Fluxengine Tutorial on Debian Forum for build on Debian 64 Bit.

[ldkraemer]

I've posted a Tutorial for building the Fluxengine Software on the Debian Forum. It details the build process and usage of the Fluxengine
to convert .SCP files to *.IMG files.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=149566

Larry

 

[ldkraemer]

If you have built the fluxengine software on Linux and discovered the permissions problem, a short term fix is
to use the sudo command or run fluxengine as root.

When I tried to read a real floppy I kept getting a permissions error. I got around that for a short time by using the sudo command.

Here is a fix for that problem.

larry@debian: /home/larry/Downloads/fluxengine/fluxengine-master$ ls -alt 49-fluxengine.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 larry larry 615 Jun 23 16:53 49-fluxengine.rules
larry@debian: /home/larry/Downloads/fluxengine/fluxengine-master$

49-fluxengine.rules:

# UDEV Rules for Fluxengine
#
# To install, type this command in a terminal:
#   sudo cp 49-fluxengine.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/.
#
# After this file is installed, physically unplug and reconnect the Fluxengine.
#
ATTRS{manufacturer}=="Cowlark Technologies", ATTRS{product}=="FluxEngine", \
    SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", MODE:="0666"
#
# If you share your linux system with other users, or just don't like the
# idea of write permission for everybody, you can replace MODE:="0666" with
# OWNER:="yourusername" to create the device owned by you, or with
# GROUP:="somegroupname" and mange access using standard unix groups.

$ cp 49-fluxengine.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/.

$ cd /etc/udev/rules.d
$ ls -alt 49-fluxengine.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  615 Jun 23 16:55 49-fluxengine.rules
larry@debian:/etc/udev/rules.d$

Test to see if ./fluxengine works without using sudo command

$ ./fluxengine test bandwidth
Transferred 1048576 bytes from FluxEngine -> PC in 1096 ms (933 kB/s)
Transferred 1048576 bytes from PC -> FluxEngine in 1795 ms (570 kB/s)
larry@debian:~/Downloads/fluxengine/fluxengine-master$

fluxengine now works fine without the sudo command.


Larry

 

[Chuck(G)]

Hey Larry,

I tried your fluxengine client build on Debian Buster and Bullseye and there are so many issues that I'd like to see build instructions for those systems. Sussing through the code to resolve conflicts is going to be a hard job for someone not familiar with the thing.

Debian 9 was a long time ago...

FWIW, I did manage to get the thing to build, but it was a lot of head-scratching. Why not a repository of Ubuntu/Debian compiled binaries?

 

[ldkraemer]

Chuck,
I'm sort of behind on the Debian version because I've been too busy with other projects. After being retired a while I bought a Onefinity
"Woodworker" CNC Machine and I've been wrestling with FreeCAD, Carbide Create 5, and Meshcam V8. Things that take others a click
or two turn into days of reading and searching on how to get something that works. It always seems to take me three times as long to
get something working.

I still have files on pulled Hard drives for Debian 6 (Squeeze), Debian 7 (Wheezy), Debian 8 (Jessie) in 32 Bit or 64 Bit versions.
I need to update my Laptops to Bullseye (Ver 11 - 64 Bit) and reinstall all my files, but something is always a higher priority.

I had thought about building .DEB files for software packages like Fluxengine, but that's as far as I got. Most folks are now running
64 Bit versus 32 Bit software.

I'm glad you got Fluxengine built, and I hope your experience is better than what I had with my Kaypro II floppy's. I never did
get a good resolution from David, and it now appears he doesn't respond to my requests for help.

Larry

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, I'd built a Greaseweazle (with buffering) quite some time ago and put it to one side. I was curious about what it could and could not do and had a bit of spare time. I guess I'll find out if I'm barking up a dead tree by trying to use the fluxengine software on it.

I can recommend Bullseye--the installation was a bit smoother than Buster and I've encountered no issues. Heck, old DOSEMU from Squeeze still runs on it.

 

[Al Kossow]

As Chuck has noted, throwing something together to make a USB timing analyzer and floppy mechanism controller isn't the hard part.
I've been following these sorts of projects since the Catweasel, and all of the open-source software is crap.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Another note: If I try to build the Greaseweazle client on Buster (Debian 20.04), it craps out because Virtualbox 6.1 appears to declare that Python 2.7 is Python, even though you've also installed Python 3. Removing the dependency removes Virtualbox.

Gripe Used to be that you'd code a package in C or C++ and run a simple make to build it (I still do). A lot of these projects rely on third party build tools and IDEs which is a disaster waiting to happen, I think.

Ah, well; it was worth a shot.

 

[Al Kossow]

Python anything is dependency hell
You'd think people would have learned from Perl. Nope...

 

[ajacocks]

Used to be that you'd code a package in C or C++ and run a simple make to build it (I still do). A lot of these projects rely on third party build tools and IDEs which is a disaster waiting to happen, I think.

imake, smake, bmake, nmake, mk...

There were lots of build automation tools in the old days, too.

- Alex

 

[Chuck(G)]

I hail back to the old Unix System III days. "make" was it. Still works today. But egad, Linux still demands python 2 or 3 (depending on the package) for a lot of stuff. You can't just say "python" nowadays--it's either python2 or python3. What a mess.

Around DOS 2 on x86, I was frustrated with Lattice's version of make and created my own utility called "build": Here's a build script from 30 years ago. It's more or less self-explanatory.

 

[iz8dwf]

Hi all,
sorry to revive this old thread, but: did anyone find a way to actually build the fluxengine host tools on any linux distribution? Getting the current source tree from github then following the build instructions (they just seem to suggest it should build with a "make") throws errors. I've tried to work around some of the errors (a make included file doesn't exist, then a make rule doesn't exist...) but in the end it
seems just a lost cause. Having started on System V a "few" years ago, I didn't feel like a newbie, but age advances...
thanks in advance

 

[iz8dwf]

Ok, that was easy... Do not attempt to build this software on anything older than "current" Linux, I have tried on a debian 11 and it just compiled without issues. Make sure to install all pre-requisite packages mentioned on this document:

fluxengine/doc/building.md at master · davidgiven/fluxengine

PSOC5 floppy disk imaging interface. Contribute to davidgiven/fluxengine development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

HTH
Frank

 

[nickb333]

Ok, that was easy... Do not attempt to build this software on anything older than "current" Linux, I have tried on a debian 11 and it just compiled without issues. Make sure to install all pre-requisite packages mentioned on this document:

fluxengine/doc/building.md at master · davidgiven/fluxengine

PSOC5 floppy disk imaging interface. Contribute to davidgiven/fluxengine development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Successful on Arch which is basically a rolling, up-to-date distro. A lot of python3 dependencies but all I needed to add were fmt and protobuf packages.