Software FAQs

Can other operating systems besides Ubuntu be used?

We have only tested on Ubuntu which means it's the only operating system we currently officially support. Ubuntu is an ideal operating system as ROS is required to support it. Users are always welcome to try different operating systems and can share their patches with the community if they are successfully able to use them.

I’m having difficulty connecting to localhost:8888 (Dreamview).

The Dreamview web server is provided by the dreamview node(A node is an executable in ROS concept). Before accessing the Dreamview page, you need to build the system(including dreamview node) within the docker container following the guide. Once built, dreamview node will be started after the step bash scripts/bootstrap.sh.

So if you can not access Dreamview, please check:

Make sure you have dreamview process running correctly. In the latest version, bash scripts/bootstrap.sh will report dreamview: ERROR (spawn error) if dreamview fails to start. For early version, please check with command: supervisorctl status dreamview or ps aux | grep dreamview. If dreamview is not running, please refer to How to Debug a Dreamview Start Problem.
Make sure the address and port are not blocked by the firewall.
Make sure you're using :8888 instead of localhost:8888 if you are not accessing the Dreamview page through the host machine.

How can I perform step-by-step debugging?

The majority of bugs can be found through logging (using AERROR, AINFO, ADEBUG). If step-by-step debugging is needed, we recommend using gdb.

How do I run the Offline Perception Visualizer?

Refer to the How-To guide located here.

Here is a solution to solve this problem: Reboot ubuntu system, and press and hold 'shift' button and then enter grub menu. Choose a generic and bootable item(not boot loader with Apollo kernel) to boot up. Press 'Ctrl+Alt+F1' and install 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.39.run' according to the link. Reboot and start computer with the default boot loader with Apollo kernel.

Could I build Apollo on Ubuntu 18

We highly recommend that you use Ubuntu 14.04 to build Apollo.

Yes, you should be able to make Apollo work on Ubuntu 18. Just follow the document to install docker, then apollo.sh build and apollo.sh lint should work. But apollo.sh test might not, because the nvidia-drivers are generally miss-matched between HOST and Docker container, which will raise test failures.

How do I add a new module

Apollo currently functions as a single system, therefore before adding a module to it, understand that there would be a lot of additional work to be done to ensure that the module functions perfectly with the other modules of Apollo. Simply add your module to the modules/ folder. You can use modules/routing as an example, which is a relatively simple module. Write the BUILD files properly and apollo.sh will build your module automatically

Rosbag: not found - What now?

Should you see this error while building Apollo, please confirm the following:

Make sure you are running rosbag when you are inside docker (dev or release). We recommend using the dev docker container.
You are probably running it as root. If yes, you would need to add: source /apollo/scripts/apollo_base.sh (this script includes the ros environment setup procedure source /home/tmp/ros/setup.bash(for dev docker), or you can only source the ros env setup script as well). Usually, this could be avoid by running Apollo as a normal user, since it will be configured into .bashrc automatically.
Do not use sudo parameter, when executing dev_start.sh and dev_into.sh

More Software FAQs to follow.