Linux question

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
Hi all,

Not been on here for a while, I've bought 2 milking robots, second hand and have been installing them. They run on Linux which I know very little about.

I was advised to keep them powered until I'm ready to use them so they've been mostly on since March.

I had to do some work on the power supply and now one of them won't start.

The error message is;
no such file or directory exists?

It must have existed before and the other robot still starts up fine.

I realise its unlikely I'm going to solve it but there's some clever folk on here!

Cheers Geoff
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,845
That's not much to go on. Do the robots have any sort of console device? Does it have a hard drive or other media that can be mounted on another system?

Unix is notorious for being cranky about not being shutdown properly. Operating systems cache data in memory for efficiency and that data doesn't get written when power is removed abruptly.

Back in the 80's I had a CAD system trashed after a power outage and my only option was to reload the operating system. Fortunately, I made routine backups and didn't loose much data.
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
They have a touch screen but its designed as a farmer interface so you can't get to the guts of anything on it.

There is a hard drive which isn't designed to be removed, there are what I guess are custom PLCs which interface with the robotic arm etc.

The message before the error mentions starting vmsio which I guess is communication with the PLCs? This doest get a green OK after it then the , directory not found message.

Could the directory be in on of the PLCs, this could mean damaged wiring
?
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
Hi all,

Well I've partially resolved the problem, after much tinkering I decided to swap the hard drives (I have two robots)

Lo and behold the one that was wonky started up, a friend has cloned the good drive and now both work.

The hard drives are quite new (2017) and are Toshiba 128 gb solid state. Is it common for these to fail? I now have a backup :)
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
Where would the fun be in that?!.......

Anyway I've been fiddling around, does any one have any suggestions for good books/websites on Linux?

I can open a Linux shell on the robot touch screen and have been poking about in different directory's etc and found a few configuration files I could do with changing.

Given my laptop is nearly old enough to be clockwork, would it be a good idea to get one running linux?

I could then use a hard drive dock and run it from my arm chair?

Are there any disadvantages to that, all I really use it for is mplab x and design spark PCB software.

Cheers Geoff
 

Alec_t

Joined Sep 17, 2013
14,280
Given my laptop is nearly old enough to be clockwork, would it be a good idea to get one running linux?
As a cheaper option, would a Raspberry Pi with the Raspbian OS have enough grunt to run your robot software (or a homebrew app with a similar function)?
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
That's a interesting idea, I'm not sure? The robots are fairly old 2006, I'm sure things have moved on a lot since then?
Thinking about it, I wonder if it would even boot up without all the PLCs connected up?
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
Well I'm still prodding about with this, bought a cheap laptop running Linux popped the robot hard drive in, it wouldn't boot up. The robot runs gentoo Linux.

I put the drive in a dock, I could read all the files, its a partitioned drive.
Next day I tried and can only read the partition with the boot file in it. The other partition won't mount, anyone know why? This is new ground for me....

Cheers Geoff
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
Exactly what laptop? Exactly what appears on the screen when it tries to boot. I've had problems with really old laptops that can only run 32-bit versions of Linux.
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
I made sure it was 64 bit laptop because I wanted to run mplabx on it.
I can't remember exactly what it said but something about expecting a different processor.

From what I can find out gentoo Linux is a bit hardware specific?

I was more concerned with trying to read the drive from the hard drive dock? Anyone know why I could mount each section but now can't?

I put the drive back on the robot and it boots up fine. I will be ready to use the thing in 2 or 3 weeks and the chap is booked to reconfigure it but I'd like to find out all I can before that!

Cheers Geoff
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
Maybe the software has a boot lock to X type of machine to stop people from cloning it to run on their own hardware. Without specific information about the original hardware and software it's just guessing why it won't boot.
 

Thread Starter

geoffers

Joined Oct 25, 2010
475
Doesn't take me long does it!
Linux VMS_2 3.0.6-gentoo #17 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 24 23:43:43 CEST 2012 i586 Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

That's what comes up on the robot shell.
I'd like to read the hard drive on my laptop via a dock I have. This worked before but now won't, there are a load of pfds in one partition I'd farther like :)
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
Doesn't take me long does it!
Linux VMS_2 3.0.6-gentoo #17 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 24 23:43:43 CEST 2012 i586 Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

That's what comes up on the robot shell.
I'd like to read the hard drive on my laptop via a dock I have. This worked before but now won't, there are a load of pfds in one partition I'd farther like :)
Old stuff. 32-bit i586 likely non-PAE (PAE) based hardware. No wonder it won't boot on the laptop.
 
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