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64 bit software?

OK, I have the latest ni-488.2 / nikal working fine on Fedora 10 x86_64, so I can use the interactive control to send commands to gpib equipment.

However, nothing seems to work for installing ni-visa. Should ni-visa be installable on x86_64? How about LabView 8.6? Are there x86_64 beta versions of these, or are they simply not going to work on x86_64?

I'm aware they aren't "officially" supported, bla bla, ...

- Mike

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Message 1 of 31
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NI-VISA 4.4 supports x86_64 kernels.  NI-488.2, NI-VISA, and LabVIEW 8.6 currently all provide 32-bit user-mode components so in theory they should work just fine on any multi-lib distro (which Fedora 10 is).  You will need to ensure you have any 32-bit libraries needed installed, and you will need to install NI-KAL 1.9 before NI-VISA or NI-488.2 but besides that I think it should work.  If you are having problems what are they?

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Shawn,

Thanks for the answer. Good to know it "should work".

I installed nikal 1.9.0, followed by ni4882 2.5.4b1. They worked fine. However, I'm stuck with NI-VISA choking on a missing module:

The following components will be installed using rpm:
  NI-VISA Runtime 4.4.0              3113 KB  (in /usr/local/vxipnp)
  NI-VISA Runtime Kernel 4.4.0        169 KB  (in /usr/local/vxipnp)
  NI-VISA Development 4.4.0          9685 KB  (in /usr/local/vxipnp)
  NI-VISA Configuration 4.4.0         500 KB  (in /usr/local/vxipnp)
  NI-VISA Server 4.4.0                236 KB  (in /usr/local/vxipnp)
  NI Spy 2.6.0                       2397 KB  (in /usr/local/natinst/nispy)
  CVI Runtime 8.0                    8555 KB  (in /usr/local/natinst/cvirte)
  LabVIEW Runtime 8.2.1             38472 KB  (in /usr/local/lib/LabVIEW-8.2)
  NI-PAL 2.3.0                        832 KB  (in /usr/local/natinst/nipal)
  NI-PAL Kernel Support 2.3.0        1822 KB  (in /usr/local/natinst/nipal)
  NI-KAL 1.8.0                        242 KB  (in /usr/local/natinst/nikal)
Total space required:               66023 KB
Space available:                130093264 KB

Continue? [Yn] y

Installing selected components ...

Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
    package labview82-rte-8.2.1-2.i386 is already installed
    package nikali-1.9.0-f0.noarch (which is newer than nikali-1.8.0-f0.noarch) is already installed

Running NI-KAL Post Installation Script ...

Running NI-PAL Kernel Support Post Installation Script ...

Running NI-PAL Post Installation Script ...

FATAL: Module gpibprtk not found.

Installation completed successfully.

The install claims to have completed successfully, but the /usr/local/vxipnp directory doesn't even get created.


Suggestions?

- Mike

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The gpibprtk kernel module should come from NI-488.2, so I'm guessing the NI-488.2 install actually failed.  You may want to re-run the NI-488.2 installer.

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Ali I think that you have a problem with ni-488.2 installation. There is a probe very easy to know if your installation is working:

# modprobe nikal
FATAL: Module nikal not found.

# modprobe gpibprtk
FATAL: Module gpibprtk not found.

If you have this output from shell...you have a problem. I think that you are having problems with some scripts included at

/usr/local/natinst/nikal/bin

It's sounds It's something related with gcc version, please run this command and post the output:

#gcc --version


Saludos.

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Message 5 of 31
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Islero,

I'm have having problems with the gpibprtk part. nikal is OK:

[root@xena ~]# modprobe nikal
[root@xena ~]# modprobe gpibprtk
FATAL: Module gpibprtk not found.
[root@xena ~]# gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 4.3.2 20081105 (Red Hat 4.3.2-7)

The interactive control does work, though:

: ibdev 0 8 0 10 1 0

ud0: ibwrt "*idn?"
[0100]   ( cmpl )
count:  5

ud0: ibrd 99
[2100]   ( end cmpl )
count:  52
41  56  54  45  43  48  20  45          A V T E C H   E
4c  45  43  54  52  4f  53  59          L E C T R O S Y
53  54  45  4d  53  2c  41  56          S T E M S , A V
2d  31  30  31  30  2d  42  2d          - 1 0 1 0 - B -
4e  54  55  41  2c  53  4e  3a          N T U A , S N :
31  31  35  39  38  2c  56  33          1 1 5 9 8 , V 3
2e  37  38  0a                          . 7 8 .

So... how do I debug the gpibprtk issues?

