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libnipalu.so not initialized

I am trying to set up NI-VISA and ultimately NI-DAQ drivers on a PXI-8106 controller running the Debian linux distribution. I am aware that Debian is not officially supported by NI, but seeing as how linux distros (maybe with the exception of RedHat and its children) are more or less the same, there's no reason why this should not work. And indeed, it seems like a number of people have been successfully in setting this up.

I am running the 2.6.18-6-686 kernel.

I have done a lot of hacking to get the point where I am, but I believe that I am very close to success. However, when I run NIvisaic I receive

libnipalu.so failed to initialize
Perhaps you need to run updateNIDrivers
Aborted

I've run updateNIDrivers and it runs to conclusion. (See attached file). By the way, it does give me that warning about kernel version numbers, but my kernel source I assure you is the same as my real kernel. The scripts that check version numbers are a bit silly (i.e. 2.6.18 instead of 2.6.18-6-686 will cause errors, no doubt this is the case here).

Not to mention the PAL and KAL seemed to have successfully installed themselves as linux kernel modules
%> cat /proc/modules | grep [kp]al
nipalk 1319888 1 - Live 0xf8cdf000
nikal 62304 2 nipalk, Live 0xf8b07000
usbcore 112644 5 nika,usbhid,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd, Live 0xf8844000

Also the library in question is there in all forms one could possibly hope for
%> ls -ltr /usr/local/lib/libnipal*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 47 2008-06-17 11:34 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.2.2.0 -> /usr/local/natinst/nipal/lib/libnipalu.so.2.2.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 47 2008-06-17 12:26 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.2.0.0 -> /usr/local/natinst/nipal/lib/libnipalu.so.2.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 33 2008-06-17 12:26 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.2 -> /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.2.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 48 2008-06-19 14:40 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.1.10.2 -> /usr/local/natinst/nipal/lib/libnipalu.so.1.10.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 18 2008-06-19 14:40 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.1 -> libnipalu.so.2.2.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 29 2008-06-19 14:40 /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so -> /usr/local/lib/libnipalu.so.1

Some extra information that might help shed some light on why this is going on for those who know more than I.
Since I am not using a distro that uses RPM to manage packages (SUSE also does not use RPM I think, so this isn't a "well use a supported distro" issue I believe), my RPM database is not populated with life's necessities such as glibc, etc etc. They are of course there, but the scripts simpy check the RPM database. Installing these packages in RPM as well as debian packages is a recipe for disaster as well as strange conflicts, and could potentially wreak havoc on my system. Thus I am seeking a solution that does not simply pretend like I'm using RedHat. As such I have turned to exploding the RPMs by hand rpm -Uvh <some rpm>. When the only dependency required is something inane like /bin/sh I simpy append --nodeps to the rpm command. This has worked alright for me in the past. After I did that to all the NI-VISA (I'm using the latest version as of this date) RPMs in the appropriate order (they have dependencies among themselves) I ran the INSTALL script in the ISO root which has a --no-rpm flag you can give it, which is what I did. It happily did...something. Not quite sure what. But at the conclusion of it all I had a bunch of binaries installed where they should have been, and everything was fine and dandy with the exception of the above problem.

By the way, before I did all of this I installed NIKAL in the best and most formal way, and it worked great (the fact that it's a kernel module and updateNIDrivers works is testimony to that). That's more or less all the information I have right now. Please write with any suggestions, even if you think it only remotely relates to this, or if something will become a problem in the future, that's important too.

Thank you ahead of time,
Boris Lipchin


Message Edited by lenorin on 06-19-2008 08:25 PM
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Solved my own problem. I re-did the NI-VISA installation but used the debian package manager instead (used alien to convert to .deb). I was at first experiencing the same exact problem but the I uninstalled the nipali module and replaced it with nipalki (I think that's what happened rather than the other way around), and everything just started working. This is probably a good thing to know, particular for technical service engineers at National Instruments.
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