Labview 8 installation on Ubuntu, libdb.so.2

[eayars]

I'm trying to install labview 8 on our departmental lab machines, and not having much luck. The computers involved are AMD64's running Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).

I copied the CD to /tmp/labview/cdrom to get around the noexec issue, then cd'd to /tmp/labview/cdrom and sudid ./INSTALL. Here is the resulting error:

-----
/tmp/labview/cdrom/bin/rpmq: error while loading shared libraries: libdb.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[Ynasq?] q
Installation aborted.
-----

libdb2 is listed as obsolete, but I tried it anyway: #apt-get install libdb2 libdb2-dev
This results in the same error.

So -- where do I go from here? Any suggestions?

[Andy F.]

Hey eayars,

Unfortunately, Ubuntu is not one of the supported Linux distributions.  I am not quite sure what would be causing this issue since this OS hasn't been tested with LabVIEW.  Anyone else had success installing LabVIEW on Ubuntu?

Andy F.

[eayars]

NI Sales: "Sure, LabView works on all major Linux distributions now!"

Right. He should have said "All major RPM-based Commercial distributions".

Well, anyway, I have the minimum requirements as listed on NI's pag.: Kernel 2.6.x, x86, and glibc > 2.2.4. Ubuntu is a variation of Debian, so if anyone can tell me how to make it work on Debian with a 2.6 kernel that would be a start.

-ea

[john_sheff]

Hi,

I've got Labview 7.1 working with Ubuntu 6.06. It was a total pain but anyway I think you'll have similar problems on Labview 8.

The missing shared library problem can be sorted out by downloading a package from http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/cgi-bin/download.pl?arch=amd64&file=pool%2Fmain%2Fd%2Fdb1-compat%2Flibdb1-compat_2.1.3-7_amd64.deb&md5sum=989e86e217ad34b1e46bf644bd1183a3&arch=amd64&type=main
It's a library to manipulate database files. It's not the latest version but it doesn't appear to mess up anything else.

The next problem you'll hit is that the installer script craps out for various reasons. Trying to install the RPM's manually by downloading RPM for ubuntu doesn't work as RPM will moan about various things not being installed because they were installed via .deb packages/apt, (so RPM doesn't know about them). RPM even complained that I didn't have a bourne shell installed even though I had! Anyway NI have given you rpm2cpio to change the rpms to cpio files. I didn't have much luck doing that either so I used a program called alien,(download through Synaptic package manager), to convert the rpm's to .deb packages "alien -k rpmpackagename.rpm". Next use "dpkg -i resultingdebianpackage.deb". If all went well then labview is installed to /usr/local/lv70/labview.

Anyway I hope this helps.

Regards,
John Cahill

[jbeckley]

I got labview 8 installed on Ubuntu 6.0.6 but I had to roll my own kernel and install the rpm package via aptitude.  As for your own kernel, I was using a 2.6.15, but it was too new.  I had to roll back to a 2.6.13 kernel before it would actually install.  Once I had the 2.6.13 kernel, I simply mounted the CD and did ./INSTALL in the root of the cd.  Everything after that point went fine.  That of course just got it installed, and I haven't yet had a chance to run it, but I thought that information might be of use to others attempting to get Labview 8 installed on Ubuntu/Debian based systems.

[jbeckley]

One more thing I found necessary to do before this would work.  It was complaining about not finding libOSMesa.so.4, but the current Ubuntu version of this module is newer than that.  To make this work, I did "aptitude install libosmesa6", after that create a symlink by doing "ln -s /usr/lib/libOSMesa16.so.6 /usr/lib/libOSMesa.so.4".  After I did that, the labview GUI lanched and it appeared to be working.

[5465487]

Hello

I managed to install and start Labview 8 on my Ubuntu System (i know that this is not a supported Distro) but there are still some problems

when i use elements from the Controls Modern Pallete Labview Crashes and sometimes need to restart X

the problem is probably related to OpenGL and render.cpp or something like that (see attachment)

is there a workaround in this problem (apart from using only the classic pallete)???



PS
i would also like to complain to labview for not providing all the toolkits for Linux (System Identification, Control Design, simulation module etc)

[jbeckley]

I am dealing with this same issue right now.  I wasn't exactly sure what was causing the problem, but my labview does lock up and on the restart it says the problem was in render.cpp.  As for your complaint with NI, I called them on Friday and lodged a complaint against their tech support and against the marketing of LabVIEW as available for Linux.  I doubt complaining will do any good, but I had no other options to use for ventilation at that point.  If you make any headway with the render.cpp issues please share! 

[5465487]

i also wanted to ask something more

does anyone using a different distribution faces a similar problem???

[jbeckley]

I think I figured out a workaround to the problem where labview 8 locks up on Ubuntu.  From what I can tell, the problem is in the libOSMesa.so file.  In order to be more compliant with the labview installation guidelines, I setup an openSuSE 10.1 machine and installed labview on that.  LabView ran fine on that machine, so I copied the libOSMesa.so.4 from that install, and put it on my Ubuntu machine.  Since that time, LabView hasn't crashed on me.  And this happened on Thursday of last week.  I think you can get the required file without installing a full machine, you just need to find the appropriate SuSE RPM and get it out of there.  Hope this helps.

JB