Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am just going over the stuff I did this week. Spoiler alert: it’s more of a mix and mash. Let’s get started.
My idea while writing last week’s post was it. I believe my laptop wasn’t booting reliably because GRUB was configured incorrectly. The BIOS went fine and selected the external drive to load from (or the GRUB disk). The bootloader, GRUB, loaded correctly, gave me the option of operating systems to boot, but when it went to load Debian, some of the time the drives respond out of order: when GRUB went to the drive presently known as sda, the internal, Windows drive, and expected to load Debian, it panicked and dropped into BusyBox.
I diagnosed the problem by looking directly at the grub configuration files and sorted out any instances of “sda.” There were a few. After fielding some questions about the suspect config lines, I regenerated the config file after reverting the only change I had previously made without regenerating. When it was done, I scanned for the parts where “sda” had previously shown up, and there was the correct UUID I was looking for.
I wish I had found someone identifying this problem. Ironically, I came within inches of mysteriously solving this issue none the wiser when I tried regenerating the GRUB files to give the drives a full minute to load instead of five seconds. I can see where I might have spent just as long trying to reproduce the bug an failing. I wouldn’t have it any other way than how it happened. I can live with this.
With stability issues out of the way, I have other things to move over. Remember when I used to do 3D printing? Well, I want to make a bookmark, and I want to do it from Linux. I popped my SD card into my laptop, and found the copy of the Cura slicer that originally came with my printer — it’s a .exe file. Linux doesn’t do .exe files.
Side note: I’ve been using aptitude instead of apt-get. They both do the same job, but aptitude tries to put a nicer face on it, like not changing half its name for searching instead of installing.
After teaching myself how to search the apt repository like I did back on MicroCore, I used aptitude search cura and installed the package pertaining to g-code generation. I looked in my program menu and found “Ultimaker Cura.” OK, I suppose this is the generic. I already knew the version I was on before was a fork of some other parent program. Lacking another explanation, Ulitmaker Cura seems to be it.
The first time I opened this newer version of Cura, I was bombarded with a prompt to add my printer. I didn’t see my printer, so I ended up picking a wrong one and continuing from there. And that is where I’m stuck.
I poked around in the menus and did some research, and found the latest version of Cura is on at least version 4.0, but the on in the Debian repositories is 3.3.1. I am starting to get the feeling that this is what they meant when Debian software is chosen for proven stability. I may go around the repository on this one.
Diagnostic procedures involved a bunch of research and plugging in with a USB B connector. I hooked my printer up and told Linux to list my USB devices. I isolated an entry called “QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter.” I’m not exactly sure what is going on here, but it looks like my printer is electronically connected to something inside that then talks to the computer outside. Oh, and the menu still works off just USB power.
I am open to using other slicers. The main goal is to demonstrate a workflow, and I don’t have that right now. I also tried Slic3r Prusa and it had even fewer options, but it had a list of questions for configuring other printers.
Looking around, there is a lot more to the world of slicers than the narrow sliver I was looking at before. The IIIP branded Cura is great for someone who is just wants to 3D print or doesn’t want to move away, but there is a whole world to explore out there with different optimizations and features to play with — all locked away behind a learning curve that starts with getting my printer back online.
There are plenty of 3D printing videos out there. Every one I clicked on while trying to get things working on Linux was using Windows. Maybe there was one, but I don’t know. I’m going to have to tackle OS/slicer and slicer/printer issues separately from now on.
Unrelated: I have been getting a lot of use out of my Steam controller. It turns out to be very useful as a mouse on my Widows machine when I want to sit back without a hard surface in easy reach.
Final Question: What was one challenge you faced that left you feeling good for going through it?