Running Quartus II on ReadHat Linux 9.0

October 18, 2003
The procedure is posted at:
<http://linuxan.tripod.com>
If you experience any problem, (I may I missed something) post a message here.

Hi,

I currently trying to get Quartus running on Mandrake 9.2 and needless 
to say: it fails. Installation was no problem but I can't get it 
running. It just gives me the message "Abort" and that's it. Not even a 
core dump. I've ran quartus with GDB and then it gives a segmentation 
fault in libkernel32.so

Output from GDB:
Starting program: /usr/local/quartus/linux/quartus
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...[New Thread 16384 (LWP 28457)]
[New Thread 32769 (LWP 28496)]
[New Thread 16386 (LWP 28497)]
[New Thread 32771 (LWP 28498)]
[New Thread 49156 (LWP 28499)]
[New Thread 65541 (LWP 28500)]
[New Thread 81926 (LWP 28501)]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 16384 (LWP 28457)]
0x41af5a05 in string_hash () from 
/usr/local/quartus/mw/lib-linux_optimized/libkernel32.so


I've also tried the old 'compatible' glibc library 
(compat-glibc-6.2-2.1.3.2.src.rpm) but that isn't working either.

Currently downloading the service pack but that will take a long time...

Anyone any idea's?

kind regards,
Jan



linux user wrote:
> October 18, 2003
> The procedure is posted at:
> <http://linuxan.tripod.com>
> If you experience any problem, (I may I missed something) post a message here.

Hi,

Right, solved it.
I needed to hack a script because I got a error on an if expression.
In qenv.csh (in $QUARTUS_ROOT/adm) I needed to change the following:

if (-f /etc/issue) then
	set redhat_ver=`cat /etc/issue | grep release | sed -e 's/Red Hat Linux release 
//g' -e 's/(.*//g'`
	if ($redhat_ver != "7.1") then
    ...

Here was the problem: redhar_ver got the value "Mandrake Linux release 9.1" and 
therefor there was this wrong if expression. I've removed the whole "if (-f 
/etc/issue)" then construct and replaced it by "setenv MWMM allwm".

And now it works... Maybe Altera should write a cleaner script that first checks 
if it's a Red Hat distribution...

kind regards,
Jan



Jan De Ceuster wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I currently trying to get Quartus running on Mandrake 9.2 and needless 
> to say: it fails. Installation was no problem but I can't get it 
> running. It just gives me the message "Abort" and that's it. Not even a 
> core dump. I've ran quartus with GDB and then it gives a segmentation 
> fault in libkernel32.so
> 
> Output from GDB:
> Starting program: /usr/local/quartus/linux/quartus
> (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
> (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
> (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
> (no debugging symbols found)...[New Thread 16384 (LWP 28457)]
> [New Thread 32769 (LWP 28496)]
> [New Thread 16386 (LWP 28497)]
> [New Thread 32771 (LWP 28498)]
> [New Thread 49156 (LWP 28499)]
> [New Thread 65541 (LWP 28500)]
> [New Thread 81926 (LWP 28501)]
> 
> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> [Switching to Thread 16384 (LWP 28457)]
> 0x41af5a05 in string_hash () from 
> /usr/local/quartus/mw/lib-linux_optimized/libkernel32.so
> 
> 
> I've also tried the old 'compatible' glibc library 
> (compat-glibc-6.2-2.1.3.2.src.rpm) but that isn't working either.
> 
> Currently downloading the service pack but that will take a long time...
> 
> Anyone any idea's?
> 
> kind regards,
> Jan
> 
> 
> 
> linux user wrote:
> 
>> October 18, 2003
>> The procedure is posted at:
>> <http://linuxan.tripod.com>
>> If you experience any problem, (I may I missed something) post a 
>> message here.
> 
> 

Jan De Ceuster <jandc@elis.ugent.be> writes:

> And now it works... Maybe Altera should write a cleaner script that
> first checks if it's a Red Hat distribution...

Yes. But it would have been even better if they checked for the
*features* they need rather than checking the distribution.

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?

>>And now it works... Maybe Altera should write a cleaner script that
>>first checks if it's a Red Hat distribution...
> 
> 
> Yes. But it would have been even better if they checked for the
> *features* they need rather than checking the distribution.

