HOWTO: Gentoo for LinuxCNC

Prerequisites

For using the installer, you must have the following:

• btrfs-progs
• dosfstools
• e2fsprogs
• f2fs-tools
• GRUB
• parted
• xfsprogs

All of these are included in SystemRescue and it is strongly advised to use the latest version. Debian Bookworm also has the required versions of these tools but due to Debian's aggressive automounting, the installer script may fail. The installer is designed to handle all mounting and unmounting by itself. If you attempt to select a device that is currently in-use, such as your current Debian system, the script will error out.

IMPORTANT: If using SystemRescue, any block device except the live system will be susceptible to destruction. It is your responsibility to ensure the correct device is selected upon execution! The author of this wiki and the installer is not responsible for any damages or loss of data.

There is no support for RAID or LVM configurations.

A working internet connection is also required. This is not only to fetch the installer, but also because the installer downloads the required files for the Gentoo system (~1.2GB of data.)

Fetching the installer

In a terminal, run the following three commands:

git clone https://github.com/NTULINUX/gentoo_backup.git
cd gentoo_backup	
git checkout linuxcnc

Running the installer

Once you are in the gentoo_backup directory, simply run:

./installer.sh

Upon installation, you will be asked some questions in regards to UEFI or legacy BIOS for GRUB, filesystem type and filesystem sizes. If you specify any erroneous options, or a filesystem size that is too large for the block device, the script will fail.

Finishing up

You should see a message if the program ran successfully. Reboot and select the Gentoo installation media.

The password for root and lcnc (the regular Linux user) is: gentoo-cnc123

Use NetworkManager to add or modify network settings. A working internet connection is required for the remaining steps. Due to licensing restrictions (something to do with GNU readline) LinuxCNC cannot be pre-packaged in binary form.

You will need to run the following to compile and install LinuxCNC:

sudo emerge --sync
sudo emerge linuxcnc

After installation, you must log out and log back in again for the new environment variables (TCLLIBPATH) to be set.

LinuxCNC will show up under "Accessories" in the applications menu, as well as latency histogram, latency test and some others.