SuperCollider On Ubuntu

41 Comments

1. Dave Britton on March 16, 2011 at 2:01 pm

   very nice, thank you!

   
   
   
2. yau on March 25, 2011 at 7:24 pm

   hello ! i unsuccessfully installed ubuntu
   can you please help me how to create the .sclang.sc file ?
   i can’t get to install sun-java6 it can’t locate the files either
   i’m on ubuntu 10.10
   thank you : hello ! i unsuccessfully installed ubuntu
   can you please help me how to create the .sclang.sc file ?
   i can’t get to install sun-java6 it can’t locate the files either
   i’m on ubuntu 10.10
   thank you : )

   
   
   
   • scacinto on March 27, 2011 at 1:09 pm

     I think, because of the complexity of your questions, that these would be better posted to the SuperCollider list.

     http://new-supercollider-mailing-lists-forums-use-these.2681727.n2.nabble.com/SuperCollider-Users-New-Use-this-f2676391.html

     Someone there, perhaps myself, will be sure to help you.

     Cheers

     
     
     
3. Bruno TR on July 4, 2011 at 5:35 am

   Thanks a lot! It was very helpful. The only difference in my case was: I did not have the folder ~/supercollider/supercollider-3.4/option_installs/SwingOSC/SuperCollider after installing supercollider. So I just went to the SwingOSC website and downloaded it from there.

   * Go to http://www.sciss.de/swingOSC/

   * Look for “download current version” or something to that effect

   * Download and save the zip file in your Downloads folder or anywhere you like

   * Right click the zip file, “Extract here”

   * Go to this folder:

   cd /usr/share/SuperCollider/

   * If you don’t have a subfolder “SwingOSC” here, create one:

   sudo mkdir SwingOSC

   * Now go to the folder you just extracted earlier from the zip file — in my case, it was in my Downloads folder. Cd to the subfolder “build” in there:

   cd Downloads/SwingOSC/build

   * That’s where the file SwingOSC.jar lives. Copy SwingOSC.jar file to /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC

   sudo cp SwingOSC.jar /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwindOSC/.

   * Etc… (continue from step 5 of this this page’s tutorial, always using your downloaded SwingOSC folder as the source for files to be copied).

   
   
   
   • 01ivier on July 11, 2011 at 7:18 pm

     Thanks for your comment because I was in the same situation as you
     Nevertheless, I think there is a mistake in your last command line.
     It should be :

     sudo cp SwingOSC.jar /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/

     with a g instead of the d

     cheers

     
     
     
   • scacinto on July 11, 2011 at 9:18 pm

     Thanks Bruno – i went ahead and edited the post to reflect the change in the package.

     cheers,

     
     
     
4. nathanbontrager on July 7, 2011 at 8:53 pm

   I’m having trouble with the startup file. Note that I’m totally new to both SC and Linux/Ubuntu. I’ve created a file in texteditor with the code given in the tutorial and saved it as .sclang.sc. I have the SwingOSC.jar file located in the correct folder and saved the .sclang.sc file to my home folder.

   The first issue is that I cannot find the file that I created. Nothing I try and save with a period at the beginning of the file name shows up in any folders (can’t find it via terminal or in folders). If I save it as “sclang.sc” it shows up but of course isn’t the right file name. Despite this, if I try and re-save the .sclang.sc file under that same name it tells me that file already exists and asks if I want to replace it, but if I do it still doesn’t appear. Is the period a way of somehow hiding the file or is this an abnormality?

   When I try and switch to SuperCollider mode in the texteditor/gedit I get the following messages:

   init_OSC
   compiling class library..
   NumPrimitives = 548
   compiling dir: ‘/usr/share/SuperCollider/SCClassLibrary’
   compiling dir: ‘/usr/share/SuperCollider/Extensions’
   pass 1 done
   Extension overwriting SimpleNumber:asTimeString
   in file ‘/usr/share/SuperCollider/Extensions/SC3plugins/LoopBufUGens/classes/LJP Classes/Extensions/SimpleNumber-asTimeString.sc’.
   Original method in file ‘/Common/Math/SimpleNumber.sc’.
   numentries = 1241118 / 18964960 = 0.065
   5740 method selectors, 3304 classes
   method table size 9889996 bytes, big table size 75859840
   Number of Symbols 14699
   Byte Code Size 495593
   compiled 535 files in 0.56 seconds
   compile done
   Couldn’t set realtime scheduling priority 1: Operation not permitted
   Help tree read from cache in 0.033283948898315 seconds
   LID: event loop started
   Class tree inited in 0.05 seconds
   Welcome to SuperCollider, type ctrl-U for help
   Couldn’t set realtime scheduling priority 1: Operation not permitted
   booting java -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel -jar “/usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar” -t 57111 -L -i -h 127.0.0.1:57120
   SwingOSC server already booting
   Unable to access jarfile /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar
   RESULT = 1
   ERROR:
   SwingOSC server failed to start
   ERROR:
   SwingOSC server failed to start

   Please help, I’ve tried wading through the forums to find answers and cannot find anything that seems to help.

