Prerequisites

This section of documentation assumes the following:

• That you already have Linux installed on your computer

• That your computer is already connected to the internet

• That you are comfortable issuing basic Linux commands from a terminal or shell prompt

• That your device has a built-in microphone and speakers, or, you have successfully connected microphone and speakers to your device.

• That your device already has git installed and working. If you don't already have git installed, here is a great set of instructions.

System Requirements

Whilst Mycroft runs on a Raspberry Pi 3B or above, this is achieved through a custom release of Raspbian Lite significantly reducing the system overhead by not running a desktop environment and other unnecessary processes. Mycroft will run on older hardware however your experience may vary significantly.

Our Precise wake word engine also relies upon TensorFlow. For x86 Intel processors this requires the AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) instruction set. To ensure your system supports AVX open a terminal and run: grep avx /proc/cpuinfo. AVX should be listed under the flags for each CPU core. If nothing is returned it is most likely that your system does not support AVX. Technical users may be able to build an older version of TensorFlow (1.13) from source using the instructions provided on their website. Alternatively you may use Mycroft with the PocketSphinx wake word engine; see (Switching Wake Word Listeners)[../customizations/wake-word#switching-wake-word-listeners].

The ARM architecture has a similar requirement called SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data). This has been available since ARMv7 which includes the Cortex A53 used by the RaspberryPi and the Cortex A7 from the OrangePi.

Getting Started

There are multiple ways to install Mycroft for Linux.

Installing via git clone

The simplest way to install Mycroft for Linux is to clone the mycroft-core repo to your system and run a shell script, which will install all dependencies, and Mycroft components.

The mycroft-core repo is at https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core.

The instructions below will install Mycroft in your HOME directory.

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core.git
cd mycroft-core
bash dev_setup.sh

The dev_setup.sh script identifies, installs and configures dependencies that Mycroft needs to run.

The script will also install and configure virtualenv. virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments. It is a way to isolate an application - in this case Mycroft - from other applications. It helps to better manage both dependencies and security.

If you are running a Linux distribution other than Ubuntu, Debian, Arch or Fedora, you may need to manually install packages as instructed by dev_setup.sh.

Running Mycroft for Linux

The Mycroft for Linux installation includes two scripts that you use to control Mycroft services.

start-mycroft.sh

start-mycroft.sh is used to start one, or all, Mycroft services. This script uses the virtualenv created by dev_setup.sh.

The usage of start-mycroft.sh is:

usage: start-mycroft.sh [command] [params]
​
Services:
  all                      runs core services: bus, audio, skills, voice
  debug                    runs core services, then starts the CLI
​
Services:
  audio                    the audio playback service
  bus                      the messagebus service
  skills                   the skill service
  voice                    voice capture service
  wifi                     wifi setup service
  enclosure                mark_1 enclosure service
​
Tools:
  cli                      the Command Line Interface
  unittest                 run mycroft-core unit tests
​
Utils:
  skill_container <skill>  container for running a single skill
  audiotest                attempt simple audio validation
  audioaccuracytest        more complex audio validation
  sdkdoc                   generate sdk documentation
​
Examples:
  start-mycroft.sh all
  start-mycroft.sh cli
  start-mycroft.sh unittest

To start all Mycroft services at once

$ ./start-mycroft.sh all
Starting all mycroft-core services
Initializing...
Starting background service bus
Starting background service skills
Starting background service audio
Starting background service voice

To start individual Mycroft services

Services can also be started individually.

$ ./start-mycroft.sh audio
Initializing...
Starting background service audio

Stopping Mycroft services

$ ./stop-mycroft.sh
Stopping all mycroft-core services

Start Mycroft on boot

You could create a mycroft service to get Mycroft automatic started on boot.

