Building and installing ROS from a bootable USB key - discussion, questions and issues

[Joe Tojek]

Let's use this thread to discuss issues around building and testing the bootable USB key.

I just found this bootable USB key for ROS Electric and Ubuntu 10.4
http://store.iheartengineering.com/TurtleBot-Kit-USB-Install-Disk/dp/B0056QK98Q

I will be building a bootable USB image with Ubuntu 11.10 and doing a manual ROS Fuerte install this weekend to get a handle on what this entails.  I need to update my *NIX chops and get past my first ROS install. Cheers!

[Bill Morris]

On Sat, 2012-05-26 at 08:10 -0700, Joe Tojek wrote:
> Let's use this thread to discuss issues around building and testing the bootable USB key.
>
> I just found this bootable USB key for ROS Electric and Ubuntu 10.4
> http://store.iheartengineering.com/TurtleBot-Kit-USB-Install-Disk/dp/B0056QK98Q

We are currently planning to have a USB key for Ubuntu 12.04 and ROS
Fuerte in the next few weeks. There is also a DVD that has a set of ROS
specific menu items.

Our build scripts are in github
https://github.com/IHeartRobotics/TurtleBot/tree/master/customization-scripts

To build your own, you can use UCK
./remaster-live-cd path-to-iso-file.iso customization-dir/
http://uck.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/uck/trunk/uck/docs/html/building-script.html
This will allow you to build it via the command line.

UCK also offers a GUI interface that might be a bit easier to use.

> I will be building a bootable USB image with Ubuntu 11.10 and doing a
> manual ROS Fuerte install this weekend to get a handle on what this
> entails. I need to update my *NIX chops and get past my first ROS
> install. Cheers!

Good luck with your project.


>From a testing perspective, We have found a few minor issues.

First, in many ways we are limited to supporting the hardware that
Ubuntu supports. This can cause some issues with with video and WiFi
cards. This problem should be solved when we switch to 12.04.

Next, rviz has some issue with selecting the correct RTT mode and AFAIK
it still doesn't handle this automatically
http://ros.org/wiki/rviz/Troubleshooting#Segfault_during_startup
Our solution is to include a flier with the information from the wiki.

Also, while most labs have Internet access, it is unclear which packages
outside the core ROS programs should be installed by default. On this
note, would it be an important feature to include a mirror of the ROS
wiki on the USB key?

--
Bill Morris <bi...@iheartengineering.com>
I Heart Engineering
http://www.iheartengineering.com
<3

[Joe Tojek]

Bill - I believe that including a mirror of the ROS  wiki on the USB key is a great idea and could really broaden access to labs or users that may not have or want Internet access in their environments. Is that something that is easy enough to do?

[Bill Morris]

On Sat, 2012-05-26 at 18:52 -0700, Joe Tojek wrote:
> Bill - I believe that including a mirror of the ROS wiki on the USB
> key is a great idea and could really broaden access to labs or users
> that may not have or want Internet access in their environments. Is
> that something that is easy enough to do?

Adding the data as a separate partition to the USB key wont take much
work and will only add to the cost. We were planning on using 2GB drives
and we would probably need 16GB drives if we want to include the API
docs.

turtlebot-2012-01-10.iso 1.3G
doc.tar.gz 11G
roswiki.tar.gz 1.1G

Setting it up so the wiki is functional when running off of the USB key
will take some work. The main issue is that you need to have a full web
server with moinmoin running locally for things to work. If there is
demand, we can do it.

[Joe Tojek]

I see, thanks for the details. Sounds like a nice to have. Can you point me to an iso with ROS and Turtlebot all in one that I can load on my own key and boot from?
I would like to try that.