   
   
   
   • scacinto on July 7, 2011 at 9:52 pm

     Hi Nathan,

     In Unix land, a dot preceding a file name = a hidden file. You can see these files by typing “ls -a” in your shell (-a = show all files) or by checking the “show hidden files” in Nautilus or your file browser in Ubuntu. (I think this is found under the “view” drop-down menu.

     >Unable to access jarfile /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar

     This line in the above error message means that SC3 is expecting the SwingOSC.jar file at that path. Is this where you placed your SwinOSC.jar file?

     
     
     
     • nathanbontrager on July 19, 2011 at 12:13 pm

       Hi Scott,

       Thanks for the speedy reply.

       So I see that the .sclang.sc file is, indeed, in my home folder.

       My SwingOSC.jar file is in the location specified in that path. I noticed you updated some things on the tutorial. Would you suggest just trying it from the ground up again or do you have any other suggestions?

       Nathan

       
       
       
   • scacinto on July 19, 2011 at 12:38 pm

     Hi Nathan, I’m not sure what to tell you. I just tested the tut today on a fresh linux mint install and everything worked fine. I would suggest checking your .sclang.sc file and making sure that it looks like it does above:

     SwingOSC.program = “/usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar”; g=SwingOSC.default; g.boot; SwingOSC.default.waitForBoot({s.makeGui});

     That said, SC is looking for the SwingOSC.jar file in the correct location, so it seems the problem is not with the startup file. You are sure your SwingOSC.jar file is actually at /usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/? I don’t want to sound insulting, but if everything is where it should be, and the startup file has the right information (path) then it should work; there are no tricks to it, and permissions do not seem to be an issue from what I can tell.

     
     
     
     • nathanbontrager on July 19, 2011 at 1:15 pm

       Not insulting at all, I’m sure I’ve goofed somewhere along the way. I tried re-entering the file both in the form given in your comment and also what’s in the tut (which is different than what was there before, right?) and both do not work, albeit with slightly different error messages than before. I’m going to go through it again from the top to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Thanks again.

       
       
       
5. Matt on July 7, 2011 at 11:53 pm

   One more thing to watch out for:

   I set this up on ubuntu studio – Natty with Scott’s excellent instructions, but when I first tried to use the ctrl-U help feature in gedit/sced, it asked me to select a filebrowser, giving me the choice between nautilus and Thunar. You will want to use Thunar, which will open the .html files in your default browser. Nautilus will complain that it can’t open the file because it’s not a folder (duh). If you accidentally choose nautilus, you can fix it by editing (OF ALL THINGS) ~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc. Change the line that says:

   FileManager=nautilus

   to

   FileManager=Thunar

   (note the upper-case T).

   Let this be a lesson to all of us. =o)

   
   
   
6. 01ivier on July 11, 2011 at 8:09 pm

   Thanks a lot for this tutorial.
   With the Bruno TR’s comment, it works fine for me.

   Just a question : are you sure that this command line is the good one ?

   sudo cp -r Help/ /usr/share/SuperCollider/Help

   Don’t we have to use this one instead ?

   sudo cp -r Help/SwingOSC /usr/share/SuperCollider/Help

   By the way, I translate in french parts of your article for our wiki.
   http://wiki.labomedia.org/index.php/SuperCollider

   I hope you don’t mind.

   Cheers

   
   
   
   • scacinto on July 11, 2011 at 8:38 pm

     Hi O1ilier,

     I don’t think it matters as anything in the Help folder is searched recursively. But you can certainly strip out the extra folder.

     I’ll change the post above tomorrow to reflect that the package no longer comes with the ‘optional installs’ folder and that you have to download the package from Sciss’s site.

     Cheers!

     
     
     
7. Tasos on July 18, 2011 at 6:54 pm

   Hi to all
   i ve done everything the tutorial says and i think i got it right.
   the thing is that when i try to run the swingosc gui server i get this messages:

   SwingGUI
   booting java -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel -jar “SwingOSC.jar” -t 57111 -L -i -h 127.0.0.1:57121
   Unable to access jarfile SwingOSC.jar
   RESULT = 1
   ERROR:

   everything is in the right place, java works and i use SC with no problem just without the gui but the thing is that without it i cant use .plot too..

   I thought that something is wrong with the permissions so i ve changed them but nothing happend

   i see that the post is quite recent, so if you have any ideas i d be veeeery gratefull

   thanx a lot

   
   
   
   • scacinto on July 18, 2011 at 10:19 pm

     can you confirm the location of your SwingOSC.jar file? The error message leads me to believe the correct path is not being set in your startup file.

