Postinstall instructions

This instructions are for nocheto package only. Other packages (nochetoegni, nochetopgn) do not require any action.

  1. Remove emoji
  2. Run nocheto
  3. Make sure that stockfish is installed and can be executed
  4. Install themes for kitty board (optional)
  5. Install sounds
    1. Check (and cofigure) aplay
  6. Disable check for new version (optional)
  7. Have a fun! (optional)

1: Remove emoji

On some distributions (I am talking about you, Ubuntu!) there are installed ugly icons into console (see picture below). Instead of UTF-8 char of black pawn, there is this icon, whose color cannot be changed (and do not match with other pieces characters).

bad emoji icons

To get rid of it, remove fonts-noto-color-emoji package.

apt-get remove fonts-noto-color-emoji

Restart your console and you should be fine.

2: Run nocheto

$ nocheto
Nocheto (Noidea Chess Tool) 3.0.0.1679M, Ubuntu20_04, PACHMAN edition
Type 'help' for help.

First time nocheto is executed, it creates a directory structure and some files in your home directory (~/.nocheto/). It might take some time before nocheto becomes responsive. Be patient, please.

3: Make sure that stockfish is installed and can be executed

On some distributions, stockfish executable is not installed in one of the paths which are in your PATH variable. For example, in Fedora it is installed in /usr/bin/stockfish (instead of /usr/games/stockfish as in many other distributions).

If stockfish cannot be executed, you can get this error:

$ nocheto
Nocheto (Noidea Chess Tool) 1.1.0, Ubuntu19_10, FISHER edition
Type 'help' for help.
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'App::Exceptions::IOException'
  what():  execvp: Cannot open resource (KO).
Magick: abort due to signal 6 (SIGABRT) "Abort"...

To solve this, a) (preferably) add the full path to the engine variable in [engine] section in ~/.nocheto/configs/nocheto.ini config file:

[engine]
engine = /usr/bin/stockfish

b) create symlink to nocheto executable in a path which is already in your $PATH variable:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:

$ ln -s /usr/bin/stockfish /usr/local/bin/stockfish

Note: That error can also happen when your hard drive is heavily under load so the stockfish executable cannot be executed quickly enough. Just try to run nocheto again.

4: Install themes for kitty board (optional)

Download themes.zip, unpack it and move unpacked themes directory into ~/.nocheto directory.

5: Install sounds

You can download default sound theme here: sounds.zip.
Unpack the archive into ~/.nocheto/sounds/.

You can create your own sound theme as described below.

Nocheto is not shipped with sounds. But if you download any of move.wav, capture.wav and mate.wav to ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/ directory, nocheto will use them. You can also add error.wav1.1.0 sound, which is played on errors (for example, if you misspell a move).

For example, you can use https://soundbible.com/1251-Beep.html for error sound.
(Download it, rename it to error.wav and put it in ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/ directory.)

You can find good sounds at lichess github. But you need to convert the mp3 file to wav. You can do it like this:

wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ornicar/lila/master/public/sound/standard/Move.mp3" -O ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/move.mp3
ffmpeg -i ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/move.mp3 ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/move.wav
aplay ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/move.wav # test the sound
rm ~/.nocheto/sounds/default/move.mp3 # optional

5.1: Check (and configure) aplay

Nocheto uses aplay program to play wav sounds, so make sure it is installed (you can find it in the alsa-utils package).
You also might have to create ~/.asoundrc file with the following content:

pcm.!default {
        type hw
        card 1
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw
        card 0
}

Change the card numbers to somethig which works for you. You can test these numbers by aplay -D hw:1,0 move.wav etc.

Note: I was unsuccessfull with wav files created under arch docker. Use ffmpeg in your native linux environment to do that.

6: Disable check for new version (optional)

Nocheto looks for a new version at start (once a day). If you do not have internet access (or this website is down), nocheto can hang and does not start.

To disable checking for new version, open ~/.nocheto/configs/nocheto.ini and change line checkforupdate = 1 to checkforupdate = 0.

7: Have a fun! (optional)

Because that's what it's all about.