RTnet setup on Xenomai

Official website : http://www.rtnet.org/index.html

RTnet allows you to send and receive data with very strict constraints, in a real-time environment (RTAI, Xenomai). It only works with a very limited set of ethernet cards (RTnet includes “real-time” re-written drivers) : Intel PRO/1000, 82574L, any card with r8169 (xenomai < 2.6.4 only) and others.

First make sure your followed the Xenomai installation instructions and you are running the Xenomai kernel (uname -a).

Check which kernel driver you use

lspci -vvv -nn | grep -C 10 Ethernet

And check if the rt_ version exists in RTnet’s drivers.

Note

We’re using a custom website that fixes compilation problems for kernel > 3.10 source.

Download

sudo apt install git

git clone https://github.com/kuka-isir/RTnet.git

Installation

We’ll need the following options:

* Variant
  --> Xenomai 2.1
* Protocol Stack
  --> TCP Support (for ATI Force Sensor)
* Drivers
  --> The driver you use (New Intel PRO/1000 in our case)
  --> Loopback (optional)
* Add-Ons
  --> Real-Time Capturing Support (optional, for Wireshark debugging)
* Examples
  --> RTnet Application Examples
      --> Enable (optional)

sudo apt install libncurses5-dev

cd RTnet
make menuconfig
# Configure the options below
# Then hit ESC 2 times, save the config, and build
make
# Install in /usr/local/rtnet/ (default location)
sudo make install

Configuration

The configuration file is located by default at /usr/local/rtnet/etc/rtnet.conf Take a look at this configuration file.

  • RT_DRIVER=”rt_e1000e” The driver we use (we have the Intel PRO/1000 GT)
  • REBIND_RT_NICS=”0000:05:00.0 0000:06:00.0” NIC addresses of the 2 cards we use for RTnet (you can check the NIC address typing ‘lshw -C network’ and looking at “bus info: pci@...”. It is useful to have a fix master/slave config order (card1->robot, card2->Sensor for example).
  • IPADDR=”192.168.100.101” IP of the master (your computer). ALl the slaves will send/receive to/from master IP.
  • NETMASK=”255.255.255.0” The other slave will have IPs 192.168.100.XXX.
  • RT_LOOPBACK=”no” Not used now. Might be useful to use it somehow.
  • RT_PROTOCOLS=”udp packet tcp” Robot sends via UDP, ATI Sensor via TCP for config, UDP otherwise.
  • RTCAP=”yes” To debug with Wireshark
  • TDMA_CYCLE=”450” and TDMA_OFFSET=”50” Data from robot/ sensor takes about 350us to receive (using Wireshark).

Allow non-root users

To allow commands like rtnet start etc to be used without sudo, we will use visudo. We remove password in certain commands only for people in the xenomai group.

sudo visudo
# then add the following at the end
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/sbin/insmod
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/sbin/rmmod
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/sbin/modprobe
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/bin/echo
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/bin/mknod
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/service
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/service
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtcfg
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtifconfig
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtiwconfig
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtnet
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtping
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/rtroute
%xenomai ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/rtnet/sbin/tdmacfg

Test your installation

Using the test script

A launch script can be found here. Adjust the following settings to your needs :

  • SLAVES=”192.168.100.102 192.168.100.103”
  • SLAVES_NAMES=”Kuka ATISensor”

Then to use it :

./path/to/script/rtnet start

Manually

cd /usr/local/rtnet/sbin
# Start the rt kernel drivers
sudo ./rtnet start
# Bringup connection
sudo ./rtifconfig rteth0 up 192.168.100.101 netmask 255.255.255.0
# Bringup slaves
sudo ./rtroute solicit 192.168.100.102 dev rteth0
# Ping Slave
sudo ./rtping 192.168.100.102
# Stop everything
sudo ./rtnet stop

Note

You might have to remove the non-rt kernel driver before rtnet start :

sudo rmmod e1000e
sudo ./rtnet start

Note

You should see rt_e1000e as the kernel driver currently used

lspci -vvv -nn | grep -C 10 Ethernet
lsmod | grep rt_

Use RTnet in C++

The API is the same as regular socket in C, except that the functions start with rt_*. To make sure it compiles on every platform, add the following to your headers :

#ifndef HAVE_RTNET

// Rename the standard functions
// And use theses ones to be RTnet-compatible when available

#define rt_dev_socket     socket
#define rt_dev_setsockopt setsockopt
#define rt_dev_bind       bind
#define rt_dev_recvfrom   recvfrom
#define rt_dev_sendto     sendto
#define rt_dev_close      close
#define rt_dev_connect    connect

#else
// Use RTnet in Xenomai
#include <rtdm/rtdm.h>
#endif

And in your CMakeLists.txt (example) :

# Add the path to the FindRTnet.cmake folder
# Let's assume you put it in /path/to/project/cmake
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake)

if($ENV{OROCOS_TARGET} STREQUAL "xenomai")
  find_package(RTnet)
  if(NOT ${RTnet_FOUND})
    message(ERROR "RTnet cannot be used without Xenomai")
  else()
    message(STATUS "RTnet support enabled")
    set_property(TARGET ${TARGET_NAME} APPEND PROPERTY COMPILE_DEFINITIONS HAVE_RTNET XENOMAI)
  endif()
endif()

Note

FindRTnet.cmake can be found here.