Will GPIB ENET-100 work with kernels 2.6.25 and greater?

[anshuljain]

Will the GPIB ENET-100 work with kernels 2.6.25 and greater? I'm supposing that it will work...since the 2.6.25 restrictions apply to the usbcore modules not allowing access to USB GPIB devices. But just wanted to be sure before deciding on a new order

-Anshul

[Shawn B.]

Since the GPIB ENET-100 is an Ethernet device all communication is done from user-mode with sockets.  There is no kernel piece.  So yes it should work fine with newer kernels.

Shawn Bohrer

[anshuljain]

Thanks Shawn...appreciate your reply.

Is there any work being done to solve the GPIB-USB issue with kernels >=2.6.25 onwards? I tried to play with the nikal.c file in /usr/local/natinst/.../ diectory and run a updateNIdrivers. This did apparently make the kernel module as GPL compliant ( I don't know if its allright to post the workaround)...which was evident from the insmod nikal command. But I still couldn't get nikal to register with usbcore.

Any suggestions? . The workaround is purely experimental...

-Anshul

[Shawn B.]

Hey Anshul,

At this point we have not begun any work to support the GPIB-USB on newer kernels.  We are certainly thinking about what the best way to support that hardware is, but with the economy down we have to carefully consider where we should focus our development efforts.  In this case there are some workarounds since you can use an older distribution/kernel or try the open source Linux GPIB drivers.

As for other potential workarounds I don't think we should post a detailed solution on this site.  If customers want to look at nikal.c to see how we declare our license and disable USB on kernels >=2.6.25 that is their own choice.

Shawn Bohrer

National Instruments