XTRX PCIe SDR not working and cant be installed - please add live-support
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#55 XTRX PCIe SDR not working and cant be installed - please add live-support
Hello. Could you please add live iso support for the XTRX SDR? Its a highend PCIe TX/RX SDR and currently not supported in R32. It have a huge bandwidth and here you can see how it can show the whole 2.4Ghz WiFi band at once: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=gKufR9b-1ng
I installed DragonOS R32 to a local computer, ran system update, reboot the computer and then tried to install xtrx. This failed, because the package (xtrx-dkms) is not ok for such a recent linux kernel. You can see the issue i had here: https://github.com/myriadrf/xtrx_linux_pcie_drv/issues/16
And the fixes are also already there as a pull request: https://github.com/myriadrf/xtrx_linux_pcie_drv/pulls
Could you add all together with soapysdr xtrx modules and so on into DragonOS? It would be great to have a live image i could just boot and then everything just works. I think this is the basic idea behind this Linux Distro.
Hi and thank you for the feedback. I’ve not had this device but have thought about adding it. My one concern is the space I have remaining to make the iso. I will try to compile everything on my end tonight and see how things go. Perhaps worse case I can make deb packages out of everything and those could be pulled down even on the live image?
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On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 10:53 AM, jofewi <jofewi@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
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Tickets: #55
Thanks for the fast answer. Of course it would be great if it somehow would fit into the iso so i can offline boot a live iso and have the SDR directly working.
But yes, i have seen the PPA you have setup. It would also be great to have it there and to be able to install or update it from there when for example the next new linux kernel release break the functionality and again a Pull Request have to be merged into the package to make it working again.
If it dont fit into the iso i would have to carry two usb drives. One with DragonOS and a second one with the package files i would have to always install at every boot.
Running into a problem here. The latest HWE kernel for 22.04 is up to 6.5, something in the new ISO too. I pulled the branch for the 6.3 fix, but so far I'm not able to build it on the 6.5 kernel. Have you had success?
I did not know how to compile it. What i tried failed to build. Thats why i uninstalled the HWE kernel and use now the basic ubuntu 5.15 LTS kernel so that i could try out DragonOS in general.
SDRangel seem to be compiled without XTRX support. Could you add XTRX support to SDRangel? Should i write this in an other ticket to keep this ticket about the kernel driver in combination with live mode only?
Still looking into this, also trying to figure out where to check my DM on here. I think I got a message from you and now can't find it. Thank you for the feedback and recommendations, keep them coming.
The problem again for live support is going to be lack of space again I think. I can't fit both kernels and headers. Maybe I can continue to pursue 6.5 support by making a ticket over at the xtrx site?
Thanks for motivating me instead of demotivating like some other projects. Many project developer take bug reports personal and you can see this in the way they answer.
Happily this is not the case here and you seem to be happy when people try to contribute like they can to the project.
Yes, of course a fix upstream instead of adding a second kernel that have to be double maintained is the way to go. Thanks for even considering adding a second kernel.
I have already send at 06.02.2024 to info@myriadrf.org a email to merge the already existing pull-requests. On 07.02.2024 those commits appeared: https://github.com/myriadrf/xtrx_linux_pcie_drv/commits/master/
The developer also added build fix for kernel 6.4. Maybe 6.5 does not require a build fix. Have you tried the new code on your buildsystem since then?
My SDRangel note was about something to have to use for a waterfall diagram. I was hoping to be able to try out DragonOS with XTRX by switching to kernel 5.15. Sadly by downgrading the kernel i had a working SDR that was not usable with the tools i quickly tried like for example SDRangel.
Because when the kernel driver would work with a recent linux kernel, i still would be at the same point without SDRangel working because it seems like the support for the SDR have to be added at build time of SDRangel.
This is what I'm testing so far on the HWE 6.5 kernel that is stock in the new install of DragonOS FocalX R33.
Can you please try this and make sure you get to the point on your end where the xtrx is seen possibly in dmesg?
Last edit: Cemaxecuter 2024-02-14
Yes, this works on a fresh R33 installation. Thanks. I can see the card in dmesg like before on R32 with kernel 5.15 and also the compile of test_xtrx worked again on R33 where i have not downgreaded the kernel.
