Running GNU Radio in a VirtualBox is generally not a good idea. It just isn't going to work very well. You're also going to have USB issues trying to read the high speed sample rates from the RTL device. Expect the worst, hope for the best applies here.
Ask ten different people on which Linux distro to use, you'll likely get ten different answers. Most current Debian based distros will work. I use Mint 16 myself, Ubuntu will work too.
Forget the SpenchWiki instructions. Those are way out of date and they're based on the older GNU Radio v3.6 API. The current OP25 project requires the v3.7 API. Also, the required install method for GNU Radio is via the
PyBOMBS install script. You can't install OP25 without it.
The absolute bare minimum install steps are as follows:
Install the OS(assuming Ubuntu or Mint), then open a terminal session and
Code:
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get update
Reboot if it asks, otherwise type the following:
Code:
cd ~/
git clone git://github.com/pybombs/pybombs
cd pybombs
./pybombs install gnuradio
This will ask for some basic config parameters, but you can just enter through them and take the defaults. Based on your machine, this can take a few hours. Don't try to install GNU Radio with less then 4 gigs of ram, it might fail hours into the process. Once the install process is complete, type the following:
This command creates a shell script that sets up the environment variables needed by GNU Radio and is required.You only need to do this once. It should spit out the path to this script when it completes. The output will look similar to this:
Code:
source /home/<user>/target/setup_env.sh
That shell script will need to be executed each time you open a new terminal session. You can add this command to your
~/.bashrc script so it gets executed every time you open a terminal session. Edit the
~/.bashrc file with a text editor and add the following on the very last line, save and close.
Code:
source ~/target/setup_env.sh
You can now install OP25 and all the prerequisites needed including RTL support by typing the following:
Code:
cd ~/pybombs
./pybombs install gr-op25
Not sure if this is required after a fresh install, but it wouldn't hurt to run the following command after OP25 finishes:
This just reloads libraries and loads new ones with the system.
That is all you need to do... If all goes well and everything is installed I'll answer any questions you have on running OP25. One last thing, don't expect any GRC support for OP25 because there isn't any. I've been running it since the beginning of the year on a local LSM system with perfect decoding. It's amazing! :wink: