hi, thanks, the files seemed to be under /usr/realtime.... so i copied them under /lib as you suggested. this helped but there appears to be a problem with the parport address now. maybe you know how to fix this? also tried to answer your questions Paul wrote: Hi David On Monday 22 September 2008, David Szakovits wrote: i had trouble compiling in the drivers/vital directory, but i felt i could safely comment this out and so i did. Can you remember what errors occurred with the Vital driver ? it starts out not finding "pci/pci.h" and then a bunch of undefined macros and variables. when i did "make modules_install" at one point Makefile tried to include /Makefile.inc, i presume because somehow $(PWD) became undefined. i hard coded the path into Makefile and with these changes it looked like everything went ok but with so many warnings concerning deprecated char** strings, i could easily missed an error or two. perhaps the compile did go successfully since often Make stops with an actual error. To resolve the deprecated char warnings requires a couple of hours of tiresome, repetative search/replace - Maybe I'll make a start this evening. do you just declare these "char **" as "const char** " or is there a better equivalent declaration that doesn't require const? These symbols are all provided by various RTAI modules - These *should* be in the /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-rtai/ tree somewhere, if not, you'll need to copy them over (suggest /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-rtai/extra) and then run depmod. If you still get errors regarding the above symbols, could you check /boot/config-2.6.24-16-rtai and tell me if CONFIG_MODVERSION=y. actually it is the plural CONFIG_MOVERSIONS=y and it is set equal to y, Regards, Paul. here is what i get at the terminal (dmesg output is below this) inivar = plat/nonrealtime/bin/inivar INIFILE = x3.ini RS274NGC_PARAMFILE = generic.var starting emc... starting EMC MOTION PROGRAM -- quickstep... Can not find -sec TRAJ -var BLEND_TOL_REL -num 1 IO_BASE_ADDRESS 0x378 Can not find -sec EMCMOT -var QS_PINOUT -num 1 modprobe quickstep PERIOD=22000 STEPPING_TYPE=0 IO_BASE_ADDRESS=0x378 SHMEM_KE Y=100 FATAL: Error inserting quickstep (/lib/modules/2.6.24-16-rtai/extra/quickstep.k o): Operation not permitted can't install quickstep x3.ini was not changed. generic.var was not changed. Removing kernel module rtai_math Removing kernel module rtai_sched Removing kernel module rtai_hal [363100.415742] I-pipe: Domain RTAI registered. [363100.415759] RTAI[hal]: <3.6> mounted over IPIPE-NOTHREADS 2.0-04. [363100.415763] RTAI[hal]: compiled with gcc version 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubunt u7). [363100.415772] RTAI[hal]: mounted (IPIPE-NOTHREADS, IMMEDIATE (INTERNAL IRQs D ISPATCHED), ISOL_CPUS_MASK: 0). [363100.415777] PIPELINE layers: [363100.415780] e0cd1000 9ac15d93 RTAI 200 [363100.415784] c0383180 0 Linux 100 [363100.439701] RTAI[malloc]: global heap size = 2097152 bytes, <BSD>. [363100.441466] RTAI[sched]: loaded (IMMEDIATE, UP, USER/KERNEL SPACE: <with RT AI OWN KTASKs>, kstacks pool size = 524288 bytes. [363100.441476] RTAI[sched]: hard timer type/freq = 8254-PIT/1193180(Hz); defau lt timing: periodic; linear timed lists. [363100.441483] RTAI[sched]: Linux timer freq = 250 (Hz), CPU freq = 1243350000 hz. [363100.441488] RTAI[sched]: timer setup = 2010 ns, resched latency = 2688 ns. [363100.450535] RTAI[math]: loaded. [363100.454731] emcmot: SHMEM_KEY = 100 [363100.454745] emcmot: IO_BASE_ADDRESS = 378 [363100.454749] emcmot: EMCMOT_TASK_PRIORITY = 2 [363100.454753] emcmot: EMCMOT_TASK_STACK_SIZE = 12288 [363100.454757] emcmot: sizeof(RT_TASK) = 1152 [363100.454761] emcmot: sizeof(EMCMOT_STRUCT) = 688592 [363100.454765] emcmot: default blend tolerance = 4000000 ns*feed [363100.463652] emcmot: emcmotStruct allocated at 0xE0F6C000 from rtai_kmalloc( 100,688592) [363100.465782] Finished configuring emcmotStruct [363100.527781] emcmot: No parport found at 0x378 [363100.527795] can't initialize motion hardware [363100.527799] emcmot: releasing rtai shared memory. [363103.340504] RTAI[math]: unloaded. [363103.375457] SCHED releases registered named ALIEN RTGLBF [363103.389860] RTAI[malloc]: unloaded. [363103.489378] RTAI[sched]: unloaded (forced hard/soft/hard transitions: traps 0, syscalls 0). [363103.522599] I-pipe: Domain RTAI unregistered. [363103.522615] RTAI[hal]: unmounted. i notice this has something to do with the parport address. i checked in /proc/ioports and it is not there either. i suspect this is a problem to do with the use of the emc2 ubuntu as a starting point. i know nothing at all about this but i have previously noted that the parport does not show up in /proc/ioports on emc2 machines. i suppose i could start over with a different installation CD. i thought i could save some work installing rtai but maybe not. i ran into this sort of thing before when i wanted to run emc1 and emc2 on the same OS. i always gave up. djs