:17 AM roycroft: i would agree with solarwind that there are a lot of cheap surplus xeon-based machines that would be more then sufficient for a control computer
11:17 AM roycroft: i buy lease returns off ebay from a vendor called unixsurplus
11:17 AM roycroft: really good deals on some quite capable hardware
11:22 AM solarwind: https://deltaserverstore.com/product/lenovo-thinkstation-p500/ these guys are right down the street from me and for $200 I get a ready to go machine with ECC RAM that can run like 100 instances of LinuxCNC
11:22 AM solarwind: I can negotiate that down to $150 CAD easily
11:23 AM solarwind: like cash, no sales tax
11:24 AM solarwind: And the machines look like new, not chipped or dented or anything
11:25 AM CloudEvil: nice
11:25 AM yaqwsx2 is now known as yaqwsx
11:29 AM solarwind: Oh yeah, and the benefit of the Xeon platform is more PCIe lanes. At least 40 lanes which is useful for everything
11:29 AM solarwind: I don't buy computers with anything less than 128 PCIe lanes anymore. Too many Infiniband/100GbE cards and so on
11:30 AM solarwind: everything in my workshop is a thin client hooked up with anywhere from 1 to 4 100GBASE-LR4 links runninv RoCE
11:31 AM solarwind: a nice central rack SAN is so nice to manage. iSCSI and NVMeoF running over RoCE is like 3 orders of magnitude faster than any consumer crap
11:38 AM bjorkintosh: goodness solarwind. that's the definition of beefy!
11:38 AM bjorkintosh: just checking out the unix surplus ebay site.
11:39 AM bjorkintosh: 512GB ram machine for around 800.00
11:39 AM solarwind: $100 will get you more than you need: https://deltaserverstore.com/product/core-i7-32gb-ram-1tb-ssd-lenovo-thinkstation-p300/
11:39 AM solarwind: If it's $100 in Canada, you can sure as hell get it cheaper in the USA
11:40 AM bjorkintosh: I like lots of RAM
11:41 AM solarwind: for what?
11:41 AM bjorkintosh: I play around with ancient OSes (multics, OpenGenera OS etc)
11:41 AM bjorkintosh: and I don't like my system getting bogged down.
11:41 AM solarwind: If you plan to use it as a workstation, sure. But for LinuxCNC, 8GiB is more than enough
11:41 AM bjorkintosh: oh. yes for that.
11:41 AM bjorkintosh: No I was thinking VMs for ancient OSes.
11:41 AM solarwind: Oh, for VMs, yeah, 64GiB will get you far
11:42 AM solarwind: those ancient OS won't even see past 32 bit address space anyway
11:42 AM bjorkintosh: but the VMs are not terribly efficient.
11:42 AM solarwind: they are
11:42 AM solarwind: they are _Extremely_ efficient actually
11:42 AM solarwind: virtualization is on the hardware level
11:42 AM bjorkintosh: they are? why does my system slow down to a crawl then?
11:43 AM solarwind: misconfiguration
11:43 AM bjorkintosh: chair-keyboard ?
11:43 AM solarwind: VMs are nothing more than a thin layer over the hardware
11:43 AM solarwind: virtualization is entirely native to the CPU
11:43 AM bjorkintosh: hmm. might be an issue with VBox
11:43 AM solarwind: unless you explicitly run them in binary translation mode for whatever reason
11:44 AM bjorkintosh: when I say slow, I mean mouse dragging sloooooooow
11:44 AM solarwind: make sure you're using the virtualization extensions (and to do that, you must enable it in your BIOS)
11:44 AM solarwind: yeah that is very obviously a configuration issue
11:44 AM solarwind: with proper configuration, you won't even notice them running
11:44 AM bjorkintosh: :-? I'll take a look again. I assumed it was meant to be super fast.
11:45 AM solarwind: it is meant to be completely unnoticeable fast
11:45 AM bjorkintosh: but, if I have a few instances of ubuntu or windows running on the same machine (via VM), it is quite noticeable what's hosted and what's native.
11:45 AM solarwind: you mean mouse dragging slow IN the VM?
11:45 AM bjorkintosh: yes
11:45 AM solarwind: ok that's a video driver issue
11:45 AM bjorkintosh: ah. I hoped it was just ram.
11:45 AM solarwind: on vmware, you install the "vmware tools" extensions so the guest can optimize video driver
11:45 AM bjorkintosh: Video cards are hideously expensive.
11:46 AM solarwind: no you don't need a video card
11:46 AM solarwind: you just need to install the virtualization software's video emulation driver
11:46 AM bjorkintosh: have you used Oracle's virtualbox at all?
11:46 AM solarwind: yes a little
11:46 AM solarwind: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=99133
11:46 AM bjorkintosh: maybe it is inferior.
11:46 AM solarwind: no
11:47 AM bjorkintosh: Chair-keyboard again?!
