I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm
trying to run SignalTap on 
the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable. Virt-manager sees 
the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP doesn't see it. Has 
anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a KVM VM?

p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus 
doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera cable 
driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native CentOS 
partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a native 
Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.

General Schvantzkoph
<s...@yahoo.com> writes:

> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus 
> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera cable 
> driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native CentOS 
> partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a native 
> Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.

Hmm. I've used the USB blaster almost daily on several gentoo systems
for the last couple years. I even used an old headless PC (running
gentoo) as a JTAG server for some time. However, I tend to use most of
the CLI (quartus_pgm, nios2-download, and gdb) tools except signaltap.

Long ago when I was running Quartus on Solaris I had an old Windows
Laptop (I think it was even a 486) running Quartus Programmer acting
as a JTAG server.


Petter
-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:08:07 +0100, Petter Gustad
wrote:

> General Schvantzkoph <s...@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
>> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus
>> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera
>> cable driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native
>> CentOS partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a
>> native Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.
> 
> Hmm. I've used the USB blaster almost daily on several gentoo systems
> for the last couple years. I even used an old headless PC (running
> gentoo) as a JTAG server for some time. However, I tend to use most of
> the CLI (quartus_pgm, nios2-download, and gdb) tools except signaltap.
> 
> Long ago when I was running Quartus on Solaris I had an old Windows
> Laptop (I think it was even a 486) running Quartus Programmer acting as
> a JTAG server.
> 
> 
> Petter

I have an old first generation A64 machine that I'm using as a lab 
computer. I have both CentOS 5.4 and XP on that system. Under CentOS 
SignalTap hardly ever sees the USB Blaster, I have to keep power cycling 
the board or the cable and occasionally SignalTap will find it. Using XP 
on the same machine there are no problems with SignalTap finding the 
cable. In a couple of weeks I want to demo something to customer which is 
why I need to be able to use my laptop. I was hoping to be able to use an 
XP VM for this purpose but I haven't been able to get the VM to see the 
cable.

General Schvantzkoph
<s...@yahoo.com> writes:

> why I need to be able to use my laptop. I was hoping to be able to use an 
> XP VM for this purpose but I haven't been able to get the VM to see the 
> cable.

I understand. Unfortunately I haven't tried that combo. 

Petter
-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 17:11 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm trying to run SignalTap on 
> the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable. Virt-manager sees 
> the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP doesn't see it. Has 
> anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a KVM VM?
> 
> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus 
> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera cable 
> driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native CentOS 
> partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a native 
> Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.


Quartus II 9.1sp1 runs under my x86_64 Fedora fine. It was just
necessary to do some small hacking first.

1. Edit the <altera_install_dir>/quartus/adm/qenv.csh file to get rid of
the stupid compatibility mode causing Quartus IDE to freeze. I added
following lines below simlar section related to CentOS:
    if ( "$REDHAT_VERSION" =~ *Fedora* ) then
        setenv REDHAT_VERSION 5.0rhel
    endif

2. Run the Quartus II IDE as well as other tools in 64 bit mode under
x86_64 Fedora. Otherwise the tools do not start complaining about tcl/tk
problems.
    quartus --64bit

Second option is to use brand new native Linux GUI based on QT (qgui).
It is in beta but it looks fine.


I hope this helps you to get rid of the VM. I use Quartus 9.1 this way
since SP1 was released.

Jan

On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 17:11 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm trying to run SignalTap on 
> the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable. Virt-manager sees 
> the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP doesn't see it. Has 
> anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a KVM VM?
> 
> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus 
> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera cable 
> driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native CentOS 
> partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a native 
> Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.


BTW, what is wrong with the JTAG cable driver on CentOS? I use Altera
tools on both Fedora and CentOS and I had no problems at all. At least
not since the time I managed to setup udev properly and start the jtagd
during system startup.

