Running the PROPELLER Tool On Ubuntu Linux with Sun's xVM Virtual Box & Windows
Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)
Posts: 1,720
I got tired of booting between Linux and XP to do various tasks and thought I would try a few Linux options such as WineHQ to run Win32 software. Very .. very late one night after another fight with Windows XP [noparse]:)[/noparse] I formatted a spare drive and put Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings! on it. I used the latest version from www.ubuntu.com/ and downloaded :Ubuntu 8.04 - the Hardy Heron - released in April 2008.
The installation was very easy and everything worked great. It setup all of the hardware correctly and got my screen and sound drivers setup correctly as well. (which was a problem for most other Linux distro's I've tried including Xandros and SUSE Linux)
Then I installed Wine from:www.winehq.org/
I had some success with a few MS Windows programs but a survey design program that I use for work (and badly needed) at [noparse][[/noparse]urlhttp://]infopoll.com only worked partially [noparse]:([/noparse]. At that point I didn't try the prop tool (although I did read that it runs in Wine) and decided to find another solution.
After a Google.com search I stumbled into the Sun Virtual Box which is a VirtualBox that you can run on Linux and Install other operation systems on it. Then you can install and run your Windows programs on the Virtual box.
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Overview: Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.
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www.virtualbox.org/
I installed the virtual box and then MS Windows XP. Everything installed fine. Even Internet Explorer connected to the Internet on the first try. [noparse]:)[/noparse] Windows XP running on the VM is much faster than my regular install and boots up much faster as well.
Then I loaded the Infopoll survey designer program and it worked perfect. I then tried the Propeller tool. It also installed and except for the loader part, worked great..(Edit , compile etc)
LIMITATIONS:
The only limitation so far is the smaller screen size (Virtual window for VGA 640 X 480.. I think) and of course you have to own a licensed copy of MS Winows XP
HARDWARE:
I still have to figure out how to get the hardware Sound, USB and serial ports working but I have lots of options in the Virtual box to try first (as time permits) I believe that I have the serial ports working but have not tested it yet with the prop or any other hardware. (at 6:00 am on a work night I had to get some sleep [noparse]:)[/noparse] ) It does look very encouraging though.
Has anyone else tried the Propeller Tool with the Sun Virtual Box? (a quick forum search did not find any posts related to it)
I will update this post as I make progress. If there's something that you want me to try, just let me know. When I have the time I will test it for you (if I can)
I think that with a little work the USB and serial ports will work as well... stay ..........tuned.
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Aka: CosmicBob
Post Edited (Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)) : 9/18/2008 7:06:27 PM GMT
The installation was very easy and everything worked great. It setup all of the hardware correctly and got my screen and sound drivers setup correctly as well. (which was a problem for most other Linux distro's I've tried including Xandros and SUSE Linux)
Then I installed Wine from:www.winehq.org/
I had some success with a few MS Windows programs but a survey design program that I use for work (and badly needed) at [noparse][[/noparse]urlhttp://]infopoll.com only worked partially [noparse]:([/noparse]. At that point I didn't try the prop tool (although I did read that it runs in Wine) and decided to find another solution.
After a Google.com search I stumbled into the Sun Virtual Box which is a VirtualBox that you can run on Linux and Install other operation systems on it. Then you can install and run your Windows programs on the Virtual box.
=============================================================================================================================================================
Overview: Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.
===========================================================================================================================================================
www.virtualbox.org/
I installed the virtual box and then MS Windows XP. Everything installed fine. Even Internet Explorer connected to the Internet on the first try. [noparse]:)[/noparse] Windows XP running on the VM is much faster than my regular install and boots up much faster as well.
Then I loaded the Infopoll survey designer program and it worked perfect. I then tried the Propeller tool. It also installed and except for the loader part, worked great..(Edit , compile etc)
LIMITATIONS:
The only limitation so far is the smaller screen size (Virtual window for VGA 640 X 480.. I think) and of course you have to own a licensed copy of MS Winows XP
HARDWARE:
I still have to figure out how to get the hardware Sound, USB and serial ports working but I have lots of options in the Virtual box to try first (as time permits) I believe that I have the serial ports working but have not tested it yet with the prop or any other hardware. (at 6:00 am on a work night I had to get some sleep [noparse]:)[/noparse] ) It does look very encouraging though.
Has anyone else tried the Propeller Tool with the Sun Virtual Box? (a quick forum search did not find any posts related to it)
I will update this post as I make progress. If there's something that you want me to try, just let me know. When I have the time I will test it for you (if I can)
I think that with a little work the USB and serial ports will work as well... stay ..........tuned. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Aka: CosmicBob
Post Edited (Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)) : 9/18/2008 7:06:27 PM GMT
Comments
I've been working on a similar setup: Ubuntu, VirtualBox, and W2K. I have not been successful getting W2K to recognize the USB serial device under VB. Some individuals in the forum have suggested things to try, but it apparently didn't work for me. If you have any luck, please let me know what you did that worked.