Indeed and I even had to manualy add some directories to the librarypath to get 
everything up and running. It just doesn't look profecional to me. 2 days work 
(at most) for a decent engineer and the scripts would have been perfect. I'm a 
bit dissapointed...

kind regards,
Jan

The topic of where to pick up the Red Hat Release was pointed to by another
user who tried Quartus 3.0 with a non Red Hat version of Linux. This has
been fixed for Quartus II 4.0.

- Subroto Datta
Altera Corp.

"Jan De Ceuster" <jandc@elis.ugent.be> wrote in message
news:bn59aj$tqj$1@gaudi2.UGent.be...
> >>And now it works... Maybe Altera should write a cleaner script that
> >>first checks if it's a Red Hat distribution...
> >
> >
> > Yes. But it would have been even better if they checked for the
> > *features* they need rather than checking the distribution.
>
> Indeed and I even had to manualy add some directories to the librarypath
to get
> everything up and running. It just doesn't look profecional to me. 2 days
work
> (at most) for a decent engineer and the scripts would have been perfect.
I'm a
> bit dissapointed...
>
> kind regards,
> Jan
>

To everyone:
  I realize that this is not ideal, but the fact "it works" underline
at least:

1) There is significant interest in FPGA tools on Linux : Possibly the
most important!

2) This is really feasible and requires minimal work (at least for Red
Hat).
   So we (users) may expect someone at Altera to be motivated, pickup
the ball, and treat this seriously.
   Altera has very talented engineers, and there is no doubt in my
mind that very soon a nice install, possibly similar to the one of
Open Office (GUI based) will be available for Linux.
 
3) Mandrake: I have also tried Mandrake 9.1 and did not get anywhere!
   This is a pity, because Mandrake is most-likely the most
user-friendly Linux distribution: usually very easy to install.

4) Suse 9.0: did anyone try?

Conclusion: Note that OpenOffice runs pretty much on any Linux distro.
This is done at the (reasonable) cost of a fatter distribution,
statically linked.
Indeed some portion(s) of the code could be provided as source to
allow easy run on most "current" Linux distros.

Well, I guess this will now have a life of its own.
Enjoy.
 Andre G.

-----------------------------------------
"Subroto Datta" <sdatta@altera.com> wrote in message news:<Azwlb.6823$nF2.6135@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>...
> The topic of where to pick up the Red Hat Release was pointed to by another
> user who tried Quartus 3.0 with a non Red Hat version of Linux. This has
> been fixed for Quartus II 4.0.
> 
> - Subroto Datta
> Altera Corp.
> 
> "Jan De Ceuster" <jandc@elis.ugent.be> wrote in message
> news:bn59aj$tqj$1@gaudi2.UGent.be...
> > >>And now it works... Maybe Altera should write a cleaner script that
> > >>first checks if it's a Red Hat distribution...
> > >
> > >
> > > Yes. But it would have been even better if they checked for the
> > > *features* they need rather than checking the distribution.
> >
> > Indeed and I even had to manualy add some directories to the librarypath
>  to get
> > everything up and running. It just doesn't look profecional to me. 2 days
>  work
> > (at most) for a decent engineer and the scripts would have been perfect.
>  I'm a
> > bit dissapointed...
> >
> > kind regards,
> > Jan
> >

uselinux2000@yahoo.com (linux user) writes:


>    Altera has very talented engineers, and there is no doubt in my
> mind that very soon a nice install, possibly similar to the one of
> Open Office (GUI based) will be available for Linux.

I've been a Linux user since 1993 and I'm very happy to see that Linux
support from the major FPGA vendors is improving.

However, I would like Altera and Xilinx to spend their efforts on other
things than a GUI based install program. I recall all the problems I
have had over the years with the Xilinx GUI based install program
under Solaris. It would sit there for days flashing cute ads without
installing anything :-( A simple tar would done the job. Of course you
most likely need a way of specifying which devices and parts to
install, but that's about it. Sometimes I install Linux software on
file servers which don't even have X11.

I would rather have better scripting capabilities, support for
distributed processing (e.g. synthesis and place and route using a
cluster to improve throughput), device programming support under
Linux, Opteron 64-bit support, etc.


> 4) Suse 9.0: did anyone try?

I have tried on a SuSe 8 AMD64 system. Quartus II 3.0SP1 bails out
with the message:

Unknown Linux processor
MWARCH: Undefined variable.

