[ebo]

Windell, do not worry about the holiday delay I *fully* understand. I’ve only got a couple hundred hours of python development, but 10’s of thousand of hours doing C/C++/Fortan and more than 40 other languages.  I currently work under contract as a senior programmer for NASA, and am one of the developers for LinuxCNC.  So yes, I should be to do some debugging (given the time – which is currently almost nil).  One of my major job focuses just took an interesting turn and I will probably be working overtime for the foreseeable future… Realistically I will likely only have at most an hour or so a night to work on any of my projects as I am winding down before bed (~1am). 

Something that would be helpful would be if you or someone else could describe how to run the extensions standalone (outside of Inkscape) so I can run it in a debugger and single step through the code.  If that is not possible, then I can pepper the code with bread crumbs to isolate where it is dieing.  Do you have other suggetions besides the interface to pyserial?  As a note, I am in meetings the rest of the week, then I go on holiday/vacation, and possibly some work travel. I’ve put the EB in with my travel things, but do not expect that I will have to much time to work on it…

Thanks again!

[ebo]

A quick note, I dusted off a laptop (with Win7 on it) that I’ve only turned on may 3 times in the last year) updated security, the OS, and installed Inkscape.  I got everything to work with Inkscape 0.48.2.  So, the machine is working.  I would still like to get the extension working on my Linux laptop, but that is running 0.48.3.1…

Anyway, thought I would update you, and thank you once again for taking the time to look at this.

[ebo]

A couple of notes, I tried running a number of supposed “static” binary builds to find that it could not find the already installed version of libpopt.  I tried three different rpm version, and finally gave up.  I may try setting up a virtual machine, but that will be in a month or two (unless I blow the dust off of a Win* laptop and see if I can git it working there).

[ebo]

sorry for the delay I am scrambling to get stuff done for work before vacation, and I was just asked to make a couple of trips for work into Africa…  I understand about the time crunch, and frankly I am impressed that you were even willing to try to setup a testbead.  What hardware specs does that machine have (net connection in specific)?  If you are willing to poke at it again, just let me know when and I will see if I can breakaway at the same time and make myself available via phone/web.  Another idea just came to mind.  Have you ever tried setting up virtual macjhiens via virtualbox, VMWare, or qemu?  I have set up testbeds that way on an occasion or two.  I do not remember having to set up kde/inkscape inside of one though, just bridging against Plan 9, Win*, and linux, and various build specialized configurations (like x486/x686 builds)…

Gentoo does not have a binary install for inkscape, but I will look around and see if I can find a prebuilt binary and try installing it.

more later,

  EBo —

ps: No, Sunnyvale is not so close to DC, but it is closer than Perth! ;-)

[ebo]

I use eselect all the time.  Actually I already had it set to 2.7.3 (as suggested in one suggestion) without success.  I also tried to add the python-interpreter=”/usr/bin/python2.7″  as well (again without success).

As a note, you can also use another trick that I do not know if it will work in this case (ie have not tried it yet) setting the hardcoded python above to “/usr/env python2” which will find the installed version 2 of pythong (wether the default is 2.6, 2.7, or installed in some place like /opt).

So, no.  Still not joy.

BTW, where are you located?  I am in the Washington DC area at the moment, heading into the the New Orleans area for the holidays.  If you are within 100 mils of there (or other destinations I will be traveling for fun and/or work) I can look into arranging a meetup to configure a Gentoo box.

BTW, what happened when you tried before?  The common mistake is not to build/install a kernel properly.  Depending on how far you got I can walk you through it (and to recover from the point you last got).  Anyway, let me know…

[ebo]

huh?  Oh you mean problems setting up a testbed.  If there is a time we can we can sync up I can help walk you through it.  Can you email e off list?

If not, if you start with the livecd and follow the instructions http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1  then you will have to install xorg-server, kde-meta, and then inkscape.  I can send you my world build file from one of my machines, and that might make building the packages faster, but will be a lot more that you really need for a test bench.

[ebo]

First please accept my apologies.  When I used the term “beast” I had not meant it to be disparaging.  Rereading the post (after some sleep) I see where it could be taken that way.  Sorry about that.

