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libnipalu.so failed to initialize - CentOS 7

Hi,

 

I have installed NI-VISA 16 and PyVISA on CentOS 7 to ultimately try to control a Keithley 2410 SMU via python. The installations of both NI-VISA 16 and PyVISA seemed to be successful but when I tried to do a quick test in a python interactive shell I see the following:

 

>>> import visa

>>> rm = visa.ResourceManager()

libnipalu.so failed to initialize
Perhaps you need to run updateNIDrivers
Aborted (core dumped)

 

Furthermore, when I tried to then update the NI drivers, as suggested, that also failed with the following error:

 

nikal: ERROR: Error locating kernel sources for the requested kernel version (3.10.0-514.6.1.el7.x86_64).

 

Any suggestions as to what the problem(s) might be would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

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I found that at least some of the NI drivers (I tried using the NI488.2 driver) are not supported on Centos 1611. The kernel package is using a symbol that is not GPL compatible anymore. The latest NI drivers do appear to work on Centos 1511. When I contacted support they basically told me to pound sand.

 


@a4gb0s23 wrote:

Hi,

 

I have installed NI-VISA 16 and PyVISA on CentOS 7 to ultimately try to control a Keithley 2410 SMU via python. The installations of both NI-VISA 16 and PyVISA seemed to be successful but when I tried to do a quick test in a python interactive shell I see the following:

 

>>> import visa

>>> rm = visa.ResourceManager()

libnipalu.so failed to initialize
Perhaps you need to run updateNIDrivers
Aborted (core dumped)

 

Furthermore, when I tried to then update the NI drivers, as suggested, that also failed with the following error:

 

nikal: ERROR: Error locating kernel sources for the requested kernel version (3.10.0-514.6.1.el7.x86_64).

 

Any suggestions as to what the problem(s) might be would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks.


 

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Thanks a lot for your reply. That's a bit disappointing to hear as I'm also currently using CentOS 1611. I'll see if I can try again with CentOS 1511. In the meantime I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has managed to use NI-VISA on CentOS 1611. Thanks again.

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I found that at least some of the NI drivers (I tried using the NI488.2 driver) are not supported on Centos 1611. The kernel package is using a symbol that is not GPL compatible anymore.

Correct. And in future much more symbols are going to be GPL-only, and I dont recall any new non-GPL one introduced in recent time.

 

Dont expect that "GPL-condome"-approach (which actually is just abusing the letters of GPL against the spirit) work for the future. It's technically completely nuts - Russian roulette. Not usable for serious production environments.

 

When I contacted support they basically told me to pound sand.

Sad, but as expected. Certain HW vendors just haven't grasped how Linux (and its development process) works. The best, IMHO, is to completely boycott such asocial and bad-engineering behaviour - until they learn, or get optimized-away from the market.

(the hard task for us consultants is teaching our clients what bad products they're attemping to buy and how huge the technical and economic risks actually are).

 

Linus once put it straight (towards NVidia): "**bleep** off!"

Linux Embedded / Kernel Hacker / BSP / Driver development / Systems engineering
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Linus once put it straight (towards NVidia): "**bleep** off!"

Ah, as expected: typical american bigoted "bad word" filter. No free speech. Thanks @NI for the clarification. (reminds me to certain radio overseer beaurocrats who wanna censor the name "Pamela Anderson") By the way: if these devices are really important enough for some people here, to collect a proper budget, we could just reverse engineer the drivers (by the way: over here in EU that's perfectly legal) and bring them to mainline. (just as, eg. Nouveau folks did)
Linux Embedded / Kernel Hacker / BSP / Driver development / Systems engineering
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