[solved]Instaling GNURadio's LiveSDR environnement on hard drive

[Nazmo]

Hi,

I'm Nazmi, member of a Ham Radio Club and here we are trying to get started in SDR with GRC, a fellow member bought the USRP SDR Tx/Rx but we are having difficulties using it with GRC under linux (we also have limited knowledge on Linux systems (my Desktop has been under Debian Jessie for about a year, the others have Kubuntu on their laptops).

We are trying to get started working on GNU Radio Companion with the Ettus's USRP, we tried to install the drivers on a Kubuntu system with GRC installed, it did not work, eventually we found the working Ubuntu system (Live SDR) ISO published by GnuRadio, put on a usb thumb drive, it works with the USRP but it's so locked down, we can change the keyboard layout but because it's a Live Distro, we lose all the parameters at every reboot.

Do you have any ideas on how to use it with persistance/install it as a working system ?

Or should we try again to install the drivers and then GRC on a normal system (probably Kubuntu) ?

PS: I saw that there is already a topic on this forum about installing LiveSDR on a hard drive but I couldn't find enough answers in it (link: https://forums.hak5.org/index.php?/topic/32345-gnuradio-live-install-to-hard-drive/ ).

Edited August 6, 2016 by Nazmo

[bmark109]

Hi to all.

Had great success with these two debian ubuntu distros they have gqrx pre installed along with many other useful sdr software,Have a look ......Good luck!!!!!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/skywavelinux/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/files/

[Nazmo]

Thanks for your response

I looked at these solutions,

the first: skywave doesn't seem to have GRC installed, does it ?

The second has GRC, it says so in the release note on sourceforge, I'll install it on an usb thumb drive and saturday, at the next meeting, we'll test and see if the USRP works with it :)

But the question, will we be able to install it as a normal working system if it works ?

Or is it possible to install Gnuradio's LiveSDR on the hard drive and use it as a normal OS (especially modifying the keyboard layout) ?

Thanks in advance

[bmark109]

install Gnuradio's LiveSDR on the hard drive and use it as a normal OS.

Yes ........boot into windows plug flash drive in look for a file called "wubi-installer.exe"this will install to your hard drive .

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide

[Nazmo]

Thanks for your response

Wubi Insaller ?! I'll see with the fellow hams on saturday (I don't have any Bootable key with the LiveSDR distro).

that would be perfect, once we tried (I think the wrong way) by doing

dd LiveSDR's.ISO /hard/drive/partition/

it didn't work, I think it was because of GRUB not being configured properly, but we have no idea on how to do so.

also would that unlock the system (most importantly we need to be able to configure the keyboard and stuff like that).

Thanks in advance

[Nazmo]

Hi, we had a meeting yesterday so we tried: There is indeed a wubi installer on the drive but it doesn't work: the laptop reboots, then the menu comes up but it's like the debian menu with only one option: boot live sdr environnement, in the advanced tab, there is nothing. Do you have other infos, like a procedure on how to install the system on the hard drive (and configure grub to allow booting on it) and also how to unlock it. There is a last alternative: installing a new linux system and installing the drivers from the sources as showed on the Ettus Research website, we tried that in the first place but it never worked, maybe because of a lack of skill :p

Edit: Finally we are going to try the manual installation of the ettus uhd drivers and then GRC on a fresh install, probably next week, hoping that this time it will work

Edited March 28, 2016 by Nazmo

[Nazmo]

Well, it was a lack of skill, the people at the club managed to get it working eventually a few weeks ago on Debian Jessie Gnome by compiling the ettus drivers manually (it didn't work on ubuntu but I guess it's again the lack of skill in cause and not ubuntu...