NI Update Service: Upgrades & Service Packs: LabVIEW 2012 FPGA Module Xilinx Tools 10.1

[stbe]

Hi,

I downloaded / installed the newest LV 2012 release - everythin fine so far (its great 🙂 )

NI-Update Service proposed the installation of a service pack - download and installation worked too.

NI-US also suggests to update the Xilinx tools for the FPGA module, but the download is not working. Seems like the download-link is broken??

Any suggestions?

Another interesting question: I live in Austria (German speaking), but we use Windows & LV entirely in English in our company. The NI-US however is heavily localized - even the item description is in German. While this is OK for me, I still wonder if I could change it to English too.

(for the attachment: "Fehler beim Herunterl..." => "failed to download")

-Benjamin

[Marco_Brauner]

Hi Benjamin,I am under the impression that LV 2012 requires Xilinx Tools 13.4, did you try to donwload this one?

Does it also fail to download?

regards

Marco Brauner NIG

[stbe]

Thank you for your reply.

As far as I know, the 10.1 tools are required for the "old" Virtex-2 FPGA devices (which I use) ... and the 13.x tools for the newer Virtex-5 ... ones, or am I wrong?

I am able to download the 13.4 tools ... it's going to take some time. I'll report back if I also can compile FPGA code for the PXI-7831.

-Benjamin

[LaRisa]

Hi Benjamin,

Can you run Update Service from the command line to generate a log file, like this:

NIUpdateService.exe -log log.txt

The NIUpdateService.exe should be located in your Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\Update Service directory, and the log will be placed there unless you specify a different path to save the log. Please post your log here and I'll take a look. It should tell us what happened.

Also, Update Service is localized based on your system's Region and Language >> Format settings.

[stbe]

Hi Larisa,

thanks for the reply.

I followed your steps and the log file is included.

However, now I did not get the choice to download any tools ... (none installed yet on this machine and hidden updates are displayed)

In the meanwhile, I also installed LV2012 + FPGA module on a PC where I already had LV2011SP1 + FPGA module 2011 + Xilinx Tools 10.1 & 12.4 installed and I was able to use this machine to compile the bit files (via the network compile server option).

It looks like the FPGA compile works ... our we need to install LV2011 + tools before LV2012 ?

Will the Xilinx tools for both Virtex-II and Virtex-5 devices be on the DVDs for the academic site licence?

-Benjamin

PS:

attachments do not work from my side (FF 14.0.1) ...

"The attachment's content type (unknown/unknown) does not match its file extension."

here's a link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3iibrcarfv9zri/nius_log.zip 

PPS: hm, strange ... why the error message, when the attachment is here??

[LaRisa]

Hi Benjamin,

Yeah, the log here basically says that Update Service did not display the Xilinx 10.1 update because your system doesn't need it. I guess you already updated in some other way?

I'm not very familar with FPGA and Xilinx, so I may be wrong, but it was my impression that the Xilinx tools must be updated to compile with the new 2012 FPGA module.

I can tell you that both Xilinx 13.4 and Xilinx 10.1 for FPGA 2012 are included in the Academic Site License if your package includes the Control and Embedded Systems Option (which is the option that includes the FPGA Module).

[stbe]

Hi Larisa,

I'm pretty sure that I did not install the 10.1 tools for LV2012 so far (no Xilinx tools at all on this machine)

I don't know what other software package might modify some states here.

The attached log file is from the PC I wrote earlier:
WinXP SP3, LV2011SP1 and LV2012 installed, both with FPGA module and compile farm.
FPGA tools 10.1 for LV2011, 12.4 for LV2011 and 13.4 for LV2012 installed successfully.

Starting up the NIUS suggests to install the 10.1 tools for LV2012 (I also think that an update should be required to work properly with the new LV version), but it won't download this specific update. (log attached)

Am I the only one with this issue so far?

Anyhow ... if the ASL contains the installers, I just need to wait a few days/weeks until I can do a full upgrade of the LV environment. So far I've only been testing if our projects are also running properly with the new version 🙂

Thanks for looking into this,

-Benjamin

[LaRisa]

Hi Benjamin,

OK, I see, if the PC doesn't have any Xilinx tools installed at all, then Update Service will not offer you the update. It only displays upgrades to software that is already installed.

This log from the other PC shows that the Xilinx 10.1 update fails to download, as your message said initially, but unfortunately it doesn't say anything more.

We released a bunch of new updates last week, and since then there have been a few cases like this, but it doesn't seem widespread or easily reproducible. I can see in our server reports that other users successfully downloaded this update yesterday.

I attached a downloader file that you can try. Unzip the file and run the exe. All it does is point to the same download location that Update Service is using to download this file. If the downloader works, then the problem is with Update Service. If the downloader doesn't work, then we'd know that something on our web servers isn't delivering this file properly.

Also, if you happen to have any HTTP traffic monitoring software (like Fiddler), I'd be interested to know what it says is happening during the file download request.

[stbe]

Hi Larisa,

OK, that's what the name "update service" stands for 🙂

The downloader file worked fine. I installed the update and afterwards the NIUS doesn't give me the 10.1 tools download option any more, so everything seems fine.

I also installed Fiddler, but I'm not very comfortable with using it. I had a quick look and it seems that the url provided to NIUS lies on a different server-url than where the file finally can be downloaded (the first response sends a HTTP 301 - permanently relocated - header). Maybe the NIUS on my machine cannot parse this correctly? Anyhow, the downloader did ...

Also, while using Fiddler, NIUS just showed the downloading bar, but did not get any data (although Fiddler was downloading the file). After closing Fiddler, NIUS displayed the error message (that's already known to me).

As far as I am concerned, it's finally working  - although we'll start rolling LV2012 to more clients the next week. I'll check if other clients have the same issue and report back.

-Benjamin

[LaRisa]

Hi Benjamin,

I'm glad you're up and running for now. I'll file a Corrective Action Request for my team to investigate further on our end. Thank you for all the information you provided!