[Bill Morris]

http://pr.willowgarage.com/downloads/turtlebot/turtlebot-2012-01-10.iso

On Sun, 2012-05-27 at 03:47 -0700, Joe Tojek wrote:
> I see, thanks for the details. Sounds like a nice to have. Can you point me to an iso with ROS and Turtlebot all in one that I can load on my own key and boot from?
> I would like to try that.
>

[Jonathan Bohren]

Since the addition Gnome3/Unity in 12.04, I've been looking into other distros, and I found that Xubuntu 12.04 works quite well, and it basically behaves like Gnome2. Is anyone else interested in standardizing on a more lightweight/intuitive window manager than what comes by default in 12.04?

[Bill Morris]

I have no love for Unity, however from a practical standpoint it is the
first priority. We have someone here who has been trying to get Mint12
working with ROS, but Xubuntu should be pretty easy to support.

[Jonathan Bohren]

Yeah, I tried booting my Lenovo T61 off of a USB drive with Linuxmint, but it didn't even boot. I'm sure there is a way to make it work, but I really want something that works out of the box if we're going to be handing it over to students to use. I also tried out kubuntu and lubuntu, and both of them felt pretty schlocky. An undergrad in our lab was able to get a PR2 up and running in gazebo on a xubuntu install without any trouble.

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[Bill Morris]

On Sat, 2012-05-26 at 18:52 -0700, Joe Tojek wrote:

> Bill - I believe that including a mirror of the ROS wiki on the USB
> key is a great idea and could really broaden access to labs or users
> that may not have or want Internet access in their environments. Is
> that something that is easy enough to do?

Here is what we can do for pricing for bootable ROS USB drives. This is
for quantity one, larger quantities will bring prices down.

2GB USB 2.0 $24.95
16GB USB 3.0 $47.95

The plan is that this would include a $10 contribution to OSRF.

The 16GB drive would be enough to mirror the wiki with some project
space to spare, and the 2GB drive would probably be enough to test
things out.

does anyone have thoughts on space requirements? Is USB 3.0 worth it yet
for a lab environment?

[Piyush]

Just wanted to chime in about the wiki mirror here.

1) The wiki was around 11GB back in November (in comparison to the
12.1GB right now). I suspect in about 6 months time the size of the
wiki might be a bit too much for a 16GB drive. If there is still
interest in putting up a wiki mirror, perhaps a selected subset is
more useful?
2) I may have misunderstood this point. If the wiki is only to be used
locally, it does not require a web server. Additionally the wiki
mirror does not require moinmoin to work.

I may have also missed the purpose of the bootable USB key. Is it
supposed to be used for a regular ROS + Ubuntu install, or as a
persistent USB OS?

Thanks,
Piyush

[Bill Morris]

On Tue, 2012-05-29 at 19:46 -0500, Piyush wrote:
> Just wanted to chime in about the wiki mirror here.
>
> 1) The wiki was around 11GB back in November (in comparison to the
> 12.1GB right now). I suspect in about 6 months time the size of the
> wiki might be a bit too much for a 16GB drive. If there is still
> interest in putting up a wiki mirror, perhaps a selected subset is
> more useful?

Well, not including the API docs would probably solve the problem, as
would using 32GB drives. If we only included a subset, what would be the
criteria for inclusion?

Also, our current system for imaging the USB drives is pretty flexible,
so if there was a standard set of tutorials or assignments we could
probably build an education version of ROS with those files included.

> 2) I may have misunderstood this point. If the wiki is only to be used
> locally, it does not require a web server. Additionally the wiki
> mirror does not require moinmoin to work.

My understanding is that the current wiki mirror only contains the files
needed to run a moinmoin instance and does not have rendered webpages.

It is possible to create a mirror that contains rendered webpages, but
AFAIK this is not part of the existing mirror system.

> I may have also missed the purpose of the bootable USB key. Is it
> supposed to be used for a regular ROS + Ubuntu install, or as a
> persistent USB OS?

I think a persistent USB OS is more useful for students who may not be
committed to running Linux and can also be used to install ROS + Ubuntu.
If cost is a bigger concern you can run everything off of a 2GB USB
Install disk, but there is not much extra room for persistent files.

[Jonathan Bohren]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Piyush <piy...@gmail.com> wrote:

I may have also missed the purpose of the bootable USB key. Is it
supposed to be used for a regular ROS + Ubuntu install, or as a
persistent USB OS?

