Creative Technology

6. Fix Things for New User

23 Jan 2018

Welcome to Linux, where it is easy to break things and the benefit is that fixing them involves learning something new about how all of this works. Huzzah! Here are some steps that you need to perform before the beginning of class on Friday. I would strongly recommend tackling this process in groups.

Fix Autocorrect

Gotta be totally honest: I have not experienced this problem where we make a new user on our Pi and then lose the ability to autocomplete when logged in as that user. Since everyone had this symptom in common I had a feeling that something needed to be done differently to get autocomplete functioning again, and turns out you have to do the following:

  1. log in to your new user and run the following command: sudo chsh -s /bin/bash [USERNAME]
  2. reboot your pi: sudo reboot now
  3. Log in and confirm that you can use autocomplete with [TAB] again

Installing SuperCollider

Note: this section relies heavily on all of the great work done by Fredrik Olofsson on this standalone version of SC.

I have already done most of the installation work for you, but we need to do a few more things to make sure your new user can access SC:

  • git clone https://github.com/redFrik/supercolliderStandaloneRPI2 --depth 1
  • mkdir -p ~/.config/SuperCollider
  • cp supercolliderStandaloneRPI2/sc_ide_conf_temp.yaml ~/.config/SuperCollider/sc_ide_conf.yaml


  • git clone git://github.com/jackaudio/jack2.git --depth 1
  • cd jack2
  • ./waf configure --alsa
  • ./waf build
  • sudo ./waf install
  • sudo ldconfig
  • cd ..
  • rm -rf jack2


  • nano ~/.jackdrc
  • add the following in ~/.jackdrc: /usr/local/bin/jackd -P75 -dalsa -dhw:1 -r44100 -p1024 -n3
  • save and exit the file
  • sudo reboot


Confirm Functionality

  • log back in, plug headphones into your USB Audio Adapter
  • cd supercolliderStandaloneRPI2
  • xvfb-run --auto-servernum ./sclang -a -l sclang.yaml mycode.scd

If you did everything correctly you should hear a throbbing sine tone play once SC has launched. KeyboardInterrupt to stop and then sudo shutdown now to turn you Pi off.

You will get credit for having completed the assignment if we do not have to repeat any of these steps as part of Friday's class. Please contact me if you are having problems and please do not wait until Thursday evening to try this process.

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