Ken
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·"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.· My wish has come true.· I no longer know how to use my telephone."
- Bjarne Stroustrup
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E3 = Thought
http://folding.stanford.edu/·- Donating some CPU/GPU downtime just might lead to a cure for cancer! My team stats.
Ok great. Also great to know others are working on it. [noparse]:)[/noparse] I''s only been a few days but I'm really impressed with Ubuntu
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Aka: CosmicBob
The Propeller Tool works fine. Even the loading through the PropPlug is OK.
I tried the same setup using VirtualBox. Except for the loading, Prop Tool works OK.
Overall I find VirtualBox easier to setup, but was unable to get the USB working.
VMware is working without a hitch.
The VBox help is very well written, and explains setting up usb, networking, etc.
I tried Fedora Core 9 also, but at the time the VMware drivers had not caught up to the latest Fedora release, so I reverted back to Fedora Core 8.· Right now I have a stable system and I don't want to mess with it.
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
@ Beau
I quickly had a look at the VM ware site a while back but they had so many options it wasn't clear on what you had to purchase or what they had a trial for etc...
Re:a dual head monitor 64-bit Fedora Core 8 with VMware Workstation running Windows XP.
Nice setup
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Aka: CosmicBob
Getting a Linux system up and running can be somewhat of an art anyway.... the dual head monitor was a pain to get the NVidia drivers working properly... every time I got a security package update, it would kill the driver and my monitors would die (BOTH of them).... I don't know how many times I had to go through the "GRUB" back door to reset things and get everything working correctly again. There were a few hoops that I had to go through also the get the VMware to accept Fedora... similar hoops with Ubuntu. .... mostly things like making sure all of my builds were all geared for the same kernel.... watch out for kernel upgrades!
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
It's how I've run things since I started with the Prop.
I'm running it on a Vaio laptop and a Mac Mini (both running Ubuntu). USB works flawlessly here.
I used to be a Qemu fan but when I moved over to Virtualbox I've never really gone back.
The main thing with Ubuntu and VBox is to make sure you have your udev permissions right for USB. Instructions in the VBox forums. Once you get that sorted USB "just works".
Easy for me to say though, I've been using Linux exclusively as my OS since '96..
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Pull my finger!
Your issues with the nvidia drivers could be related to *third* party drivers, i.e. the ones from the nvidia site. those break every time you update your kernel :-(, I suffered that when using SuSE. In Ubuntu (maybe also in others) they smarted the process and included updated drivers with the kernel, so no problems with 2 monitors (I run also a setup like yours). (But sometimes messes up the hard disks, changing names and so on so remounting does not work), so I hardly reboot because it is usually a pita!
VMWare for linux has some issues with USB, I use ubuntu. Sometimes the USB device disconnects itself and you have to suspend and resume to get it back. This problem was not present in VMWare for MacOSX though. As a matter of fact, I really think that it is a problem in XP SP2, because I never ever experienced when using XP (without any patches) in VMWare for MacOSX, but it happened a couple of times with SP2 in VMWare for MacOSX, and very often (almost every time) in linux. btw, I always suspend and resume, I reboot not so often.
I did find one issue with admin rights. I added rights for the virtual machine box but under root and not my user account. When I allowed it for both accounts it solved that problem.
@Luis Digital: Thanks! for your help. Your picture was very helpful. It's the first time I seen that screen but I was playing with those options on a different screen and couldn't add the hardware , Only the filters.
I am very happy to report that it all works now. I can write/edit spin code, compile it, save it , load it etc and the screen size is now adjusted to a bigger size as well.
@ Steve it's your turn:
A big thanks! to everyone for their suggestions.
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Aka: CosmicBob
Post Edited (Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)) : 9/18/2008 10:00:12 PM GMT
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Aka: CosmicBob
Last one out turn the light off... [noparse]:)[/noparse]
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
Personally, I don't completely see the point since because you're still running XP, inheriting any Windows-based issues that exist and at a much slower speed. I'd say if you really want to run Windows, just run it natively under a dual-boot setup. While you do have to reboot when you want to do some things, everything still tends to run much cleaner as a whole.
This is originally why I wrote my short little guide using Wine; while the Prop tool itself doesn't work, Propellent mostly does still, at least for compilation. It's an almost completely free software based solution, and also less resource-consuming than running a virtual machine.
Pros and cons to both solutions in the end.
BTW - Spork Frog: Windows under VirtualBox isn't that much slower. I found it quite useable and I'm using an AMD Athlon 1800+ system. I found it to be VERY slow under qemu.
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·"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.· My wish has come true.· I no longer know how to use my telephone."
- Bjarne Stroustrup
No, seriously; whenever I need to do something on my Windows machine, the fact that the VNC window isn't consuming my whole screen, and that I can't slam my mouse against the corners of the screen to get to buttons.
While I could live with emulation or VNC for a short while, theres no way I could put up with using it for extended periods.
