Setup CQRLOG
In this “moving ham ops to Linux” entry, I’ll touch on the installation and basic setup of cqrlog, which I’ve found to be a pretty robust logging suite for the linux desktop.
These notes are geared towards running all components of cqrlog on a single system, as opposed to, say, running the backend database on a remote system.
Installation
Installation of CQRLOG is pretty straighforward on an Ubuntu-based system. Petr, the author of the software, maintains a launchpad repo and instructions on using it to install the software.
Keep in mind that CQRLOG has many dependencies, including MySQL (MariaDB). So this is a fairly large installation.
Configuration
I feel a little like I’m mailing this one in, but Petr, OK2CQR, and Martin, OK1RR, maintain pretty good documentation on what’s needed for setting up and running cqrlog. Additionally, much of their information is reasonably specific to Ubuntu distributions. So I highly recommend the CQRLOG help docs. That said…
Running CQRLOG for the first time
The first time you start up CQRLOG you’ll be prompted to allow the software to take some additional setup steps.
Setup TQSL with existing config
I want to have TrustedQSL installed and configured on my Linux system so I can upload QSO (log lines) to ARRL’s LotW.
In my case I’m moving from a functional install of TrustedSQL on another machine, so I won’t cover all the steps to start using TQSL as a new user (like requesting a signing cert from the ARRL). If you’re brand new to TQSL, head to ARRL’s intro page.
Installation
Ubuntu has a TrustedQSL package available in its default repos, so installation is simple:
sudo apt-get install trustedqsl
When you open the version that Ubuntu provides you’ll be warned that there’s a newer version available. That’s OK. This is a case where I’ve found running the provided version is OK even though its not the latest. For me its not worth getting the newer version to build from source (ARRL doesn’t provide a packaged version of the software).
Importing existing config
In a previous post I mentioned exporting the TrustedQSL config from my old station computer for import onto the new machine. The ARRL published instrustion on Export/Import (Backup/Restore) of your TSQL config in a PDF titled “Moving LoTW to Another Computer”. The process is pretty straight forward: select “Restore Station Location, Certificates, and Preferences” from TSQL’s ‘File’ menu and then browse for the tqslconfig.tbk file that’s been brought over from the old machine.
Viola!
Now that TSQL is configured it can be used by CQRLOG to upload QSOs to LotW.
73!