NI-VISA 5.1.2 exits/closes right after launching it on a Linux CentOS 6.2 PC, also crashes LabVIEW when trying to create VISA ref constant for VISA Open.

Question

After installing LaBVIEW 2011 and NI-VISA 5.1.2 on a CentOS 6.2 PC, I had noticed a problem with trying to use the VISA vi's in LabVIEW, basically it's not working for me, LabVIEW crashed when trying to create a control or constant for the VISA Open vi.  Tried to launch the VISA tools, they all start and then close abruptly.  NI I/O Trace only shows one line.
I did read though many threads and decided to collect the NI system.log, which is attached. (system.log.gz).  I did notice a strange message in here about nivisaserver:
/usr/bin/tail --lines=25 /var/log/messages:
May 22 11:18:48 localhost abrtd: Package 'nivisaserver' isn't signed with proper key
May 22 11:18:48 localhost abrtd: Corrupted or bad dump /var/spool/abrt/ccpp-2012-05-22-11:18:48-3258 (res:2), deleting
Thanks!
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
system.log.gz ‏621 KB

Answer 1

MountainMan12 wrote:
After installing LaBVIEW 2011 and NI-VISA 5.1.2 on a CentOS 6.2 PC, I had noticed a problem with trying to use the VISA vi's in LabVIEW, basically it's not working for me, LabVIEW crashed when trying to create a control or constant for the VISA Open vi.  Tried to launch the VISA tools, they all start and then close abruptly.  NI I/O Trace only shows one line.
I did read though many threads and decided to collect the NI system.log, which is attached. (system.log.gz).  I did notice a strange message in here about nivisaserver:
/usr/bin/tail --lines=25 /var/log/messages:
May 22 11:18:48 localhost abrtd: Package 'nivisaserver' isn't signed with proper key
May 22 11:18:48 localhost abrtd: Corrupted or bad dump /var/spool/abrt/ccpp-2012-05-22-11:18:48-3258 (res:2), deleting
Hi MountainMan,
Thanks for attaching the system report log -- I believe I have a solution for you :-) Let's look at a few of the lines:
890: /proc/meminfo:
891: MemTotal: 3894712 kB
1726: /proc/iomem:
1784: 100000000-12dffffff : System RAM
1807: /bin/dmesg:
1820: BIOS-provided physical RAM map: 2576: [nipal] More than 4GB of addressable memory detected.
1838: BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 000000012e000000 (usable)
2576: [nipal] More than 4GB of addressable memory detected.
2577: [nipal] This configuration is not supported. Check the release notes for more information.
Starting at the bottom at lines 2576..2577, dmesg had more than just the NI-VISA server signing notification. At system boot, the NI kernel modules refused to load because they detected more than 4 GB of addressable memory. But, if you look towards the top at lines 890..891, meminfo says you have less than 4 GB of system memory, which makes it seem like the NI modules don't know what they're talking about. However, if you look at the report from iomem a little further down on lines 1726..1784, system RAM has been re-mapped above the 4 GB boundary. While your system doesn't have more than 4 GB of RAM, some of its memory has addresses above 4 GB, which the NI modules cannot use and so they refuse to load. How did that happen? Your system BIOS provided a physical RAM map with usable addresses above the threshold (line 1838).
The fix here is simple -- you need to tell the kernel to reserve addresses above 4 GB [1] so that it won't remap the RAM to higher memory. Once all of the RAM has addresses below the 4 GB threshold, the modules should load and VISA/LabVIEW/et al should stop misbehaving.
It seems to me that LabVIEW is not handling this situation very gracefully, and maybe you can work with Kira to file a bug report.
[1] Re: Successful SUSE linux and DAQmx install; nilsdev and other utilities missing.
http://forums.ni.com/t5/Multifunction-DAQ/Successful-SUSE-linux-and-DAQmx-install-nilsdev-and-other/...
Joe Friedchicken
NI VirtualBench Application Software
Get with your fellow hardware users :: [ NI's VirtualBench User Group ]
Get with your fellow OS users :: [ NI's Linux User Group ] [ NI's OS X User Group ]
Get with your fellow developers :: [ NI's DAQmx Base User Group ] [ NI's DDK User Group ]
Senior Software Engineer :: Multifunction Instruments Applications Group
Software Engineer :: Measurements RLP Group (until Mar 2014)
Applications Engineer :: High Speed Product Group (until Sep 2008)