How do I install RV on Ubuntu 18.04

Hey guys (and gals),

I am kinda new to using Linux on my workstation and I found the instructions provided by shotgun a little sparse for my beginner level on how I could go about installing shotgun RV on my desktop.

I have gotten to the point of downloading and extracting the tar archive in my downloads folder, however, I am not so sure what command to run where to actually go about installing the software. In my very limited exposure, I am used to there being an INSTALL.txt or README.txt that would hold my hand in terms of what command to run from what directory to get the program up and running and since I can’t seem to find that here, I am a little lost.

Do any of you knowledgeable people think you could help me out?

Any advice is greatly appreciated and I am sorry if this is a very basic question that should go elsewhere.

Thanks for the read!
Stay safe out there!

2 Likes

Hi @underscore,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for posting.

RV is built to work with NVidia graphics cards on Linux. A current NVidia driver (which supports OpenGL 3.2 or newer) is required.

RV for Linux is distributed as a gzipped tarball. Un-tar this archive into the directory in which you would like to install RV with some version of the tar command, like this.

tar -zxf rv-Linux-x86_64-7.2.1.tar.gz

Edit your dot files to include the rv/bin directory in your PATH. You can use the Tweak license installer to install your license, or can copy it directly in the $RV_HOME/etc subdirectory and name it license.gto.

For more details, please refer to our RV User Manual here.

Cheers,
Ben

3 Likes

Hi Ben, thanks for the reply, and thanks for the heads up on the NVIDIA drivers!

I saw something similar about editing the dot files too add rv/bin, however, I am not entirely sure what this means.

What are these “dot files” and where do I find them? Are they files that come with RV or are they system files somewhere on my machine? Since you mention adding rv/bin to my PATH are the “dot files” just a place to store environment variables like PATH?

Also regarding the license, previously on other machines, I have just had to launch RV and login, I have never set it up before. If there a separate license required or would logging into a valid shotgun account be enough?

Thanks again for the reply!

2 Likes

@underscore to see dot files, command “ls -a ~”. dot files are preceded by a dot. most people modify “.bashrc” or “.profile”. simply those files were loaded when you start your terminal, and its commands are executed at terminal startup.

usually you can use these to create aliases, set PATH variables etc…

to explain PATH, (if export bin/rv to your PATH, you can just type rv in terminal to open rv. just don’t have to type full path)

for more read this. this explains it better - Adding a Path to the Linux PATH Variable | Baeldung on Linux

sorry for bad english.