- Mike

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Message 6 of 31
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Interesting, I'll admit that I have no idea what gpibprtk.ko does but what I do know is how to create that module.  A working installation of NI-488.2 should install:

/usr/local/natinst/ni4882/src/objects/gpibprtk-unversioned.o

It should then create the following symbolic link:

/usr/local/natinst/nikal/etc/clientkdb/ni4882/gpibprtk-unversioned.o -> /usr/local/natinst/ni4882/src/objects/gpibprtk-unversioned.o

Once the symbolic link is in place you can create the kernel module for the kernel you are currently running by running "updateNIDrivers".  The resulting module should then end up as:

/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/natinst/ni4882/gpibprtk.ko

My guess is that your system is simply missing the symbolic link, but I'm not sure why that link was not created.

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Shawn,

I'm missing gpibprtk-unversioned.o. Which rpm is supposed to install it? I can try playing with that rpm manually.

[mjc@xena python]$ cd /usr/local/natinst/ni4882/src/objects/
[mjc@xena objects]$ ll
total 488
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 477328 2008-02-19 18:04 ni488k-unversioned.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  15400 2008-02-19 18:04 ni488lock-unversioned.o
[mjc@xena objects]$

- Mike

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Message 8 of 31
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OK just another disclaimer... I'm not a GPIB expert but it looks like gpibprtk.ko has been split into ni488k.ko and ni488lock.ko which would explain why gpib works on your system.

So my next question would be why does the VISA install try to load gpibprtk.ko (I'm not a VISA guy either)?  To figure that out I would try to find where the the modprobe/insmod occurs.  Here is a trick you can use to narrow down what tries to load gpibprtk.ko.  First make sure you are trying to install NI-VISA 4.4 then run the INSTALL script with

sh -x INSTALL

This will print out every line in the shell script with variables filled in before they execute.  You can then search the output for the FATAL message and see what the command immediately before was.  The -x option won't recurse into other shell scripts but if you want to dig deeper to find the actual modprobe gpibprtk.ko call you can either:

a) copy the previous shell command before the FATAL message and run it directly with the -x option

b) find that script on the system and edit the interpreter line at the top of the file to be "#!/bin/sh -x".  You can then rerun the VISA INSTALL script.

If you can narrow down the "call stack" of scripts that eventually try to load gpibprt.ko we should be able to figure out what is going on.  Even if you can't find the exact modprobe call any bit of detailed output would help.

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Shawn, thanks, "sh -x" led me to some cruft in /etc/natinst that was left over from previous unsuccessful installs of older versions. I uninstalled everything and then purged "/etc/natinst" and "/usr/local/natinst", and re-installed NIKAL 1.9 and ni4882 x86_64 beta. This cleared the "gpibprtk" errors.

But... nivisa still doesn't install. It claims success, but no vxipnp directory is created.

So... I unzipped the rpms in the nivisa 4.4 folder, deleted the obsolete NIKAL subfolder, and tried running:

[root@xena visa44]# rpm -ivh */*.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
    package labview82-rte-8.2.1-2.i386 is already installed
    file /usr/local/natinst/nipal/src/objects/nipalk-unversioned.o conflicts between attempted installs of nipalki-2.3.0-f1.i386 and nipalki-2.3.0-f1.x86_64
    file /usr/local/vxipnp/src/objects/NiViPciK-unversioned.o conflicts between attempted installs of nivisak-4.4.0-f0.i386 and nivisak-4.4.0-f0.x86_64
    file /usr/local/vxipnp/src/objects/NiViPxiK-unversioned.o conflicts between attempted installs of nivisak-4.4.0-f0.i386 and nivisak-4.4.0-f0.x86_64

Is this the source of the trouble? I think you need to install both i386 and x86_64 versions, right?

If I try to force things I get:

[root@xena visa44]# rpm -ivh --force */*.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:nipalki                ########################################### [  6%]
   2:nipali                 ########################################### [ 13%]
   3:labview82-rte          ########################################### [ 19%]
   4:nicvirte               ########################################### [ 25%]
   5:nivisak                ########################################### [ 31%]
   6:nivisa                 ########################################### [ 38%]
   7:nirpci                 ########################################### [ 44%]
   8:niorbi                 ########################################### [ 50%]
   9:nidimi                 ########################################### [ 56%]
  10:nipalki                ########################################### [ 63%]
  11:nipxirmi               ########################################### [ 69%]
  12:nispyi                 ########################################### [ 75%]
  13:nivisa-config          ########################################### [ 81%]
  14:nivisa-devel           ########################################### [ 88%]
  15:nivisak                ########################################### [ 94%]
  16:nivisaserver           ########################################### [100%]

[root@xena visa44]# ll /usr/local/vxipnp/
bin/   etc/   linux/ src/

[root@xena visa44]# python /fileserver/mjcfiles/op1b/python/avtech-idn.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
...snip...

OSError: /usr/local/vxipnp/linux/bin/libvisa.so.7: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32
[root@xena visa44]#

So there seems to be a 32/64 bit issue. Right?

- Mike

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