How Update Kstars on Astroberry RPi4

xsnrg wrote:

wornish wrote: In the end, I decided to compile from source code. Once I got the dependencies sorted it all compiled well, it took a little time. Now I have the latest bleeding-edge 3.5 release !!
So problem solved.

Congrats on compiling, and glad it works for you. It seems that if compiling it yourself did not show the same problems as you had before, then there are problems with the packages made available in the repo that need to be addressed.

The only issue is that the astroberry repo has not been updated with the latest kstars release which only came out last week. Some of us are eager to try the new features hence taking the step to compile from source.

Thank you for the detailed explanation, wornish!

I'll give it a few more days and if, by the time I am ready for my next clear night session Astroberry didn't update regularly, I'll try your method.

David (@wornish):

I didn't check your dependencies etc carefully, but a few comments on your compile instructions:

1- The KStars README.md file invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/blob/master/README.md also gives compile instructions.

2- For the kstars cmake command, you should probably add -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo, i.e.That gets the compile to run 'optimized' which for several operations makes the executable run much faster (though it probably slows
down the compile). I believe it defaults to Debug/not-optimized.

3- When you run your make, you should add -j6 or -j8. The '6' version means "if possible run up to 6 compiles in parallel" which is usually
fine on an RPi4 with 4Gb of memory. You'd run -j8 on a faster machine with more memory. You can experiment with the number.
(On an old Rpi3, I'd stick with the way you have it, equivalent to -j1). So the commands would beYou'll still need to "get a cup of coffee" but a compile from scratch will take ~40 minutes instead of 2-3X that.

Hy

xsnrg wrote: @wornish, yes I see it was others having problems with ports and devices after the apt upgrade, not yourself. If the kstars packages had not been updated yet, it would be the OS changes, not the kstars package, that introduced differences. A bit of leapfrog going on between the OS and kstars. Your recompile seems to make everything work well together again, so hopefully when the new packages are released, they will also work well with the latest OS updates.

The USB problems are still present in the very latest OS upgrade I carried out today, and upgrading to KStars 3.5.0 has no significant effect on this. So whereas the fallback of a clean installation of the Astroberry 2.0.2 image ported to an SSD works well, and lists 14 USB devices under lsusb, the latest RPi OS with KStars 3.5.0 doesn't list any of the USB2.0 devices connected to the USB3.0 powered hub, nor via the USB2.0 hub built into the ASI533MC camera.

Avocette wrote:

xsnrg wrote: @wornish, yes I see it was others having problems with ports and devices after the apt upgrade, not yourself. If the kstars packages had not been updated yet, it would be the OS changes, not the kstars package, that introduced differences. A bit of leapfrog going on between the OS and kstars. Your recompile seems to make everything work well together again, so hopefully when the new packages are released, they will also work well with the latest OS updates.

The USB problems are still present in the very latest OS upgrade I carried out today, and upgrading to KStars 3.5.0 has no significant effect on this. So whereas the fallback of a clean installation of the Astroberry 2.0.2 image ported to an SSD works well, and lists 14 USB devices under lsusb, the latest RPi OS with KStars 3.5.0 doesn't list any of the USB2.0 devices connected to the USB3.0 powered hub, nor via the USB2.0 hub built into the ASI533MC camera.

I just tried mine again running KStars 3.5 all my USB connections are working fine. EKOS connects to all my gear with no errors.

It is very strange that all is well with the earlier version of Kstars. I did a completely fresh install of RPi OS and then the latest Astroberry before doing the compile for Kstars. Its a pain having to redo all the settings but it was worth it.
I would have thought if it was an Astroberry or a Kstars issue this forum would be full of people raising concerns.

I fully agree - I keep searching on other forums for any signs of people suffering similar issues! I wouldn’t mind so much if things had not worked very reliably until the recent OS/kernel upgrade. Still I had a good night last night targeting IC5070 without hiccup!

Hello,

What I keep reading is a USB device stops working. A USB connected to what and how many what types needs definition. USB 2.0 specifies 5v at 1.2 Amps. With 3.0, 5V at 2 Amps is the specification. That is one port to one device. Now, string a chain of them out.

USB hubs look to be a problem. Not all hubs manage power as claimed. I went from 7 port hubs to 4 because the last few items in the chain didn’t have enough power to initialize. Marginal power can cause anyone in the chain to loose power if the neighbor needs more to boot or operate.

AstroBerry and INDI are not responsible for all hubs. LSUSB is a friend. Udevadm is the other friend. But neither can help a power issue.

I sympathise with your general points here, and there are always potential issues with power distribution. But it seemed such a black/white switch from the old OS and software/hardware to the new OS with same software and hardware but USB problems. There are some threads elsewhere on Indilib forum starting to talk of similar problems arising subsequent to last week’s linux kernel upgrade - and it may well be quite deep in the system. I’m not a linux expert, I want to do astronomy not programming, and happily I’m back to running the Astroberry 2.0.2 from May 2020 with all the USB elements operating properly.

Has anyone actually heard from Radek in the last month?

I've not seen any activity from him since the end of June, I suppose he might be away on holiday or something?

He just finished his holidays. He will be planning upgrades end of July / beginning of August.