PS: Bob Lawrence, could you cut down on the ===s? Your pushing 1/5th the page of my screen
VMware's "Unity" and Parallels "Coherence" both allow you to see each VM window within a window on your host machine, rather than cramming the entire screen into a single window. It's a much more natural way to mix apps from two operating systems, if you're using virtualization for that purpose.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I work at VMware [noparse];)[/noparse]
--Micah
Re: (In the interest of full disclosure, I work at VMware [noparse];)[/noparse] - lol
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
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·"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.· My wish has come true.· I no longer know how to use my telephone."
- Bjarne Stroustrup
See if there are "proprietary" drivers available in the Ubuntu repository for your video card. If there are, you should be able to get fullscreen without the borders.
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·"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.· My wish has come true.· I no longer know how to use my telephone."
- Bjarne Stroustrup
hit a few snags with USB and shared folders, but resolved them relatively quickly with enough googling
vbox seems fast enough on my hp laptop with 2gb ram (allocated 1gb for vbox)
no more rebooting!
I use it on my Vaio (which has a 1.2GHZ ULV Centrino (not fast) and it ticks along quite happily with 384M of ram allocated to XP.
No need to overdo it.
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Pull my finger!
Would you mind sharing the dirty details on how you beat the USB issue?
I'm running the exact configuration you are over here.
BTW, you can get the screen issue resolved with the Virtual Addons install.
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
Sure no problem. I don't remember exactly what I did but give me a day or so to go back over it to see if I can offer some tips and possibly a few extra screen shots. I may even install it on another drive just to keep track of the steps involved. Like most things it's fairly straight forward to do it once you know what you are looking for.
Please Note:
**** I will list things as I remembered them (below) But it's subject to change as I think about it over the next few days. ****
I will can assume that getting the basic Linux package running is no problem for most.
Installing the VM Virtual Box should be the same . I just use all of the defaults offered.
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1) To prepare for it you can first ensure that you have the FTDI drivers loaded on the VM hard drive, ready for install (unziped)
Get FTDI DRIVER here:
www.parallax.com/ProductInfo/Accessories/FTDIUSBDrivers/tabid/530/Default.aspx
And load up the Prop tool to the VM drive, here.
Prop Tool[noparse]:http:[/noparse]//www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/sw/propeller/Setup-Propeller-Tool-v1.2.exe
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2) Setup USB ON Linux: (Found this on a website and used it: but am not sure if it was actually required on my system. If you linux USB works with any other device it should be ok)
USB is disabled by default, so you'll probably want to enable it. Otherwise you'll get an error when you go into the "Settings" of your virtual machine. To correct this, you'll need to edit the mountdevsubfs.sh file:
[noparse][[/noparse]In Terminal]
Code:
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh
Inside, you'll see a block of code that looks like this:
#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
Change it to look like this (uncomment out the region by deleting the "#'s"):
#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
Save the changes, log out, and then log back in again for the changes to take place.
(** I actually rebooted at that point)
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Start the VM program and before you select the drive to boot, go to the main menu of the program and select settings. There is a picture (see Luis Digital's post )of the settings screen above in this thread. Then select USB. Add a filter device button. It should find "FTDI FT232R USB UART [noparse][[/noparse]0600]" on the Prop board - which has to be pluged in.
- At this point the VM starter program is detecting a device on Linux USB port and you are adddinf a descriptor filter by pushing a button. The descriptor file will be used to setup USB on the Virtual operating system. (i.e XP)
Then boot the VM operating system (in my case it was XP) Once XP boots it should find the USB port (FDI) and request the software for it.
It all that works then run the Prop tool and let it detect the Propeller chip. (Identify hardware option - F7)
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Unfortunately, that may not be exactly the correct order... I will think about it some more.
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Aka: CosmicBob
Picture is attached.
Once the VM virtual Box is installed you have to setup your Linux user rights to allow access to it. you can do that through your Linux Administration options. You have to select the virtual box as per the picture attached.
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Aka: CosmicBob
- you have to download and install the binary package of vbox from the official site, and NOT from the ubuntu's APT repository (i.e NOT by means of apt-get). There are apparently two versions of vbox: open-source one and closed-source, which is still free for non-commercial use. AFAIK, only the closed-source one has usb support - thus the need to d/l this binary package separately. Get the stable version 1.6
- /etc/fstab file has to be modified to provide /proc/bus/usb mount for vbox. i also had to change the access permissions so this is the fstab line that i use:
## usbfs is the USB group in fstab file:
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=124,devmode=666 0 0
notice "666" - means access to anyone (potential security hole, but made it work for me)
- you need to create USB filter (in usb section of the vbox settings dialog box) to let the propplug be "captured" not by the host linux, but by vbox for the guest OS, i.e windows
post here with error messages if you have further problems
good luck
I can see the devices and create filters for them now, but they show up as Unavailable and "Not Connected"
at the bottom USB icon in the Virtual window. It's nice to see them by the proper name, it appears they are
being detected, just can't get them to access.
I'm stepping carefully though the various FAQs and forum entries on VirtualBox, but if you think of something
else...
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
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Aka: CosmicBob