Manual installation
Downloading
Clone Solaar from GitHub by git clone https://github.com/pwr-Solaar/Solaar.git
Requirements for Solaar
Installing Solaar from a repository should have set up all these requirements so in this situation you should be able to skip this section.
Solaar needs a reasonably new kernel (5.2+ should work fine and recent CentOS distributions are likely to work),
with kernel modules hid-logitech-dj
and hid-logitech-hidpp
loaded. Also, the udev
package must be installed
and its daemon running. If you have a recent Linux distribution, you are
most likely good to go.
Solaar requires Python 3.6+ and the
python3-pyudev
package.
The Solaar GUI requires the
python3-psutil
, python3-xlib
, and python3-pyyaml
packages.
To run the GUI Solaar also requires Gtk3 and its GObject introspection bindings.
The Debian/Ubuntu packages that need to be installed are
python3-gi
and gir1.2-gtk-3.0
;
in Fedora you need gtk3
and python3-gobject
;
if you’re using another
distribution the required packages are most likely named something similar.
You may have to install gcc
and the Python development package (python3-dev
or python3-devel
,
depending on your distribution).
If desktop notifications bindings are also installed
(gir1.2-notify-0.7
for Debian/Ubuntu),
you will also see desktop notifications when devices come online/go offline.
For GNOME Shell/Budgie Desktop/KDE/XFCE support, you also need to have
gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1
installed in Debian/Ubuntu. Although it is
recommended to install and use gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1
if it is
available, you can also use gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1
if necessary (e.g.,
for Unity in Ubuntu).
Installing Solaar’s udev rule
Solaar needs to write to HID devices for receivers and devices. To be able to do this without running as root requires a udev rule that gives seated users write access to the HID devices for Logitech receiver and devices.
You can install this rule by copying, as root,
rules.d/42-logitech-unify-permissions.rules
from Solaar to
/etc/udev/rules.d
.
You will probably also have to tell udev to reload its rule via
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
.
For this rule to set up the correct permissions for your receivers and devices you will then need to either disconnect your receivers and any USB-connected or Bluetooth-connected devices and re-connect them or reboot your computer.
You only need to install Solaar’s udev rule if it is not already installed on your system or the rule has changed.
Running from the Download Directories
If the latest Solaar udev rule is installed,
you can just go to the solaar directory and run bin/solaar
for the GUI
or bin/solaar <command> <arguments>
for the CLI.
Otherwise, you will need to run Solaar as root via
sudo bin/solaar
for the GUI
or sudo bin/solaar <command> <arguments>
for the CLI.
Warning: Running Solaar as root may result in problems with the Solaar icon in the system tray.
Installing Solaar
Python programs are usually installed using pip.
The pip instructions for solaar are in setup.py
, the standard place to put such instructions.
To install solaar for yourself only run pip install --user .
from the solaar directory.
This tells pip to install into your .local
directory, but does not install Solaar’s udev rule.
(See above for installing the udev rule.)
Once the udev rule has been installed you can then run Solaar as ~/.local/bin/solaar
.
Installing python programs to system directories using pip is generally frowned on both
because this runs arbitrary code as root and because this can override existing python libraries
that other users or even the system depend on. If you want to install solaar to /usr/local run
sudo bash -c 'umask 022 ; pip install .'
in the solaar directory.
(The umask is needed so that the created files and directories can be read and executed by everyone.)
Then solaar can be run as /usr/local/bin/solaar.
You will also have to install the udev rule.
Solaar in other languages
If you want to have Solaar’s user messages in some other language you need to run
tools/po-compile.sh
to create the translation files before running or installing Solaar
and set the LANGUAGE environment variable appropriately when running Solaar.
Running Solaar at Startup
Distributions can cause Solaar can be run automatically at user login by installing a desktop file at
/etc/xdg/autostart/solaar.desktop
.
If you install Solaar yourself you may need to create or modify this file or install a startup file under your home directory.
Installing from PyPI
As an alternative to downloading and installing you can install the most recent release
(but not the current github version) of Solaar from PyPI.
Just run pip install --user solaar
.
This will not install the Solaar udev rule, which you will need to copy from
~/.local/share/solaar/udev-rules.d/42-logitech-unify-permissions.rules
to /etc/udev/rules.d
as root.