Argyll Installation on Linux

# Installing the software on Linux with X11

You will need to unpack the downloaded file in the location you have chosen to hold the executable files. Typically this might be in /usr/local/, or perhaps $HOME/bin/. You would then unpack the files using tar -zxf archivename.tgz, which will create a directory Argyll_VX.X.X, where X.X.X is the version number, and the executables will be in Argyll_VX.X.X/bin You will also have to configure your $PATH environment variable to give access to the executables from your command line environment. The .tgz file also contains several useful reference files (such as scanner chart recognition templates, sample illumination spectrum etc.) in the ref sub-directory, as well as all the current HTML documentation in a doc sub-directory. You may want to copy things to more standard locations such as /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/argyll/bin etc., depending on the conventions used on your system.
Some systems (Fedora ?) seem to be missing normal X11 libraries like libXss.so, so you may have to install libXScrnSaver, i.e. "sudo dnf install libXScrnSaver".
Note on the system bell:
When reading strips using the Eye-One Pro or ColorMunki instrument, the system bell is used to indicate when the instrument the ready to be used, and to provide feedback on any problems. On some Linux installations the system bell may be disabled. As well as checking the terminal and GUI sound preferences, you may have to enable the used of the PC speaker driver, which can be done by adding the command /sbin/modprobe pcspkr to the /etc/rc.local startup script. You may also have to run xset b 100 1000 100 in your local setup, if you are running in an X11 environment. You can check that the system bell is operating by doing an "echo ^G", where ^G is ctrl-G.
Note on X11 multi-monitor setups:
When working with a multi-monitor X11 configuration, note that you will only be able to individually calibrate monitors if the multi-window extension you are using (if any), supports access to the individual screen Video LUT tables that are used for calibration. The native X11 multi-screen addressing supports this, as does the Xinerama extension, and XRandR V1.2.
The proprietary NVidia TwinView and ATI MergeFB extensions do not currently support access to the individual screen Video LUTs, so calibration of each screen independently is impossible if either of these extensions are running. You can switch to using Xinerama to solve this problem, or you can try doing a calibration for the screens that do have accessible Video LUTs with these proprietary extensions, or ignore calibration and rely purely on display profiling. Use the dispwin tool to figure out what works on your system. The NVidia ATI binary drivers do not seem to properly support XRandR V1.2 either, even though they claim to do so. You may have to set the ARGYLL_IGNORE_XRANDR1_2 environment variable if the XRandR V1.2 extension is faulty.
If these limitations trouble you, then as a valuable customer of NVidia or AMD/ATI, perhaps you should contact them and urge them to fix the problems with Video LUT access in their proprietary multi-monitor extensions and XRandR implementation, bringing their support for multi-monitors on X11 up to the same standards as other operating systems. Ask them to add full and correct support for the XRandR V1.2 extension.
Fixing access to Video LUTs:
Some users have noted that their default X11 installation doesn't properly enable access to the video card Video Lookup Tables (RAMDAC). The Video LUTs are used for display calibration purposes, and a warning will be issues by the dispcal and dispread tools if there is a problem with this. Without access to the VideoLUTs, you won't be able to use display calibration.
The problem may be because certain X11 extensions aren't being loaded by default. You may want to check that you have
Load "extmod"
in the appropriate (or any) section of your Xorg.conf file, to allow the XF86Video LUT extensions to function correctly.
Another source of problems is if the display isn't configured with a suitable visual. Typically for high quality color you need to be using at least 24 bits per pixel (8 Bits for each of Red, Green and Blue channels), but more importantly the number of entries in the the VideoLUTs needs to match the depth of the screen. So if the VideoLUTs have 256 entries per channel, then the screen must be using 8 bits per channel to match. Or 64 entries and 6 bits. Or 4096 entries and 12 bits, etc. Running "dispwin -D" may give some clues as to what the nature of the problem is. You might have to look into your xorg.conf or XRANDR setup, or on some distributions there will be some configuration program that will let you choose the display configuration (ie. YaST or SaX2 on openSUSE, etc.).
Setting up instrument access:
By default most Linux based systems make devices inaccessible to user mode programs, so it is necessary to make some modification to your permissions so that Argyll tools are able to access the Color Measurement Instruments. In order from newest to oldest, the following sub-systems may need to be configured to permit this:
No device configuration needed when running from the console:
Mandriva 2008.0 default installation

##### USB instruments access using udev:

Ubuntu 10.04
Fedora Core 8
Mandriva 2008.1
OpenSuSE 10.3
Ubuntu 7.1
Kubuntu 7.1
Debian 4.0

##### USB instruments access using hotplug:

Red Hat 4.0
Fedora Core 4
Fedora Core 3
Fedora Core 2

##### Serial instrument access:

All
NOTE: That mtp-probe / libmtp been known to interfere with device access, particularly the Spyder 3 and DTP94. Recent versions of the libmtp should ignore any instrument marked as COLOR_MEASUREMENT_DEVICE by the /etc/udev/rules.d/55-Argyll.rules file, but for older systems you probably need to disable libmtp (look in the udev configuration).
The JETI specbos 1211, 1201, 1511, 1501 and the Klien K10A makes use of the FTDI Virtual COM Port Drivers (VCP), that should come with any recent version of Linux. Older versions of Linux may not support the FTDI FT231XS chip that the JETI specbos 1511, 1501 use. You may have to add yourself to the tty, uucp or dialout group to have permission to open the instrument.

##### No device configuration needed:

A few systems have in place a security configuration such that anyone logging in at the console of a machine has access to all the local devices.

##### USB instruments access using udev with existing /etc/udev/rules.d or /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules file.

