Manual installation

Requirements

You should have a reasonably new kernel (3.2+), with the logitech-djreceiver driver enabled and loaded (kernel module hid-logitech-dj) or Linux 3.19+ (kernel module hid-logitech-hidpp); also, the udev package must be installed and the daemon running. If you have a modern Linux distribution (2011+), you’re most likely good to go.

The command-line application (bin/solaar-cli) requires Python 2.7.3 or 3.2+ (either version should work), and the python-pyudev/python3-pyudev package.

The GUI application (bin/solaar) also requires Gtk3, and its GObject Introspection bindings. The Debian/Ubuntu package names are python-gi/python3-gi and gir1.2-gtk-3.0; if you’re using another distribution the required packages are most likely named something similar. If the desktop notifications bindings are also installed (gir1.2-notify-0.7), you will also get desktop notifications when devices come online/go offline.

For gnome-shell/Unity support, you also need to have gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1 installed.

Installation

Normally USB devices are not accessible for r/w by regular users, so you will need to do a one-time udev rule installation to allow access to the Logitech Unifying Receiver.

You can run the rules.d/install.sh script from Solaar to do this installation automatically (make sure to run it as your regular desktop user, it will switch to root when necessary), or you can do all the required steps by hand, as the root user:

1. Copy rules.d/42-logitech-unifying-receiver.rules from Solaar to /etc/udev/rules.d/. The udev daemon will automatically pick up this file using inotify.

   By default, the rule allows all members of the plugdev group to have read/write access to the Unifying Receiver device. (standard Debian/Ubuntu group for pluggable devices). It may need changes, specific to your particular system’s configuration. If in doubt, replacing GROUP="plugdev" with GROUP="<your username>" should just work.

2. Physically remove the Unifying Receiver and re-insert it.

   This is necessary because if the receiver is already plugged-in, it already has a /dev/hidrawX device node, but with the old (root:root) permissions. Plugging it again will re-create the device node with the right permissions.

3. Make sure your desktop users are part of the plugdev group, by running gpasswd -a <desktop username> plugdev. If these users were not assigned to the group before, they must re-login for the changes to take effect.