Problems installing gqrx on Ubuntu 16.04 with HackRF One

[Dennis Wagner]

I'm new to Linux and GNURado but interested in learning both in the context of Ham Radio and initially the HackRF hardware.

So I was happy to discover the gqrx app.

1. For starters I ordered a Dell Laptop with Ubuntu 16.04 preloaded.
2. I then installed GNURadio using PyBombs following the directions in the Field Expedient SDR book (which gives great directions for Linux newbies like me).
3. I ran hackrf_info and got the famous I/O Error (-1000).
4. Did some google searches and discovered its a permission problem accessing the USB port.
5. Created a file called 52-hackrf.rules with the recommended command lines and saved it in /etc.udev/rules.d
6. Added the line "source ~/sdr/setup-env.sh" to the end of my .bashrc in my home directory
7. ran hackrf_info and everything looked good with the HackRF device
8. created a subdirectory called /sdr to store all my gnu-radio files
9. started gnuradio-companion
10. built the FM Receiver described in the HackRF video lession 1
11, worked great!
12, after a couple days playing around with gnuradio-companion I downloaded the ubuntu 16.04 version of the gqrx project from the gqrx website
13 the dreaded I/O Error (-1000) problem returned. Was able to boot gqrx but it could not see the hackrf hardware
14.got out of gqrx and tried to launch gnuradio-companion and got error message "input error: No module main"
15. tried launching using "sudo gnuradio-companion and that worked, but the layout of my blocks were all squished (overlaping)
16. tried uninstalling instructions on gqrx website and reinstalling PPA version. Same I/O error (-1000) when running hackrf_info and same error message when trying to launch gnuradio-companion.

It seems to me its a permissions issue for accessing the USB port.  Do I need to add some lines to the 52-hackrf.rules for gqrx?
Is gnuradio loaded in a different place by gqrx?

I searched the Google Group database and could not find a similar problem reported.

Any guidance for getting HackRF One working with gqrx and starting up gnuradio-companion apart from gqrx would be appreciated.

Dennis

[Jeff Long]

(15) is probably because of a change in screen resolution. More recent versions of GNU Radio handle this better.

Did the 52-hackrf.rules file get uninstalled or changed? If hackrf_info doesn't work, then the problem is before GQRX.

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[Simon Kennedy]

Hi Dennis,

Great description of you issue and problems. I think the solution to your problem is to uninstall gqrx that you installed from the PPA and install it from pybombs. 

If you search the archive of this mailing list you will find many emails where Alex says that gqrx cannot be installed side by side with gnuradio because gqrx installs gnuradio libraries so you then have two versions of the same library installed. If installed correctly your HackRF will work fine 'out of the box' with gqrx.

I used to run gnuradio and gqrx both installed from pybombs until I tried pybombs2 and everything fell apart. I plan to do a clean install of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS when it is released to solve this.

Regards

Simon.

[Dennis Wagner]

Simon, this makes sense to me as the cause of the problem I'm seeing.  I will unstall gqrx and at that point my original gnu-companion and hackrf should work again.  If so, then I will install gqrx with pybombs.  I'll keep you posted on the results.

Thanks for the help.
Dennis

[Dennis Wagner]

Jeff, thanks for the tip on screen resolution.  I will check that.  If Simon's suggestion works, the screen problem may go away as I will be back to using my original install of gnuradio.

I did check my 52-hackrf.rules file and it is still there, unchanged.

Dennis

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