Using a RALF workstation¶

RALF stations are available at ISAE-Supaero, they are provided with GNU/Linux Debian Wheezy or Xubuntu 14.04. This documentation is a short getting started guide in order to start working with RALF.

Login, home and network shares¶

You must login using your ISAE-Supaero account after choosing your graphical environment (GNOME Shell, GNOME Classic, Xfce). At your first login, once the access is granted by the LDAP server, a home directory is automatically created locally in subdirectories of /home.

Notice that networks shares are not available through NFS due to delegated administration of the computers. However, it remains possible to use network shares through SAMBA (use for example Gigolo).

Setting up the proxy¶

In a GNU/Linux shell, the ISAE's proxy can be configured mainly through http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables.

export http_proxy=http://host:port
export https_proxy=http://host:port

notice. The fields host and port are not released publicly, do not hesitate to ask to the professor in charge.

In a Firefox web browser, go to "Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Autodetect proxy".

Getting privileges¶

Users can obtain advanced permissions by belonging to appropriate groups:

• for realtime scheduling (in order to execute UHD), users should be member of usrp group;
• for administrator rights (through sudo), users should be member of sudo group.

For the cases above, adding an user to a group can be performed thanks to the following instruction (as root):

adduser <user> <group>

Driving USRP hardware¶

warning. Beware of the transmission power !

• Start transmitting only if 50 ohm termination is used (antenna, dummy load, loopback interface...).
• If you are using a loopback interface, do not forget to connect a 30 dB attenuator.
• Respect the regulation.

You can start by analyzing examples given by UHD and GNURadio in the following directories:

/usr/local/lib/uhd/examples/
/usr/local/share/gnuradio/examples/