Operating System Tips - DevRaf-Per/hackrf GitHub Wiki

Here are some software setup tips for particular Operating Systems and Linux distributions.

Package managers

We highly recommend that, unless developing or testing new features of HackRF, most users use build systems or package management provided for their operating system.

Linux

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install gqrx-sdr

Fedora / Red Hat

sudo dnf install gnuradio gr-osmosdr hackrf gqrx -y

Gentoo Linux

emerge -a net-wireless/hackrf-tools
USE="hackrf" emerge -a net-wireless/gr-osmosdr

Arch Linux

pacman -S gnuradio gnuradio-osmosdr
pacman -S gnuradio-companion

OS X (10.5+)

MacPorts

sudo port install gr-osmosdr

Homebrew

brew install gr-osmosdr

Windows

Binaries are provided as part of the PothosSDR project, they can be downloaded here

FreeBSD

You can use the binary package: # pkg install hackrf

You can build and install from ports:

# cd /usr/ports/comms/hackrf
# make install

Building from source

Linux / OS X / *BSD

Preparing Your System

First of all, make sure that your system is up to date using your operating system provided update method.

Installing using PyBOMBS

The GNU Radio project has a build system that covers the core libraries, drivers for SDR hardware, and many out of tree modules. PyBOMBs will take care of installing dependencies for you.

Building HackRF tools from source

Acquire the source for the HackRF tools from either a release archive or git: git clone https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf.git

Once you have the source downloaded, the host tools can be built as follows:

cd hackrf/host
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

If you have HackRF hardware, you may need to update the firmware to match the host tools versions.

Windows

Prerequisites for Cygwin, MinGW, or Visual Studio

• cmake-2.8.12.1 or later from http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html
• libusbx-1.0.18 or later from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusbx/files/latest/download?source=files
• fftw-3.3.5 or later from http://www.fftw.org/install/windows.html
• Install Windows driver for HackRF hardware or use Zadig see http://sourceforge.net/projects/libwdi/files/zadig
  • If you want to use Zadig select HackRF USB device and just install/replace it with WinUSB driver.

Note for Windows build: You shall always execute hackrf-tools from Windows command shell and not from Cygwin or MinGW shell because on Cygwin/MinGW Ctrl+C is not managed correctly and especially for hackrf_transfer the Ctrl+C (abort) will not stop correctly and will corrupt the file.

For Visual Studio 2015 x64

Create library definition for MSVC to link to C:\fftw-3.3.5-dll64> lib /machine:x64 /def:libfftw3f-3.def

c:\hackrf\host\build> cmake ../ -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" \
-DLIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR=c:\libusb-1.0.21\libusb \
-DLIBUSB_LIBRARIES=c:\libusb-1.0.21\MS64\dll\lib\libusb-1.0.lib \
-DTHREADS_PTHREADS_INCLUDE_DIR=c:\pthreads-w32-2-9-1-release\Pre-built.2\include \
-DTHREADS_PTHREADS_WIN32_LIBRARY=c:\pthreads-w32-2-9-1-release\Pre-built.2\lib\x64\pthreadVC2.lib \
-DFFTW_INCLUDES=C:\fftw-3.3.5-dll64 \
-DFFTW_LIBRARIES=C:\fftw-3.3.5-dll64\libfftw3f-3.lib

CMake will produce a solution file named HackRF.sln and a series of project files which can be built with msbuild as follows: c:\hackrf\host\build> msbuild HackRF.sln

Cygwin

mkdir host/build
cd host/build
cmake ../ -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_LEGACY_CYGWIN_WIN32=1 -DLIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/local/include/libusb-1.0/
make
make install

MinGW

mkdir host/build
cd host/build
cmake ../ -G "MSYS Makefiles" -DLIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/local/include/libusb-1.0/
make
make install