For this create a file named /etc/systemd/system/mycroft.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Mycroft AI
After=pulseaudio.service
​
[Service]
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/
ExecStart=/home/pi/mycroft-core/bin/mycroft-start all
ExecStop=/home/pi/mycroft-core/bin/mycroft-stop
Type=forking
Restart=no
​
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Please modify WorkingDirectory and User to your needs. Reload the unit files with sudo systemctl daemon-reloadand then, enable the new created service with sudo systemctl enable mycroft.service . You could start Mycroft by running sudo systemctl start mycroft.service stop it by sudo systemctl stop mycroft.service and get the status by typing sudo systemctl status mycroft.service.

Pairing Mycroft for Linux

Once successfully installed, you will need to pair your Mycroft for Linux Device with your home.mycroft.ai account.

Speak

Hey Mycroft, pair my device

Mycroft will Speak "I am connected to the internet and need to be paired. Your 6-digit Registration Code is XXXXXX"

Use the Registration Code to pair your Mycroft for Linux Device with home.mycroft.ai.

​View the home.mycroft.ai documentation to learn how to add your Device to home.mycroft.ai.

Once paired, you can then use basic Skills.

Using Mycroft behind a proxy

Many schools, universities and workplaces run a proxy on their network. If you need to type in a username and password to access the external internet, then you are likely behind a proxy.

If you plan to use Mycroft behind a proxy, then you will need to do an additional configuration step.

NOTE: In order to complete this step, you will need to know the hostname and port for the proxy server. Your network administrator will be able to provide these details. Your network administrator may want information on what type of traffic Mycroft will be using. We use https traffic on port 443, primarily for accessing ReST-based APIs.

Using Mycroft behind a proxy without authentication

If you are using Mycroft behind a proxy without authentication, add the following environment variables, changing the proxy_hostname.com and proxy_port for the values for your network. These commands are executed from the Linux command line interface (CLI).

$ export http_proxy=http://proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export https_port=http://proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com,0.0.0.0,::1"

Using Mycroft behind an authenticated proxy

If you are behind a proxy which requires authentication, add the following environment variables, changing the proxy_hostname.com and proxy_port for the values for your network. These commands are executed from the Linux command line interface (CLI).

$ export http_proxy=http://user:[email protected]_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export https_port=http://user:[email protected]_hostname.com:proxy_port
$  export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com,0.0.0.0,::1"

Keeping Mycroft for Linux updated

Keeping your mycroft-core installation up to date is simple.

1. Change to the directory where your mycroft-core installation is. This is most likely at ~/mycroft-core

2. Type git stash - this preserves your Mycroft configuration. git may prompt you to set up an identity.

3. Type git pull to get the latest code. By default, using a git installation will bring down the dev branch of the repo. If you want to pull down another branch - for instance to test it - use git pull origin BRANCH_NAME.

4. Type git stash pop to return the configuration that was stashed with git stash

5. Type ./update_dev.sh to update your virtualenv - it's a good idea to do this if you update your mycroft-core installation.

6. Type ./start-mycroft.sh all to restart the services

Removing Mycroft for Linux from your system

If you have installed mycroft-core using the git-clone method, you can remove all files and directories that have been created by Mycroft using the --clean flag:

cd ~/mycroft-core # or the path to your mycroft-core installation
./dev_setup --clean

This does not remove the cloned mycroft-core project directory. If cloned directly into the home directory, this can be removed with:

rm -rf ~/mycroft-core

Alternatively you can manually remove these files using the following commands:

sudo rm -rf /var/log/mycroft # Log files
rm -f /var/tmp/mycroft_web_cache.json # Configuration from Home.mycroft.ai
rm -rf "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mycroft" # Temp files
rm -rf "$HOME/.mycroft" # User level configuration
sudo rm -rf /opt/mycroft # Mycroft Skills directory
rm -rf "$HOME/mycroft-core" # Mycroft-core installation

Snap Package

A pre-Alpha Snap package is available, with the aim to provide a simple and secure means of installing Mycroft on a broad range of Linux distributions.

The Snap package currently has a number of major usability bugs that need to be addressed before it will be promoted to an installable channel. For now we recommend the git clone method above, but we welcome any help in improving Mycroft as a Snap:

Troubleshooting