Jan

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:22:13 +0100, Jan Pech
wrote:

> On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 17:11 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>> I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm trying to run SignalTap on
>> the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable. Virt-manager
>> sees the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP doesn't see it.
>> Has anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a KVM VM?
>> 
>> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus
>> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera
>> cable driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native
>> CentOS partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a
>> native Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.
> 
> 
> BTW, what is wrong with the JTAG cable driver on CentOS? I use Altera
> tools on both Fedora and CentOS and I had no problems at all. At least
> not since the time I managed to setup udev properly and start the jtagd
> during system startup.
> 
> Jan

Two questions, 

1) How do you invoke the new beta GUI?
2) What did you do to get udev working?

When I tried to use the USB Blaster from CentOS it almost never found the 
FPGA, on XP on the same machine it worked.

On Mon, 2010-02-15 at 14:49 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:22:13 +0100, Jan Pech wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 17:11 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> >> I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm trying to run SignalTap on
> >> the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable. Virt-manager
> >> sees the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP doesn't see it.
> >> Has anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a KVM VM?
> >> 
> >> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus
> >> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera
> >> cable driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native
> >> CentOS partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a
> >> native Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option either.
> > 
> > 
> > BTW, what is wrong with the JTAG cable driver on CentOS? I use Altera
> > tools on both Fedora and CentOS and I had no problems at all. At least
> > not since the time I managed to setup udev properly and start the jtagd
> > during system startup.
> > 
> > Jan
> 
> Two questions, 
> 
> 1) How do you invoke the new beta GUI?
> 2) What did you do to get udev working?
> 
> When I tried to use the USB Blaster from CentOS it almost never found the 
> FPGA, on XP on the same machine it worked.
> 

1) qgui

2) cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules:

BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb",
SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001",
MODE="0666", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k; K=$${K#usbdev};
printf /proc/bus/usb/%%03i/%%03i$${K%%%%.*} $${K#*.}'", RUN+="/bin/chmod
0666 %c"

Jan

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:58:56 +0100, Jan Pech
wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-02-15 at 14:49 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:22:13 +0100, Jan Pech wrote:
>> 
>> > On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 17:11 +0000, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>> >> I have a KVM XP VM running on Fedora 12. I'm trying to run SignalTap
>> >> on the VM however I can't get the VM to see the USB cable.
>> >> Virt-manager sees the cable and I've attached it to the VM but XP
>> >> doesn't see it. Has anyone been able to attach an Altera cable to a
>> >> KVM VM?
>> >> 
>> >> p.s. the reason that I'm trying to do this with a VM is that Quartus
>> >> doesn't run on Fedora, just CentOS. Also I've found that the Altera
>> >> cable driver is pretty much unusable on CentOS so putting a native
>> >> CentOS partition on machine won't solve the problem. I don't have a
>> >> native Windows partition on my laptop so that's not an option
>> >> either.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > BTW, what is wrong with the JTAG cable driver on CentOS? I use Altera
>> > tools on both Fedora and CentOS and I had no problems at all. At
>> > least not since the time I managed to setup udev properly and start
>> > the jtagd during system startup.
>> > 
>> > Jan
>> 
>> Two questions,
>> 
>> 1) How do you invoke the new beta GUI? 2) What did you do to get udev
>> working?
>> 
>> When I tried to use the USB Blaster from CentOS it almost never found
>> the FPGA, on XP on the same machine it worked.
>> 
>> 
> 1) qgui
> 
> 2) cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules:
> 
> BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb",
SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001",
> MODE="0666", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k; K=$${K#usbdev}; printf
> /proc/bus/usb/%%03i/%%03i$${K%%%%.*} $${K#*.}'", RUN+="/bin/chmod 0666
> %c"
> 
> Jan

Thanks, its' all working on Fedora 12. I switch to the beta GUI and I set 
up udev as you suggested and I added the following to /etc/rc.local

echo 356 40000 32 32000 > /proc/sys/kernel/sem
/usr/local/tools/Quartus/bin/jtagd