1 Installing the EMC2 software

1.1 Introduction

One of the problems users often complained about EMC was installing the software itself. They were forced to get sources, and compile themselves, and try to set up a RT-patched Linux, etc. The developers of EMC2 chose to go with a standard distribution called Ubuntu¹.

Ubuntu has been chosen, because it fits perfectly into the Open Source views of EMC2:

Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
Ubuntu comes with full professional support on commercial terms from hundreds of companies around the world, if you need those services. Each new version of Ubuntu receives free security updates for 18 months after release, some versions are supported for even longer.
Ubuntu uses the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable for as many people as possible.
Ubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or help improve the current development release.
The Ubuntu community is entirely committed to the principles of free software development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it and pass it on.

1.2 EMC2 Live CD

The EMC2 team now has a custom Live-CD based on Ubuntu 6.06 and 8.04 that will let you try out EMC2 before installing, and it's also the easiest way to install Ubuntu and EMC2 together.

Just download the ISO from www.linuxcnc.org and burn it to a CD.

When you boot the CD on your machine, you can see and experiment with the exact environment and EMC2 software that you will have if you choose to install it.

If you like what you see, just click the Install icon on the desktop, answer a few questions (your name, timezone, password) and the install completes in a few minutes.

This install gives you all the benefits of the community-supported Ubuntu distribution as well as being automatically configured for EMC2. As new Ubuntu updates or EMC2 releases are made, the Update manager will let you know and allow you to easily upgrade.

1.3 Other Methods

You will find information about other install methods on the following web sites.

http://www.linuxcnc.org (Home of EMC2)

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl (User maintained Wiki EMC2 site)

1.4 EMC2 install script

We also provide a simple script to install EMC2 on Ubuntu for users with an existing installation of Ubuntu. It runs the commands explained in [.].

To use it you need to :

Download the script from http://linuxcnc.org/dapper/emc2-install.sh (For Ubuntu 6.06)
Save it on your Desktop. Right-click the icon, select Properties. Go to the Permissions tab and check the box for Owner: Execute. Close the Properties window.
Now double-click the emc2-install.sh icon, and select "Run in Terminal". A terminal will appear and you will be asked for your password.
When the installation asks if you are sure you want to install the EMC2 packages, hit Enter to accept. Now just allow the install to finish.
When it is done, you must reboot (System > Log Out > Restart the Computer), and when you log in again you can run EMC2 by selecting it on the Applications > CNC Menu.
If you aren't ready to set up a machine configuration, try the sim-AXIS configuration; it runs a "simulated machine" that requires no attached hardware.
Now that the initial installation is done, Ubuntu will prompt you when updates of EMC2 or its supporting files are available. When they are, you can update them easily and automatically with the Update Manager.

1.5 Manual installing using apt commands.

The following few section will describe how to install EMC2 on Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper Drake” using a console and apt-commands. If you know a bit about Linux and Debian-flavored distributions this might be trivial. If not, you might consider reading [.].

First add the repository to /etc/apt/sources.list:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://www.linuxcnc.org/emc2/ dapper emc2.2" >>/etc/apt/sources.list;'
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb-src http://www.linuxcnc.org/emc2/ dapper emc2.2" >>/etc/apt/sources.list'

Then update & get EMC2.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install emc2

This command will install the EMC2 package along with all dependencies².

You might get warnings that the packages are from an untrusted source (this means your computer doesn't recognize the GPG signature on the packages). To correct that issue the following commands:

$ gpg --keyserver pgpkeys.mit.edu --recv-key BC92B87F
$ gpg -a --export BC92B87F | sudo apt-key add -

Footnotes

1 “Ubuntu” is an ancient African word, meaning “humanity to others”. Ubuntu also means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. You can read more about it at http://www.ubuntu.com back

2 The dependencies are one of the nicest thing in Debian based distributions. They assure you have everything installed that you need. In the case of EMC2 it's even a RT-patched kernel, and all needed libraries. back

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