[CNCist]

As it was useful to me, I thought it useful to recap and condense jailbreaking PathPilot 1.9.3. I think it was silly of Tormach to use a Linux OS and GNU interface and expect it to remain locked for more than a nanosecond. What if your display is bigger than 1024x768? And why pretend the controller is super proprietary like a Haas or something.

I want to be able to run my old Mach3 with all the existing Gcode I have for existing products. So dual booting is a must. I have a PCNC770 & Tormach controller with. 64b Intel mobo. The new Mesa card looks generic, so there may be no further need for a specially selected computer to run it. My mobo still uses BIOS not UEFI, and that may or may not be a future problem in running multiple OS easily.

My controller came with only 1GB DDR3 DRAM and wouldn't install some 64b OS versions. So get more DRAM, it's cheap! I upgraded to 4GB from eBay for $20. I also wanted a multi-boot setup so I could boot MachOS and run the old OS with a manual parallel port A/B switch. I decided to actually triple boot because I know and love Windows 7. So here is my steps.

1-update the DRAM 2-4GB min. Your machine will run better.
2-get a second 250+ hdd for the primary boot disk and scrub it so there is no MBR left. Install it under the dvd rom in the empty bay of the controller. Leave the original hdd in place. Drives are cheap and if you want to access MachOS just keep that old disk separate. You can boot into it just fine. There should be 3 sata ports in the Tormach controller, but you may need another data and power cable. This approach will save your old machine env until you are sure you really like PathPilot.
3-with the original hdd disk data cable unplugged for safety, install the PathPilot 1.9.3 image to the main hdd using the supplied dvd. It installs as a 28-30GB partition, leaving plenty of space for other stuff. Let it finish and reboot. It will want to update the Mesa card. You can play with your Ubuntu env a bit.
4-now you need a boot loader to access both PathPilot and MachOS which are on different disks. You could use grub or a Windows loader. I wanted to triple boot using Win7, so I installed W7 in 200GB of free space behind the PathPilot sda1 & sda2 partitions. After reattaching the MachOS drive, I used EasyBCD from W7 to locate both the PathPilot partition and the WEmbedded XP MachOS on hdd2 and write the BCD boot entry points. Now the Windows boot loader will load Win7, Ubuntu 10.04, or Win Embedded XP. If you want to use grub with no w7 partition, you'll tell grub where the XP partition is and the Ubuntu loader will provide your boot selection.

5-jailbreak PathPilot
Needed logins & passwords at some points
PC user- login: operator pw: operator
Samba- login: operator pw: pcnc
Root- login: tormach pw: pcnc1100

Boot into Ubuntu and during Tormach splash hold LSHIFT-ALT until you get the Gnome desktop. Your now out of jail!
6- turn off auto starting of PathPilot. Go to top banner system/preferences/startup and uncheck PathPilot. Also select "remember running applications" so after reboot you get same env back.
7- create desktop icon to start Gnome. This us useful to restart Gnome. On Gnome desktop, right click and select CreateLauncher. Name: gnome-panel, or what ever you like. Command: gnome-panel
Create another icon to start PathPilot. Right click DT and select CreateLauncher. Name: PathPilot, or what ever you like. Command: gnome-terminal -x bash -c "~/operator_login"
This icon will run all the PathPilot startup code in the terminal session, remain open and start PathPilot. To shut down PathPilot, just hit the exit button. PathPilot will "say" click ok to shut down the controller, but it won't. It will terminate the terminal session and drop back into Gnome. DONT close PathPilot terminal session while joy are using the machine! It will close PathPilot. Hell, I got no idea what that might do to the machine! At best minimize the terminal. There are ways to fork an independent process for PathPilot, but I'm rusty on that after so many Windows years.

8- adjust screen resolution. If you display is really 1024x768 leave it alone. Otherwise go to system/preferences/monitors and select "use full resolution" (native resolution).
It would help to know your native resolution ahead of time as a verification.
9- reboot into Ubuntu and you should get the gnome desktop with an icon to start PathPilot.

Happy tooling.

[RTP_Burnsville]

Nice write up, thanks!

Robert

[CNCist]

One addition I missed....
The Tormach image is for 1024x768, so there is no desktop visible, and no need for a bottom panel. When you change resolution to 1280 or more you will likely find the bottom panel is missing. Minimized Windows will disappear into the lower right black hole. To fix, right click in the top panel and select "new panel". It should go to the bottom. Right click in the bottom panel and select "window list". The panel will show open and minimized windows. Minimized ones are grayed.

[jcposada]

Re independent process: append "&" without quotes to the end of the command you are using to start PP

[CNCist]

Because the exposed terminal window that starts PP remains actively attached to the PP (LinuxCNC) process, it is a bit dangerous left open on the desktop. Closing it accidentally WILL kill the PP process and maybe crash the mill/lathe hardware. Unfortunately, there is no option in gnome-terminal to start a terminal session minimized. (why?)

I pieced together a means of starting a PP terminal session minimized from info in the Ubuntu forum. It does require installing "wmctrl", a tool for interacting with the X window manager. There are several versions of this tool, but none are likely installed in a Tormach 10.04 install.

I got the correct one here:
https://github.com/geekless/wmctrl/archive/master.zip

Put it somewhere.
Unzip
do ./configure
do make
do sudo make install

Use the following command in the startup icon for PathPilot:
gnome-terminal -x bash -c "wmctrl -i -Y $(wmctrl -l | awk -F' ' 'END{print $1}'); ~/operator_login"

It will minimize the terminal window then start the PP session.
It would be nice if I could find a way to make the panel-icon RED or something. Then one would know not to mess with it.

[tmallard450]

Thanks for the write up! I was messing around with it the other day and I was close but missing a few key items! Can you map new keyboard hot keys to different functions? I would like to build a small control panel and use the mouse less.


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