I cannot get flirc installed on my linux machine

[Tes]

I have read and read and read and I am getting frustrated now. I am new to linux, so please bear that in mind, but I have followed one thread after another trying to install this damn thing and it's one roadblock after another.

First and foremost, the repo DOES NOT EXIST!

http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x64 is not there. Yet ALL of the instuctionals I can find tell you to get your stuff from there. The i386 version is there, but I can't use that one. Won't let me.

I have also tried to go to a folder which IS there, under http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x86_64/ however, there is no binary folder. I downloaded the tar.gz file and tried to do it locally but all i get are errors there as well.

I am running zorinOS (ubuntu based distro) and all other debian things I have had to do have worked. My issue is that this repo that everyone likes to point to doesn't exist. At all.

There were some different (finally) instructions on the flirc page that I just found this morning. So I thhought, aha! I got you now! .... Yeah, no. More roadblocks! I am met with the following, on the instructions page...

 Needed Dependencies: libhidapi-hidraw0 libqt5core5a libqt5network5 libqt5xml5  libqt5xmlpatterns5  libhid qt5-qtbase qt5-qtsvg hidapi
     cp the 99-flirc.rules rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/
     optionally copy flirc_util and flirc to /usr/local/bin/

So it says to copy the 99-flirc.rules to the rules.d directory. Notice it doesn't tell you where to get them...

It also mentions that I need to get all these dependencies. Again... Notice it doesn't tell you where to get them.

There are countless other threads I have seen in my search with people having the same problem as me and there is just never a solution! I get that we need to learn things, which I am most happy to do. But for pity sake, can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong here and help me get this damn thing working??

[stevealon]

On 5/1/2022 at 6:16 PM, Tes said:

I have read and read and read and I am getting frustrated now. I am new to linux, so please bear that in mind, but I have followed one thread after another trying to install this damn thing and it's one roadblock after another.

First and foremost, the repo DOES NOT EXIST!

http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x64 is not there. Yet ALL of the instuctionals I can find tell you to get your stuff from there. The i386 version is there, but I can't use that one. Won't let me.

I have also tried to go to a folder which IS there, under http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x86_64/ however, there is no binary folder. I downloaded the tar.gz file and tried to do it locally but all i get are errors there as well.

I am running zorinOS (ubuntu based distro) and all other debian things I have had to do have worked. My issue is that this repo that everyone likes to point to doesn't exist. At all.

There were some different (finally) instructions on the flirc page that I just found this morning. So I thhought, aha! I got you now! .... Yeah, no. More roadblocks! I am met with the following, on the instructions page...

 Needed Dependencies: libhidapi-hidraw0 libqt5core5a libqt5network5 libqt5xml5  libqt5xmlpatterns5  libhid qt5-qtbase qt5-qtsvg hidapi
     cp the 99-flirc.rules rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/
     optionally copy flirc_util and flirc to /usr/local/bin/

So it says to copy the 99-flirc.rules to the rules.d directory. Notice it doesn't tell you where to get them...

It also mentions that I need to get all these dependencies. Again... Notice it doesn't tell you where to get them.

There are countless other threads I have seen in my search with people having the same problem as me and there is just never a solution! I get that we need to learn things, which I am most happy to do. But for pity sake, can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong here and help me get this damn thing working??

I'm also curious to know how I can accomplish this while wearing Wilbur Soot attire.

Edited September 23, 2022 by stevealon

[Apoksiomen]

You are doing everything right but this piece of sh** is not working.

 

Despite all the wrong info on the site I have managed to run shell start up script.... but Flirc is still disconnected.

Device is not recognized from Flirc or flirc_util.

So don`t bother with Flirc I have lost 4h on setting it up and I have nothing to show.

And I am not linux noob....

Also as there is no user support from Flirc and real interest for linux OS support.

As I see it this is dead project, last update was in early  2020-02-03   http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x86_64/

This guy just don`t care and is ripping of people on old "glory" brand.

