CUCC Expedition Handbook - Your laptop

Setting up an Expo laptop

Operating Systems

• The quickest way to get a complete setup is to use a Debian Linux laptop.
  The expo laptop uses Debian with the Cinnamon interface, but pretty much any Linux system works fine. This handbook does assume that you are using apt - the Debian package manager - which is good for all Debian-derived Linuxes such as Ubuntu. Old, slow machines without much memory can be very effective with Xubuntu/xfce.
• Windows machines can do everything needed, but some useful software has no Windows version and you will need to find your own equivalents. There are also dangerous 'gotchas' to look out for because the file-naming system is different. Do use Linux instead if you can.
• WSL: the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The first release of this didn't do the ssh key exchange process easily. The 2019 WSL2 release includes a complete Linux kernel. If you want to use this, then please do - and write the handbook documentation too. But beware, it can work in two different modes which behave differently.
• Mac users will need to use the Linux documentation as a guide and work it all out for themselves.
• Android phone apps can be very handy too.

Software

Long-standing Expo policy is to retain absolute control of all software and all data. So we use FOSS software and we store data in text files not in a database. You can use other software on your own machine if it is format-compatible and exports data in the formats we want, but all the recommended software here is open source and please don't install proprietary software on the 'expo laptop'.

The list of software:

• mercurial
• git
• TortoiseHg
• scp and ftp GUI software, such as Filezilla - with a configuration file to get to the expo server
• TortoiseGit - GUI interface to git. Optional.
• Survex, including the Aven visualisation tool.
• Tunnel: a Java 2.5D cave drawing program surveys based on Survex-compatible data which can also read PocketTopo files. (Generally called 'tunnel' even though the project and executable is actually 'tunnelx'.)
• therion.speleo.sk/Therion - Therion processes survey data and generates maps or 3D models of caves.
• QGIS - A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System
• GPSprune - to edit GPS tracks in GPX files. Just download the .jar file.
• java - needed to run GPSprune
• Viking - an alternative to GPSprune. The code is on github.
• python, if you are extending troggle or the scripts in expoweb/noinfo/ - already installed on Linux
• python packages you will want to install: [not yet documented]

Nearly all the Austrian survey has beeen produced using Tunnel but we are moving to Therion for new caves because Therion does elevations properly and Tunnel never will.

For Windows users only:

• PuTTY including pagent. Version 0.73 was released on 2019-09-29. You need this to generate and to use ssh keys on Windows.
• Git for Windows
• python for windows. We are using python 2.7 not 3.8.
• WinScp can be used instead of Filezilla, see

For Android phones:

• FTP using Cx_File_Explorer (this is probably out of date)
• Terminus - command line ssh to login to the expo server.
• OsmAnd - GPS app. See separate pages on using GPS software
• andftp app
• TopoDroid makes cave surveys with the DistoX.
• Cave3D is a Therion 3D viewer.
• ThManager organizes single surveys, exported by TopoDroid, into Therion projects encoded by Therion "thconfig" files.

Logins to external systems

• Github - create your own github account if you don't have one already.
• Bitbucket - create an account to help develop tunnel.
• Trac issue tracker and wiki for survex
• Launchpad - create an account to help develop survex.

Bug lists and open issues are discussed on the github CaveSurveying/CUCCexposurveyissues/issues issue list so you will need to subscribe to the Cave Surveying Group on github to participate.

github.com/CaveSurveying/CUCCexposurveyissues/wiki/Expo-tunnel-workflows is a wiki on github discussing workflows to generate centerlines, GEOTIFF and QGIS integration.

launchpad.net/survex - the main Survex development system.

Configuration

On a Windows machine you will need to configure pageant (the putty authentication agent) to run at startup to load your key. Note that you are loading your private key, the .ppk file, into pageant and that this key never leaves your laptop.

When using Windows please be excessively careful when naming files and survex names.

The handbook has extensive documentation on when and where it is necessary to use scp and ftp to manage large files in 'expofiles'. See Experts: Uploading files, a href="../uploading.html">Uploading files and Uploading GPS tracks. Only machines which have done the key exchange process can do scp, ftp or rsync.

Learning how to use this software

For Survex, Tunnel and Therion, see the Expo Surveying Handbook.

For installing Survex, Tunnel etc. see this page which will be merged in here eventually.

The Tunnel tutorial - installation notes and a wiki of examples and tutorials

bitbucket.org/goatchurch/tunnelx - documentation and source code in the bitbucket repository system.

Quick reminders for using mercurial at the command line.

Full instructions for installing TortoiseHg and PuTTy on Windows