So, moving on…

sys.platform returns ‘linux2’

the eggbot enumerates as /dev/ttyACM0 as expected

I am running inkscape-0.48.3.1 which is actually newer than the 0.48.2 version you quoted.  So, I thought that I might as well downgrade and see if that helps.  Here is where things start to get exciting…

My system is running newer versions of the compilers and glib than inkscape-0.48.2 source can handle. I was able to solve most of the source code problems with the following script fu in a custom ebuild:

    find . -type f -exec sed -i “/gstdio.h/! s%glib/g.*.h%glib.h%” {} ;
    find . -type f -exec sed -i “s%(_(%((%” {} ;

newer version of glib disallows calling glib/g*.h and requires you call <glib.h> instead.  There is one interesting exception though, and that is <glib/gstdio.h>

So things started building away until way late in the game where it dies with the following errors (one here as an example):

extension/internal/pdfinput/pdf-parser.cpp: In member function ‘void PdfParser::parse(Object*, GBool)’:
extension/internal/pdfinput/pdf-parser.cpp:370:52: error: invalid conversion from ‘int’ to ‘ErrorCategory’ [-fpermissive]
extension/internal/pdfinput/pdf-parser.cpp:370:52: error: invalid conversion from ‘char*’ to ‘int’ [-fpermissive]
extension/internal/pdfinput/pdf-parser.cpp:370:52: error: too few arguments to function ‘void error(ErrorCategory, int, const char*, …)’
/usr/include/poppler/Error.h:54:13: note: declared here

It turns out that this error is, if I understand it correctly, all bound up with changes to poppler (I am running poppler-0.20.4 BTW).  So, this is a show-stopper, because I cannot safely downgrade my systems glib and poppler to accommodate the older version of inkscape without risking mucking all sorts of things.

If you really are willing to setup a development machine to run Gentoo for testing, I will see what I can do to help.  As a note, Gentoo is far from being the easiest linux distribution to install, but once you do get a configured sustem it is trivial to keep it up to date with security patches, etc., because “portage” manages a complete dependency graph of all package revisions and rebuilds packages automatically when updates to dependencies are posted.  I have been able to keep my laptop uptodate for the last 5 years with only one serious hickup.  If you do start banging on this I will offer to write an eggbot ebuild to help build, maintain, and distribute the changes.

Once again I am sorry for how my “beast” comment came across.  As a note, when I first got the eggbot it was just to play with (so I had very little motivation to get it all working, and add to that the fact that I normally only play with things like this as I am winding down at the end of the night — like right now at 2:30am).  If I recall correctly I did contact one of the forums sometime back in 2010, but was not able to work through whatever the issues were at that time.  So, I have been taking this down and play with it every once and awhile and put it back in a box for 3 to 6 months at a time until I decide to poke at it again.  I was hoping to work on a holiday gift where I could have used it.  That is why I picked it up again. For all I know something might have been damaged in my last half-dozen moves… 

[ebo]

oops.  Sorry, I am dead tired and missing things.  I have not had a need to use inkscape for anything in over a year and do not know if there is any issues with my plugins.  I do know that I can run egmazing and several other extensions and they behave as expected.  If there is a problem I do not know.  It is likely though that I will need to jump back into writing programs to interface with ImageMagic and Inkscape later than sooner.  I may have more to add at that time.

[ebo]

Also, where can I find the documentation on the setup (baud, parity, stop-bits, and commands that can be sent to the board via a hyper type terminal)?  I remember seeing something where we are supposed to be able to talk to the board directly…

[ebo]

Windell, thanks for the reply.  I am running the Gentoo Linux distribution with a 3.4.9 kernel.  I should be able to easily downgrade the version to whatever you suggest.  I can also downgrade the kernel if necessary.

The error happens no matter what image I have loaded (or none at all).

A couple of side notes.  I have had nothing but trouble with this beast, and in the couple of years I have had it I have never gotten it to work satisfactorily.  I also had it on loan to the hackerspace in Austin for a time, and one of the members reported he had it running (but I think he was running Windows). 

Also, when I power the beast up, the LED next to the USB port blinks in a in a constant long, short, long, short,… pattern.  Is this some sort of error code?

As a further note, usbview recognizes the EiBotBoard and returns the following information:

EiBotBoard
Manufacturer: SchmalzHaus
Speed: 12Mb/s (full)
USB Version:  2.00
Device Class: 02(comm.)
Device Subclass: 00
Device Protocol: 00
Maximum Default Endpoint Size: 64
Number of Configurations: 1
Vendor Id: 04d8
Product Id: fd92
Revision Number:  1.82

So, I do not think there is a real problem with the board, BUT when I run “gtkterm –port /dev/ttyACM0” I get the following errors:

!2 Err: TX Buffer overrun
!7 Err: Extra parmater

Any idea what that might be about?

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