Ubuntu is another popular version of Linux. Based on Debian Linux, Ubuntu aims to make a nice user friendly experience operating linux. It is nice to work with, but it does have some important differences from RedHat / Fedora / CentOS and SuSE. One of the challenges that Ubuntu users have are the longer development and release cycles of software, thus there are times that if you opt to build your own packages, you can use software that may be several versions ahead of what is in the common software repository.
When you install Ubuntu, you are not given any development environment by default, nor do you assign a root user. These things may be easily overcome.
Your author (KC0ARF) has used Ubuntu here and there, but my preference lies in other distributions. Yes, I would rather have Ubuntu over Windows, but this installation is more involved than the others.
Internet Resources
I used the following locations to help get Ubuntu and Xastir working quickly:
http://www.xastir.org/wiki/index.php/HowTo:Ubuntu/Debian
http://www.xastir.org/wiki/index.php/HowTo:Ubuntu_8.10
Installing the Binary package
The first thing I did was install the Binary packge. Following the first link above, I performed these steps:
* Opened the System --> Administration --> Synapic Package Manager, and enabled Universe and source
* Opened a terminal session by choosing Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal
* Inside the window, performed these steps:
---> sudo bash
---> apt-get install build-essential ssh curl xastir
---> watched a bunch of things install, and the system reported that everything was installed successfully.
I then opened a new terminal window, and typed in xastir, and the program launched. Wow! Very Easy. I then closed xastir to install the map files, just like I did with the other Linux installations.
After the installation, I went and got the following files. Note that with Fedora 10, the directory is /usr/share/xastir instead of the /usr/local/share that we are used to seeing when building by hand.
mkdir /install/xastir
cd /install/xastir
wget http://www.wx9grb.org/xastir/downloads/usr-local-share-xastir-Counties.tar.gz
wget http://www.wx9grb.org/xastir/downloads/usr-local-share-xastir-maps.tar.gz
I then performed the following as root:
cd /usr/share/xastir/Counties
cp /install/xastir/usr-local-share-xastir-Counties.tar.gz .
tar -xvzf *.gz
rm *.gz
cd /usr/share/xastir/maps
cp /install/xastir/usr-local-share-xastir-maps.tar.gz .
tar -xvzf *.gz
rm *.gz
to make the maps available before starting Xastir. I had to change the link inside the maps directory by removing the untarr'd Counties file, and then performing a ln -s /usr/share/xastir/Counties Counties so that the path would resolve properly.
Finally I
cd /usr/share
chown -R <username>.<username> xastir
This will set the file permissions properly if you spell out the username that you are going to run the software with.
After this, I used the hints in the Legacy / Configure section to complete the installation. Note that if you do not want to set it up for VNC services, you can skip the first section, and begin with Connect and Configure.
I then went back to the terminal window, and typed in xastir, and it all loaded properly for me. But, I was not seeing any RADAR information. I moved the Xastir window out of the way, and found that in my terminal session, I was getting an error that libcurl or wget was not installed. After about 20 minutes of research, I found that something was broken inside of the publically available version of Xastir that we installed that prevented the graphics from showing up. In order to fix, we had to build by hand.
Building Xaster from Source
Because I installed the binary packages, I had a lot of the needed nuggets on hand so I did not need to re-build them. I was going to try and merge the nuggets from the binary process with a new build of the program code, and minimize the extra work. Yup, I cheated.
Looking at http://www.xastir.org/wiki/index.php/HowTo:Ubuntu_8.10 I followed these instructions, shamelessly copied from that website, but modified in order:
First launch the Synaptic package manager and click the Reload button to ensure you are in sync with the latest content in the repositories. In all cases when you search and mark packages for installation as instructed below, accept any prompts to install additional packages as dependencies.
* Get the basic set of build tools:
build-essential
* Get the libraries essential for building xastir:
cvs autoconf automake xorg-dev libmotif-dev imagemagick gv libxp-dev
note: I saw an xserver package, not an xorg-dev and I selected that instead.
* Get additional libraries that will help for extra features:
gpsman gpsmanshp proj libpcre3-dev libmagick9-dev libdb4.7-dev
python-dev libax25-dev shapelib libshp-dev
Search for each package listed above, mark it for installation, and click Apply to install.
Once everything was done installing, I
* Opened a terminal session by choosing Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal
* Inside the window, performed these steps:
---> sudo bash
---> mkdir /install
---> mkdir /install/xastir
---> cd /install/xastir
---> wget http://www.wx9grb.org/xastir/downloads/xastir-1.9.4.tar.gz
---> tar -xvzf xastir-1.9.4.tar.gz
---> cd xastir-1.9.4
---> ./configure
I then watched the configure script run it's motions, and saw that the main options I was interested in were all enabled with YES marked after them. Key ones to look for are: GraphicsMagick, pcre, dbfawk, and internet map retrival. I purposly did not install festival.
I then typed in make followed by make install
Now, all of the materials installed by the binary application (the first step) were located in /usr/share/xastir and all of the materials generated by the source build went into /usr/local/share/xastir. I also found that the binary placed the executable file inside of /usr/bin and that would need to go.
I did the following inside our favorite terminal window:
---> rm /usr/bin/xastir
---> cp /usr/local/bin/xastir /usr/bin/xastir
I then went to a non-root terminal window, and typed in xastir, and the less-capable, but what I wanted, version loaded. RADAR displayed, and life was good.