README.md

IgH EtherCAT Master Debian Packaging

NOTE: This repository is now archived. See the etherlabmaster repo, which now has Debian packaging integrated.

---

This directory contain files that are needed to build a debian package of the IgH EtherCAT Master for Linux. In contrast to IgH's method to start the master via an init script (and unloading existing standard ethernet drivers before statup), the config file (/etc/default/ethercat) is used by a script named update-ethercat-config that should be run after config changes. The script updates /etc/modules-load.d/ethercat.conf and /etc/modprobe.d/ethercat.conf to reflect the configuration so that unneeded/unwanted standard drivers get blacklisted and the EtherCAT drivers and master are automatically loaded at system startup with the right parameters.

Building

The build process was tested under Debian 10 (Buster) with RT-Kernel.

to build the packages:

# Install hg and mk-build-deps
sudo apt-get install devscripts equivs mercurial

# Checkout source and patches
./get_source.sh -a

# Install build dependencies and build the packages
cd etherlabmaster
sudo mk-build-deps -i
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us

Installing

Install packages:

sudo dpkg -i ethercat_<version>_<arch>.deb \
    etherlabmaster-tools_<version>_<arch>.deb \
    libethercat_<version>_<arch>.deb

After the required config settings in /etc/default/ethercat (see documentation), run sudo update-ethercat-config. Either reboot or load the ec_* modules manually (see /etc/modules), and the master should become functional.

To build the LinuxCNC EtherCAT HAL driver, also install the development package:

sudo dpkg -i ethercat-dev_<version>_<arch>.deb

RTAI

Support for RTAI has been dropped.