Installing the Altera Design Suite on Linux
From Crashcourse Wiki
This page is merely a shortened version of what you can read [here], so if anything untoward happens while following the directions on this page, by all means, go to the Nios wiki page for more detail. In what follows, I'll assume you don't have a Quartus license; if you do, again, visit the Nios wiki page for more details.
Contents |
The prerequisites
- A working C shell (almost certainly tcsh)
- A working USB filesystem
You can verify that you have a USB filesystem on your Linux system by running:
$ cat /proc/mounts ... /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,relatime 0 0 [or something similar] ...
Personally, I'd be surprised if any modern Linux distro didn't have this already running, but I'm willing to be corrected.
NOTE: You might very well not see an entry for this mount point in /etc/fstab, or in the output of the mount command; the proper way to check this is to examine the contents of /proc/mounts.
Getting the tarballs
Rather than using the Design Suite software that comes with your NEEK, you should download the latest versions of the design suite components:
Note well the size of these tarballs and make sure you have enough space for the downloads and the subsequent installation (the installed software will use up about 7.5G).
The installation
Once all the tarballs have been downloaded into the same directory, unload the installer tarball, decide where you want to install the (7.5G worth of) design suite software, and simply run:
$ ./install_download
NOTE: Depending on where you want to install the design suite, you may or may not need root privilege. Personally, I prefer to avoid needing to be superuser, so I have a tendency to install software under my home directory. In what follows, I chose the location of /home/rpjday/altera/ (or just ~/altera/ in my case), and the installation worked just fine on my Fedora 8 system:
$ ls -l ~/altera total 56 -rw-rw-r-- 1 rpjday rpjday 11271 2008-06-21 05:06 download_install_8.0_log.txt -rw-rw-r-- 1 rpjday rpjday 3762 2008-06-21 05:02 install_8.0_log.txt drwxrwxr-x 46 rpjday rpjday 4096 2008-06-21 05:02 ip drwxrwxr-x 2 rpjday rpjday 4096 2008-06-21 05:06 modelsim_ae drwxrwxr-x 7 rpjday rpjday 4096 2008-06-21 05:05 nios2eds drwxrwxr-x 15 rpjday rpjday 4096 2008-06-21 05:02 quartus
As far as I know, there is nothing that requires the software to be installed as root but, again, I'm willing to be corrected.
Configuring the appropriate system files
At this point, there are a couple system files you need to prepare (which will require root privilege). First:
# mkdir /etc/jtagd # cp ~/altera/quartus/linux/pgm_parts.txt /etc/jtagd/jtagd.pgm_parts
Also, you should arrange for the JTAG daemon to be started at boot time by adding the following lines to your distro's version of /etc/rc.local:
echo 356 40000 32 32000 > /proc/sys/kernel/sem /home/rpjday/altera/quartus/bin/jtagd
You can either reboot or, for now, just run those two commands manually as root.
Running the design suite
For convenience (and to make sure the proper Quartus-related environment variables are set), you should create a short script with which to start the Design Suite SDK. Create the one-line script ~/bin/n2sdk with contents (in my case):
QUARTUS_ROOTDIR=~/altera/quartus ~/altera/nios2eds/sdk_shell
then make it executable with:
$ chmod +x ~/bin/n2sdk
Lastly, create an empty JTAG configuration file in your home directory with:
$ touch ~/.jtag.conf
Even though this file is initially empty, you do need it to exist to run the SDK. Finally, see what happens:
$ n2sdk ------------------------------------------------ Welcome To Altera SOPC Builder Version 8.0, Built Tue May 27 22:59:48 PDT 2008 ------------------------------------------------ ... etc etc ... [NiosII EDS]$
Looks good. And you can just type exit to terminate the SDK.
Testing the JTAG connection
At the very least, you should now verify that you have access to the NEEK's JTAG functionality. Simply plug in the NEEK-supplied USB cable and:
$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 010: ID 067b:2506 Prolific Technology, Inc. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Bus 003 Device 010: ID 09fb:6001 Altera <--- OK, that looks good. Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c00e Logitech, Inc. M-BJ58/M-BJ69 Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:2005 Dell Computer Corp. RT7D50 Keyboard Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001
If you don't see a new entry corresponding to your NEEK system, you have some troubleshooting to do. If things look good, you can verify the JTAG connection to your NEEK from within the SDK shell as well:
[NiosII EDS]$ jtagconfig 1) USB-Blaster [USB 3-1.1] 020F30DD EP3C25 <-- should see something like that /etc/jtagd [NiosII EDS]$
Running the web server example
Now that everything's configured, you can try to run the web server example described [here].
[NiosII EDS]$ nios2-configure-sof ~/neek/dl/tryout/web_server/cycloneIII_embedded_evaluation_kit_web_server.sof
Info: *******************************************************************
Info: Running Quartus II Programmer
Info: Command: quartus_pgm --no_banner --mode=jtag -o p;/home/rpjday/neek/dl/tryout/web_server/cycloneIII_embedded_evaluation_kit_web_server.sof
Info: Using programming cable "USB-Blaster [USB 3-1.1]"
Info: Started Programmer operation at Sat Jun 21 10:00:47 2008
Info: Configuring device index 1
Info: Device 1 contains JTAG ID code 0x020F30DD
Info: Configuration succeeded -- 1 device(s) configured
Info: Successfully performed operation(s)
Info: Ended Programmer operation at Sat Jun 21 10:00:48 2008
Info: Quartus II Programmer was successful. 0 errors, 0 warnings
Info: Processing ended: Sat Jun 21 10:00:48 2008
Info: Elapsed time: 00:00:02
Info: Total CPU time (on all processors): 00:00:01
/etc/jtagd
[NiosII EDS]$
Then download the corresponding kernel image:
[NiosII EDS]$ nios2-download -g ~/neek/dl/tryout/zImage_cycloneIII_embedded_evaluation_kit_web_server Using cable "USB-Blaster [USB 3-1.1]", device 1, instance 0x00 Pausing target processor: OK Initializing CPU cache (if present) OK Downloaded 1206KB in 10.5s (114.8KB/s) Verified OK Starting processor at address 0x00500000 /etc/jtagd [NiosII EDS]$
And finally:
$ nios2-terminal nios2-terminal: connected to hardware target using JTAG UART on cable nios2-terminal: "USB-Blaster [USB 3-1.1]", device 1, instance 0 nios2-terminal: (Use the IDE stop button or Ctrl-C to terminate) InitialUncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel... ... etc etc ... /> <-- now at the shell prompt
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