What setup to use for GPIB-USB-HS and Visa under Linux?

[graffitici]

Hi all,

After spending two entire days trying to get this system working, I hope somebody will kindly give me some advice. I have a GPIB-USB-HS cable connected to several equipments in the lab. I have a lot of code I have written in Python using PyVISA on my Mac OS X. I need to run this code on a Linux box.

At first, I tried to install this on Ubuntu, but after several failed attempts and hours of custom kernel compilations, I decided to switch to OpenSuse 11.2 (since it is supposedly "supported"). Since apparently the NI-488.2 2.9.1 driver only supports kernel versions up to 2.6.24, I downloaded and built that kernel. That is a fairly old kernel, and it was a real pain to get it working. I had to manually patch certain files (unifdef.c) from newer versions, change the registers here and there, but at the end got it to compile. Then I realize it does not support Ext4, which is what OpenSuse 11.2 installed as a file system!!

My question is this: Given the constraints of all these drivers (NI-KAL, NI488.2, VISA etc..), what is the platform that one must use to get this GPIB-USB-HS working with Python?! I am ready to intall another distro from scratch if need be and so on, but seriously, this shouldn't be so hard, right?

How do I use this GPIB-USB-HS with Linux? Is this even possible?!

Thanks in advance,

 Berk

[Nathan-P]

Thats a pretty tough question, and this is all I've been able to find so far:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Linux-Users/clarification-of-working-solution-in-ubuntu/td-p/3424095

I'd reccomend talking a look at those.

From the sound of it, you need PyVISA, so you may be better off not using the GPIB-USB-HS but using a GPIB module that has hardware Linux support like:

https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/model/pcie-gpib.html

[JasonSmith]

You should be able to get it to work easily if you use Redhat 5 or Scientific Linux 5, which are both NI-supported distributions that still use kernel versions that will work with the GPIB-USB-HS.

For newer distributions with incompatible kernels, the PCI-GPIB or PCIe-GPIB are good options that are supported by National Instruments. It may be possible to use the GPIB-USB-HS with the open-source linux-gpib package available on SourceForge, but it is not supported or maintained by National Instruments, and is not 100% compatible with NI-488.2.

-Jason Smith