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Robot user environment

Info

This guide applies to both iCub and ergoCub robots. Throughout this guide, references to icub should be replaced with your specific robot name:

  • For iCub: use icub
  • For ergoCub: use ergocub

The main user configured on all robot Setup machines is usually icub (SID: 1000 - GID 1000), however it can be changed with ergocub as stated above (the SID and GID are typically the same).

All the environment configurations required for this user are stored in a separate file that is loaded every time a bash session is started.

Note

If you installed your system starting from an image (eg. the iCubOS - Installation from image chapter, or equivalently the ergoCubOS - OS Installation), the steps below have already been added into the image.

Users and Passwords

The default user account is

Username : icub Password : icub

If you want to change the default password simply execute (this works only if you are using persistence)

passwd icub

NOTE: As in any Ubuntu installation, the root user has no password, this means that the direct login (i.e. ssh root@icub-head) is disabled, but you can always do

sudo su -

The bashrc

The user enviroment configurations (for bash sessions) are stored in the file

~/.bashrc_iCub

Online updated version

You can find the updated default .bashrc_iCub file online. There are two versions of the iCub environment file:

the above files must be renamed to .bashrc_iCub and saved in the user home directory, along with the .bashrc file.

How to setup the enviroment properly

To use the ~/.bashrc_iCub file to setup the environment, the following lines: 

if [[ $- == *i* ]] || [[ -n "$SSH_CLIENT" ]] || [[ -n "$SSH_TTY" ]]; then
  #Load the iCub custom bashrc
  if [ "$HOME" != "" ]; then
      ICUBRC_FILE="${HOME}/.bashrc_iCub"
  else
      ICUBRC_FILE="/home/icub/.bashrc_iCub"
  fi
  if [ -f "$ICUBRC_FILE" ]; then
      source $ICUBRC_FILE
  fi
fi
should be added at the beginning of file ~/.bashrc just BEFORE the following lines: 
# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
   *i*) ;;
     *) return;;
esac

The reason why the .bashrc_iCub needs to be added at the beginning of ~/.bashrc is that file must be loaded every time an interactive or ssh bash sessions are started. The lines of code after # If not running interactively, don't do anything make the ~/.bashrc file exit if executed in a non-interactive shell.

Required configuration

To customize the above user environment, you ought to manually make some changes:

  • The YARP_ROBOT_NAME - you must insert your robot name, in the following line and remove the leading "#" 
    #export YARP_ROBOT_NAME=

Groups

Add the user icub to the following groups

  • video
  • audio
  • tty
  • dialout
  • i2c
  • bluetooth

use the next command to perform that action 

usermod -a -G video,audio,tty,dialout,i2c,bluetooth icub