     
     
     
     • luisfernando06 on February 16, 2012 at 9:46 pm

       hi
       (i dont speak english)
       i had the same problem. my quetion is where do I put the startup file??

       thanx a lot

       
       
       
8. Halley on July 29, 2011 at 5:14 pm

   Thanks, this was really helpful!

   
   
   
   • scacinto on July 31, 2011 at 10:16 pm

     I’m glad you found it helpful. Cheers!

     
     
     
9. shemahmforash on August 23, 2011 at 1:45 pm

   Hello. First of all thank you for such a complete tutorial.

   I followed this tutorial in an installation of Linux Mint 11 and it works partially. I mean, I’m able to run it and to try some commands (such as play, for instance), however when I start the environment, I get the error:
   Couldn’t set realtime scheduling priority 1: Operation not permitted

   And, when I boot the server I get other errors:
   Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
   exception in GrafDef_Load: UGen ‘Chromagram’ not installed.

   Because of this second error, I’m not able to use the method Scope.

   Anyone has any idea what’s going on here?

   Thank you for your help.

   
   
   
   • scacinto on August 24, 2011 at 9:29 pm

     Hi there,

     Your first error is likely caused because you are not a member of the audio group. This means that you cannot set realtime priority. You should be able to find instructions online for adding realtime permissions in Ubuntu. (Linux Mint is a modified Ubuntu distro.) As for the second error, I haven’t ever encountered this before. You should post this to the Nabble SuperCollider group forum / mailing list. Just google Nabble SuperCollider and you will find the forum. This probably has to do with the latest binary release and may be a bug.

     
     
     
   • scacinto on August 24, 2011 at 9:34 pm

     I should clarify too, that you should be starting Jack before starting SC and you should be starting it in Real-time mode. If you cannot start Jack in Real-time mode, this means that you aren’t a member of the group “audio” on your machine. Note that this is not fatal; you can run Jack and SC when not in real-time mode, you will simply get this error and possible encounter other latency-related issues.

     
     
     
10. shemahmforash on August 25, 2011 at 5:29 am

    Thank you for your quick answer.
    First, my user (wanderer) is part of the audio group, as you can see in the output of the command groups:
    groups wanderer
    wanderer : wanderer adm dialout cdrom audio www-data plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare vboxusers

    I never thought I’d have to start jack first. I started now with:
    jackd -R -d alsa

    And the error related with realtime disappeared. Now, the only error is the one which states that chromogram is not istalled.

    I’ll start a thread in the sc mailing list to see if anyone can help me.

    Thank you for your help.

    
    
    
11. shemahmforash on August 29, 2011 at 8:29 am

    I’ve done a re-installation from scratch in a ubuntu virtual machine with the help of the video howto in youtube – http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6859CD3B93661B86 – and I’ve managed to made SC work well in my computer:)

    During this installation I’ve looked again and your tutorial in this site and notices you have a style problem in the code of 2) in the part Creating a Startup File, because with both Firefox and Chromium (I didn’t tried with other browsers) the text to put in the startup file doesn’t appear complete.
    It reads:
    SwingOSC.program = “/usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar”; g=SwingOSC.default; g.boot; SwingOSC.d

    but it should read:
    SwingOSC.program = “/usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar”; g=SwingOSC.default; g.boot; SwingOSC.default.waitForBoot({s.makeGui});

    I only got the complete info to put in the file from the source code of this page and from the youtube video (where the code is a bit different because of the virtual machine).

    Anyway, thanks a lot for your help, it was really useful to me.

    
    
    
    • scacinto on August 29, 2011 at 9:19 am

      Hi there. Actually, the code is all there, it is just not displayed because of WordPress awesomeness. If you double/triple click the code to select all of it and paste it to a text document, you will see the complete code.

      
      
      
12. pablito on October 14, 2011 at 4:51 am

    wow, still using jack < 2 after all this time ?

    believe me, once you'll try jackdmp (aka jack2) you'll never go back 😉

    
    
    
    • scacinto on October 14, 2011 at 2:24 pm

      “Here are instructions for building with Jack2. If you don’t care and are fine with the old jack, just let the installer do its thing…” This is right above the section called “Building for Jack 2″…

      …

      
      
      
13. julian rios on October 22, 2011 at 1:45 pm

    hello
    when I try to run the GUI server it shows the following message:
    SwingGUI
    booting java -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel -jar “SwingOSC.jar” -t 57111 -L -i -h 127.0.0.1:57120
    Unable to access jarfile SwingOSC.jar
    RESULT = 1
    ERROR:
    SwingOSC server failed to start

    I think the path in the startup file is ok, I have it the same as this guide:
    SwingOSC.program = “/usr/share/SuperCollider/SwingOSC/SwingOSC.jar”; g=SwingOSC.default; g.boot; SwingOSC.default.waitForBoot({s.makeGui});

    also tried pointing it to the original folder, but its the same:
    “~/SwingOSC/build/SwingOSC.jar”;

    Im just getting started with linux, so I may be missing something obvious here

    
    
    
14. julian rios on October 22, 2011 at 3:53 pm

    hi there!
    just got it working!! out of desperation added a period before sclang.sc (.sclang.sc) that’s that 🙂 I really don’t know what happened but Im so f&%$%ng elated right now!
    Thanks!

