SDR (Software Defined Radio) » gr-gsm

h1. Installation

There are many ways to install *gr-gsm*:

* [[Installation#Manual-compilation-and-installation|Manual compilation and installation]]

* [[Installation#Installation-from-packages-on-Debian-Testing-and-Ubuntu-1804|Installation from distribution's packages]]

* [[Installation#Compilation-and-installation-with-use-of-Pybombs|Compilation and installation with use of Pybombs]]

h1. Manual compilation and installation

Currently manual method of installation is considered to be the easiest way to get newest version of *gr-gsm* up and running. The *gr-gsm* repository contains automatic tests of manual installation in form of "dockerfiles":https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/tree/development/tests/dockerfiles that are built and executed by "Travis CI":https://travis-ci.org/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/builds continuous integration service. Travis CI informs if particular revision of *gr-gsm* builds and passes tests on a set of GNU/Linux distributions. History of the results can be checked on "the *gr-gsm*'s Travis CI page":https://travis-ci.org/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/builds.

The instructions presented here are a version of dockerfiles:https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/tree/development/tests/dockerfiles with stripped instructions specific to docker and without running unit tests. This wiki might at some moment be behind installation procedures contained in the dockerfiles:https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/tree/development/tests/dockerfiles so in case of installation problems it is a good idea to look in there.

h2. Debbian-based distributions (Debian Testing, Ubuntu 16.04+, Kali Rolling Edition) 

Install all needed prerequisites with following command:

<pre>

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y \

    cmake \

    autoconf \

    libtool \

    pkg-config \

    build-essential \

    python-docutils \

    libcppunit-dev \

    swig \

    doxygen \

    liblog4cpp5-dev \

    python-scipy \

    gnuradio-dev \

    gr-osmosdr \

    libosmocore-dev

</pre>

Currently on Debian Testing and Kali Rolling execution of following command is needed:

<pre> sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvolk.so.1.3.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvolk.so.1.3 </pre>

It is a workaround due to an "issue":https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/pull/378#issuecomment-379587145 with faulty libvolk installation on these systems at the moment.

<pre>

git clone https://git.osmocom.org/gr-gsm

cd gr-gsm

mkdir build

cd build

cmake ..

mkdir $HOME/.grc_gnuradio/ $HOME/.gnuradio/

make

sudo make install

sudo ldconfig

</pre>

To speedup compilation instead of "make" you can use parallel build <pre>make -j $nproc</pre> where "$nproc" is number of CPU cores. The "mkdir $HOME/.grc_gnuradio/ $HOME/.gnuradio/" line is there because without it parallel build sometimes fails.

h2. Fedora 26

Install all needed prerequisites with following command invoked with root's rights:

<pre>dnf install -y \

    gcc-c++ \

    make \

    cmake \

    pkgconfig \

    boost-devel \

    gnuradio-devel \

    libosmocore-devel \

    gr-osmosdr \

    swig \

    doxygen \

    python2-docutils \

    cppunit-devel

</pre>

Then download the *gr-gsm*'s source and build it with following commands:

<pre>

git clone https://git.osmocom.org/gr-gsm

cd gr-gsm

mkdir build

cd build

cmake ..

mkdir $HOME/.grc_gnuradio/ $HOME/.gnuradio/

make

</pre>

and as root:

<pre>

make install

ldconfig

</pre>

To speedup compilation instead of "make" you can use parallel build <pre>make -j $nproc</pre> where "$nproc" is number of CPU cores. The "mkdir $HOME/.grc_gnuradio/ $HOME/.gnuradio/" line is there because without it parallel build sometimes fails.

h1. Installation from packages on Debian Testing and Ubuntu 18.04+

Thanks to work of Petter Reinholdtsen *gr-gsm* has packages for Debian Testing that were subsequently included in Ubuntu starting from 18.04. On these systems *gr-gsm* can be installed by simply doing:

<pre>sudo apt-get install</pre>

As of *gr-gsm*'s version 0.41.2 grgsm_livemon application doesn't work because of change of PyQT version in current Debian Testing and Ubuntu 18.04. In order to use this program you can generate new version out of "grgsm_livemon.grc":

<pre>

wget http://git.osmocom.org/gr-gsm/plain/apps/grgsm_livemon.grc

grcc -d . grgsm_livemon.grc

mv grgsm_livemon.py grgsm_livemon

</pre>

Then move the grgsm_livemon file into a directory in the search path, i.e. /usr/local/bin.

h1. Compilation and installation with use of Pybombs

*Pybombs* is *GNU Radio* project's installation manager that installs *GNU Radio* and related projects, *gr-gsm* included. In times when distributions provided too old *GNU Radio*, *pybombs* offered the most straightforward way of installing *gr-gsm* as it automagically compiles newest *GNU Radio* and all other *gr-gsm*'s prerequisites. *Pybombs* is doing quite complex work of figuring out what too install from packages of distribution and what to compile. Failures to install *gr-gsm* with use of *pybombs* were quite widespread among *gr-gsm* users due to many reasons. Some of them (in addition to general issues of *gr-gsm* installation):

* head of *GNU Radio*'s master branch not compiling due to ongoing development,

* issues in *pybombs* resulting from intensive changes in the project,

* small set of distributions on which *pybombs* is regularly tested (i.e. never ending problems on Kali Linux that is distribution of choice for many of *gr-gsm*'s users due to some unknown reason).

For installation of pybombs you will need git. On Debian based distributions you can get it with:

<pre>

sudo apt-get install git python-pip

</pre>

Then install *pybombs* with following command:

<pre>

sudo pip install PyBOMBS

</pre>

Then configure installation prefix:

<pre>

pybombs auto-config

pybombs recipes add-defaults

sudo pybombs prefix init /usr/local -a default_prx -R gnuradio-default

sudo pybombs config default_prefix default_prx

</pre>

**Then build and install *gr-gsm* with following command**:

<pre>

sudo pybombs install gr-gsm

</pre>

Pybombs will take care of downloading all of required libraries and for installation of *GNU Radio* and building *gr-gsm*.

It is required to have approximately 3.5GB of free space in /usr/local/src directory as everything will be built in there. If there is no enough space you can configure pybombs to use other directory as installation prefix.

At this moment many operating systems might not know where to look for new libgrgsm library. In order to update cache of links to new libraries run:

<pre>

sudo ldconfig

</pre>