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About to Install Kstars/Ekos on a NUC with dual boot Win/Linux. Any advice from those who have done this?

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Hi all.

I have just bought a NUC 8i5 that I will setup as a dual boot windows/linux machine. I'm planning on using Kstars/Ekos as a local AP control rig when in Linux.
This is my first time doing it with a NUC (used a RPI4 in the past with stellarmate)

Anything specific I need to know? Anything I wish you knew before doing this?
Things like what is the best version of Ubuntu to install to play nice with Kstars/Ekos, will Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS be the one?
Is it as straight forward as installing Kstars from the software centre? Will all the indi drivers be installed along side Kstars with this method?
When dual booting, I will get a dual boot splash screen to select Ubuntu or windows.. Can I set it up to auto boot to linux? Since I will be remoting into the NUC using NO Machine and I don't really want to go out, plug a keyboard into the NUC to just press entre to get to linux everytime..

Thanks for your advice in advance! 
Last edit: 2 years 5 months ago by Steeve Body.
2 years 5 months ago #76431

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I recently switched over to a NUC and am very happy with it:
indilib.org/forum/general/10446-nuc10-vs-rpi4b-ssd.html#76042

I did not dual boot, but just installed Ubuntu 20.04.3 and it's running very well, and all the indi drivers related to my equipment seem to work fine.

There's a BIOS setting you want to use which makes it boot on power-on (without having to go outside and hit the 'on' switch). You definitely want that ;)
www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/...el-nuc-mini-pcs.html

Also, I needed a dummy HDMI plug to get the NoMachine networking to work without a monitor connected.

The main thing I didn't get working was copy/paste to my Mac laptop. Not sure why.

Other than that, just the standard 'bringing up KStars on Linux', as far as I recall. Certainly post again if you have issues.

Hy
 
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2 years 5 months ago #76434

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Thanks! Good one about the dummy HDMI, just ordered that... that would have been frustrating figuring this one out...!

I've been running on a RPI4  with SSD and I often get crashes when messing around in the fit viewer... I can see a cpu spike in the CPU manager... and boom Kstars crashes...

I can't wait to have Kstars working with all the bells and whistles like it does on a desktop.

I figured the boot options. There is a timeout period in the dual boot menu coming up when you have both windows and linux installed. The default is 30s... and the selected option will boot automatically. Here is a video showing you how to change to timeout value to something smaller: 


So I should be set!
2 years 5 months ago #76439

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Hi guys, I have just realised that the dummy HDMI is not needed. In bios of my NUC there is an option to emulate connected HDMI monitor. I have Intel NUC 7i5DNKE
Check this link: www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/...33413/intel-nuc.html
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2 years 3 months ago #78885

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If you have all the indi drivers already, you may not need windows a lot and the dual boot option is just fine.

Perhaps the following is interesting for you.

I have an ASUS PN50 with Linux (Ubuntu 20.04.xx LTS) single boot without display, but with Windows 10 in a virtualbox VM. Devices are connected through a powered USB3 hub on the telescope (Moravian C4, C1, Teleskop control), 10Micron Mount via TCP/IP. I can connect to Linux with ssh/nomachine and to Windows with RDP.

Of course, you could do it the other way around as well. Which one works better for you depends on your preferences.

Dual boot has the advantage, that both systems will perform well - but you have to attach a monitor and keyboard when you want to boot in the non-default system.

Installing Kstars/Ekos/Indi in Ubuntu is working quite well. You may have to set up additional repos, but it will install without conflicts.

This setup works fine, although the Windows VM does not perform well (virtualization is not fast enough for USB3). Nevertheless, it is good as a fallback and for testing. I was hoping to use ASCOM on the virtual windows machine and use those windows only devices through Alpaca in indi on the linux side, but this doesn't work, because Alpaca does only provide one way access (accessing indi devices from windows but not the other way).

Currently, I am only missing a driver for the telescope control system (focuser, heating, etc.). So I started writing an indi driver and I got it working within half a day. I will submit a PR once it is polished and properly documented.
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2 years 3 months ago #78887

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Hi,
Reguarding copy/paste from ubuntu 20.04.3 on the NUC via NoMachine to your Mac.  My experience is with a Unbuntu 20.04.3 on an Odroid to the Mac via NoMachine.  I find I have to include the finder as intermediate step when copying from the NoMachine window to an OS App. e.g. copy in NoMachine on the remote machine, click on the Finder in the task bar, then click in the task bar to my target OS X app. It seems (this might be superstition) that the Finder does the acquistion of the copy buffer from NoMachine more reliably than directly to another app.
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2 years 3 months ago #78889

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I have run Kstars/Ekos under ubuntu for years on a NUC-like mini PC, but mine's got an AMD CPU. Works great. I set it up dual boot with Win 10 as well, but I've never actually booted into Windows except when I was setting it up. Before this box I used several others.

Different motherboards have different options that control auto-power on (or not) and the use of a dummy HDMI plug (or not). YMMV. Some require a tiny hardware jumper to enable auto-power-on, and can't be done in BIOS. In my opinion this is 100% worth doing, even if you have to fiddle around to get it working.

To me the biggest advantage of using a mini-PC over the Pi is for lunar and planetary video capture. The Pi hardware is fine for DSO imaging in Ekos, but can't support high frame rate video encoding. I like imaging the moon in FireCapture. If I was just doing DSOs, I'd stick with a Pi.
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2 years 2 months ago #78899

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Hi all

Just an update to let you know that I have been using my NUC in dual boot no problem. Indeed you actually don't need am HDMI monitor emulator dongle... thanks for the tip @hades 

I'm running both Nina on Windows 10 and Kstars on Unbuntu 20.04.3 no problem.

I found that for remote control NoMachine works great on linux but not so great on Windows (a lot more lag for some reason). However I'm running Jump Desktop on Windows and it is just amazingly fast with no lag at all with 2k resolution... but you have to pay for it. I'm controlling all of it from my Mac desktop inside the house or my phone using the Jump Desktop App or the No machine App. I have installed Connectify on the NUC when on remote site to create a permanent wifi hotspot easily on boot and it all works great and most importantly it is all very reliable!


 
2 years 2 months ago #79222

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Having whet my appetite for Ekos/Kstars on a RPi4/Stellarmate, I'd like to get to know more about the INDI way of doing things.
I've been using NINA, Sharpcap etc on a MeLE Quieter2Q with a 128GB eMM drive using Win11. The drive has 83GB of free space. If I partition the drive in half, is this going to be enough to install Ubuntu/Ekos/Kstars/INDI server and run it stably?
1 year 11 months ago #82435

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Yes 64GB will be plenty of space. Clean install of Ubuntu takes around 9GB of space so Kstars/INDI and other stuff will puff that up to 10GB.
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1 year 11 months ago #82438

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Hi all,

I have just purchased a mini pc running Ubuntu only. I want to use it with my Astrophotography setup. So far for setting it up I understand I will need to install Kstars/Ekos and a way to Remote Desktop into it, and maybe something like PHD. Is there any instruction on how to setup a permanent hotspot for when I am out of my normal WiFi range?
Is there anything else besides the above that I will need to think about when setting things up?
1 year 10 months ago #82733

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Hi, there is a nice script made by Robert Lancaster: github.com/rlancaste/AstroPi3/blob/master/setupUbuntuSBC.sh
You can run it as it is or study its content, and run only those commands you are interested in.
1 year 10 months ago #82737

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