    
    
    
    • scacinto on October 22, 2011 at 4:05 pm

      yeah, the period is important 😉 in unix/linux land, a period before a file name means the file is invisible. most config folders and files are invisible. regardless, if a program is looking for a specific file, visible or not, the file must be named correctly. (obviously.) I’m glad you got everything working. cheers!

      
      
      
15. meisterplanlos on March 15, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    Hi,

    thanks for the tutorial. So far everything is running fine. However, the scope refuses to display something useful; It just stays black… Any idea?

    Cheers!

    
    
    
    • scacinto on March 16, 2012 at 10:28 am

      Hi there, I’m glad you found this helpful. Please check the following thread on the Nabble SuperCollider site: http://new-supercollider-mailing-lists-forums-use-these.2681727.n2.nabble.com/To-those-having-problems-with-the-scope-in-Linux-td6871670.html

      I know this has been “going around” but one of these solutions should do for you.

      
      
      
      • meisterplanlos on March 16, 2012 at 11:30 am

        Oh yeah! It’s working. Thank you so much. Normally, I’m the one who’s telling all the questioners to use Google. But in that case I haven’t found a solution for my problem. I tried much and more but nothing worked. I thought it would be some GUI error but apparently it was a network error due to a wrong entry in the hosts file. after correcting it everything works fine.
        So thanks again!
        dm–(^_^)–mb

        
        
        
16. Installing SuperCollider (w/Sced & Swing) on AVLinux: a quick guide « S C A C I N T O ∞ P E T E R S E N ∞ M U C O on June 8, 2012 at 8:31 pm

    […] the current swingOSC (http://sourceforge.net/projects/swingosc/) and follow instructions here http://scacinto.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/supercollider-on-ubuntu/ to install  (section titled “Installing […]

    
    
    
17. jcr on August 16, 2013 at 3:39 pm

    Hey thanks for the nice tutorial.
    I’m doing some installations of Xubuntu 12.04 LTS on old P4 computers… at one point I got it working but then lost that installation to a configuration error. Now when I try to follow your instructions I get an error on the command:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:supercollider/ppa

    after the [ENTER] to continue prompt I get what looks like a python error ending in the line “ValueError: cannot convert float NaN to integer”

    Anyone have a clue as to what might be the problem?
    (full error below)

    
    
    
18. jcr on August 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm

    and the error 🙂

    Exception in thread Thread-1:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py”, line 551, in __bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py”, line 99, in run
    self.add_ppa_signing_key(self.ppa_path)
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py”, line 132, in add_ppa_signing_key
    tmp_keyring_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/tempfile.py”, line 322, in mkdtemp
    name = names.next()
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/tempfile.py”, line 141, in next
    letters = [choose(c) for dummy in “123456”]
    File “/usr/lib/python2.7/random.py”, line 274, in choice
    return seq[int(self.random() * len(seq))] # raises IndexError if seq is empty
    ValueError: cannot convert float NaN to integer

    
    
    
19. scacinto on August 18, 2013 at 10:06 pm

    Hi JCR, can you make sure you have the “python-software-properties” package installed?

    sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

    The error output looks like it is, or at least python is trying to do what you are telling it, but lets start there.

    My next step would be to make sure all my python packages are up-to-date. It seems like something in your python package config is wonked out.

    
    
    
20. edfishmusic on December 16, 2013 at 5:17 am

    Thanks this really saved my bacon!

    
    
    
21. Egor on February 4, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    Hi , I am following your instructions , but : why a have n,t supercollider-3.4 directory ? May be I did n,t something … thank you

    
    
    
    • scacinto on February 4, 2014 at 5:11 pm

      Hi – please check out this updated (just published!) page on installing SC3.6 on Ubuntu. This page is no longer up-to-date.

      http://scacinto.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/new-supercollider-on-xubuntu/

      
      
      
22. New SuperCollider on (x)Ubuntu | S C O T T P E T E R S E N ∞ E L M U C O ∞ S C A C I N T O . C O M on February 4, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    […] it people. I hope you’re not disappointed. If you want to remember the Bad ol’ Days, check out this post on installing 3.4 on Ubuntu from back in 2011. Just don’t try to follow the […]