170 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
170 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
# TeraHz build guide
|
|
This document describes the process of building/installing TeraHz from the Git
|
|
repository.
|
|
|
|
## Warning
|
|
The recommended way of getting TeraHz is the official Raspberry Pi SD card image
|
|
provided under the releases tab in the GitHub repository. Installing TeraHz from
|
|
source is a time consuming and painful process, even more so if you don't know
|
|
what you're doing, and whatever you end up building __will not be officially
|
|
supported__ (unless you're a core developer).
|
|
|
|
With this warning out of the way, let's begin.
|
|
|
|
## Getting the latest sources
|
|
The most reliable way to get working source code is by cloning the official
|
|
GitHub repository and checking out the `development-stable` tag. This tag marks
|
|
the latest confirmed working commit. Building from the master branch is somewhat
|
|
risky, and building from development branches is straight up stupid if you're
|
|
not a developer.
|
|
|
|
Make sure that the repository is cloned into `/home/pi/TeraHz`, as Lighttpd
|
|
expects to find frontend files inside this directory.
|
|
|
|
After cloning and checking out, check the documentation for module dependencies
|
|
and the required version of python in the `docs/dependencies.md` file.
|
|
|
|
## Installing Python
|
|
This step depends a lot on the platform you're using. TeraHz was developed with
|
|
Raspberry Pi and Raspbian in mind. If you're familiar with Raspbian enough,
|
|
you'll know that the latest version of Python available is `3.5`, which is too
|
|
obsolete to run TeraHz and the required modules consistently. This leaves us
|
|
with compiling Python from source. __This step is guaranteed to be slow,
|
|
overnight compiling with something like tmux is recommended.__
|
|
|
|
### Pre-requirements
|
|
Installing python without most C libraries will lead to a rather minimalistic
|
|
Python install, missing a lot of important modules. To prevent this, update
|
|
the system packages. After that, reboot.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
sudo apt update
|
|
sudo apt full-upgrade
|
|
sudo reboot
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Install the required build tools, libraries and their headers.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
sudo apt-get install build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev \
|
|
libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev \
|
|
libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
### Compiling
|
|
Compiling Python from source is, in fact pretty easy, just time-consuming. To combat
|
|
that, using tmux to detach and later reattach the session is advised.
|
|
|
|
Python is packaged in many forms, but you'll be using the most basic
|
|
of them all: a gzipped tarball. Download and decompress it, then cd into its
|
|
directory.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.8/Python-3.6.8.tgz
|
|
tar -xzf Python-3.6.8.tgz
|
|
cd Python-3.6.8
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Python's build process is pretty classic, a `.configure` script and a Makefile.
|
|
Using the `-j` option with Make can reduce the compile time significantly. Go
|
|
with as many threads as you have cores: `-j 4` works great on the Pi 3 B/B+.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
./configure
|
|
make -j4
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
When the compilation ends, install your freshly built version of python.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
sudo make altinstall
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
"Altinstall" means that the new version of Python will be installed beside the
|
|
existing version, and all related commands will use the full naming scheme:
|
|
think `python3.6` or `pip3.6` instead of the shorter `python3` or `pip3`.
|
|
|
|
### Modules
|
|
Another painfully slow part is the installation of all the required modules
|
|
needed by TeraHz. Luckily, `pip3.6` takes care of the entire installation
|
|
process. As before, using tmux is advised.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
pip3.6 install smbus pyserial flask pandas
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Raspi-config
|
|
For some law-obeying reason, Raspbian locks down the Wi-Fi interface card until
|
|
the Wi-Fi country is set. This means that we will need to set it manually through
|
|
the `raspi-config` program. It requires superuser privileges.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
sudo raspi-config
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
|
|
Configure the network hostname to something specific. If setting up multiple
|
|
TeraHz machines, make their hostnames unique so you can tell them apart.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enable SSH and I2C interfaces.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Expand the root filesystem along the entire SD card.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Set the Wi-Fi country to the country you'll be using TeraHz in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Save and reboot to enable Wi-Fi
|
|
|
|
## Installing packages
|
|
In addition to what's already installed, TeraHz requires the following daemons
|
|
to run:
|
|
- Lighttpd - Frontend HTTP server
|
|
- Dnsmasq - DNS and DHCP server, used to redirect the `terahz.site` domain
|
|
- Hostapd - Wi-Fi access point
|
|
|
|
They are available from the Raspbian repository. Install it via `apt`.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
apt install hostapd dnsmasq hostapd
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Configuring daemons
|
|
By default, the daemons we installed are disabled and start only manually. To
|
|
change that, enable them through systemctl. Hostapd conflicts with
|
|
wpa_supplicant, the solution is to disable wpa_supplicant (this will break your
|
|
wireless connections, so use wired ethernet).
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
sudo systemctl unmask hostapd
|
|
sudo systemctl stop wpa_supplicant
|
|
sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant
|
|
sudo systemctl enable dnsmasq hostapd lighttpd
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Copying configuration files
|
|
To simplify the process of configuring Raspbian to run TeraHz, sample
|
|
configuration file are provided in the `etcs` subdirectory of the Git
|
|
repository.
|
|
|
|
These files have been verified to work, but it's not a brilliant idea to just
|
|
copy them into your `/etc` directory. Use them carefully and more as a template
|
|
for your own configuration rather than as a _de facto_ way of configuring
|
|
TeraHz.
|