./test_xtrx -t -l2
Master: 32.000 MHz; RX rate: 4.000 MHz; TX rate: 0.000 MHz
RX tunned: 900000000.000000
RX bandwidth: 2000000.000000
RX LNA gain: 15.000000
RX PGA gain: 0.000000
RX TIA gain: 9.000000
RX CYCLES=1 SAMPLES=16384 SLICE=16384 (PARTS=1)
PROCESSED RX SLICE 0 /0: res 0 TS: 8192 4222 us DELTA 115 us LATE 2290 us 16384 samples
RX STAT Overruns:0
Success!
Processed 1 devs, each: RX 2 x 1.858 = 3.715 MSPS (WIRE: 14.860808) TX 2 x 0.000 = 0.000 MSPS (WIRE: 0.000000 MB/s)
I also found that someone already created a bug. I added the information that its now fixed upstream
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xtrx-dkms/+bug/2045039/comments/4
Now I need to see about building the soapy part, but I imagine you should be about to grab the source for soapy xtrx? Also need to see if I can build SDRAngel from source against the new module.
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On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 12:15 PM, jofewi <jofewi@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
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Tickets: #55
I tried two different things about soapySDR and could get a working version:
First:
sudo apt install soapysdr-module-xtrx xtrx-dkms- #the '-' at the end removes the dependency and this helped to install it.
Sadly it was not working. I was expecting it to work because this should not be bound that strong to the changed lines in the kernel module that made it working with kernel 6.5 . SopySDR was there. But not a single tool could show a waterfall diagram. I tried mainly gqrx and SparkSDR. They both find the hardware like SoapySDRUtil --find also did before.
I removed soapysdr-module-xtrx and run a autoremove and that removed all other dependencies.
Second:
I could then use mainly gqrx and tried out quickly sparksdr which also worked and showed a waterfall diagram.
Sorry I haven't followed up. For sure we will need to build the Soapy module from source, but I just tried and it seems out of date and fails at a few points of the make process. I tried to grab the source for the deb package for 22.04 so I could start there. I'll see if I can find something newer.
Is the images needed to go along with what we did before, right? Like do the images load the fpga on the xtrx and what we did before was just the libraries?
That's really cool gqrx and sparksdr worked.
I am not sure but if i understand correctly, the FPGA image is written inside some ROM part of the xtrx. Thats why if you reflash it and something does not work, you brick it and need special hardware tools to fix it again.
Lets see if the XTRX support could fit and work inside of the iso file of DragonOS R34 with rebuild SDRAngel to also add support for it there.
Last edit: jofewi 2024-02-28
Any updates about adding xtrx support to the live iso?
You know what, I need to pick up where we left off. If not in the live cd at least able to be installed via PPA. If I recall, I don’t think I currently have enough space to find in everything that’s needed beforehand without pulling out some existing stuff.
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On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 9:03 AM, jofewi <jofewi@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
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Tickets: #55
I have never left off(you used the word 'we', that is why i tell this). I was just waiting and checking every new DragonOS release since then for xtrx support. After some time and no xtrx support in the images, i decided to ask about any it.
To my understanding i would now again just have to continue waiting. If you want to be reminded on a schedule, then please tell me what time schedule i should add into my calendar so that i remind you on those days.
Last edit: jofewi 2024-08-28
We meaning when we spoke about this. I need to remind myself what challenges are keeping me from including it by default - possibly dkms or something else ending in to big of an add to continue to make the image distributed. I face a hard limit of about 4GB when compressed before I can no longer succeed in making the ISO.
I can’t justify removing other applications to include something by default that may not be used by a lot of people - not saying that’s the case, but I’m trying to maintain a fine balance.
What if instead of including it in the ISO, if in fact there’s a size limitation I may exceed in doing so, but maybe I have all necessary packages prebuilt on my PPA that would allow a simple apt get install xyz resulting in a working configuration?
Or does it absolutely need to be included right out of the box?
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On Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 9:45 AM, jofewi <jofewi@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
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Tickets: #55