current Image details

• Debian jessie
• NSLS2 EPICS Debian distribution in /urs/lib/epics -areaDetector-3-3-1 package with

babyIOC

babyIOC is easy to assemble plug and play Debian server with installed latest NSLS2 EPICS Debian distribution, compiled areaDetector package with prosilica sample IOC deployed at /epics/iocs. NSLS2 Epics Debian distribution is built from community epicsdeb repository and deployed at /usr/lib/epics/. X2Go server is intsalled on this system.

Introduction

Building an EPICS Control System from scratch could be a tedious, time consuming and challenging for the beginners. We offer you an out of the box solution, when you buy and assemble Single Board Computer, load precreated image onto microSD card, boot the discless babyIOC computer from this microSD card and build your EPICS iocs using prebuild libraries and packages. If community finds this useful, we can add more mudules, sample iocs to ease the learning curve, as well as NSLS2 DAMA bluesky suit, etc.

Hardware and parts

The selected hardware is UDOO x86 Ultra board, which can be enhanced with different daughter cards. In this project we use ethernet daughter card, which adds 2 additional interfaces useful in any controls environment. Though the hardware can be purchased from many distributors, we advise buying directly from UDOO. They ship fast.

Parts list:

• UDOO x86 Ultra
• UDOO x86 metal case
• CPU fan for UDOO x86 heatsink
• M.2 dual Ethernet Module Kit
• Power Supply USA
• HDMI to HDMI cable, or other cable to connect the monitor. We used HDMI port.
• microSD memory card 16GB or bigger

Assemble the hardware.

Vendor's instructions how to assemble the hardware can be found here. Vendor's metal case is desiged to hold a board without accesories. In order to use this metal case with ethernet daughter board, one needs to cut an opening in the back side. The original drawing can be found here. The needed cut out is indicated on UDOO_X86_metal_case_drawing-MODIFIED.pdf.

Copy image onto microSD card.

• plug in microSD card into your linux box. We used microSD-miniSD-USB dungle run cat /proc/partitions to see what the device name is. It ussualy come up as /dev/sdb

 
oksana@oksana-linux:~$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8        0  244140625 sda
   8        1  234219520 sda1
   8        2          1 sda2
   8        5    9918464 sda5
   8       16  122241024 sdb
   8       17  121634816 sdb1
   8       18          1 sdb2
   8       21     604160 sdb5

Copy image to microSD card. You should become root.

root@oksana-linux:/home/oksana# date; dd if=udooImage of=/dev/sdb bs=64k; date
Thu Oct 11 15:11:48 EDT 2018
243096+0 records in
243096+0 records out
15931539456 bytes (16 GB) copied, 597.654 s, 26.7 MB/s
Thu Oct 11 15:21:45 EDT 2018
root@oksana-linux:/home/oksana# 

You are ready to 

Word of warning: dd command will happily overwrite your system's hard drive if you use the wrong /dev/sdX and it won't warn you or anything since you are root. Always double check the dd commands! dd stands for Disk Destroyer.

You can plug your microSD card and boot, however if your microSD card size was more then 16GB, you will not be able to use it at this time.

Extend your disc partition

we used this website as a resource. The commands below will output information about all your partitions. We will include only the one we are resizing.

root@oksana-linux:/home/oksana# fdisk -l
......
Disk /dev/sdb: 116.6 GiB, 125174808576 bytes, 244482048 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x9adc4c27

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *        2048 29747199 29745152 14.2G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2       29749246 31115263  1366018  667M  5 Extended
/dev/sdb5       29749248 31115263  1366016  667M 82 Linux swap / Solaris

We would like to extend Linux partion, which happened to be the boot partition as well, and the only way to do this is to delete all partions, and recreate them again.

  # fdisk /dev/sdb
  

2. Delete by pressin "d" and accepting the default suggestion 5, them 2, then 1.
3. Press "n" to create new partion, 'p' for primary,Last 1, offered default, fist sector offered 2048,since you have to perserve your boot partion beginning, and accept default for your last sector. Your total size is less then you expected, SD card vendors a bit creative with the size definition.
4. press w to write changes and exit

Now you need to resize your file system to use all available space. If you run #resize2fs /dev/sdb1, you will be aske to run e2fsck first.

  #e2fsck -f /dev/sdb1
  

press y (for yes) for offers to correct the errors

  #resize2fs  /dev/sdb1
  

You are ready to boot!

Credits

• Christopher Stelmach, BNL for adding cutout to the drawing.