most painless method to get visa->gpib & daqmx?

[Chaz123]

Hello,

After several weeks of struggling with getting this working, what is the most painless approach to get visa talking to my devices in Linux.

I have at NI6008 and a NI6120 that need to comunicate with via Visa with DAQmx

I also have a GPIB-USB-HS device that I use to talk with various instruments.

I have been using openSuse 11.2, based on the supported distributions listed in the linux Visa, 488.2 and DAQmx packages.  Is there a particular distribution and set of packages that allow for a straightforward installation?  Each package I've tried says that openSuse 11.2 is supported, but it sure does not look like it, based on the hours I've spent and the many similar problems on this discussion.

Thanks!

[irwan]

openSUSE 11.2 should be supported now. Make sure you have the latest nikal package.

[Chaz123]

Thank you.

Yes, openSuse 11.2 should work.  From the readmes, it is clear that it should work.  From looking at user comments, and from my own experience, it does not work without a whole lot of mess.

My question, perhaps refrased, is there any distribution and set of NI software packages that is supported (and be supported, I mean that it installs without spending hours getting the kernal set up, etc.)?  Redhat???

[irwan]

Can you elaborate what doesn't work without a whole lot of mess?

The one thing to note is that on openSUSE requires more steps as indicated in nikal readme:

"

On openSUSE complete the following steps:

1. Ensure you have installed kernel-source and kernel-syms packages

   corresponding to the version of the currently running kernel. The version of

   the currently running kernel can be determined by issuing the command

   "uname -r".

2. Change the directory to the /usr/src/linux-<version> directory, where

   <version> corresponds to the currently running kernel version.

3. Run "zcat /boot/symvers-<version>.gz > Module.symvers" as root to prepare

   modversion support.

4. Run "make cloneconfig" as root to configure the sources for the currently

   running kernel.

5. Run "make modules_prepare" as root to prepare the headers for compilation.

"

The process is more straightforward with RedHat installation, you get to skip those.

I don't know what you're having difficulty with, so I'm not sure how to help

[Chaz123]

Thanks for your help.

After more reading on this forum, it looks like labview on linux is not ready to put into our lab.  

Better support for linux will bring NI more business, but it is not ready.

Thanks

Andy