Latest NI-KAL and dpkg- Possible Ubuntu/Debian support?

[anshuljain]

I was playing around with the latest NI-KAL 1.9 and noticed something rather interesting- the installer checked for dpkg support. Here is the log:-

[root@sagarika KAL]# ./INSTALL

*****************************************************************************
  NI-KAL Installer Distribution
     version 1.9.0f0 for Linux
*****************************************************************************

National Instruments products support the following Linux distributions:
   Mandriva Linux Official
   openSUSE
   Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop + Workstation
Refer to README.txt for the latest information at the time of release.
Refer to www.ni.com/linux for the most recent information about Linux
support at National Instruments.

Continue? [Yn] Y

Checking required install tools...
Checking installer tool versions...
dpkg found
rpm        4.4.2.3 can be used with a default installation path
tar        1.19
Both rpm and dpkg are available on this system. Continue using Dpkg? [Yn]  

Can I now install NI-KAL and by extension NI-VISA on Ubuntu/Debian systems?

[Shawn B.]

Well, I think you just found a bug .  Mainly because if you said yes there are no deb packages to install.

But to answer your question we have been investigating adding support for Debian based distros internally and NI-KAL seemed like a good place to start.  However NI-KAL is at the bottom of the software stack and there are still many other components on top that still need support and obviously as you found we probably need some more testing too.  Additionally I should say that at this point Ubuntu/Debian support is simply a research project and NI has not made an official decision to add that support for all products.

Shawn Bohrer

National Instruments

[anshuljain]

It would be good if Ubuntu/Debian distro support is provided. A lot of our systems in house are deployed on Ubuntu and I'm the last hold out still using Opensuse or Mandriva for all of our deployments.

Coming back to Ubuntu...is it possible to install NI-KAL on Ubuntu? I did read some posts on the forum, but it seems like a hit and miss. I would'nt mind experimenting quite a bit on getting NI-KAL to work on Ubuntu. Is there a post that has some instructions for lets say Ubuntu Hardy 8.04?

[Shawn B.]

Getting NI-KAL to work on Ubuntu shouldn't be hard, but by itself NI-KAL doesn't really do anything.  Getting some of the other NI drivers to work could be more complicated.

If you want to play around and maybe make a tutorial feel free.  My suggestion is to install rpm on your system and try running the INSTALL script.  You will probably need to install with "--nodeps".  I'm not sure there is a point for NI-KAL, but you could start there and then maybe try something like NI-VISA if you want.

[Islero]

Hello.

I think that I have got install nikal 1.8 and NI-488.2 2.5 under Ubuntu 7.10. Tomorrow I'm going to check it on lab, but this image make me feel good.

If this method work properly I will make a "How to" to upload in this  Community

VIVA UBUNTU!!!

[anshuljain]

Islero,

Do post your findings, we would really appreciate it I might give it a stab on Ubuntu Hardy sometime this weekend.

[Islero]

Hey Anshul.

We tryed to install Labview in Ubuntu 8.04 but we had fatal errors. We followed this manual:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=726092

Though I know that several users had been able to install LV in ubuntu 8.04 I had this fatal error:

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture labview82-core_8.2-1_i386.deb 
dpkg - warning, overriding problem because --force enabled:
 package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
(Reading database ... 123659 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace labview82-core 8.2-1 (using labview82-core_8.2-1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement labview82-core ...
Setting up labview82-core (8.2-1) ...
sort: open failed: +1: No such file or directory

I advise you that it´s better if you try to install everything in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. One important advantage is the fact that Intrepid include gcc 4.3.1 just version that you need to compile nikal.

Today I am testing the drivers NI-488.2 installed and I think that everything work good. Gpibexplorer has detected my pci-gpib card, now I am going to try communicate with my agilent 34970A.

bye

[JoeFriedchicken]

Just looking at the error message from dpkg tells me that your problem is more than the version of Ubuntu you're using:

package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)

[Islero]

I'm not sure, let me see. I'm gonna reinstall ubuntu 8.04 & LV8.2  following the manual (alien+dpkg). I will post my conclusions but one thing I know I had a problem when I tryed to install labview-core.deb on ubuntu 8.04.

Saludos

[Islero]

Hello

I'm preparing a new "how to" where I'm going to comment how to install LV8.2+488.2+VISA on Ubuntu 8.04. While I was changing rpm packages to deb and installing, It has appeared the error which I spoke about it:

root@vicente-desktop:/home/vicente/labview#  sudo dpkg -i --force-all  labview82-core_8.2.1-1_i386.deb
(Leyendo la base de datos ...
124375 ficheros y directorios instalados actualmente.)
Preparando para reemplazar labview82-core 8.2.1-1 (usando labview82-core_8.2.1-1_i386.deb) ...
Desempaquetando el reemplazo de labview82-core ...
Configurando labview82-core (8.2.1-1) ...
sort: fallo al abrir: +1: No existe el fichero ó directorio

It's very strange because this error doesn't appear under Ubuntu 7.10. To put on the picture, I created  labview82-core_8.2.1-1_i386.deb writing down this code:

vicente@vicente-desktop:~/labview$ sudo alien -k --scripts labview82-core-8.2.1-1.i386.rpm
labview82-core_8.2.1-1_i386.deb generated

Any ideas?

Thanks