Cannot install NI-KAL 1.6 in default Mandriva 2006 setup

[greenphreak]

Hello there:

    I am trying to install Labview and its corresponding support programs (NI-VISA, NI-KAL, NI-PAL, NI-488.2, etc.) on an x86 processor.  The distribution of linux we chose to install was Mandriva 2006, due to it being listed as well-supported by NI on this page: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/35D2B5E483A001A18625716B005BE464  However, despite Mandriva 2006 being certified to work with our NI products, we have had very little success in actually getting these products to install properly. 

    Our Mandriva 2006 install uses mostly default settings, certainly nothing out of the ordinary.  We upgraded to the most recent kernel possible for that distribution, 2.6.12-31, using the urpmi tool (basically grabs rpms and dependencies from the net).  We also installed the corresponding source code for this kernel version kernel-source-2.6.12-31mdk. 

    After this, we installed labview 8.0, with no problems.  We went to install NI-VISA, and it crashes in the middle of the NI-VISA installation due to problems with NI-KAL.  Attached is a transcript of our actual session of the NI-VISA 4.2 installation.  NI-KAL installs ok, but when it comes to the post-installation script, it crashes.  I'm not sure why.  Any ideas of what might be going on, or ways in which we could fix it, would be very welcome.  Thank you in advance!

                                                 Cameron

[Shawn B.]

Hey Cameron,

Wow I must be having deja vu.  It sounds like your kernel modules are failing to load.  Can you please run "dmesg" after you see this error to see what error message is reported from the kernel?

Shawn Bohrer
National Instruments

[greenphreak]

We discovered the problem, but forgot to update this page as a reference for others.  By looking in the file /tmp/niSystemReport.out.gz, we were able to find more information regarding why the install was failing.  NIKAL is a kernel module, and it was complaining about version magic numbers disagreeing between itself and our installed kernel source in the line:

Sep 26 12:11:01 ctl2121 kernel: nikal: version magic '2.6.12-31mdkcustom 686 gcc-4.0' should be '2.6.12-31mdk 686 gcc-4.0'

So after searching around a bit, I found that the kernel source we had installed was set to this 31mdkcustom, whereas nikal was expecting 31mdk.  So we went to the Makefile for our kernel source found in /usr/src/linux, and edited the fourth line from

EXTRAVERSION = -31mdkcustom

to

EXTRAVERSION = -31mdk

Then, we recompiled the kernel source, by running make in this directory, then retried installing nikal with no problems, as the version magic numbers were identical.  I'm not sure why the version was set to custom in the default install of the kernel source for 2.6.12-31, and my only worry is that it might cause problems if we try to install other kernel modules that expect the custom version magic number, but my guess is that it won't.  What kind of weird kernel module *wants* to have a custom version magic in the kernel?  None, I imagine.

Thanks for the response though, and I hope this helps other people in the future.