11:47 AM solarwind: like I said, virtualization happens at the hardware layer
11:47 AM solarwind: the only thing that gets somewhat translated/emulated is the graphics
11:47 AM solarwind: and for that, it's just a matter of installing the drivers in the guest, see above
11:47 AM solarwind: for linux/windows, it's super easy
11:48 AM solarwind: for ancient OS, the drivers most likely do not exist, so you will not get any graphics acceleration and you only get basic VESA modes
11:48 AM solarwind: UNLESS you have a second dedicated GPU which you can pass through to the guest
11:48 AM solarwind: and any GPU will work. They are like $20
11:48 AM bjorkintosh: might be the basic VESA modes screwing with my setups
11:49 AM solarwind: what guest OS are you running?
11:49 AM bjorkintosh: OpenGenera
11:49 AM solarwind: never even heard of that
11:49 AM solarwind: it won't have these virtualization drivers LOL
11:49 AM solarwind: so yeah, you're stuck with relatively laggy mouse unless you either add a second GPU, or possibly tweak the virtual graphics adapter settings carefully
11:50 AM bjorkintosh: https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
11:50 AM solarwind: so it's not actually running slow.
11:50 AM solarwind: if you compile some C program and run it in there, it'll run at native speed
11:51 AM solarwind: it's just the virtual graphics that doesn't exist for opengenera
11:51 AM solarwind: virtual graphics driver*
11:51 AM bjorkintosh: https://youtu.be/o4-YnLpLgtk
11:51 AM bjorkintosh: I also run multics sometimes.
11:51 AM solarwind: I don't care for weird OS unless it's hard realtime
11:51 AM solarwind: so that narrows it down to... QNX
11:52 AM bjorkintosh: when did you last run QNX?
11:52 AM solarwind: last week
11:52 AM bjorkintosh: (pronounced QueUeNix)
11:52 AM solarwind: and SEL4
11:52 AM solarwind: and RTAI Linux
11:52 AM solarwind: and experimenting with RT-thread
11:52 AM bjorkintosh: also, Oberon. but that doesn't lag much. it is so tiny.
11:53 AM bjorkintosh: solarwind, do you have a link for qnx? I haven't touched it in a very long time.
11:53 AM solarwind: it's not as "open" and accessible as it is anymore
11:53 AM solarwind: just go on their site and sign up for a free hobby/education licence
11:53 AM solarwind: it's perpetual
11:53 AM bjorkintosh: you don't say. I'll take a look.
11:53 AM solarwind: they have to approve you
11:53 AM bjorkintosh: Oh.
11:53 AM solarwind: so come up with some bullshit "research project" lol
11:54 AM solarwind: that is how you kill an OS, make it closed an expensive
11:54 AM solarwind: SEL4 is the way forward. It's a true microkernel, formally verified
11:57 AM Unterhausen: qnx was a product 10 years before linux was first released. Open source wasn't a thing
11:57 AM Unterhausen: amazing they are still around though
11:57 AM solarwind: Unterhausen "openqnx" _was_ a thing
11:58 AM Unterhausen: as of when though?
11:58 AM solarwind: 10 years ago
11:58 AM solarwind: I remember using QNX 6 a lot
11:58 AM solarwind: it was easy to download and use
11:59 AM Unterhausen: the way to kill a product is best shown by rtlinux
11:59 AM Unterhausen: went commercial and then disappeared from view
11:59 AM solarwind: good riddance
11:59 AM solarwind: thankfully we have RTAI
12:00 PM Unterhausen: I wish rtai could use ethernet
12:00 PM solarwind: it can
12:00 PM Unterhausen: not with mesa cards
12:01 PM solarwind: I'm getting excellent performance with DPDK
12:01 PM solarwind: and Ethercat
12:01 PM solarwind: like easy 8kHz torque control
12:02 PM solarwind: sorry not DPDK, I'm using this: http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/
12:16 PM NoSpark: Thats not really my problem. As I refurbish CNC machine, the weak link is always the PC
12:18 PM NoSpark: Besides, a dual or QUAD core A73 isn't exactly a step down for Linuxcnc, esp if there is a decent gfx card included
12:20 PM NoSpark: Also, I should point out, I'm asking about the CPU specifically, this is for an all in one board, with a MPU to run linuxcnc, and a MCU to run remora
12:22 PM NoSpark: I'll put a bunch of industrial IO, some SSR type outputs, a couple of analog inputs, and maybe an industrial wireless chip for a pendant
12:24 PM NoSpark: I was hoping to use an AM625, which is a dual core A53 and a "realtime cortex- M4" (Texas instruments words)
12:24 PM NoSpark: https://www.ti.com/ds_dgm/images/fbd_sprsp58b.svg
12:27 PM NoSpark: I can purchase those chips for less than a 2GB DDR chip
12:27 PM NoSpark: They have all the perifierals I want, but the CPU power might be a bit lacking
12:28 PM NoSpark: *correction, the AM625 is a QUAD core A53, same as the RPI3
12:29 PM NoSpark: actually, it's 200Mhz per core faster
12:34 PM bjorkintosh: solarwind, what do you use qnx for?
12:35 PM solarwind: what you would use an RTOS for: real time motion control
12:39 PM bjorkintosh: oh! it's in productive use!
