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wxAstroCapture installation - Linux (.rpm)

Prepare for installation :

The Philips WebCam driver (PWC) is not pre-installed under SuSE. Therefore, install the pwc webcam driver from http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/RPMs/ (via Yast). Use the latest RPM listed for SUSE v9.2.


Linux - install .rpm file: To get wxAstroCapture up and running on SuSE 10.2 or 11.0 simply

Now that you have the program up and running, you may also want to consult the instructions for
enabling long exposures via parallel port.

See also Quickstart instructions.


Enabling LX control under SuSE Linux V11.0

The following applies only of your webcam is modified for long exposures:

To be able to run your webcam in long exposure (LX) mode (via the parallel port) as an ordinary user, is to add your user account to the group 'lp'.


Enabling LX control under SuSE Linux V10.2 and V10.3

LX control via the parallel port requires user access to /dev/parport0. Ubuntu creates /dev/parport0 with user access under group 'lp'. Recent versions of SuSE Linux do not create /dev/parport0. The following steps are required:

1. As root, go to Yast-System-/etc/sysconfig, then under System+Kernel+MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT, add 'ppdev'. On rebooting, /dev/parport0 will be available, but only with root permissions.

2. As root, edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules to add the line:

KERNEL=="parport*", NAME="%k", GROUP="lp"
This file contains a warning that changes will be overwritten if the system is updated, but ignore this.

On rebooting, any user with membership of group 'lp' will have access to /dev/parport0.

3. As root, check for user access to group 'lp' via Yast-Security and Users-User Management. If 'lp' isn't present for the user, select Edit-Details-Groups. Then check 'lp' and Accept. On restarting KDE (or Gnome), user access to /dev/parport0 will be allowed.

Note: Most recent versions of Linux use udev to dynamically create/manage device files, so any changes that are made manually (eg 'chgrp lp /dev/parport0') will be lost on shutdown/reboot.

-- Ken Hough, 11-Jan-2008 (thanks Ken!)