LabView stability under Linux, better than Windows?

[Harry.W]

Hello,

We are doing LabView DAQ using a cDAQ9714 module (with AI card 9203 and AO card 9265) at a customer site. We are running an excutable on a Windows PC and had a couples of times (3 so far) that the PC just gone freeze for some reason and we lost all inputs and outputs. Each time it happend after the program continous run a few days. So far we have no clue why this is happening (Any idea?)

We need the program to run continously for months and years and absolutely hate the fact that it freeze. Since we couldn't find any bug in the program till now, we're thinking to blame Windows. Then alternative for us is to use Linux os. My questions are:

1. Does LabView run stable on Linux than on Windows? Any data or experience anyone has?

2. To get the same program runs on Linux, I heard I have to buy a LabView Linux delelopment tool and create the excutable from there. Does this involve any extra effort than the Windows one?

3. Does NI have any industrial PC that has Linux OS preinstalled instead of Windows? We bought one PPC 2115 before.

Thanks!

Rgds,

Harry

[bstreiff]

Do you mean the cDAQ-9174? While we do have a version of DAQmx for Linux, it does not have support for any USB devices; this includes the cDAQ-9174. DAQmx Base for Linux also does not support any cDAQ devices.

As such, while LabVIEW is supported on Linux, you will unfortunately not have the hardware support you expect.

In what way does the PC just freeze? Does it become completely unresponsive? Does it bluescreen? What version of Windows and what version of NI-DAQmx are you using?

[Harry.W]

bstreiff ,

Humm, not a good news. And you are right we use cDAQ-9174.

The way it freeze appears to be just "unresponsive" (never saw blue screen or any error dialog box). The program front panel was still there but clock stopped and you cannot do anything to it, even minimize the window. The only way it to power cycle using the hard way - unplug the power line.

The PC we bought from NI, NI PPC-2115, and it has Window XP pre-installed (not sure what verion of SP is though). For the DAQmx, it's the verion 9.1 and I used LabView 2010 for the code and build the excutable.

Could it be a bug in my program? But it's not a complicated one: I read 7 current inputs from AI card, do some calculation, conditioning etc, and then drive out 7 current outputs. I am doing the loop every 5 secs which is very slow i would think. How can i debug my program if it runs ok for a few days. When freeze happen I cannot see no certain pattern. Besides, Labview is the only program running and the PC is NOT in any network.

Any clue? Thanks

Harry

[bstreiff]

That is indeed curious. I would recommend upgrading to the latest version of NI-DAQmx (which at this time is 9.4).

If your computer is configured to provide a memory dump on system failure (System Properties → Advanced → Startup and Recovery → Write debugging information), check to see if a file associated with the time of the crash is available at C:\WINDOWS\Minidump. If present, it would have the form 'MiniMMDDYY-NN.dmp'. If you have a minidump file, it would be immensely useful for R&D to debug this. Unfortunately, if it just flat-out freezes (instead of bluescreening) it might not actually create the file.

It's also possible that it might be an issue with your particular PPC-2115... unfortunately I've never worked with them and so don't know where to start with debugging that hardware.