Working Driver Station for Linux

[viggy96]

Does anyone know if there is a working build of a driver station for Linux? I hate having to use Windows for just that one program to test the bot. (Literally just that one, it I had one, I would wipe Windows)

Anyway, thanks in advance.

[legts]

To my knowledge, there is not. As someone who only runs Linux, I wish there were one!

[dawonn]

I just run it in virtualbox. Not the best solution but at least I don't need to reboot and lose access to all of my other applications...

[virtuald]

I too run the official DS in Virtualbox.

However, there are at least two open source implementations that I'm aware of, but I haven't really messed with either. Search CD for related threads such as this one.

[iSpotix]

I have used a program called Wine to run windows programs in ubuntu.

https://www.winehq.org/

[Bkeeneykid]

If you can be bother to try and compile it yourself, you might be able to compile the open source QDriverStation to run on linux. They say it runs on Linux, though I can't find any compiled files on the source forge site. Their website is blocked on the school laptop, so I can look later, but this should, in theory, work with Linux.

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by iSpotix

I have used a program called Wine to run windows programs in ubuntu.

https://www.winehq.org/

I've been able to get the driver station to run under Wine, but it won't find the robot. I imagine it has something to do with me not running the required MDNS services under Wine or something like that.

[fovea1959]

if you think that lack of mDNS is the issue with DS and Wine, try installing avahi on your Linux box; that may help (avahi is mDNS resolver for Linux)

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by fovea1959

if you think that lack of mDNS is the issue with DS and Wine, try installing avahi on your Linux box; that may help (avahi is mDNS resolver for Linux)

Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. I've got working mDNS on Linux. (ping roboRIO-971.local works, as does ssh). There seems to be a NI service which needs to run to resolve mDNS on Windows and the DS expects to use it. (I'm guessing on how it works and could very well be wrong) If anyone figures it out, I'd also be very excited.

[Arhowk]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. I've got working mDNS on Linux. (ping roboRIO-971.local works, as does ssh). There seems to be a NI service which needs to run to resolve mDNS on Windows and the DS expects to use it. (I'm guessing on how it works and could very well be wrong) If anyone figures it out, I'd also be very excited.

Is your roboRIO updated? The correct IP for 2016 is roborio-971-frc.local not roborio-971.local (last year's address)

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Arhowk

Is your roboRIO updated? The correct IP for 2016 is roborio-971-frc.local not roborio-971.local (last year's address)

As a Beta Test team, we are well aware of the change. As the beta test progressed this year, the address changed mid-season, and I've had to write code to auto-detect which scheme is in current use. The issue has no relation to how mDNS is functioning on Linux. I've been deploying code from Linux to the roboRIO successfully using both static IP addresses and mDNS for years. As far as I can tell, the issue is that the DriverStation running under Wine can't resolve the address of the roboRIO, and there is no way to give it a static IP address. If anyone else gets further, I'd love to hear how they did it. (I'd like to develop a custom joystick driver at some point after the season, and that will be much easier under Linux.)

[demosthenes2k8]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. I've got working mDNS on Linux. (ping roboRIO-971.local works, as does ssh). There seems to be a NI service which needs to run to resolve mDNS on Windows and the DS expects to use it. (I'm guessing on how it works and could very well be wrong) If anyone figures it out, I'd also be very excited.

Despite having avahi installed on my Linux (fedora) box for years, I can't seem to find the roborio. Was there any custom setup you had to do to get that working?

[Peter Mitrano]

I'd suggest contributing to this project: it seems to have worked in years past, although unlikely it works for the 2016 season

https://github.com/anidev/frc-driverstation

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

As far as I can tell, the issue is that the DriverStation running under Wine can't resolve the address of the roboRIO, and there is no way to give it a static IP address. If anyone else gets further, I'd love to hear how they did it.

You can type the ip address into the team number field.

[Ben Wolsieffer]

I can verify that QDriverStation works on Linux. You will need to compile it yourself though (it isn't very hard), and make sure you use the latest commit (rather than the v0.1-alpha release).

If you happen to use Arch Linux, I created an AUR package for it.