9.1. Tips

9.1.1. Terminal

  • You might want to try terminator instead of the default Ubuntu terminal. To install it, sudo apt install terminator. In terminator, you can split your window vertically and horizontally as much as you want (https://gnome-terminator.readthedocs.io). You probably should change the scrolling setting to infinite (documentation).

  • Linux keeps a history of your commands. You can use the Up and Down arrows to go through your history and retrieve past commands. The command history will show you the full history.

  • Linux shell offers auto-completion. Hit the Tab key and, it will either complete your command or present options. This is extremely useful. For example, you can just type dvr followed by 2 Tab and you will see all the commands starting with dvr. Most applications provided along the dVRK start with dvr, qla or saw. Type any of these prefixes followed by Tab and, you’ll get lists of available commands.

  • Auto-completion works with ROS. For example, type ros2 followed by a space and Tab, the different options will be shown. If you type ros2 run dvr followed by Tab, all the ROS dVRK packages will be listed. After ros2 run dvrk_robot, Tab will list all the possible nodes in the dvrk_robot package.

  • If you are unsure about a command spelling, option or even a ROS topic, hit Tab. It will likely help.

  • Linux terminal uses shortcuts similar to Emacs. ctrl+a goes to beginning of line, ctrl+e goes to end of line, ctrl+arrow left/right goes from word to word, ctrl+k deletes all characters after your cursor.

  • ROS commands tend to mess the terminal. You can type reset in the terminal to reset to the default settings.

9.1.2. dVRK

  • Many cisst/SAW applications, including the dVRK ones, will create log files. You will quickly find many cisstLog.txt files in your working directories. If you are comfortable with the find command, you can do find . -name "cisstLog*.txt" -exec rm {} \' to find and delete them. This is not necessarily easy to remember so, we provide a small script to clean all the cisst log files as well as some backup files generated during the configuration and calibration steps. Go to the top directory you want to clean and type: dvrk-remove-logs.py.

  • When you run into issues with the dVRK, always scroll up to find the initial error message. The last message might just be the consequence of previous errors and doesn’t tell anything about the actual issue.

  • The log file, cisstLog-<date>.txt contains all the messages you can see in the dVRK GUI and in the terminal. It is better so send this file along but reports than sending screenshots. The log has a lot more information too, such as the full path of every configuration file used and their content.

  • When running a dVRK application, you might want to reset the terminal and clean the logs first. For example, use: reset; dvrk-remove-logs.py -f; ros2 run dvrk_robot dvrk_system -j <your_system.json>. This way, you can scroll up in the terminal to see the first messages displayed and the only cisstLog file will correspond to your last run.