These are some basic Linux commands and techniques for new to Linux users. More complete information can be found on the web or by using the man pages.
When you install EMC2 with the Ubuntu LiveCD the default is to have to log in each time you turn the computer on. To enable automatic login go to System/Administration/Login Window. If it is a fresh install the Login Window might take a second or three to pop up. You will have to have your password that you used for the install to gain access to the Login Window Preferences window. In the Security tab check off Enable Automatic Login and pick a user name from the list (that would be you).
To have EMC start automatically with your config after turning on the computer go to System/Preferences/Sessions Startup Programs , add new. Navigate to your config and select the .ini file. When the file picker dialog closes add emc and a space in front of the path to your .ini file.
Example:
emc /home/mill/emc2/config/mill/mill.ini
Man pages are automatically generated manual pages in most cases. Man pages are usually available for most programs and commands in Linux.
To view a man page open up a terminal window by going to Applications, Accessories, Terminal. For example if you wanted to find out something about the find command in the terminal window type:
man find
Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to view the man page and the Q key to quit viewing.
Sometimes when troubleshooting you need to get a list of modules that are loaded. In a terminal window type:
lsmod
If you want to send the output from lsmod to a text file in a terminal window type:
lsmod > mymod.txt
The resulting text file will be located in the home directory if you did not change directories when you opened up the terminal window and it will be named mymod.txt or what ever you named it.
When you open the file browser and you see the Owner of the file is root you must do extra steps to edit that file. Editing some root files can have bad results. Be careful when editing root files. You can open and view most root files normally but they will open in “read only” mode.
Open up Applications, Accessories, Terminal.
In the terminal window type
sudo gedit
Open the file with File, Open then edit
In Ubuntu you can become root by typing in "sudo -i" in a terminal window then typing in your password. You can really foul up things if you don't know what your doing as root.
To find out the path to the present working directory in the terminal window type:
pwd
To move up one level in the terminal window type:
cd ..
To move up two levels in the terminal window type:
cd ../..
To move down to the emc2/configs subdirectory in the terminal window type:
cd emc2/configs
To view a list of all the files and subdirectories in the terminal window type:
dir
or
ls
The find command can be a bit confusing to a new Linux user. The basic syntax is:
find starting-directory parameters actions
For example to find all the .ini files in your emc2 directory you first need to use the pwd command to find out the directory. Open a new terminal window and type:
pwd
might return the following result
/home/joe
With this information put the command together like this:
find /home/joe/emc2 -name *.ini -print
The -name is the name of the file your looking for and the -print tells it to print out the result to the terminal window. The *.ini tells find to return all files that have the .ini extension.
To find all the files in the directory named and all the subdirectories under that add the -L option to the find command like this:
find -L /home/joe/emc2 -name *.ini -print
grep -i -r 'text to search for' *
To find all the files that contain the 'text to search for' in the current directory and all the subdirectories below the current while ignoring the case. The -i is for ignore case and the -r is for recursive (include all subdirectories in the search). The * is a wild card for search all files.
To view the bootup messages use "dmesg" from the command window. To save the bootup messages to a file use the redirection operator like this:
dmesg > bootmsg.txt
The contents of this file can be copied and pasted on line to share with people trying to help you diagnose your problem.
To clear the message buffer type this:
sudo dmesg -c
This can be useful to do just before you launch EMC to only show the infomation related to the start up of EMC.
If you want to add a terminal launcher to the panel bar on top of the screen you typically can right click on the panel at the top of the screen and select "Add to Panel". Select Custom Application Launcher and Add. Give it a name and put gnome-terminal in the command box.
To find out what hardware is connected to your motherboard in a terminal window type:
lspci -v
During installation Ubuntu attempts to detect the monitor settings. If this fails you are left with a generic monitor with a maximum resolution of 800x600.
Instructions for fixing this are located here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FixVideoResolutionHowto