[Discuss-gnuradio] Follow up: Failure to build GNU Radio on various Ubuntu builds

[Mark]

I managed to resolve a problem with the install.

 

Commands, find_usrp_devices and uhd_usrp_probe failed to get my B100 to respond with the model and daughter board and FPGA information. Yet at other times it would work, albeit very briefly.

 

Whilst trying to keep this follow up mail brief, the problem was caused by the USB lead I was using. Although a new lead and just 2m in length, it must be unable to handle the bus communications between the USRP and my PC. However, for the past few months it’s been fine when using my B100 on Windows 8.1 when casually running SDR# or HDSDR.

 

Whilst working in Ubuntu, when I ran the lsusb command, the USRP was listed. This was puzzling, for me anyway, as beyond that the USRP would not function or rather I could not get it to intermittently communicate with my PC, as mentioned above.

 

Whilst switching back to my Windows partition, I checked the USB lead with known working applications in Windows 10; HDSDR and SDR#, since by this time I felt my USRP B100 may have been faulty. My USRP wouldn’t work in those applications either, though it had previously worked perfectly well on the same now suspect USB lead. The commands, find_usrp_devices and uhd_usrp_probe on a Windows platform (from Command line) wouldn’t  work with the suspect faulty cable attached (the command, uhd_usrp_probe,being particularly problematic in returning runtime errors).

 

Again, without going into more tests and irregular driver responses in Windows 10, with the UHD driver throwing up errors, I changed the USB cable with another cable in desperation and the whole system came alive and has remained so over the past day or so.

 

I swapped the cable with a 1.5m filtered USB cable I’ve owned for years and this confirmed the problem. I swapped it back again, to the suspect cable, and the irregular functions reoccurred. However, the suspect USB lead works fine with any other equipment I have such as printer and an USB  expansion port. I wasn’t using an expansion USB device when these errors were occurring BTW, just the suspect one USB lead between the PC and the USRP B100.

 

All it is left for me to do is now go back to my Ubuntu partition and try to reinstall GNURadio again on a fresh install of Ubuntu (as I have done so many times this past week trying to get it to work) and hopefully get some more positive results.

 

I will start with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64 bit as that was the last known Ubuntu distro that worked two years ago when running many successful installs of GNURadio on my other PC’s and laptop. This includes successfully installing GNURadio on Windows 7 at the time. However, in terms of Ubuntu, I will again use Marcus’s excellent build-gnuradio script, as I did two years ago and work on from there. I’m hoping Marcus’s script will fetch the required dependencies and build to a successful outcome this time around again.

 

Else, if you can advise on any other approach to installing GNURadio, on more recent Ubuntu distro’s, so that it will also reliably work with my B100 USRP, I should be grateful again for your help. I really want to learn and work with GNURadio so that I can better understand its function since with various academic commitments I have had so little time over the past couple of years and more since investing in the Ettus USRP concept back in 2012.

 

Again, your patient help is very much appreciated.

 

Mark