But I think it should be possible to get it to run by hacking the
scripts so that it will find its dynamic libraries, etc.

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?

Petter Gustad <newsmailcomp6@gustad.com> writes:

> I would rather have better scripting capabilities, support for

I prefer to have my scripts under a source control system to be able
to generate reproducible results. Not a designs which accidentally did
or did not work because somebody on the project checked off an option
several levels down in a GUI dialog box(1) (if DUI is "driving under
influence", what is GUI?). For floorplanners and waveform viewers I
use GUI's, but for plain synthesis, place and route, etc. I prefer
scripts.

I would like to say that Altera have spend quite a bit of effort
putting scripting capabilities into Quartus. Quartus have TCL support,
but the way you write your "code" is kind of weird:

project add_assignment $top "" "" $clk GLOBAL_SIGNAL ON

In order to check that the command had succeeded you have to check if
the above command returned something like "assignment made". It also
seems that the names and values for the various assignments might
change from different Quartus releases.

In later versions of Quartus Altera has added several smaller tools
which do synthesis and elaboration, place and route, timing analysis,
etc. This is good, even though I can't really see why bash is more
suited than TCL to run the various commands/tools (assuming you make
tclsh do dynamic linking).

However, these tools seem to use a CSF (compiler settings file) to
specify the various options to the different tools. This is a plain
text file. What I don't like about this approach is that you loose the
scripting ability. Of course you can write your own programs to
generate these files. What I fear is that their format might change in
future releases (please prove me wrong on this).

What I would like is a *standard documented API* for the scripts. For
the project assignment mentioned above I would like to have a command
called something like "set_global_clock_signal $clk". If this command
returned 0 (or some other predefined value) it has succeeded.
Otherwise, I could a verbose error message by calling some other
command (e.g. with the command name and result code as arguments).

It would have been even better if the vendor would proved different
scripting interfaces like TCL, Guile, Scheme, Perl, etc. to their
tools so the users could pick their favorite scripting language. If
the vendor provided the C API then users or others could generate a
shell (they could provide TCL as a minimum or example) for their
favorite language.

Just my 2&#4294967295;.

Petter
1) CSF (compiler settings files) would of course solve this issue.

-- 
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?

Based on feedback from our UNIX (Solaris, Linux and HP) users, we have
intentionally made our UNIX installs simple and script based. UNIX
environments can be diverse and a script based approach allows power users
to step in and fix things as needed to let them do their job, rather than
wait on factory support for trivial items. A script based approach has also
proven to be very robust and has virtually eliminated all support calls for
installation issues.

Also based on feedback from our UNIX users we have invested substantial
resources in improving our command line interfaces and procedural (Tcl
based) scripting capabilities in Quartus II 3.0 and in the upcoming
releases. More on this in a future post. As usual we welcome your feedback
and in helping make Quartus a better product for you.

- Subroto Datta
Altera Corp.

"Petter Gustad" <newsmailcomp6@gustad.com> wrote in message
news:87smljd8i6.fsf@zener.home.gustad.com...
> uselinux2000@yahoo.com (linux user) writes:
>
>
> >    Altera has very talented engineers, and there is no doubt in my
> > mind that very soon a nice install, possibly similar to the one of
> > Open Office (GUI based) will be available for Linux.
>
> I've been a Linux user since 1993 and I'm very happy to see that Linux
> support from the major FPGA vendors is improving.
>
> However, I would like Altera and Xilinx to spend their efforts on other
> things than a GUI based install program. I recall all the problems I
> have had over the years with the Xilinx GUI based install program
> under Solaris. It would sit there for days flashing cute ads without
> installing anything :-( A simple tar would done the job. Of course you
> most likely need a way of specifying which devices and parts to
> install, but that's about it. Sometimes I install Linux software on
> file servers which don't even have X11.
>
> I would rather have better scripting capabilities, support for
> distributed processing (e.g. synthesis and place and route using a
> cluster to improve throughput), device programming support under
> Linux, Opteron 64-bit support, etc.
>
>
> > 4) Suse 9.0: did anyone try?
>
> I have tried on a SuSe 8 AMD64 system. Quartus II 3.0SP1 bails out
> with the message:
>
> Unknown Linux processor
> MWARCH: Undefined variable.
>
> But I think it should be possible to get it to run by hacking the
> scripts so that it will find its dynamic libraries, etc.
>
> 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?