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Installation Steps

I've opted to use an Ubuntu LXC on my PM to implement the server. Here are the steps I took to get it installed and running

My LXC has the following specifications - set yours up how you want:

2 CPUs
 2GB RAM
 512MB SWAP
 128GB Boot Disk
 Ubuntu 24.04

Installation

The install guide from the Github is easy to follow, you should check it out here:
https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder/wiki/Installation

I had to make some corrections to the installation, as some things simply wouldn't install (packages it calls for). That said, omitting them didn't seem to cause any problems building or running it. 

  1. Install TrunkRecorder Pre-Recs via the following commands (your mileage may vary!) 
    1. apt install -y gr-osmosdr osmo-sdr libosmosdr0 libosmosdr-dev libuhd4.1.0 libuhd-dev gnuradio-dev libgnuradio-uhd3.10.1 libgnuradio-osmosdr0.2.0 git gcc cpp cmake make build-essential libboost-all-dev  libusb-dev fdkaac sox openssl libssl-dev curl libcurl4 libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config liborc-0.4-dev
    2. If you have some issues, I found after installing the above, running these (yes some are duplicated) helps: 
      apt install -y gnuradio-dev libhackrf-dev libuhd-dev libboost-all-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libssl-dev libsndfile1-dev
  2. Build it with the following (I did this from~)
    1. git clone https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder.git ~/trunk-recorder/
    2. cd ~/trunk-recorder
    3. mkdir build
    4. cd build
    5. cmake ..
    6. make -j `nproc`

PPM Correction Value Finding

Since this is an LXC and not a VM, I don't have a GUI to work with. Why does this matter? RTL-SDR tuning. In the config files, you can specify the PPM correction value for your dongles. Normally, one would use GQRX or some other software to get this value. Maybe you already know it? At any rate, I did not as these were new to me, so I needed to find the correction values. 

There is a neat program that will allow you to run tests and provide the presumptive value. I say presumptive because I've noticed with using these devices that the value drifts over time and use (heat, running time, etc.). Anyhow, I used rtl-test which can be installed and run from the CLI: apt install rtl_test. With that installed, simply execute rtl_test -p and it will start running. Let it go for about 5-10 minutes. Once you are satisfied with consistent values, stop the test, and update your config.json files accordingly. It should get you close enough.

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