12:40 PM solarwind: Experimental, but I want to move away from it because of the commercial licence
12:40 PM solarwind: When seL4 is mature enough, that's the route I'll go with
12:42 PM bjorkintosh: I thought seL4 was just a research project.
12:42 PM bjorkintosh: for writing academic papers and stuff of the sort.
12:44 PM solarwind: no, it's very much real
12:44 PM solarwind: But it's just a kernel. The OS part is juuuuuuuust starting to eb worked on
12:44 PM solarwind: there are some prototypes
12:45 PM solarwind: Progress is moving pretty fast (like the opposite of GNU Hurd lol)
12:46 PM solarwind: Like it's usable _right now_ if you wanted to get something going on your raspberry pi or whatever, but it takes a lot of effort and know how
12:46 PM solarwind: you need to compile things and put things together a bit like Linux From Scratch, but far more involved.
12:51 PM bjorkintosh: I used freebsd for a long long time.
12:51 PM solarwind: I can't think of a single reason to use it over Linux
12:51 PM bjorkintosh: if you wanted sound, you had to compile the kernel. a printer? compile. better video? compile.
12:51 PM bjorkintosh: solarwind, it was a very usable system when RedHat 5.0 was a POS
12:51 PM solarwind: ok yeah back then, I agree
12:51 PM bjorkintosh: a very long time ago now.
12:52 PM solarwind: but these days, my go-to is Ubuntu server
12:52 PM solarwind: all the benefits of Debian with a predictable release cycle
12:52 PM solarwind: and extremely well supported by everyone
12:53 PM solarwind: "snap" and every other custom thing they do is complete garbage, but you can just uninstall it
12:53 PM solarwind: they should just focus on making a solid distribution, not these poorly executed side projects that never amount to anything
12:54 PM solarwind: nix and nixOS is also something I'm looking into
01:15 PM bjorkintosh: solarwind, I switched to ubuntu as well after my years with freebsd.
02:02 PM JT-Shop: pcw--home, what's the ETA for the 7i84u?
02:07 PM rmu: sel4, is that the formally proven correct micro-kernel?
02:10 PM pcw--home: JT-Shop: we have protos but still need some firmware work
02:13 PM CaptHindsight: https://openlunchbox.com/mw19/index.php/HOWTO:_Gentoo_for_LinuxCNC he simplified the howto
02:14 PM bjorkintosh: rmu, yes.
02:15 PM CaptHindsight: "Unterhausen> I wish rtai could use ethernet" just a personal preference or did you find a need?
02:20 PM JT-Shop: pcw--home, thanks
02:21 PM pcw--home: Its possible to use RTAI with Ethernet using RT-Net, but RT-Net seems to be abandoned
02:21 PM pcw--home: (so no new driver support)
02:23 PM CaptHindsight: yes, memleak pulled it out of his RTAI tree years ago
02:23 PM CaptHindsight: it wasn't being used and he didn't wish to support it
02:24 PM CaptHindsight: he pulled out something like 300K lines of code from RTAI back then, he spent months on cleanup
02:24 PM CaptHindsight: might have been 500K lines
02:32 PM CaptHindsight: NoSpark: it would be nice IF TI put a decent GPU into one of their ARM SOC's but they haven't since their cellphone days
02:32 PM CaptHindsight: and it would be $40ea or similar to NXP's prices
02:34 PM CaptHindsight: maybe someone will put some RISC-V micros inside a RISC-V SOC with a decent GPU for <$10, but it will likely come from China and turn lots of people off
02:45 PM JT-Shop: damn deer corn has 25% corn cob in it...
02:45 PM pcw--home: more fiber!
04:51 PM skunkworks: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BlIwGh8jG6Y
04:52 PM memleak: Hi FinboySlick
04:52 PM FinboySlick: Hey memleak :) Long time no see.
04:53 PM memleak: I think this video would make you guys cringe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRxmR0ICvTM
04:53 PM memleak: The engineering involved scares me
04:54 PM FinboySlick: I think I remember when he first built one of those.
04:55 PM memleak: My PREEMPT_RT Gentoo image + installer is finally done, just needs testing, and then I have RTAI updated to use the GNU11 standard with the latest 5.4 and 4.19 kernels ready to go as well.
04:55 PM memleak: Been pretty busy the past few weeks
04:56 PM memleak: Heading out now, bbl
04:56 PM FinboySlick: Seeya.
04:59 PM memleak: What do you use btw, PREEMPT_RT or RTAI?
05:01 PM FinboySlick: I'm still on the old ubuntu livecd. I haven't had a chance to use my mill in four years.
05:01 PM FinboySlick: Running linuxcnc on gentoo is definitely on my list though.
07:15 PM memleak: I'm back everyone
07:15 PM memleak: You all desperately needed to know that :)
09:26 PM _unreal_: memleak, ? sounds like a mem over run LOL
09:27 PM _unreal_: """"" <memleak> I'm back """"""
09:27 PM _unreal_: lol
09:28 PM memleak: With an Austrian accent
09:28 PM memleak: how you been _unreal_ ?
09:31 PM _unreal_: not bad "with a Maine " accent
09:31 PM memleak: :-)
10:10 PM * roycroft has a strong irc accent