Well for this I think it depends on which students we're talking about. I feel like for undergraduates, many of them might not be ready to devote a partition on their hard drives to Linux, or might find it  difficult. It's more likely that graduate students who may continue using ROS in their research might just use it as an installer.

Also, with respect to the wiki, I don't think the whole thing needs to be mirrored on the USB drives. Especially because such a mirror will get out of date really fast, and you might even want to encourage the students to contribute to the wiki as part of the course.

-j

[Mac Mason]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Jonathan Bohren
<jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well for this I think it depends on which students we're talking about. I
> feel like for undergraduates, many of them might not be ready to devote a
> partition on their hard drives to Linux, or might find it  difficult. It's
> more likely that graduate students who may continue using ROS in their
> research might just use it as an installer.

I think this is a useful use case. I wonder if making a VM image (or
several, for different VMware, Parallels, etc.) would be more useful
in this case.

I (and others) have had a lot of success with getting software to
students this way.

--M

--
Julian "Mac" Mason      m...@cs.duke.edu      www.cs.duke.edu/~mac

[Jonathan Bohren]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:44 PM, Mac Mason <m...@cs.duke.edu> wrote:

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Jonathan Bohren
<jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well for this I think it depends on which students we're talking about. I
> feel like for undergraduates, many of them might not be ready to devote a
> partition on their hard drives to Linux, or might find it  difficult. It's
> more likely that graduate students who may continue using ROS in their
> research might just use it as an installer.

I think this is a useful use case. I wonder if making a VM image (or
several, for different VMware, Parallels, etc.) would be more useful
in this case.

I (and others) have had a lot of success with getting software to
students this way.

Yeah, I know at least one of the undergraduates in our lab has even gotten rviz in fuerte / xubuntu 12.04 working reliably in a VM. It basically comes down to what sort of hardware they're dealing with, in that case.

-j

[Piyush]

Apologies for not stating this clearly. The current wiki mirror contains rendered webpages. Just verified this

on my mirror again. Consequently, it opens up locally as well.

Same here, I have had a number of students successfully use ROS

Electric/Fuerte on top of Oneiric through a VM. In the past using VMs

has been an issue. I was surprised to see that a number of students

got it working successfully this time around.

 

-j

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Piyush 

[Yujin Stonier]

Important point.

On a usb drive it is by definition no longer a mirror. It would be worth thinking about if the edu ros version is locked in for something like the length of an ubuntu LTS release. Then it provides a good 'snapshot'.

> -j

[Yujin Stonier]

On May 30, 2012 10:40 AM, "Jonathan Bohren" <jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

If you arent out of version sync, I think making a process for students to contribute to the wiki is a great
idea. It is very much part of why ros is great, and i often have new employees coming in who dont know they can, or are too shy about fixing trivial things on the wiki.

> -j

[Mac Mason]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 8:33 PM, Yujin Stonier <sto...@yujinrobot.com> wrote:
> If you arent out of version sync, I think making a process for
> students to contribute to the wiki is a great idea. It is very much
> part of why ros is great, and i often have new employees coming in who
> dont know they can, or are too shy about fixing trivial things on the
> wiki.

Weirdly, I think this is a reason we _shouldn't_ mirror the wiki; it
keeps students from having the opportunity to edit the wiki.

For that matter, if we're going to start producing suggestions for how
to use ROS in a classroom setting, we could include instructions for
possible ways to give students credit for wiki improvements.

[Joe Tojek]

I am totally agreeing with you here Mac. If the user story is... User can download a snapshot of the ROS wiki for offline use. Then we could look into providing a live link to a weekly wiki snapshot file through a wiki script or some other magic on the server. I will check with Melonee Wise on this one.

[Jonathan Bohren]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Joe Tojek <joe...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am totally agreeing with you here Mac.   If the user story is...  User can download a snapshot of the ROS wiki for offline use. Then we could look into providing a live link to a weekly wiki snapshot file through a wiki script or some other magic on the server. I will check with Melonee Wise on this one.