[Esin8785]

Follow this page this is how I did it

 

https://support.flirc.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203633465-Installing-Flirc-GUI-on-Linux-Debian-

 

 

[Tes]

On 12/24/2022 at 12:37 AM, Esin8785 said:

Follow this page this is how I did it

 

https://support.flirc.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203633465-Installing-Flirc-GUI-on-Linux-Debian-

 

 

Thank you! I will try this today

[Tes]

So it turns out I've already tried this. Once again the problem is that the directory doesn't exist. When I put in what it says, and I add that to the sources.list file, I do apt get update and in the lines it says for the one I just added, which I copy and pasted, "404 not found"

 

On 12/24/2022 at 12:37 AM, Esin8785 said:

Follow this page this is how I did it

 

https://support.flirc.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203633465-Installing-Flirc-GUI-on-Linux-Debian-

 

 

 

 

[Nathan]

20 hours ago, Tes said:

So it turns out I've already tried this. Once again the problem is that the directory doesn't exist. When I put in what it says, and I add that to the sources.list file, I do apt get update and in the lines it says for the one I just added, which I copy and pasted, "404 not found"

 

 

 

Quick question, are you running a Debian based system? If so, have you followed the instructions coming from the flirc.tv download page?

https://flirc.com/ubuntu-software-installation-guide

That link comes from the Flirc's download section on it's page: https://flirc.tv/products/flirc-usb-receiver?variant=43513067569384#spec2

[Tes]

Yes, I am running a Debian based system. ZorinOS distro, Ubuntu based which to my knowledge is a Debian fork. Following the instructions was the very first thing I tried.

when I follow the instructions I see this...

Screenshot from 2023-02-26 11-09-01.xcf

 

Sorry for the attachment. Not sure how to embed images just yet. 

It just sucks because this stupid little plastic dongle is the one and only factor keeping me from completely loving Linux. And it's not even Linux's fault!

 

You know what this POS needs? A flatpak installer!! Oh, wouldn't that just be glorious???

 

***edit*** OK! so, here's an interesting development. Apparently it IS in fact working. Just out of plain old habit when I started Kodi, I instinctively grabbed my remote and started to arrow up and down to look at what's on.  Umm... it worked. lol
On my Sofabaton, it was set to my "Windows" option (as apposed to my Fireplace, Nvidia Shield, TV, and other selections in the remote's internal menu), since I've not yet set anything up for running it on Linux. But it worked. So now, the only thing I have left to do is to get the UI up and running for it. Any help there is appreciated very much!

 

And can I please say, one last time, that it would be so much easier and better for everyone if the dev would just make sure that the x64 binaries are in the provided link! I mean, seriously! Just click on the 2 links provided in Esin's reply above (linked here: " https://support.flirc.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203633465-Installing-Flirc-GUI-on-Linux-Debian- " ) and the 32bit link takes you to the repo where the x86 binaries are, but the x64 link brings up a 404 message because it isn't there. To me its simple. MAKE IT BE THERE!!!

Edited March 5 by Tes

[pierce.jason]

On 2/26/2023 at 10:16 AM, Tes said:

so, here's an interesting development. Apparently it IS in fact working.

What did you do differently to have success? Or was it just a matter of ignoring the errors thrown during installation?

[Tes]

deleted

Edited March 5 by Tes

[Tes]

8 minutes ago, pierce.jason said:

What did you do differently to have success? Or was it just a matter of ignoring the errors thrown during installation?

Honestly, nothing. And as stated, I still have no way to configure the functions as there is no interface yet. The remote just happens to work. As I said, it's just the configuration I made in windows, months ago. If I hadn't previously configured for windows use, it would not currently be functional.

I'm really no further along on the Linux end as yet.  I'm sure it would help a bit if I even knew what I was doing, but at this point, it is what it is... which isn't much. I'm at such a loss and I just don't know what to say.

[BigDave]

I've got it working on MX-Linux-KDE version, but I had to symlink libreadline.so.6 to libreadline.so.8 in order to use the command line flirc_utils. MX is directly Debian based (not via Ubuntu).

[Tes]

4 minutes ago, BigDave said:

I've got it working on MX-Linux-KDE version, but I had to symlink libreadline.so.6 to libreadline.so.8 in order to use the command line flirc_utils. MX is directly Debian based (not via Ubuntu).