Recent Fedora based systems include Gnome Color Manager, which comes with a udev rule for color instruments. You can check this by looking for the /etc/udev/rules.d or in /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules file. If this exists and is up to date enough to include the instrument you want to use, then all you have to do is add yourself to the colord group, ie:
sudo usermod -a -G colord $USER
If the 69-cd-sensors.rules file is out of date and does not include the latest instruments supported by Argyll, then the simplest thing to do is to replace the 69-cd-sensors.rules file with the usb/55-Argyll.rules. You will need to do this as root, and set the owner as root, group root, permissions 644. You may need to re-plug in your instrument to get changes to the udev rules recognised.

##### USB instruments access using udev, with no existing /etc/udev/rules.d or /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules file.

Most recent systems use udev to manage device names and permissions, but by default color instruments may not be accessible to normal system users.
To solve this a udev rule file needs to be added that modifies the group and permission of any Color Measurement Instruments, and you may then need to add yourself to that group.
First check whether other rules are in /etc/udev/rules.d or in /usr/lib/udev/rules.d, and use the appropriate directory.
(You may also want to check in that directory whether 55-Argyll.rules or some other .rules file that is setup to enable color instruments already exists in that directory.)
Copy the file usb/55-Argyll.rules from the binary or source distribution into /etc/udev/rules.d/55-Argyll.rules or /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/55-Argyll.rules (as appropriate) with owner root, group root, permissions 644.
If you are on an older system that uses a udev that doesn't recognize the syntax used in 55-Argyll.rules, or that doesn't have rules to create the libusb /dev/bus/usb/00X/00Y device entries, you should install the usb/45-Argyll.rules file instead - See below.
On recent systems the new rules file will be notices as soon as you plug the instrument in again.
On older systems you may need to run /sbin/udevtrigger, /sbin/udevcontrol reload_rules or /sbin/udevstart or reboot to get the new file noticed.
(You may want to refer to this document for more guidance on modifying udev rules, as well as this.)
YOU THEN MAY NEED TO:
If your system is not using the ACL to manage device access for console users (the file /var/run/ConsoleKit/database doesn't exist on your system), then you will need to add yourself to the colord group, if you are not already a member of it. You can do this either by using a "Users and Groups" system administration tool, or on the command line running as root:
sudo usermod -a -G colord $USER
or
su root
usermod -a -G colord $USER
(If the usermod program isn't found as root, it might be in /usr/sbin, ie. use /usr/sbin/usermod .... etc.
If usermod doesn't recognize the -a flag try "usermod -A colord $USER".
If this doesn't work you will have to run "id yourusername" to list the current supplemental
groups, and add them plus colord using just "usermod -G group1,group2,... yourusername")
You may find that the colord group doesn't exist on your system, and if so you will need to create it:
sudo groupadd -r colord
and then add yourself to the colord group.
You may have to log out and then in again for the groups to become effective.
You can check whether the instrument is being recognized and set to the colord group by comparing the output of ls -l -R /dev/bus/usb without and then with the instrument plugged in.
You can test whether your instrument is accessible by plugging it in and then running "spotread -?" and looking for it listed after the -c option.

##### USB instruments access using hotplug:

Under much older versions of Linux, you should look into the hotplug system configuration for USB devices. You know you are running this because the /etc/hotplug directory exists on your system.
Assuming we want to configure for all Argyll supported USB instruments, copy the file usb/Argyll.usermap from the binary or source distribution into /etc/hotplug/usb/Argyll.usermap with owner root, group root, permissions 644.
(For even older versions, append the lines above to /etc/hotplug/usb.usermap, and you may have to run update-usb.usermap)
Then copy the file usb/Argyll from the binary or source distribution into /etc/hotplug/usb/Argyll with owner root, group root, permissions 744.
YOU THEN NEED TO:
You will then need to add yourself to the colord group, if you are not already a member of it. You can do this either by using a "Users and Groups" system administration tool, or on the command line running as root:
sudo usermod -a -G colord $USER
or
su root
usermod -a -G colord $USER
(If the usermod program isn't found as root, it might be in /usr/sbin, ie. use /usr/sbin/usermod .... etc.
If usermod doesn't recognize the -a flag try "usermod -A colord $USER".
If this doesn't work you will have to run "id yourusername" to list the current suplemental
groups, and add colord using just "usermod -G group1,group2,... yourusername"
Another option may be to use gpasswd -a $USER colord))
You may find that the colord group doesn't exist on your system, and if so you will need to create it:
sudo groupadd -r colord
and then add yourself to the colord group.
You may have to log out and then in again for the groups to become effective.
You can test whether your instrument is accessible by plugging it in and then running "spotread -?" and looking for it listed after the -c option.

##### Serial instruments access:

If you have a serial instrument then you may find that by default you don't have permission to access the serial ports or a Serial to USB adapter. Most systems make the serial ports available to any user in the tty, uucp or dialout group, so the best way of getting access to the serial ports is to add yourself to the correct group. (You can identify the correct group by looking at the group name shown by ls -l /dev/ttyS* )
You can add yourself to a group either by using a "Users and Groups" system administration tool, or on the command line using "usermod":
su root
usermod -a -G dialout $USER
or
sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
(If the usermod program isn't found as root, it might be in /usr/sbin, ie. use /usr/sbin/usermod .... etc.
If usermod doesn't recognize the -a flag try "usermod -A dialout $USER".
If this doesn't work you will have to run "id yourusername" to list the current suplemental
groups, and add a tty, uucp or dialout group using just "usermod -G group1,group2,... yourusername"
Another option may be to use gpasswd -a $USER dialout)
You may have to log out and then in again, or even re-boot your system for the group to become effective.