libnipalu.so failed to initialize

[danielbixby]

Greetings,

We installed NI-VISA 15.0 on RHEL 7.2 (output attached). When running our application, the following error message appeared and the program aborted. The abort happens on the very first call to viOpenDefaultRM().

libnipalu.so failed to initialize

Perhaps you need to run updateNIDrivers

Abort (core dumped)

We ran updateNIDrivers (output attached), which didn't appear to change the installed RPMs (also attached, from the command "rpm -qa | grep ^ni"). But the problem persisted. Previously we have tried uninstall/install with no luck. I have looked around the forum and seen this message appear elsewhere, but without a solution for this particular problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Note: I work in a closed area and have to scribe output files like the ones attached. If the niSystemReport output would be useful, please let me know what I could grep for 🙂

Extra info:

//--------------------------------------------

// OS - RHEL 7.2, 4 GB RAM

//--------------------------------------------

>>> uname -r

3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Application - simple C++ program with dependencies

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xf76f7000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0xf76bb000)
libvisa.so => /usr/local/lib/libvisa.so (0xf7672000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xf7586000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xf7543000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf7527000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xf736a000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xf7365000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xf734b000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf76f8000)

[Kemens]

Hello danielbixby,

Thank you for the detailed initial post.  It sounds like somehow the install and uninstal/reinstall does not fix the libnipalu.so initialization issue.  After searching around a bit, I found a post that may be helpful.  It is using hardware (usb DAQ) so the issue may be a bit different, but here is the link:  https://decibel.ni.com/content/message/10708 

If you could post the issue you are currently facing in the Linux User Discussion Forum I think you will be able to get more help, as this issue is specific to NI-VISA on a Linux (RHEL) system.  Developers are also active on that Linux discussion page.

[danielbixby · Accepted solution]

---

Thanks Kemens for the reply and pointing me to the discussion form. Most helpful on that board is a brief tutorial, Using NI-VISA with Arch Linux (or Ubuntu 14.04), which breaks down some of the install steps and highlights things to look for.

The issue here was the native NI processes (nipal, nipxirmu, nisvcloc, etc.) not tying themselves to the boot. When the box is rebooted, these processes are not running which causes the application to abort (on the first VISA function call). Once they were started, all ran smoothly.

There is a hackaround/workaround for this issue. See the attached doc for directions, with an example for nipxirmu.

[Kemens]

Hello danielbixby,

Thank you for posting your updates back in this thread and for attaching a doc for the workaround.  If your issue was solved using the steps you provided, could you mark your post as the solution so that other who run into the same issue can more easily find a solution?

Thanks!

[Saniy]

From the document attached:   "/etc/my_start_scripts/natinst/nipxirmu" .

What should I do to confirm the location of  "my_start_scripts"?

I search "natinst", but get a list of directory.

such as:   /etc/natinst   /usr/lib/natinst  /usr/lib64/natinst     /usr/local/natinst

[danielbixby]

Hello Saniy,

"my_start_scripts" is just an example representing the working location for custom scripts that we wanted to invoke at startup, including the modified nipxirmu et al.

Sticking with nipxirmu as the example: As long as the path where you place the modified nipxirmu matches what you have added to /etc/system/systemd/nipxirmu.service (and presumably is root-accessible), the modified scripts should be started up at boot.