How often would someone really not have access to the wiki? This really seems like a lot of work for something that I'm not seeing the motivation for.

-j

--

Jonathan Bohren

PhD Student

Dynamical Systems and Control Laboratory

Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics

The Johns Hopkins University

(707) 520-4736

j...@jhu.edu

[Yujin Stonier]

On 1 June 2012 09:35, Jonathan Bohren <jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Joe Tojek <joe...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am totally agreeing with you here Mac.   If the user story is...  User can download a snapshot of the ROS wiki for offline use. Then we could look into providing a live link to a weekly wiki snapshot file through a wiki script or some other magic on the server. I will check with Melonee Wise on this one.

How often would someone really not have access to the wiki? This really seems like a lot of work for something that I'm not seeing the motivation for.

I agree - an offline wiki doesn't seem to have a huge benefit if your ros version is close to current. The only problem I see is if the eduros version is not upgrading at the mad rate that ros does and so is running diamondback when ros is already at fuerte - the wiki would tend to be frequently irrelevant because alot of wiki authors do not maintain multiple versions of documentation as well as they should.

Now ros and enterprise ros are both talking about LTS cycles, which may mean better documentation for LTS cycles if eduros goes that way too. So it may be a non-issue.

Right now though, it is a non-issue. The wiki closely matches whatever eduros will be putting out. Most everyone has internet access. If eduros does LTS, if LTS isn't something that will be actively focused on by the ros community, then there might be the aforementioned problem. But, I think it can be shelved for now.

Daniel.

[Jonathan Bohren]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Yujin Stonier <sto...@yujinrobot.com> wrote:

I agree - an offline wiki doesn't seem to have a huge benefit if your ros version is close to current. The only problem I see is if the eduros version is not upgrading at the mad rate that ros does and so is running diamondback when ros is already at fuerte - the wiki would tend to be frequently irrelevant because alot of wiki authors do not maintain multiple versions of documentation as well as they should.

Now ros and enterprise ros are both talking about LTS cycles, which may mean better documentation for LTS cycles if eduros goes that way too. So it may be a non-issue.

Yeah, I think it's really an issue to be dealt with on the wiki: like people being better about using distribution tags for documentation of different versions of packages.

[Joe Tojek]

I have not been able to boot Ubuntu 12.04 or the 10.4 image with ROS from Clearpath, using bootable USB keys or a partition, possibly due to having a SSD drive for C: on a Core i7 920 with 12 GB of Ram with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550TI. So, I am thinking of building new Linux only machine for ROS / Gazebo / Blender 3D etc. This might be a good process to document for the edusig output. Has anyone built a custom linux machine for ROS recently? I would like to hear about the specs and results. Thanks!

[Bill Smart]

I think that this is a good point.  We've dived into asking what we want to put on the drives without first asking who's going to be using them.  We need a concrete use case in order to make an informed decision on whether or not to include or not include a given thing.

As an example, if we're targeting undergraduate students in a traditional university setting, then there's no point in including the wiki on the drive for bandwidth reasons.  Every university has more then enough bandwidth for the students to browse the wiki.  There might be an argument for including it for the purposes of stability and versioning, but that's another thread.

So, my main interest is students who take my robotics classes.  I want them to have enough stuff on the stick to complete my assignments.  This probably means the core WG packages, stage, gazebo, the turtle stacks, and probably a few others.  I want the operating system to be easy for them to use, and I don't care if its Ubuntu, Xubuntu, or whatever variant is your favourite.

We have to be careful not to spend months arguing about the color of the bikeshed (http://bikeshed.com/).  If we're targeting people who don't use linux, it doesn't matter* which linux distribution we pick.  Any one we pick will be Big and Scary.  We should, IMHO, pick one with a vote, and move on.  It should be derivative of Ubuntu, since this is what's best supported.

* Of course it matters, but it matters a lot less than some other things, and we should spend our time thinking about these things.