So if you don't mind me asking, can you tell me what commands I should use to try this?

[BigDave]

1 minute ago, Tes said:

So if you don't mind me asking, can you tell me what commands I should use to try this?

I just found the page you tried to work from, which mentioned repositories. Wow. Glad that's not the one I found else I'd still be struggling with it.

I found a different page which gave the following command line you have to put in, in a terminal to install Flirc:

 

curl apt.flirc.tv/install.sh | sudo bash 

After that, you should check whether your distro has libreadline.so.6 available. This is because whoever programmed flirc_util marked it to require libreadline.so.6 "only" instead of "or later". If it's not there, in my case in the folder /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu but your distro may be different. What I had to do, was to go to the folder:

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ (or wherever you find libreadline.so.<number> Assuming it's 8 ... )

sudo ln -sf libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.6

This worked on MX Linux. I'm actually struggling to get it to work on PCLinuxOS at the moment.

[Tes]

1 hour ago, BigDave said:

I just found the page you tried to work from, which mentioned repositories. Wow. Glad that's not the one I found else I'd still be struggling with it.

I found a different page which gave the following command line you have to put in, in a terminal to install Flirc:

 

curl apt.flirc.tv/install.sh | sudo bash 

After that, you should check whether your distro has libreadline.so.6 available. This is because whoever programmed flirc_util marked it to require libreadline.so.6 "only" instead of "or later". If it's not there, in my case in the folder /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu but your distro may be different. What I had to do, was to go to the folder:

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ (or wherever you find libreadline.so.<number> Assuming it's 8 ... )

sudo ln -sf libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.6

This worked on MX Linux. I'm actually struggling to get it to work on PCLinuxOS at the moment.

Ok, yeah. I did see those instructions as well. That's going back a little bit for me, but I believe I ran into a different error altogether with that one. I use Zoran OS which is Ubuntu based. I can't remember if it was the curl command itself or something else. But for your effort, I will definitely try it when I get home from work so I can let you know what it tells me. Maybe you can help me with that when I post it. I'm glad you were able to get something of it working on your and. Hopefully I'm not far behind you either. There are a couple of functions on the remote that still aren't working for me. Like, stop. I can play a video but I can't stop it. Little things like that. So I would very much like to get the flirc utility working so I can remap the buttons to work properly lol

I'll update after work today. Thanks!

Edited April 28 by Tes

[BigDave]

I'm finding the software side of things a little sloppy. In the archive for non-Debian users, there are only two files: Flirc and flirc_util. The reason that the flirc wasn't detected on my other partition running PCLinuxOS is that they forgot to include the Udev Rules file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-flirc.rules. That had been installed by the curl command, so I copied the file from my MXLinux installation to my PCLinuxOS installation and now it's all working!

It's a great invention but they need to keep the software up to date!

 

[Tes]

15 minutes ago, BigDave said:

I'm finding the software side of things a little sloppy. In the archive for non-Debian users, there are only two files: Flirc and flirc_util. The reason that the flirc wasn't detected on my other partition running PCLinuxOS is that they forgot to include the Udev Rules file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-flirc.rules. That had been installed by the curl command, so I copied the file from my MXLinux installation to my PCLinuxOS installation and now it's all working!

It's a great invention but they need to keep the software up to date!

 

I agree completely. You know what would solve this for a lot of Linux users? If someone would just upload a flat pack version of this! Or set it up so that we can just type in to the terminal,

sudo apt install flirc

Done!

[Tes]

On 4/28/2023 at 7:53 AM, BigDave said:

I just found the page you tried to work from, which mentioned repositories. Wow. Glad that's not the one I found else I'd still be struggling with it.

I found a different page which gave the following command line you have to put in, in a terminal to install Flirc:

 

curl apt.flirc.tv/install.sh | sudo bash 

After that, you should check whether your distro has libreadline.so.6 available. This is because whoever programmed flirc_util marked it to require libreadline.so.6 "only" instead of "or later". If it's not there, in my case in the folder /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu but your distro may be different. What I had to do, was to go to the folder:

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ (or wherever you find libreadline.so.<number> Assuming it's 8 ... )

sudo ln -sf libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.6

This worked on MX Linux. I'm actually struggling to get it to work on PCLinuxOS at the moment.

so I got this when I used the 'curl' script...

