Installing ni4882, visa, LabView, and 32 bit Python on Fedora 10 x86_64

[avtechmjc]

Installation on F10 x86_64

Yes, it's possible! Mostly.

Kernels

This only works for kernel versions up to and including 2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64.

Later 2.6.27 kernels will give an error about gcc versions.

2.6.29 kernels don't work at all, due to obscure problems with "init_mm". So this isn't workable on Fedora 11, yet.

Some Other Prerequisites

You'll need to do this as root:

yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers mesa-libGL.{i386,x86_64}

If you've been struggling with NI installs already, you should probably delete any existing NI rpms, and clear out the existing directories. Otherwise, strange things can happen due to old files and libraries:

rpm -e (...whatever NI rpms are installed...)

rm -rf /usr/local/natinst

rm -rf /etc/natinst

Start with NIKAL 1.9 (or 1.10)

Download NIKAL19.iso from http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1195/lang/en.

wget http://ftp.ni.com/support/softlib/kal/1.9/NIKAL19.iso

su
mkdir NIKAL
mount NIKAL19.iso -t iso9660 -o loop ./NIKAL
cd NIKAL
./INSTALL

reboot

NIKAL 1.10 should work fine too.

Next: x86_64 version of ni4882

Go to http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1000/lang/en to get the beta x86_64 version of ni4882.

wget http://ftp.ni.com/support/softlib/gpib/linux/Linux%20Beta/ni4882-2.5.4b1-release.tar.gz

tar -zxvf ni4882-2.5.4b1-release.tar.gz
cd release
su
./INSTALL

reboot

Test Communications

Run the GPIB explorer, and make sure your controller card is shown:

/usr/local/natinst/ni4882/bin/gpibexplorer

If you get weird errors, disable selinux:

setenforce 0

Try communicating with an instrument (in this example, a pulse generator at address 8):

/usr/local/natinst/ni4882/bin/gpibintctrl
ibdev 0 8 0 10 1 0
ibwrt "*idn?"
ibrd 99

Install NI-VISA

Get NI-VISA 4.4 from http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1074/lang/en. You will need to fix a problem in the INSTALL file, using the commands below. "visa" is a read-only mount point. "visa44" is an editable copy of it. This editing should not be needed with VISA 4.5, when it becomes available.

wget http://ftp.ni.com/support/softlib/visa/NI-VISA/4.4/linux/NI-VISA-4.4.0.iso

mkdir visa

mkdir visa44

su
mount NI-VISA-4.4.0.iso -t iso9660 -o loop ./visa

cp -r visa visa44
cd visa44
perl -p -i -e 's/INSTALLPREFIX/INSTPREFIXES/g' INSTALL
./INSTALL

reboot

Install LabView from its CD

./INSTALL

/usr/local/bin/updateNIDrivers

reboot

32 Bit Python

The NI software only has a 32 but user API, so you can't use a normal 64 bit application like Python with it. (The LabView software is 32 bit, so it is OK). So you have to install a special 32 bit Python  instance, like so:

wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.6.1/Python-2.6.1.tar.bz2

tar -xjvf Python-2.6.1.tar.bz2

cd Python-2.6.1

su

yum install libgcc.{i386,x86_64} glibc-common.{i386,x86_64} glibc-devel.{i386,x86_64} glibc-headers.{i386,x86_64}
./configure --prefix=/opt/python32 CC="gcc -m32" CXX="g++ -m32" LD="ld -m elf_i386"

make

make install

PyVISA

If you install PyVISA to use with your 32 bit Python, you'll need to edit setup.cfg to use the 32 bit instance:

[install]
prefix = /opt/python32

before running /opt/python32/bin/python setup.py install

[Enrico_Segre]

On CentOS 5.1 (essentially a port of RHEL5), with several previous versions of LV installed, I was also running into the "module gpibrtk not found" loop. It turns out, /usr/local/natinst/ni4822/src/objects/gpibrtk_unversioned.o is provided by ni4882i-2.5.1-f0.i386.rpm (the one on the Fall 2008 LV CD), but it is an ELF32, which prevented it from being linked by updateNIdrivers. Apparently some reference to it somewhere survives even when upgrading to nikal1.9 and ni4882i-2.5.4b1.

Clearing all packages and removing the /usr/local/natinst dir, then installing nikal1.9, nivisa44, lv86 in the sequence you suggest above did the trick. Didn't need to patch the INSTALLPREFIX, as a matter of fact.

Now I have still to see if I can reinstall some older LV version in parallel to 8.6 without conflicts.

Thanks for opening the way...

Enrico

[ubelec]

I was also able to sucessfully follow the steps up to and including installing NI-VISA. I did this on SL 5 with a 2.6.18 kernel, x86_64.

Note: After installing NI-VISA and rebooting, I had to do /usr/local/bin/updateNIDrivers

I also needed NI DAQ-mx-Base (3.4.0), which I installed right after the above steps.

They all work fine.

Thanks for posting this, it was really helpful!!