Installing VISA USB device under Linux

Question

    Well, well, well... I've never though that such a time will come, but...
Linux. The question is about it.
It so happend that i need to install a custom made usb device under that OS. I've created the driver using NI-VISA driver development wizard and my device works fine under windows. But i don't know how to create a driver for Linux and how to install it there.  Any ideas? Any???
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Answer 1

Shawn B. wrote:
> It looks like you are running Mandriva 2006 (as opposed to 10.0). 
> The version of NI-KAL that shipped with NI-VISA 3.4 does not support
> Mandriva 2006.  The good news is you can download a newer version
> of NI-KAL that will install on Mandriva 2006 from:
>
> <a href="ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/kal/1.2/"
> target="_blank">ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/kal/1.2/</a>
>
> Install NI-KAL then run updateNIDrivers.
>
> Shawn B.
> National Instruments
This is not exactly an enlightening answer for a typical Linux user. I too
am having difficulty installing this under Debian Etch.
Linux distributions are made of components, the name on the label is a
little meaningless (in my years of experience with Linux, I am yet to find
a single program that will compile with one distro but not another, given
the same tools). So what components exactly does this driver depend upon ?
What am I missing here ? Is it my custom kernel (this is a Debian Etch
system) or some bug in the supplied drivers ?
The installer identified the following :
Checking required install tools...
Checking installer tool versions...
rpm 4.4.1 can be used with a default installation path
tar 1.15.1
Checking dependencies...
glibc 2.3.5
X /usr/X11R6/bin/X
Terminal /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm
Unpacking install files to /tmp/ni4882.install...
My error messages :
The following components, totalling 28444KB, have been selected
for installation:
LabVIEW 7.0 Run-Time Engine
NI-PAL
NI-KAL
NI-488.2 Help
NI-488.2 Utilities
NI-488.2 Driver
Continue? [Ynq] Y
* NI-KAL 1.0.0f0 for Linux/x86
This installer will install the NI software using the targz.
This software is covered by the included license file (LICENSE.txt).
By installing this software you are acknowledging acceptance of the
terms of the license.
The installation location for NI-KAL is /usr/local. A natinst/nikal
subdirectory will be created at the specified location.
Installing:
NI-KAL => /usr/local/natinst/nikal
Extracting /tmp/ni4882.install/kal/nikali-1.0.0-f0.tar.gz to /usr/local/...
Checking required tools...
Configuring for linux kernel version 2.6.14.3-raja.
********************************* NOTE *********************************
Using kernel headers found in /lib/modules/2.6.14.3-raja/source.
If this does not correspond to the location of the 2.6.14.3-raja headers,
then define KERNELHEADERS in your environment to point to the location
of the kernel headers, define KERNELTARGET as the version of the
kernel for which to compile, and then rerun ./configure.
********************************* NOTE *********************************
Kernel has reparent_to_init(): yes
Number of arguments for do_munmap(): 3
pte_offset function: pte_offset_kernel()
Number of arguments for remap_page_range(): 4
Kernel has get_user_pages(): yes
Kernel exports get_user_pages(): yes
USB altsetting name: cur_altsetting
Kernel has usb_get_intf(): yes
Kernel has intf_cache member in usb_host_config: yes
Kernel exports usb_set_configuration(): no
Kernel has usb_endpoint_running(): no
Storing configuration in Makefile.in
If the values stored are incorrect they can be changed before running make.
Installing Kernel module...
/bin/cp nikal.c objects/nikal.c
/bin/cp nikal.h objects/nikal.h
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.14.3-raja/source
SUBDIRS=/usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.14.3'
CC [M] /usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects/nikal.o
In file included from /usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects/nikal.c:86:
/usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects/nikal.h:172: warning: 'packed'
attribute ignored
/usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects/nikal.c: In function
'nNIKAL100_vmaClose':
/usr/local/natinst/nikal/src/objects/nikal.c:196: sorry, unimplemen