CAD CAM EDM DRO - Yahoo Group Archive

Re: Re: BDI install, ie hand book

Posted by Ray
on 2001-08-26 08:20:41 UTC
Peter

Good Job. I'm going to answer your questions out of the order that you
asked them. You may also find additional help in the linuxcnc.org/handbook.
Try the faq first.

The ini file is the key to configuring the personality of the EMC. Which
ini you run is determined by one line about 30 lines down in the run file
that you click on or enter as a command from a terminal. When you decide
to write your own ini file, you will need to change a run file so that it
reads the ini that you have edited. The line to change is

---run file snippet-----
# Set the name of the .ini file, using emc.ini as default. Change this to
# your .ini file, if you don't use emc.ini.

INIFILE = emc.ini
---end---

Just put the name of your ini there and rename the run file. I usually use
the same first name for both the run and ini. Try pete.run and pete.ini
or excello.run and excello.ini.

Unfortunately the documents about the ini file are cryptic at best and
have mostly been written by insiders for insiders. The best one is
included with the CD and is named /usr/local/emc/doc/emcsoft/html.

You asked about how you can view the contents of directories and such. Kfm
is my browser of choice and is the default on the cd. Kfm is what comes up
when you press the little home icon on the bottom bar. A single click will
usually get you where you want to go with it. Navigation is pretty obvious
using the arrows on the top left. But the view that kfm offers is
different when you enter a directory vs a directory with an index.html
file. When it hits a directory with a index.html file in it, it switches
to html viewer and shows the contents of that file. This is how Paul gets
the BDI visual to display when you try to look at the contents of the cd.

To view the cd directory contents, you will have to shut off html view
under the view menu of kfm. So all that you would have to do to view
emcsoft/html is to click on the home icon. click up arrow until you get to
(/). That is the starting directory in the structure. It used to be
called root, probably still is, but now there is a /root directory also.
Perhaps we should call this one root-root but that sounds like something
we might encourage people to do while at a local football game.

From (/) find your way to /usr/local/emc/doc and click on emcsoft.html and
you will see its contents. Clicking on the handbook icon will show you the
beginning page for it using the same browser I think.

You can start several BDI versions of the EMC from icons on the desktop.
I prefer to start them using a terminal window. Here is how I do it. I
move around the file structure with kfm until I find /usr/local. In there
you will see a directory named emc. Left click on it and drag it onto the
desktop. You will be asked if you want to copy, move, or link. Select
link. Now you will have a little file folder looking icon on the desktop
named emc. Any time you click on that once you will pop up a kfm window in
that directory. Click twice and you will get two of them.

If you have multiple windows open, only one will have the focus at a time.
That one will have it's title bar in color rather than gray so with the
focus on the kfm window that shows the contents of /usr/local/emc hold down
<control> and press (t) and kfm will pop up a terminal window. In that
window type ./emc.run. This will produce the same emc as pressing the
emc_run icon but it will also show the execution of emc.run as it starts
up. If you create problems for yourself as you begin to edit run and ini
files, this is the way to check for errors. The ./ is the way that you
tell the linux kernel to look for and treat as a command, the words after
the ./. By typing ./emc.run we are asking the kernel to execute a file
named emc.run -- if it can.

Linux is a world traveler rather than a proprietary system. It can read
most any kind of file system that you can put on a cd, floppy, or tape
drive, or network. The mount commands that Jon speaks of --

From: Jon Elson <elson@...>
<s>
>If you do it right, there should be no problem. Linux knows about DOS
>file systems. 1. You have to mount and dismount floppies, the mount
>command is : mount /dev/floppy /mnt/floppy
>
>then, you can check what's on it, with the usual ls commands, like :
>ls /mnt/floppy
>
>copy like this :
>cp /mnt/floppy/xyz.dat .
>
>The '.' means put it in the Linux directory i'm set to at the moment.
>You can change the name, put it in another directory, etc by replacing the
>. with some other name, directory path, etc. To check what dir you're in,
>the command is pwd (print working directory).
>
>Don't forget to unmount any floppies, especially if you have written
>files to them! The command is umount /dev/floppy

-- have been automated a bit in the BDI using something called supermount.
With it working properly, you can just stuff a cd or floppy into the slot
and click on the desktop icon and kfm will show the contents. (there is a
small problem with BDI-2.04's icon. The fix is listed on linuxcnc.org/bdi.)

Hope this helps

Ray

Discussion Thread

Ray 2001-08-26 08:20:41 UTC Re: Re: BDI install, ie hand book