Installing the kernel-source
Needed libraries
Installing the kernel drivers
Installing gCCD
Running the drivers

I had a little bit of trouble getting gCCD running on RH9 but with a little help from the author, David Schmenk, (thanks David!) I managed to get enough info together to get it running and put together this quick guide.

First of all there are a few things that must be installed. One of the most important is the linux kernel sources. The easiest way to install them (in Redhat) is thorugh the Add/Remove application found under System Tools in the Gnome or KDE menu. To add the kernel sources, scroll down to the Development section, check the Kernel Development checkbox and click on the Update button. You'll need root access for this (and other sections of the install) and you'll need your Redhat CDs.

Once the kernel sources are installed it is always a good idea to run the Redhat Network application (found under System Tools) to update the kernel souces (and any other software that might need it) we just installed from the CD. This may take a little while but it is very important to have the same version for the system kernel and the kernel sources. To make sure of this, at the command line as root, run the followng command:

This will cause RPM will list the packages installed on your system that refer to the kernel and kernel-source. The highest version of the kernel and the kernel-source should have the same version numbers.

Now we must create a symbolic link called linux to your kernel sources in the /usr/src/ directory. This is the link that the gCCD kernel drivers package looks for at compile time and is not created automatically. First we need to take a look at the directory name we are going to be linking to:

This will list the contents of the directory where the kernel source is installed. In my case the results (don't type in what is in the box!) were as follows:

Therefore, I have to create a symbolic link in the /usr/src/ directory called linux that points to, in my case at least, the directory linux-2.4.20-19.9. In other cases the kernel version number might be different and therefore you must edit the next command accordingly. To create the link, type in the following command (again, as root):

To test that your link is working simply try and change directory to the /usr/src/linux/ directory. If all went well running the command pwd should report you being located in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-19.9/ directory. If something went wrong, try running ls -l in the /usr/src/ directory to see where your linux link is really pointing. If it is pointing to the wrong place, you must first delete it before trying again.

The next step is installing prerequisite software needed by gCCD - namely the libraries gdk-pixbuf, gdk-pixbuf-devel, gnome-libs-devel. I have found that the easiest way to install these libraries is with another utility called apt-get available from http://apt.freshrpms.net. There are pre-compiled Redhat RPM packages available making installation very straight forward. Just download the RPM package for your system and double click on it to get the installer going. Once apt-get is installed, on the command line as root type the following command:

Apt-get will install the three needed libraries, automatically downloading the packages and sorting out any dependencies it encounters along the way. With this step done we can finally look at the gCCD packages themselves!

First we must compile the gCCD kernel drivers availabe in the package ccd_kernel-1.8.tgz. However, there are a a couple of things we need to edit in a file called makefile for the compilation of the drivers is to go smoothly. Unpack the compressed file to a directory of your choice and edit the makefile file with any text editor.

1) The 5th line of the file contains the text CC = gcc-2.95. I think this tells make what the command to run a compiler is as I get a "comand not found" error during the make process. My solution was simply to change this line to read CC = gcc.

2) Another problem I had was that the directory /sbin/ is not in the search path by default in Redhat. This is a problem in lines 53 to 62 where the commands insmod and modprobe are referneced. My quick and dirty solution was to add /sbin/ infront of each of these commands. You don't need this in front of the commented out commands - the lines that being with #. Also, don't forget to uncomment the lines for the cameras you want suport installed for - sx_usb, sx_parallel, qc, cookbook and audine.

After these two changes you can run make and make install as root to compile and install the modules.

Next unpack gccd-1.7.tar.gz to a directory of your choice. In my case I get a "error: cannot find input file: doc/C/Makefile.in" message when I run configure. Luckily, simply copying the contents of the /doc/c directory to /doc/C seems to fix the problem with no ill effects. After this change running configure, make and make install should work fine.

That is it! All we have to do now is load the drivers and plug in the StarlightXpress interface! The following example loads the drivers for the USB interface for an MX7C series camera - model=7 color=1:

Don't forget that you have to be root to run these commands! For an MX716, simply change the color=1 option to color=0. For more information on these settings, please check the readme files that came with gCCD. Don't forget that you'll have to run these commands every time you reboot your machine and want to run gCCD. Unfortunately, I'm not to up yet on the intricacies of the modules.conf file.

This covers pretty much everything I know about how to get this sweet piece of software to work. As soon as I know more about the modules.conf file and getting these puppies to load automatically I'll update this page. In the meantime, pleasee feel free to direct all questions, comments and criticisims to turtle@astroturtle.com.