Hey guys,
I thought I would let you know that NI-KAL 1.3 is now available. The officially supported distributions can be found on the download page. "Officially supported" means that these are the distributions that we have tested and thus we can provide support.
Also, as noted on the download page, just because NI-KAL supports a distribution doesn't mean other drivers, for example NI-DAQmx 8.0, support that distribution. NI-KAL is the component responsible for interacting with the kernel and if it installs, you should be able to perform you own testing on other drivers such as NI-DAQmx 8.0 if they do not claim support for that distribution.
@bef wrote:
as far as I have tested nipal (NIDAQmx 8.0) doesn't compile on 2.6.14 or later kernels. You have to stick with 2.6.13 (plain vanilla w/o patches should work fine). On the other hand it seems that the 2.6.9 kernel (which used to be the latest kernel to run NIDAQmx Base 1.5) doesn't work with NIDAQmx 8.0. (But I only gave that kernel one shot, after it didn't work I went straight to 2.6.13).
SUSE Linux 10.0 has a version of 2.6.13 which is the newest kernel in the distributions supported by NI-KAL 1.3. If you are feeling brave you may find that NI-KAL 1.3 will compile on newer kernels, but they have not been tested.
@bef wrote:
The best way to go (I think), is to check the kernel the supported distros are using (if you want to use an unsupported distro). It's too bad NI doesn't tell the dependencies or requirements. In my optinion the linux-community would appreciate hard facts like "Kernel 2.6.13, glibc 2.5.3, rpm, ..." rather than a list of supported distros.
Unfortunately it isn't that easy. Here is a simple example why... Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4 has the 2.6.9 kernel. NI-DAQmx Base 2.0 officially supports RHEL WS 4. NI-DAQmx 8.0 does not support RHEL WS 4 (because Red Hat configured the kernel with a 4k kernel stack), but it does install. You just commented that 2.6.9 didn't work (though you did not say what the problem was).
So do we support 2.6.9 or not? I suppose it depends on which version of 2.6.9 we are talking about. Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4's version of 2.6.9 has approximately 828 patches applied when compared to the vanilla kernel found at kernel.org. Then there are kernel configuration options... As previously mentioned NI-DAQmx 8.0 does not work with RHEL WS 4 because then have configured the kernel with a 4k (as apposed to 8k) kernel stack. If you have ever configured a kernel you know that there hundreds of configuration options.
Really it all comes back to testing. We do not have the resources to test every version of the vanilla kernel, plus every distribution's version of the kernel, plus every configuration option in the kernel. Thus we have picked several popular distributions to test, and officially support. You are welcome to use something else, but we did not test it.
You are welcome to run tests yourself, and post them on the forums. If you find a bug we will do our best to fix it.
Shawn B.
National Instruments
Message Edited by Shawn B. on 04-04-2006 03:13 PM
