Configuration Environment for EtherLab IgH EtherCAT Master at https://sourceforge.net/projects/etherlabmaster/

In order to download, install, setup all relevant components (system library, kernel module, ethercat configuration, and systemd service), one should do many steps manually. This repository was designed for the easy-to-reproducible environment for EtherLab EtherCAT Master. With the following steps, one can run the EtherCAT Master on one dedicated Ethernet port within CentOS, RedHat, Ubuntu, and Debian OSs.

• If the system has already the etherlab master kernel configuration, please don't use this before cleaning up all existent configuration.

Before the setup the etherlab master, one should define the network port which one would like to use as the EtherCAT Master. Please look at scripts/ethercatmaster.conf, and enable one and disable all others to match the device which one would like to use. With the following command, without changing git status, one can set the master device in the etherlab master configuration:

etherlabmaster (master)$ echo "ETHERCAT_MASTER0=enp0s25" > ethercatmaster.local

The local file will be used to override the ETHERCAT_MASTER0 variable defined in scripts/ethercatmaster.conf.

One should check the autoconf configuration options, which are relevant for our application currently. These options are defined in configure/CONFIG_OPTIONS are defined when make build or make autoconf by using E3_EHTERLAB_CONF_OPTIONS. One can see them all via make showopts such as

$ make showopts

>>>>  Configuration Options Variables   <<<<

E3_EHTERLAB_CONF_OPTIONS is defined as the follows:

--enable-generic --disable-8139too --disable-e100 --disable-e1000 --disable-e1000e --disable-igb --disable-r8169 --disable-ccat --enable-static=no --enable-shared=yes --enable-eoe=no --enable-cycles=no --enable-hrtimer=no --enable-regalias=no --enable-tool=yes --enable-userlib=yes --enable-sii-assign=yes --enable-rt-syslog=yes

WITH_DEV_8139TOO = NO
WITH_DEV_CCAT = NO
WITH_DEV_E100 = NO
WITH_DEV_E1000 = NO
WITH_DEV_E1000E = NO
WITH_DEV_GENERIC = YES
WITH_DEV_IGB = NO
WITH_DEV_R8169 = NO

ENABLE_CYCLES = NO
ENABLE_EOE = NO
ENABLE_HRTIMER = NO
ENABLE_REGALIAS = NO
ENABLE_RT_SYSLOG = YES
ENABLE_SII_ASSIGN = YES
ENABLE_STATIC = NO
ENABLE_TOOL = YES
ENABLE_USERLIB = YES

The most options are default, but we would like to keep the Site-specific options consistently. Note that the current implementation is so-called work in progress because of the dkms configuration.

One can override each options as follows:

echo "WITH_DEV_GENERIC = NO"  > configure/CONFIG_OPTIONS.local
echo "WITH_DEV_E1000E = YES" >> configure/CONFIG_OPTIONS.local
echo "ENABLE_STATIC = YES"   >> configure/CONFIG_OPTIONS.local

, where >> is the important thing if one would like to override more than one option.

Be ready to do the following commands in the specific order:

etherlabmaster (master)$ make init

• Select the proper options

• Check the options

etherlabmaster (master)$ make showopts

• make build calls make autoconf internally. However, if one would like to change the option after make init, one should run make autoconf whenever the options are changed.

etherlabmaster (master)$ make build
etherlabmaster (master)$ make install

Kernel modules are built via dkms. Note that the system should install the dkms package first.

etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_add
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_build
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_install
etherlabmaster (master)$ make setup

One should start the ethercat via

etherlabmaster (master)$ sudo systemctl start ethercat

And one can check the master status as follows:

etherlabmaster (master)$ ethercat master

In order to remove them and clean the configuration

etherlabmaster (master)$ sudo systemctl stop ethercat
etherlabmaster (master)$ sudo systemctl disable ethercat
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_uninstall
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_remove
etherlabmaster (master)$ make setup_clean

• Download the main etherlabmaster-code from sf.net
• Switch to Revison 9e65f7. We are using the following master revision number as the starting point
• Apply the Site Specific local patch files. See Ref [1].

# jhlee@hadron: etherlabmaster-code (master)$ hg heads
# changeset:   2295:5f29e43487df
# branch:      stable-1.5
# tag:         tip
# user:        Florian Pose
# date:        Tue Jan 22 14:34:55 2019 +0100
# summary:     Added extern "C" for floating-point functions.

• One should run this everytime when the CONFIG_OPTIONS is changed.

• Ethercat program compilation

• Ethercat program (configuration, lib, and others) installation

• dkms add

• dkms build via dkms

• Kernel modules installation via dkms

• Activate the EtherCAT master Network Port
• Setup the dkms systemd service
• Setup the ethercat systemd service
• Put the UDEV rule to allow an user to access the ethercat master port
• Put the UDEV rule to do unmanagedable on the ethercat master port by NetworkManager
• Create the symbolic link for the ethercat executable command
• Put the lib path in the global ld configuration path

• Remove the downloaded etherlabmaster-code path

One can use the unofficial patchset maintained by Gavin Lambert [2] with the local patch file [3], because the unofficial patchset is ONLY valid for --enable-eoe=yes. The local make patch is executed after all patchset. So we don't need to run it individually.

etherlabmaster (master)$ make patchset

• Select the proper options

• Check the options

etherlabmaster (master)$ make showopts

etherlabmaster (master)$ make build
etherlabmaster (master)$ make install

Kernel modules are built via dkms. Note that the system should install the dkms package first.

etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_add
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_build
etherlabmaster (master)$ make dkms_install
etherlabmaster (master)$ make setup

It uses the default variable which one has to set as ETHERCAT_MASTER0 at the beginning in order to find the proper driver, which one may select it properly.

$ make show_netdrv
/sys/class/net/enp0s25/device/uevent:DRIVER=e1000e

Once the e1001e native driver is loaded within the Linux kernel, one cannot see the netdrv anymore, because the device which one allocate is not the network device anymore.

• need to install proper package, and reboot the system once in order to match the running kernel version and installed kernel source all together.

configure: error: Failed to find Linux sources. Use --with-linux-dir!
make[1]: *** [autoconf] Error 1

• Disable the Secure Boot in the BIOS configuration, once one has the following error: ERROR: could not insert 'ec_master': Required key not available

$ systemctl start ethercat.service
Job for ethercat.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status ethercat.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details. 

$ journalctl -xe


-- Subject: Unit ethercat.service has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit ethercat.service has begun starting up.
Jan 07 07:23:04 mcag-epics9 ethercatctl[20684]: modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'ec_master': Required key not available
Jan 07 07:23:04 mcag-epics9 systemd[1]: ethercat.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 07 07:23:04 mcag-epics9 systemd[1]: Failed to start EtherCAT Master Kernel Modules.
-- Subject: Unit ethercat.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit ethercat.service has failed.
-- 
-- The result is failed. 

sudo ip link set dev ${ETHERCAT_MASTER0} up

• We would like to keep ethercat.conf file within $PREFIX/etc path. See the patch file 1
• We need to modify the default systemd configuration file in order to use it with dkms service. See the patch file 2

• It is still unclear how to build ethercat.conf if we have more than one devices now.

• https://github.com/jeonghanlee/CCAT-env

Due to rh_kabi.h, we cannot compile e1000e native drvier the default kernel 3.10. Thus, it needs the special patch file for this purpose. Some functionalities are limited and especially related with kernel log and a network device usage statistics. Both of them are no critical things for the ethercat application. The additional make rule command make centos7_patch is necessary before make dkms_add. The full commands are

make init
make centos7_patch
make build
make install
make dkms_add
make dkms_build
make dkms_install
make setup