Xenomai4 Kernel for LinuxCNC

Work in progress, things might not work or break your system!

Feedback is welcome, create an issue or pull request

Expected Distribution: Debian Trixie

How To

• Clone repo
• If you trust my binary packages
  • ./xenomai4-install.sh
• Build it from source
  • git submodule init
  • git submodule update
  • xenomai4-prepare.sh
  • xenomai4-build.sh
  • xenomai4-install.sh
• Reboot to xenomai kernel (You probably have to select it in grub)
• Check for xenomai
  • sudo dmesg | grep -i evl
• Build LinuxCNC
  • git clone https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc.git linuxcnc-src
  • cd inuxcnc-src/src
  • ./debian/configure
  • sudo apt-get build-dep .
  • ./autogen.sh
  • ./configure --with-realtime=uspace
    • configure should show:
      checking for rtai-config... none
checking for xeno-config... /usr/xenomai/bin/xeno-config
checking for realtime API(s) to use... uspace+xenomai
  • make -j
  • sudo make setuid
• Run LinuxCNC
  • ../scripts/linuxcnc
  • LinuxCNC should show: Note: Using XENOMAI4 EVL realtime
  • latency-histogram has to be started using:
    ../scripts/rip-environment ../scripts/latency-histogram

Notes

The target of this repo is to make it easy for others to use LinuxCNC with Xenomai4. No waranty can be given!

All instuctions in here base on the documentation on https://v4.xenomai.org/ with some quirks resolved.

Xenomai4 support got recently merged to master: LinuxCNC/linuxcnc#3903

Ethernet

Driver info from Intel: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005480/ethernet-products.html

The only two drivers are availabe up to now for Xenimai3 and Xenomai4 are:

• Intel igb
  • Driver matches upstream except OOB patches
  • Cards still on sale:
    • 82576
    • I210
    • I350
• Intel e1000e
  • Driver matches upstream except OOB patches
  • Works for tesing in qemu + virtmanager

For details, read: ethernet.md

Xenomai4 tools

• Xenomai latency test
  • Select an isolated CPU. For example for CPU3:
    sudo latmus -c 3
• Check for Xenomai enabled threads and status
  • evl ps -l
  • rtapi_app should show up on the isolated CPU
  • ISW should stay constant (unwanted mode switches)

Xenomai4 userspace tools plain install

For other operating systems or if you have issues with the debian packages

#make and install
mkdir libevl-build && cd libevl-build

meson setup -Dbuildtype=release -Dprefix=/opt/evl -Duapi=$(pwd)/../linux-evl . ../libevl
meson compile
sudo ninja install
echo "/opt/evl/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/evl.conf > /dev/null
sudo ldconfig

#uninstall:
sudo ninja uninstall
sudo rm -r /opt/evl/

#linuxcnc xenomai4 doesn't support non standard include/lib paths for evl for now
#You need to configure linuxcnc with:
./configure --with-realtime=uspace CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/evl/include LDFLAGS=-L/opt/evl/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu