migration windows to linux

[alacant]

Hi again everyone

Just my quarterly progress check enquiry. Has anyone managed to witch from something else to Linux yet?

I had an eyeopener last week when helping a computer literate friend make the switch. It reminded me of how difficult it is to change one's set ways of working. It collapsed completely just after I opened a terminal and began typing. Had I not done that, they would probably be on board now.

So, c'mon. Tell us your migration stories. Good and bad.

Cheers and the best of sudo apt upgrade to all.

[wornish]

Previously I have used APT on a windows laptop directly connected to my gear and it really worked well.  But I wanted to move indoors so decided to take the plunge.  

I have just completed installing a Raspberry Pi3B+ running Astroberry on Ubuntu Linux and now I can remotely control my whole setup in the garden over WiFi while I stay in the warm indoors!  It was relatively easy once I managed to get all the software up to the latest levels.  It took a whole day to update my RPi Ubuntu from the Astroberry supplied version 16 to the latest version 18, but I just left it to run and it all came good in the end.  I am just using the Indi drivers on the RPi and all is working as it should.  I do have one outstanding issue with my sestor-senso focuser that has to be recalibrated for each new session after being powered off, that is a pain but hopefully, the Indi drivers will get updated to fix the issue.  I have had a steep learning curve with using KStars on my laptop as the indoor control application, but I am getting there.

Looking forward, Indigo is a new open platform Astro software package that will run on any platform.  Indigo has just released Indigo Sky which is a complete Raspberry Pi preconfigured disk image running on Debian Linux and having played with it, it looks very promising.  APT is planning to introduce Indigo support in their next release and subject to drivers being available for all my gear (again sesto-senso is an issue) I plan on switching back to APT as my overall control application as I know my way around it.

So bottom line: If you are OK using the terminal for the occasional command line update to install a missing bit of software, then Linux is absolutely great.  

 

 

Edited March 26, 2019 by wornish

[Stub Mandrel]

6 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi again everyone

Just my quarterly progress check enquiry. Has anyone managed to witch from something else to Linux yet?

I had an eyeopener last week when helping a computer literate friend make the switch. It reminded me of how difficult it is to change one's set ways of working. It collapsed completely just after I opened a terminal and began typing. Had I not done that, they would probably be on board now.

So, c'mon. Tell us your migration stories. Good and bad.

Cheers and the best of sudo apt upgrade to all.

I'm waiting to see what happens with B***t first.

[fozzybear]

5 hours ago, wornish said:

Previously I have used APT on a windows laptop directly connected to my gear and it really worked well.  But I wanted to move indoors so decided to take the plunge.  

I have just completed installing a Raspberry Pi3B+ running Astroberry on Ubuntu Linux and now I can remotely control my whole setup in the garden over WiFi while I stay in the warm indoors!  It was relatively easy once I managed to get all the software up to the latest levels.  It took a whole day to update my RPi Ubuntu from the Astroberry supplied version 16 to the latest version 18, but I just left it to run and it all came good in the end.  I am just using the Indi drivers on the RPi and all is working as it should.  I do have one outstanding issue with my sestor-senso focuser that has to be recalibrated for each new session after being powered off, that is a pain but hopefully, the Indi drivers will get updated to fix the issue.  I have had a steep learning curve with using KStars on my laptop as the indoor control application, but I am getting there.

Looking forward, Indigo is a new open platform Astro software package that will run on any platform.  Indigo has just released Indigo Sky which is a complete Raspberry Pi preconfigured disk image running on Debian Linux and having played with it, it looks very promising.  APT is planning to introduce Indigo support in their next release and subject to drivers being available for all my gear (again sesto-senso is an issue) I plan on switching back to APT as my overall control application as I know my way around it.

So bottom line: If you are OK using the terminal for the occasional command line update to install a missing bit of software, then Linux is absolutely great.  

 

 

Wornish,

Trying to upgrade my astroberry to 18 yet I get a message "please install all available updates for your release before upgrading"

I do a Sudo apt-get update

yet still same message

even doing "Sudo do-release-upgrade"

The only update I have held back is firefox so it works on 16.04

regards

Andy

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

what happens with B***t first.

You'll be a few years yet then. Makes Linux look like a walk in the...

[discardedastro]

Coming late to the party, but thought I'd chip in with my experiences.

I'm a long-time Linux user but started my AP journey on Windows with Sharpcap and then SGP. I run both OSes on desktops daily (Linux at work, Windows+Linux at home). I lost my Windows box I was using for AP so ended up setting up my work laptop with KStars/Ekos/INDI as an interim fix; having said that I'm actually very happy with it all (with one or two exceptions) and don't have any plans to run back to Windows at present. I'm using Arch Linux on my box, which is a rolling release very close to upstream - has the benefit of being on the bleeding edge, and the downside of being on the bleeding edge.

I'm using an EQMod EQ6-R Pro mount, ASI183MM-PRO imaging camera, ASI120MC guide camera, a ZWO EFW, HitecAstro DC focuser, and MBox "weather station". My main gripes so far are with device connectivity/discovery - getting everything recognised and tying up each driver with the right tty device is a bit of a nightmare every evening. I'm going to see what I can do with udev rules to at least get all my USB devices assigned to their tty filenames consistently, and then I can configure everything to use those static assignments. I also have issues with gpsd eating other USB devices even though I've told it not to.

KStars has crashed a couple of times, usually while focusing - this is most frustrating, but it's infrequent enough. PHD2 works much better than the inbuilt Ekos guider, so it's worth setting that up, and pretty painless once done. The local astrometry.net solver works great; had some problems getting final fine alignment to work which I think is mostly down to the EQMod driver's n-stars alignment and some weirdness when that gets a lot of solves/syncs in the same small area. My focuser is pretty awful (stock Skywatcher with DC focuser) so can't really use autofocus, but the manual focus options and framing lets me manually drive close enough. I'll replace the focuser and motor soon so I can use the autofocus module.

Overall quite happy with the whole ecosystem. While I'm running it all on my laptop at the moment I intend to move to a distributed setup once I get the obsy together, with a server near to the scope for indiserver, and a server/desktop in the warm room for KStars/Ekos to run on. At the moment I just VNC into the laptop from indoors, shove the files across onto a NAS and then take them onto my workstation for processing (though the laptop's beefy enough to run PI so sometimes I'll process directly on that).

The one bit that doesn't quite sit right with me is control/state - I don't like having a desktop application/GUI managing all the state about my capture session and observatory. I'd much rather have a server manage all of that (and do so in a careful, robust fashion) and keep the GUI complexity out of it. Then again, INDI is an open protocol, so maybe I'll have a stab at something...

[stash_old]

33 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

I'm going to see what I can do with udev rules to at least get all my USB devices assigned to their tty filenames consistently, and then I can configure everything to use those static assignments. I also have issues with gpsd eating other USB devices even though I've told it not to.

The only way to go  and to be fair Windows COM devices are just the same nightmare - especially for those who are not perm set up.

 

36 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

The one bit that doesn't quite sit right with me is control/state - I don't like having a desktop application/GUI managing all the state about my capture session and observatory. I'd much rather have a server manage all of that (and do so in a careful, robust fashion) and keep the GUI complexity out of it. Then again, INDI is an open protocol, so maybe I'll have a stab at something...

Dont really understand that statement ( me thick)  - A web server manager is available but that is still a GUI interface ,as opposed to a Command line which you can have even if you dont have remote devices - just use "Remote in Indi devices" as 127.0.0.1 then you can start Inderserver program yourself from the command line (or even write a simple script so that you always get the correct device address  without Udev rules if you most ) - to a point as Ekos will still "talk" and expect "answers". You are stuck with Ekos/Indi devices(cant separate them unless you use other software) working this way but you can use other Indi aware software such as Free CDC , ANVP etc etc and maybe Cloudmakers items(not free)  if you run on Apple OS - and perhaps Indigo but  its fairly new so there could be problems as normal with any new software offering but ok if you accept that (does use Indi protocol and "backward compatible").

If you can explain better perhaps there is a better answer from the  Indi experts/developers - not me by the way.

