OLA on Linux

This describes how to get OLA working on a Linux system either from the git repo or by using a released tarball.

Checkout or Download an Archive

Either download a tarball from the releases page, or check out the git repo with the following command:

 git clone https://code.google.com/p/linux-lighting/ ola

If you don't have git yet, you'll need to install it with your distro's package manager.

Install libraries

You need a couple of libraries installed for everything to work correctly. Some of these are available as packages in distros but others need to be downloaded and built manually.

First up you'll need the following:

• cppunit
• uuid or ossp uuid
• pkg-config
• curses

Debian/Ubuntu users can install them with apt:

 apt-get install libcppunit-dev libcppunit-1.12-1 uuid-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev

If you're building from git you'll also need the following:

• libtool
• automake
• autoconf

 apt-get install libtool autoconf automake

Next, you need Protocol Buffers http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/ version 2.3.0 from Google (BSD license). Most likely, you'll need to download and build them yourself. Note that 2.4.0 won't work yet as some of the functionality has changed.

Debian (and Ubuntu) users can, in some cases, use the following packages (not yet in stable): libprotobuf2 (libprotobuf3), libprotobuf-dev, protobuf-compiler

As of Ubuntu 11.04 (in 10.04 they are too old), protocol buffer development packages can be installed with the following command:

 apt-get install libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler

Finally, if you want to use the built in webserver, you'll need microhttpd. Note: you'll need version >= 0.4.0 of microhttpd else you will get errors:

• ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libmicrohttpd/

Once everything is installed, run ldconfig as root to pick up the new libraries

 sudo  ldconfig

Run autoreconf

If this is the first time run with -i to install the missing files

autoreconf -i

Do the usual build steps

You can pass additional options to ./configure . Run

 ./configure --help

to see all options. The most popular option is --enable-python-libs to build the Python Client Module. If you want to use the RDM responder tests add --enable-rdm-tests.

Once you've decided on the options, it's time to build OLA. If you have a multi-core machine, you can speed up the build by using make -j N. A good value of N is the number of cores on your machine. On a MacBook Pro (4 core) using -j 4 reduced the build time from 5 minutes to 2.5 minutes.

./configure --enable-rdm-tests
make
make check
sudo make install

Finally run ldconfig so you can use the new libraries.

 sudo ldconfig

Device drivers

Note that, for some devices, it is necessary to install drivers for OLA to work with them. For example, the Open DMX USB device needs an additional kernel module that could be built using the instuctions on LLA_and_Q_Light_Controller_Ubuntu_Tutorial. For other devices, refer to the corresponding device page on this wiki.

Known Issues

If you get an error like the following:

/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC   --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I.   -I/opt/local/var/macports/software/protobuf-cpp/2.0.3_0/opt/local/include/  -g -O2 -c -o ltdl.lo ltdl.c
./libtool: line 464: CDPATH: command not found
/Users/simonn/lighting/lla/libltdl/libtool: line 464: CDPATH: command not found
/Users/simonn/lighting/lla/libltdl/libtool: line 1142: func_opt_split: command not found
libtool: Version mismatch error.  This is libtool 2.2.6, but the
libtool: definition of this LT_INIT comes from an older release.
libtool: You should recreate aclocal.m4 with macros from libtool 2.2.6
libtool: and run autoconf again.

Your system uses a different version of libtool. Run:

 libtoolize --ltdl -c -f

and then start from the autoreconf step again.

If you should get the following error try to fix it with one of two available solutions:

Rpc.pb.cc: In copy constructor 'ola::rpc::RpcMessage::RpcMessage(const ola::rpc::RpcMessage&)': 
Rpc.pb.cc:143: error: base class 'class google::protobuf::Message' should be explicitly initialized in the copy constructor 

You should be able to prevent this by editing ./src/Makefile.am, removing -Werror and then start from the autoreconfig step again.