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PropellerIDE with Kubuntu 15.04 (error SOLVED) — Parallax Forums

PropellerIDE with Kubuntu 15.04 (error SOLVED)

VonSzarvasVonSzarvas Posts: 3,450
edited 2015-08-25 09:39 in General Discussion
So I've been using PropellerIDE recently with Kubuntu... worked great until today. Now this error appears when building: "Could not start . "

Can't find a log file with more detail.... Anyone know about this "error" ? Preferences look sound, and point to actual files. hmm Maybe permissions...


Trying to recall what might have changed... I installed SimpleIDE last week to work on some C code. That worked OK, and still works today. There may have been some system updates during the week, but nothing else manually installed.

oh, and I just re-download and re-installed PropellerIDE from GitHub, but no improvement. And SimpleIDE still working fine.


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Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    It shows 'Could not start "."'

    Sounds like it cannot find the OpenSpin binary.

    I suspect that in Edit->Preferences you should see a path to OpenSpin specified.

    (Actually I'm guessing where "Preferences" may be, it's a while since I tried Propeller IDE and I forget)
  • Good memory Heater!

    Edit/Preferences (of F5 shortcut) takes you there.

    All the prefs (compiler, loader, library, terminal) appear correct. Clicking the helper "browse" button next to each filename text-box takes me straight to the file too. And just for fun, re-connecting the files seems to re-fill text-boxes with the correct data. And the files are executable and seem to have the correct owner (me!)

    Just had a thought though.... maybe SimpleIDE uses different version of the compiler, so that install may have overwritten openspin. And then the re-install of PropellerIDE may not have re-installed the openspin version it prefers....

    will go experiment ...


  • Dang!..

    uninstalled simpleide & propelleride
    checked openspin was gone from /usr/bin
    installed propelleride

    same error.

    oh well- without finding an error log this is not going to be productive!
    I'll move to another system for now, and ask Brett if there's an error log lurking somewhere before thinking any more about the meaning of .

    Would be good to solve the mystery for anyone else trying ubuntu with PropellerIDE.
    Might just be an innocent looking system update this week that's knocked out the serialport library, or some other dependency.




  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    I presume these programs do actually run from the command line:

    $ /usr/bin/openspin

    and so on.
  • Hmmm, that's curious. The code that controls this process isn't as stable as I'd like it to be so I suppose it needs more work, but I haven't seen this before.

    For my benefit, please paste the output of the following commands:

    - cat ~/.config/Parallax/PropellerIDE.conf
    - qmake -v
    - uname -a
    - ldd ${path to openspin}

    Some things to try to help you out of your jam:

    - Delete ~/.config/Parallax/PropellerIDE.conf.
    - See if there are any running instances of openspin and kill them off.

    Let me know if that helps. =)

    OH: It should be noted that the command-line interfaces of the SimpleIDE and PropellerIDE versions of OpenSpin are different, and future versions of PropellerIDE will include alternate names for external binaries to prevent possible issues like this.
  • VonSzarvasVonSzarvas Posts: 3,450
    edited 2015-08-22 23:21
    Thanks Brett... here goes...
    cat ~/.config/Parallax/PropellerIDE.conf
    [General]
    Theme=:/themes/Midnight_Grace.theme
    recentFiles=
    
    [Colors]
    Block_CON=#484848
    Block_DAT=#003951
    Block_OBJ=#3d3d3d
    Block_PRI=#15004d
    Block_PUB=#24003b
    Block_VAR=#4f002a
    Syntax_Comments=#cccccc
    Syntax_Functions=#6565ff
    Syntax_Keywords=#ffffff
    Syntax_Numbers=#ff7fff
    Syntax_Quotes=#a2b2ff
    Syntax_Text=#eeeeee
    
    [Font]
    Family=monospace
    Size=12
    
    [Paths]
    Compiler=/usr/bin/openspin
    Library=/usr/bin/../share/propelleride/library
    Loader=/usr/bin/propman
    Terminal=/usr/bin/propterm
    
    qmake -v
    QMake version 3.0
    Using Qt version 5.4.1 in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
    
    uname -a
    Linux michael-Lenovo-E50-00 3.19.0-26-generic #28-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 11 14:16:32 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    
    ldd openspin
            linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff26be2000)
            libQt5Core.so.5 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Core.so.5 (0x00007f282f78e000)
            libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f282f570000)
            libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f282f261000)
            libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f282ef59000)
            libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f282ed43000)
            libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f282e979000)
            libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f282e75e000)
            libicui18n.so.52 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libicui18n.so.52 (0x00007f282e34c000)
            libicuuc.so.52 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libicuuc.so.52 (0x00007f282dfce000)
            libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f282ddca000)
            libglib-2.0.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f282dabb000)
            librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f282d8b3000)
            /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f282fcd1000)
            libicudata.so.52 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libicudata.so.52 (0x00007f282c046000)
            libpcre.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007f282bdd9000)
    
  • and the openspin version....
    openspin -v
    OpenSpin 0.71111
    


    @Heater... that answers your idea also... that openspin works. Thanks!
  • Brett Weir wrote: »

    Some things to try to help you out of your jam:

    - Delete ~/.config/Parallax/PropellerIDE.conf.
    - See if there are any running instances of openspin and kill them off.