 

[Davey-T]

Still procrastinating here, got SSD and laptop sitting on the settee looking neglected trying to make me feel guilty 

Dave

[alacant]

55 minutes ago, stash_old said:

opposed to a Command line

Hi. If you want a terminal, you can ssh into the server but hey, pointing and clicking is hard enough as it is. I shudder to think what a command line script to control a focus, slew, platesolve, take-50-exposures, dither etc... would run to!

Here's an example script from the indi forum for starting a session. I'm afraid my Linux experience doesn't run to that complexity but -if you're brave- you could try the indi forum;)

Cheers and good luck

[alacant]

54 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

SSD and laptop sitting on the settee

Here's your kick start.

Let us know if you get arount to it:)

Cheers and good luck.

[discardedastro]

1 hour ago, stash_old said:

Dont really understand that statement

Not well explained ?

So indiserver running on the box doing all the hardware interface stuff is fine and great, and works well. What I basically want is the equivalent for Ekos - the alignment, focusing, guiding, etc state of "where am I pointing/what am I imaging" and observatory control. Ekos is great but complicated, and if KStars crashes I lose all the state in it. Plus I have no way to remotely get at it other than VNC. Ideally I'd have two Ekos clients seeing the same state so I can have a KStars/Ekos session on my PC in the house and see the same sequencing etc information as I would on an KStars/Ekos session out by the scope on the PC.

Going to spend an afternoon faffing with udev to get everything static and that should make life a whole bunch nicer, either way!

[stash_old]

1 hour ago, discardedastro said:

Not well explained ?

So indiserver running on the box doing all the hardware interface stuff is fine and great, and works well. What I basically want is the equivalent for Ekos - the alignment, focusing, guiding, etc state of "where am I pointing/what am I imaging" and observatory control. Ekos is great but complicated, and if KStars crashes I lose all the state in it. Plus I have no way to remotely get at it other than VNC. Ideally I'd have two Ekos clients seeing the same state so I can have a KStars/Ekos session on my PC in the house and see the same sequencing etc information as I would on an KStars/Ekos session out by the scope on the PC.

Going to spend an afternoon faffing with udev to get everything static and that should make life a whole bunch nicer, either way!

You could of course keep Indiserver (1 or more) running hardware stuff. Run Ekos/Stars concurrently - on the "hardware Indiserver pc"s and again on the laptop in the warm room. Indi is client / server system and so allows for one than one Client (where ever they maybe) to be connected to itself. Never tried that - but have done Indiserver on 2 or more PC's (e.g. 2 x RPI Indiserver chained ,1 x fast Laptop where Kstars/Ekos resides - where I could but never have need to see Kstars/Ekos - via reverse VNC from Obsys to Warm house laptop). IMO I wouldn't bother just VNC from the "Hardware Indiserver" to the "House PC" if you want to see what Kstars/Ekos is up to.

You do have a valid point as Kstars/Ekos are like twins if one or more becomes "ill" that normally means a reload for the PC they reside on. But he Indiserver will continue it doesn't care about clients "dying" and when the Client reconnects it should be able to continue (ok mostly) where it left off.. Hopefully  they will get more stable or resilient.

If you find a solution/idea please let us all know - seriously I guess many,including me, have the same problem or thoughts as you.

Oh forgot to add to can of course use DSUB or even write your Python interface (sadly only on Linux - correct me if I am wrong someone!) as the SWIG API to Indi API exists.

Bu as someone else as said wha is he point of "reinventing the wheel"

[stash_old]

2 hours ago, alacant said:

take-50-exposures

This is not as bad as you think I have done that  passing parameters to DSLR Gphoto2 command line program(app) on Linux to do imaging (even from Windows) is not a problem. Granted I would not like to do CCD/CMOS scripts ,even if it was possible(?) as they call SDK provided interfaces - but never tried it. Its all just Rock and Roll no matter what new names are used ?

if you were used to Linux/Unix BEFORE Gui front end's than it is what you had to do - hence why Unix/Linux has so many parameters for command line calls but yes messy ?

[stash_old]

6 hours ago, discardedastro said:

Not well explained ?

