Nightmare with 10.04

[welderfabrod]

Been trying to install ubuntu 10.04 for 3 days on different pc's, only one ran straight away from the live CD and this was an old 800Mhz Packard Bell that I've had for years and I only tried it on that because I got no joy with the other two but it does control my Denford Orac Lathe with no problems at all. The other two are,nt new ones a Compaq Presario 2.17Mhz with a ATI 9600 graphics card the other is a Philips Dual Core but both higher specs than the Packard.

On the Compaq when trying to boot from the live CD all I got at first was just screens full of text ending with something like Ubuntu@Ubuntu a bit like the old Dos prompt. Looked at the Bios and it was set to boot from CD. Tried a few more times same result. Then I downloaded the live CD for 10.04.1 and tried that, that booted ok. Put 10.04 back in and that booted ok as well!!!!!
So now I,m thinking I,ve got a problem with my CD rewriter (only had a rewriter on this machine). So tried 10.04 again and it would'nt load again. I had a spare CD Rom so I put that in and changed the boot set up to reflect this. Hey presto 10.04 booted first time. did'nt continue with install as it was getting late. Next day tried to boot from the CD in the Rom drive again gues what, just screens of text again, tried a couple more times same result. I had a E-Machines pc with a blown mother board, probably about 6 years old but I knew both CD drives in it were ok so put these drives in the Compaq and both drives booted 10.04 every time I tried, so we're winning, finished the install this time. Got everthing connected back to the mill, ran a latancey test. Blimey 345,700ish and that was without doing anything. As I had dual booted this with 8.04 EMC2 2.3.0 which was on there already and I had no problems with it I switched back to that and did a latancey test 6500 was the result. Gave up on 10.04 on that PC and left it with 8.04.

I then thought I,d try it on the Dual Core as this is the newest PC I have in my workshop (sorry shed) but it was'nt in use at all. However it did have a CD drive that I'd sometimes have to close 2 or 3 times before it would stay in, which really pissed me off hence its home under the bench, so I thought I'd try the the old rewriter out of the Compaq. No luck screens full of text again, so brought a new sata CD installed that but left the old rewriter in. 10.04 booted from the sata drive ok, out of curiosity I tried it in the old rewriter again and it booted ok this time I did'nt complete the install just yet but repeated trying to boot from the old drive to see if it would fail again and it did,nt so completed the install from the old rewriter. Have,nt done a latency test on the Dual core yet.
I now don't think theres anything wrong with my PC's but I do think there's something wrong with the EMC2 version of 10.04 which appears to make it very touchy about what PC,s and graphics cards it likes, so for me I'm going to leave it alone for now and stick with 8.04 and if the isues with 10.04 don,t get resloved switch to another controller if I have to, shame really because I like EMC2. I don,t use Linux apart from my cnc so I simply don't have the knowledge or time to solve these issues, and as yet have never had to think about or purchase a PC for previous versions of EMC2 its run OK on all machines I,ve put it on so far as they've just been my old PC's when I've upgraded.

Rod

[llamatrails]

I had trouble loading from the 10.04 live cd, and finally gave up on the live cd.

No, I don't remember exactly what was wrong, but I've been using Linux for quite a while, a RHCE, UNIX since 1982, and the effort to fix it wasn't worth the time already spent. IIRC, it seemed like the live cd is a stripped down version of the distro install cd, and too much was missing for my system to run correctly.

Loaded from the regular Ubuntu distro and then ran the linuxcnc.org script to install on a already loaded 10.04 system. That worked just fine.

[scudzuki]

I booted from the live CD on a laptop and a desktop then installed to the desktop without any issues, smooth as silk.

Joe

[llamatrails]

Originally Posted by scudzuki I booted from the live CD on a laptop and a desktop then installed to the desktop without any issues, smooth as silk. Joe

No doubt, and it all seems to be hardware dependent. There have been plenty of load issues, here on cnczone and other emc2 forums. For some, it works great, and others it doesn't.

My system is an Intel D945GCLF2 Atom mini-ITX, surely not an old system and not the latest either, but it didn't load cleanly from the 10.04 live cd. It loaded from the 8.04 live cd without a hitch.

My point is just that if it doesn't, load the stock Ubuntu distro, and then use the linuxcnc.org script to install on a already loaded 10.04 system. That worked better for me.

[CaptainVee]

Now that I read it again, I seem to recall having similar problems at some point but was able to install in the end, nor running my mill way better than before.

[Lexx0001]

I had some installation problems as well. It would boot to the desktop, but when installing, it would get partially thru and then stop and show a message about unexpected hardware problems, then stop. I tried burning two more CD-R's even though the MD5sum matched. I loaded it onto a laptop with no problems, and gave it one more try on the desktop, and it took. Runs fine now, but the strange thing is that my wireless network is suddenly hit or miss on the desktop. Sometimes it comes up, sometimes it isn't that easy. Even then the system will disconnect itself for no apparent reason. On the laptop, wireless came up surprisingly well, but not wired. That just blows me away because networking was a Ubuntu strength.

So, yeah I had problems, but overcame them (or will), and I think EMC runs sweet. No problems there.

[welderfabrod]

Sorry guys have'nt looked at me e-mails for a few days been a bit busy. I now have 10.04 on all 3 PC's, not sure wether the effort was worth it though. But, when I do stepconfig wizard it will not create a desktop shortcut, but comes up with a paper icon and say,s something like not a trusted program and refuses to start EMC2, but I can start it through the Applications menu OK. Again its the same on all three PC's. As I said apart from my CNC I don't use linux so this all seems a little unstable for me when using machine tools. However I have'nt tried to run EMC2 on any of them yet. At least I now know its not just me.

Rod

[GaryCorlew]

Right click on the icon, go to properties, then I think its the second tab you need to check a box down near the bottom, I dont remember what its called, but it will probably make sense once you see it. Then go back out and you should be able to double click it and it should run

[welderfabrod]

Thanks Gary I'll give it a try.

Rod

[chester88]

look for 'permissions' and check 'allow execution'.
This has been fixed in the latest bug fix. If you connect your box to the net it should ask about updating.

[sodickappsguy]

on a side note. has anyone installed the Wubi dual boot and added Linuxcnc? I was wondering if it would be stable as a dual boot.

[welderfabrod]

Hi guys still having problems here with 10.04. My old PC finally died although I had 10.04 on it I stuck with using EMC 2.3.0 in Ubuntu 8. but I have now set up the Compaq Presarrio with 10.04 and EMC 2.4.3 but when i ran the latancy test it came up with that silly figure of about 80000 again, but stepcongig will not allow me to put anything higher than 50000 in anyway. So I get the run time error when I start EMC. I even edited the ini file and put in the 80000 but still get the error on starting EMC. So I decided to dual boot and go back to 2.3.0.
Running the latency test again in 2.3.0 I get a figure of only 7800 and it runs fine. So how come there is such a wide difference in the latency of the two versions on the same PC.

Oh yea I got the desktop icon working ok thank guys, should have known that.

Thanks Rod