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ROS and Orocos are both capable of running realtime priority threads. What Realtime patch is the preferred method for realtime under Ubuntu?
Userspace support for RTAI and Xenomai are both available in repos, but there does not seem to be corresponding kernels available. I would prefer to use a prebuilt kernel if possible to simplify repeatability.
That depends on the real-time requirements of your system: both response times and ability to tolerate occasional lapses.
Vanilla Linux kernels provide good real-time performance these days. Unless your system requires very low response times or very hard guarantees, I recommend sticking with the stock kernel until measurements reveal a need for something more.
If hard real-time is needed, the simplest Ubuntu upgrade path is probably to install the linux-rt kernel, with Ingo Molnar's real time preemption patch.
In either case, you probably need to set some PAM variables in /etc/security/limits to grant non-root users permission to create SCHED_FIFO threads.
The PR2 kernel uses a linux-rt kernel, version 2.6.31-10-rt. We have patched it to resolve a iptables problem. We have noticed occasional kernel panics when running on the PR2, but this is the best RT kernel we have found.
You can download the kernel, with headers, from the PR2 repo: http://packages.ros.org/pr2/ubuntu/
A related package in the same repo, "pr2-grant", has a set capability program to allow non-root users to run realtime programs.
pr2-grant ./my_realtime_prog arg1 arg2 ...
Outside the PR2, these packages are completely unsupported, but you may find them useful.
Asked: 2011-03-20 17:40:12 -0500
Seen: 4,051 times
Last updated: Mar 21 '11
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