So indiserver running on the box doing all the hardware interface stuff is fine and great, and works well. What I basically want is the equivalent for Ekos - the alignment, focusing, guiding, etc state of "where am I pointing/what am I imaging" and observatory control. Ekos is great but complicated, and if KStars crashes I lose all the state in it. Plus I have no way to remotely get at it other than VNC. Ideally I'd have two Ekos clients seeing the same state so I can have a KStars/Ekos session on my PC in the house and see the same sequencing etc information as I would on an KStars/Ekos session out by the scope on the PC.

Going to spend an afternoon faffing with udev to get everything static and that should make life a whole bunch nicer, either way!

Just to add a foot note - I had another look at Indigo (1yr since last look) and I must say it has come on a long way - Indigo Sky is what Indi should have produced - install on SD/boot/sets up AP/Does what it says on the can - works (on RPI3b+ as its Raspain based) - and free. Impressed so far but early days.

So maybe that might help in your quest but it does not appear as sophisticated as Ekos IMO  - it does use HTTP to provide a control panel but its clean  and simple to use IMO.  

[Alien 13]

9 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Still procrastinating here, got SSD and laptop sitting on the settee looking neglected trying to make me feel guilty 

Dave

Get win 10 on it, dont be tempted by the dark side young padowan...

Alan

[Davey-T]

48 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

Get win 10 on it, dont be tempted by the dark side young padowan...

Alan

It's got Win8.1 on it but its not working so seemed an ideal candidate for some Linux astro' experimenting 

Dave

[Alien 13]

8 hours ago, Davey-T said:

It's got Win8.1 on it but its not working so seemed an ideal candidate for some Linux astro' experimenting 

Dave

Nothing to loose then, you can set it up as a dual boot if you wanted, I did that with my old Dell XPS laptop.

Alan

[alacant]

20 hours ago, discardedastro said:

thought I'd chip in with my experiences.

Hi

Don't forget that what we do have in Linux is support. The indi devs will ssh/teamviewer in and fix your problem there and then.

**To save embarassment, firstly make sure that it isn't something obvious; the last time I asked for help, all that was done was change the configuration and hit save. I had forgotten the latter. DUH!

Edited March 31, 2019 by alacant

[discardedastro]

Just now, alacant said:

Hi

Don't forget that what we do have in Linux is support. The indi devs will ssh/teamviewer in and fix your problem there and then.

**To save embarassment, firstly make sure that it isn't something obvious; the last time I asked for help, all that was done was change the configuration and hit save. I had forgotten the latter. DUH!

Oh, absolutely - I'm a long-term Linux user and contributor to various FOSS projects. I've already fixed a bug in the Arch packaging for the astrometry.net solver which was causing KStars to pick --nofits2fits when it shouldn't...

[alacant]

Hi everyone

We're getting on for 18 moths now. Just checking back to see if anyone has managed it yet.

Cheers, merry xmas and clear skies.

 

[Davey-T]

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Hi everyone

We're getting on for 18 moths now. Just checking back to see if anyone has managed it yet.

Cheers, merry xmas and clear skies.

 

Sad to say I still have SSD sitting unused here as other stuff has taken priority, I'm sure I'll get round to it eventually 😂

Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Dave 

[Stub Mandrel]

Bought a new W10 laptop with an SSD in it... boots so fast it even impressed my daughter who has a Macbook 🙂

[Chaz2b]

Pushing this thread along, has any Linux user have a preference of distro for astronomy?

chaz

[JamesF]

1 minute ago, Chaz2b said:

Pushing this thread along, has any Linux user have a preference of distro for astronomy?

chaz

My preference for desktop use is Linux Mint, but Ubuntu is probably just as suitable.  Most things seem to "just work" on those.  Obviously there's stuff like Astroberry that's designed for astro use on an RPi, too.

James

[alacant]

20 minutes ago, Chaz2b said:

preference of distro

Currently Ubuntu, but as @JamesF mentions, Mint has good support too. If you have a problem with either of those, you'll get help rapidly; large user base. 

Cheers, keep safe, HTH and thanks for the bump.

<shame>I

I must admit I'd forgotten about it:(

</shame>