Arch Linux

Eule

Member

Registered: 2015-07-22

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Getting RTL-SDR working with GNURadio and OsmoSDR

Hi,

I am trying to get the RTL-SDR working with GNURadio. The official packages don't seem to be working for me. I installed using:

sudo pacman -S gnuradio gnuradio-companion gnuradio-osmosdr

When I try to test this, however, I receive errors. I open up GNURadio Companion, and add an RTL-SDR block tied to a null sink block, as a test case. When I run this, I receive the following error:

AttributeError: module 'osmosdr' has no attribute 'source'

The same error occurs when I run the generated Python code from PyCharm. Looking at some other posts, I see that people have had a problems with Swig.

I have also tried installing gnuradio-git and gr-osmosdr-git from AUR, but without success. gnuradio-git appears to depend on a package, python-cheetah, which does not exist (though python2-cheetah and python-cheetah3 do exist).

Has anyone had any luck getting the RTL-SDR to work on Arch recently? How did you do it? Thank you.

Last edited by Eule (2020-02-11 06:55:11)

Eule

Member

Registered: 2015-07-22

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Getting RTL-SDR working with GNURadio and OsmoSDR

I realized that gr-osmosdr-git could depend on the official gnuradio package instead of gnuradio-git. I reinstalled gnuradio and gnuradio compainon from the official repos. I then attempted to reinstall gr-osmosdr-git from AUR. This package had a number of dependencies which needed to be installed, either form AUR, or from the official repos. These were:

• python2-cheetah (AUR)

• python2-markdown (official)

• python2-setuptools (official)

• libmirisdr-git (AUR)

• libosmosdr-git (AUR)

• airspy-git (AUR)

• libfreesrp (AUR): This is not listed as a dependency of gr-osmosdr-git, but makepkg complains about it when compiling if it is not installed.

When I had installed all dependencies and attempted to install gr-osmosdr-git, itself, I received the following error when running makepkg:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:179 (message):
  GnuRadio Runtime required to build gr-osmosdr

As mentioned elsewhere online, it appears that the current version of gr-osmosdr is not compatible with GNURadio 3.8. I will try to see if there is a workaround for this.

Last edited by Eule (2020-02-10 00:12:34)

Koatao

Member

Registered: 2018-08-30

Posts: 114

Re: [SOLVED] Getting RTL-SDR working with GNURadio and OsmoSDR

Hello,

I've had quite the same troubles a few weeks ago trying to make gnuradio work with a RTL-SDR. And got the same results as you (with official packages at first then AUR's ones).

Good news is: I've manage to make it work with official packages only at the end.

Bad news is: I don't remember how I did it.

I looked at pacman logs and this is the last thing I did:

pacman -Syu gnuradio
pacman -S rtl-sdr
pacman -S gnuradio-companion
pacman -S osmosdr

I don't know what else I could provide to help you, sorry!

Eule

Member

Registered: 2015-07-22

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Getting RTL-SDR working with GNURadio and OsmoSDR

Thanks for the suggestion! It seems you are right in that the RTL-SDR can be gotten working with only official packages.

After trying several unsuccessful things, I think I found the problem. I also had CubicSDR installed from cubicsdr-git, which has a dependency conflict with gnuradio-osmosdr. gnuradio-osmosdr depends on soapysdr (version 0.7.1-4), whereas cubicsdr-git depends on soapysdr-git (version 0.8). These packages are not compatible with each other, so I can have either gnuradio-osmosdr or cubicsdr-git working at one time. I had been using cubicsdr-git because cubicsdr would not compile and cubicsdr-git was the recommended solution. I will have to see if there is a different way of getting CubicSDR working, which is compatible with GNURadio and OsmoSDR.

Last edited by Eule (2020-02-11 06:36:43)

Eule

Member

Registered: 2015-07-22

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Getting RTL-SDR working with GNURadio and OsmoSDR

For anyone curious, CubicSDR can be built as a standalone executable by following the instruction here. Skip to the section called "Build CubicSDR," as the dependencies are already installed. This seems the best solution for getting CubicSDR and GNURadio working together with the RTL-SDR.

Marking this "Solved."