 

[BigDave]

If you can install the executable files from the archive, you should be able to get it to work if you can install the "rules" file. In my case it's in /etc/udev/rules.d and it's 99-flirc.rules

This is the file contents:

 

# Flirc Devices

# Bootloader
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0000", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0002", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0005", MODE="0666"

# Flirc Application
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0004", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0006", MODE="0666"
 

 

Hope this helps. You might need to reboot after adding the above file.

Edited April 30 by BigDave

[Tes]

37 minutes ago, BigDave said:

If you can install the executable files from the archive, you should be able to get it to work if you can install the "rules" file. In my case it's in /etc/udev/rules.d and it's 99-flirc.rules

This is the file contents:

 

# Flirc Devices

# Bootloader
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0000", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0002", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0005", MODE="0666"

# Flirc Application
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTR{idProduct}=="0004", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="20a0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0006", MODE="0666"
 

 

Hope this helps. You might need to reboot after adding the above file.

Hi again. Ok, so I created a 99-flirc.rules file and added the content you provided. I sudo copied it to /etc/udev/rules.d.

I then copied the files that I have (flirc and flirc_util) to /home/.local/bin.              That didn't work so I also copied them to /usr/local/bin. Still nothing though.

I am clearly missing something as there is still no gui or configuration method available.  What do I do next?

 

I should add that this is about as far as I'd gotten before I had to format my drive too. So whatever comes next will be further along than I have managed before I gave up last time.

Edited April 30 by Tes

[BigDave]

I'm assuming that you ran Flirc (capital F) and flirc_util (small F) from the command line? This may give an indication of missing dependencies.

Without a .desktop file, Flirc won't appear in your menus. Without the rules file, Flirc will run, but won't find your flirc and will report that it's disconnected.

I had another problem when I installed it on MX Linux, where you can use the "curl" command. It complained that libreadline.so.6 was not present. You'd have to check a number of folders, starting from /lib, /usr/lib or /usr/lib64 (there could be others in your distro, or further subfolders). I found libreadline.so.8, and made a symlink to libreadline.so.6 — this worked for me.

Other than that, I have no idea whatsoever. 

[Tes]

3 hours ago, BigDave said:

I'm assuming that you ran Flirc (capital F) and flirc_util (small F) from the command line? This may give an indication of missing dependencies.

Without a .desktop file, Flirc won't appear in your menus. Without the rules file, Flirc will run, but won't find your flirc and will report that it's disconnected.

I had another problem when I installed it on MX Linux, where you can use the "curl" command. It complained that libreadline.so.6 was not present. You'd have to check a number of folders, starting from /lib, /usr/lib or /usr/lib64 (there could be others in your distro, or further subfolders). I found libreadline.so.8, and made a symlink to libreadline.so.6 — this worked for me.

Other than that, I have no idea whatsoever. 

Thank you for that.

Running them in terminal I get this...

And then you can see I was unable to install them. If you can point me to the right direction, I sure would appreciate it!

I'll start searching other folders in the meantime, but I do recall the instructions implying you'd have to download them...

[BigDave]

I've installed it in two distros.

PCLinuxOS: It's in their repositories, but the rules file I mentioned above isn't there. So you'll have to add it physically as above.

MX Linux: This will install from the "curl" command mentioned above, but you'll have to locate libreadline.so.8 and create a symlink to libreadline.so.6 — I just found it again, it's in /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

As your distro is Ubuntu-based, I don't see why the curl command won't work, but Ubuntu has moved away from Debian so maybe that's why. If you're new to Linux, the two I mentioned are easy for beginners. I could never get on with Ubuntu and gave it up as a bad job years ago. Never could understand the fuss, apart from the fact that the distro was headed by someone with a huge amount of money who could buy publicity. But believe me, MX and PCLOS are good!

[Thore]

Sorry for a (maybe) dumb question. Is the installation the same if you have LibreELEC on your PC? Best regards Thore from Sweden