    Let me know if that helps. =)

    I deleted that file etc... but no help unfortunately.

    Just to note... that .conf is not recreated when PropellerIDE opens/closes again. Guessing therefore that's only created at install time? Anyway, without that file PropellerIDE seems to work up to the same point as before (same . error), and also the F5 Preferences are intact correctly. Maybe that's useful info.

    Thanks for trying to help out.

  • ... one last bit of info:
    propman -i
    [ /dev/ttyUSB0     ] Propeller P8X32A
    [ /dev/ttyS0       ] NOT FOUND
    

    and propterm works too from the command line, opening up the terminal window as expected.
  • It definitely sounds like there's a permission problem somewhere. PropellerIDE.conf should be created every time the program either starts or exits (I can't remember at the moment). Check your ~/.config and ~/.config/Parallax/ directories to see if the permissions on them were changed somehow, and see if running PropellerIDE as root makes a difference.

    Also, it is expected that the system paths in Preferences are still valid because sensible defaults are used when no config file is found.
  • Thank you Brett, that info got to the solution...

    When checking the ownership on the ~/.config/Parallax folder, that showed as root. So I deleted that Parallax folder and re-ran PropellerIDE, which re-created the folder and .conf file, and now seems to work again! Both now with me as the owner, rather than root.

    For future readers who don't wish to lose .conf settings.... chown could also be an option!

    -

    OK, I'm not gonna insist that I didn't cause this..... although I'm feeling confident that I didn't go into that Parallax folder and change the owner!

    That said, I can't imagine any random OS updates doing that either, so the issue seems odd. As mentioned before, I did install SimpleIDE before this issue... SimpleIDE seems to create it's own .config folder called "ParallaxInc", but maybe it also touches the "Parallax" folder too?? Wouldn't make much sense, but anything is possible I suppose.

    Perhaps PropellerIDE could check the config folder owner at startup, and report a meaningful error message / solution if this happens?

    All just ideas and feedback. Now I can get to work!

    Happy :)











  • Brett Weir wrote: »
    HOH: It should be noted that the command-line interfaces of the SimpleIDE and PropellerIDE versions of OpenSpin are different, and future versions of PropellerIDE will include alternate names for external binaries to prevent possible issues like this.
    Really? Wouldn't it be better if both could use the same version of OpenSpin? Why does PropellerIDE need a different command line interface?

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2015-08-31 18:30
    Please God let PropellerIDE and SimpleIDE use the same OpenSpin.

    But...I thought SimpleIDE was dropping support for Spin anyway.

    Just as well I use Vim and the command line :)


  • Heater. wrote: »
    Please God let PropellerIDE and SimpleIDE use the same OpenSpin.

    But...I thought SimpleIDE was dropping support for Spin anyway.

    Just as well I use Vim and the command line :)


    Ooo, I just stumbled across this.

    As far as I know, SimpleIDE dropped support for Spin a long time ago. I found that out when I could no longer build any of my projects with it (which is how I got involved in PropellerIDE in the first place).

    In any event, the OpenSpin distributed with PropellerIDE is identical to the mainline OpenSpin except that it replaces the command-line interface with a Qt-based one that can be parsed by GNU help2man.

    And I also spend most of my time in the terminal. =P
  • VonSzarvas wrote: »
    Thank you Brett, that info got to the solution...

    When checking the ownership on the ~/.config/Parallax folder, that showed as root. So I deleted that Parallax folder and re-ran PropellerIDE, which re-created the folder and .conf file, and now seems to work again! Both now with me as the owner, rather than root.

    For future readers who don't wish to lose .conf settings.... chown could also be an option!

    -

    OK, I'm not gonna insist that I didn't cause this..... although I'm feeling confident that I didn't go into that Parallax folder and change the owner!

    That said, I can't imagine any random OS updates doing that either, so the issue seems odd. As mentioned before, I did install SimpleIDE before this issue... SimpleIDE seems to create it's own .config folder called "ParallaxInc", but maybe it also touches the "Parallax" folder too?? Wouldn't make much sense, but anything is possible I suppose.

    Perhaps PropellerIDE could check the config folder owner at startup, and report a meaningful error message / solution if this happens?

    All just ideas and feedback. Now I can get to work!

    Happy :)

    Hi there, I thought that would do the trick! Sorry my reply took so long. =P

    I suspect what happened is that propelleride was running as root on its first startup, which is quite likely if the user doesn't have access to the serial port, but who knows. I frequently forget to set up the dialout group when I'm setting up new development machines and run the thing as root instead because I can't remember the one-liner to configure permissions. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

    At any rate, there's still a lot of changes to be made to how the config system works. Checking to make sure the config file is readable and write-able is definitely a good idea.

    Happy Spinning! :D
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Ah Bret, yes, no Spin in SimpleIDE. I should really get back up to speed with that.
  • Thxs Brett. Yeah, anything you can do to make install and exec seamless and/or self healing or diagnosing has to be good.



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