Installing NI4882 and NIVISA to Ubuntu 8.10

[dicky yu]

Hello Shawn,

there's only 1 symbolic link under clienkdb. the result of "find /usr/local/natinst/nikal/etc/clientkdb" is as follows:

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

Is it possible to force the generation of symbolic link for nipalk? I just tried to manually make the link by "ln -sf /usr/local/natinst/nipal/src/objects/nipalk-unversioned.o /usr/local/natinst/nikal/etc/clientkdb/nipal/nipalk-unversioned.o", but when I tried to modprobe gpibprtk, the error message is still the same.

Thanks,

Dicky

[dicky yu]

Sorry if I did not make it clear enough. What I meant is:

but when I tried to "modprobe gpibprtk" after performing updateNIDrivers and restarting the PC, the error message is still the same.

Thanks and best regards,

Dicky

[Shawn B.]

Creating the symbolic link manually should work as long as the /usr/local/natinst/nikal/etc/clientkdb/nipal/ subdirectory already existed.  Does "find /usr/local/natinst/nikal/etc/clientkdb/ -type l" now show both the nipalk and gpibprtk links?  When you run updateNIDrivers does it now show that it is updating nipalk.ko?

If the links are their, and updateNIDrivers updated all of the modules, then you should try running "/etc/init.d/nipal start" which will load nipalk.ko and create the device node.  Do you still see error messages when you run "dmesg"?

Shawn Bohrer

National Instruments

[dicky yu]

Hi Shawn,

Sorry that yesteday afternoon I was unable to login to this site, hence I could not update you the progress.

Yes, the symbolic link can work fine and both gpibprtk and nipalk.ko was updated.

However I saw 2 nipalk.ko in 2 different folders: /lib/modules/...../nipal/nipalk.ko and /lib/modules/...../ni4882/nipalk.ko.

It seems that "modprobe" loads nipalk.ko located in /lib/modules/...../nipal/, despite the fact that "updateNIDrivers" only updated the file in /lib/modules/...../ni4882/. That was why I could neither do "modprobe gpibprtk" or run "gpibexplorer"

Running "cp /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/natinst/ni4882/nipalk.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/natinst/nipal/nipalk.ko" could fix this. Now I can run gpibexplorer normally.

Next step will be the re-installation of NI-VISA which was still unsuccessful. Running "./INSTALL --nodeps" did not install any packages:

NI-VISA for Linux version 4.5.0f0
is about to be installed using rpm at /usr/local/natinst

Would you like to continue? [Yn] Y

Installing NI-VISA for Linux version 4.5.0f0...
Pre Installation .
Post Installation .
Pre Installation ..................
Post Installation ..................

FOR PATENTS COVERING NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS PRODUCTS, REFER TO
THE PATENTS.txt FILE ON /media/Local Disk_/Master_Ubuntu/NI/NI-VISA AND/OR
www.ni.com/patents

NI-VISA for Linux Installation completed successfully.

Based on what I experienced with NI4882 installation, I suspect it is related to the packages in NI-VISA4.5 that I had manually installed (using dpkg and rpm). Will need sometime to fix this again. If finally my system could work as expected, I think I need to re-summarize whatever steps I took. Even if the originally included installation script should have worked flawlessly, people might screw up here and there with their installation process.

I would also be interesting to know the progress of Peter's installation. If he managed to complete his setup, it is good to know which step(s) that caused the problem and how he fixed that.

Thanks and best regards

Dicky 

[Shawn B.]

---

dicky yu wrote:

Yes, the symbolic link can work fine and both gpibprtk and nipalk.ko was updated.

However I saw 2 nipalk.ko in 2 different folders: /lib/modules/...../nipal/nipalk.ko and /lib/modules/...../ni4882/nipalk.ko.

---

Did you create your nipalk-unversioned.o symbolic link under the ni4882 subdirectory in clientkdb/?

---

Next step will be the re-installation of NI-VISA which was still unsuccessful. Running "./INSTALL --nodeps" did not install any packages:

NI-VISA for Linux version 4.5.0f0
is about to be installed using rpm at /usr/local/natinst

Would you like to continue? [Yn] Y

Installing NI-VISA for Linux version 4.5.0f0...
Pre Installation .
Post Installation .
Pre Installation ..................
Post Installation ..................

FOR PATENTS COVERING NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS PRODUCTS, REFER TO
THE PATENTS.txt FILE ON /media/Local Disk_/Master_Ubuntu/NI/NI-VISA AND/OR
www.ni.com/patents

NI-VISA for Linux Installation completed successfully.

---

 Do you have rpm installed on your system?

Shawn Bohrer

National Instruments