Linux Users

The GPIB-USB-HS won't work newer kernels

> GPIB-USB-HS (Up to kernel version 2.6.24)  <----- Down to ?

No, up to. With kerneles newer than that version it won't work.

Why not?

USB kernel API was marked as EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL sometime back, and since our modules are not GPL, we can't link to them

This has come up again and again in other threads, for example: https://decibel.ni.com/content/message/24682#24682

Sorry, we can't do anything about that.

I managed to get it working on CentOS 6.4 using a "license hack". That should be ok as long as you don't distribute it. Also you need to change around line 4085 in nikal.c:

-   snprintf(device->nameString, sizeof(device->nameString), "%s", usb_dev->dev.bus_id);

+   snprintf(device->nameString, sizeof(device->nameString), "%s", usb_dev->dev.bus->name);

That's all.

I wonder why NI cannot use libusb...

We can use libusb, but changing the device access from kernel mode up to user mode while not breaking our software requirements is non-trivial and has lots of challenges (architecture-wise, performance-wise, multi-process-wise, etc).. Sorry .. We are looking into it, but no promises if/when it will happen.

Just publish the kernel driver source under GPL, and you can use the usb framework again.

Proprietary kernel modules are insane anyways.