Testing Tango integration on a Windows host

Author:Vito Gentile

Change Record

3rd May, 2015 - Document created.

18rd Jun, 2015 - Fix typos.

Purpose

This document explains the procedure to test Tango-based software on Windows. The basic idea is to provide clear instructions to setup all the necessary components to test, on a single machine, if data sent on Tango bus can be read from other clients.

In order to test Tango integration, VirtualBox needs to be installed on the Windows machine. This allows to create a virtual machine with an installation of Ubuntu. In this way, a Tango server can be installed in the virtual machine, and will be possible to emulate Tango communications between Windows and other clients, by testing if data from Windows can be read also on Ubuntu.

Reference Documents

Version of Microsoft Windows

The following instructions are based and were tested on Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit. After having installed the operating system, setup all drivers needed to use the machine in the right way.

Furthermore, it is assumed that [1] has been read and used before of all.

Version of Ubuntu

The following instruction are based and were tested on Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu MATE 14.10.

If you would like to use any other Linux distribution, consider the possibility of unexpected installation errors.

Setup of an Ubuntu virtual machine on VirtualBox

Setting up a virtual machine on VirtualBox is quite easy, and doesn’t need further explanation.

After the Ubuntu installation, install the Guest Additions as follows:
  • Start the Ubuntu virtual machine

  • Click on the Devices menu and choose Install Guest Additions...

  • This mounts the VBox Guest Additions ISO image. Run this as root:

    # ./media/cdrom0/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

  • Shut down the virtual machine.

Then, after shutting down the virtual machine, go to Settings -> Network and select Bridged networking. This allows to assign an IP to the virtual machine (Ubuntu), that will be different from the IP of the host system (Windows).

Set a static local IP address for the virtual machine

Setting up a static IP address to the virtual machine can facilitate the communication between Windows client and the Tango server (that will be installed on Ubuntu).

To do this with Ubuntu in a semi-graphical way (preferred, due to automatic management of the Network Manager plugin), see: http://www.sudo-juice.com/how-to-a-set-static-ip-in-ubuntu/

It is also possible to configure a static IP manually. For more details, see: https://www.howtoforge.com/debian-static-ip-address

Installation of Tango on Ubuntu (guest)

The next step is to install Tango on the Ubuntu virtual machine. Please refer to the Tango setup page of this documentation.

Set environment variable on Windows

In the Instructions for setting up a MS Windows machine for running body tracking, you were asked to set up an address for the Tango server. What we will do here is to perform our tests with a simple Tango server installed in the virtual machine.

Assuming the the IP address of the virtual machine is 192.168.0.111, open a terminal on Windows and execute the following command:

set TANGO_HOST=192.168.0.111:10000

Perform tests

Now everything is ready for testing. You can publish your data on the Tango bus (from Windows), and then use jive from the virtual machine to see if your data have been correctly published.