Xilinx issues on Linux

[fransschreuder]

Hello,

I am running Linux (Ubuntu 64 bit) and am having some problems with Xilinx.

Ise is running nicely, however the xilinx cable driver is not supported for modern kernels (I am using 3.0, but I heard that it is already unsupported for later 2.6 kernels).

Luckily a good working and stable open source driver can be found here:

http://rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/

Another problem is that I am still unable to run fpga_editor.

I have found forum messages from 2008 stating that I have to configure my DISPLAY variable, but still no success.:

$fpga_editor

No protocol specified
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
Wind/U X-toolkit Error: wuDisplay: Can't open display

$export DISPLAY=:0

$fpga_editor

Cannot register service: RPC: Authentication error; why = Client credential too weak
unable to register (registryProg, registryVers, tcp)
(as root)

#fpga_editor

Warning!!: XKEYSYMDB environment variable is set to a wrong location
Segmentation fault

#export XKEYSYMDB=/usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB

#fpga_editor

Segmentation fault

That's af far as I have tried, I am giving up. Any ideas on how to get fpga_editor to work? (yes, I have also tried DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0)

[bassman59]

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@fransschreuder wrote:

Hello,

I am running Linux (Ubuntu 64 bit) and am having some problems with Xilinx.

That's af far as I have tried, I am giving up. Any ideas on how to get fpga_editor to work? 

---

Try using a supported operating system.

[fransschreuder]

I had already expected this non-answer, thanks a lot for helping me out

[bassman59]

---

@fransschreuder wrote:

I had already expected this non-answer, thanks a lot for helping me out

---

Well, we aim to please :)

[fransschreuder]

Well, I am really wondering which share of the linux users is actually using those supported OSes, Red Hat enterprise as well as Suse enterprise are both rather outdated. It would be good for xilinx to build a kind of poll to see which linux distributions their customers are actually using and build their support on that.

Well, anyway we are already polluting this forum with messages, does anyone actually have an answer to my question?

[cousteau]

Same problem here (Xubuntu 12.04 64b, ISE 14.1 FPGA Editor).

I ran `gdb fpga_editor` to see if I got anything more useful than "Segmentation fault"; the error seems to be on a function call to wuGetTextExtent(), maybe that gives someone a clue of what's happening:

Reading symbols from /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE/bin/lin64/fpga_editor...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE/bin/lin64/fpga_editor 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
process 5411 is executing new program: /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE/bin/lin64/fpga_editor
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
BFD: /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE//lib/lin64/libisl_iostreams.so: version count (4792) does not match symbol count (4790)
process 5411 is executing new program: /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE/bin/lin64/_fpga_editor
BFD: /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE//lib/lin64/libisl_iostreams.so: version count (4792) does not match symbol count (4790)
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
Wind/U Error (193): X-Resource: DefaultGUIFontSpec (-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14-*) does not fully specify a font set for this locale

Warning!!: XKEYSYMDB environment variable is set to a wrong location 
[New Thread 0x7fffdcdd8700 (LWP 5417)]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007fffe26fb722 in wuGetTextExtent ()
   from /opt/Xilinx/14.1/ISE_DS/ISE//lib/lin64/libgdi50.so
(gdb) 

 I remember FPGA Editor (at least 12.1) working on Ubuntu 10.04 32b; maybe it's a problem that only affects 64b computers.

I agree with fransschreuder in that it would be nice that Ubuntu and other major Linux distributions were supported.

[eilert]

Hi,

indeed it would be nice if it would run on Ubuntu too.

But I think in this case either Canonical or you are to blame rather than Xilinx.

We have all versions of Xilinx ISE from 10.1 to 14.1 running under Debian.

And lately we changed to the latest 64 bit Squeeze without problems.

I just checked for ISE 13.4 and ISE 14.1, both are using the lin64 libs on our server.

So, since Ubuntu is just some Debian variant, it's a problem of the libraries and their versions installed on your system.

See what you can do about that. 

Regards

  Eilert

[cousteau]

Since the libraries are the same on Ubuntu than Debian (they are imported from Debian Wheezy to Ubuntu Precise), this shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, my problem is not with ISE (as in the Project Navigator), it's with FPGA Editor.  I suspect it has to do with motif.  Does fpga editor work for you?  I remember it used to work 2 years ago (Xilinx 12.1, Ubuntu 10.04, 32 bits).  The info from gdb doesn't seem very useful (except maybe for Xilinx developers).

[avantcarept]

I am having the same issue. Hopefully someone can give some ideas

[eilert]

Hi,

yes, fpga-editor works in version 13.4 and 14.1 with 64-bit debian 6.

However, i can not tell wether our system admin has made tweaks to the library naming or even added missing libraries.

We have had some issues with fpga-editor in the past but they are resolved now.

Kind regards

  Eilert

[cousteau]

Ok, here are some solutions that have _not_ worked:

* export DISPLAY="${DISPLAY%.*}"   to replace :0.0 with :0

* Install libmotif4

* Install libmotif3 (I found an ancient .deb package on Ubuntu 10.04 repositories)

* Install ia32-libs (which are needed by the mb-gcc compiler, by the way; for some weird reason the binaries for the 64 bit version are just the ones for the 32 bit one)

* Run it with sudo -H   (note: don't do this; it's generally a bad idea to just run every command with sudo just because it doesn't work without it; I did this becaue I was starting to get impatient).  With this option it segfaults much faster since there seems to be a permission problem with portmap that sudo workarounds.

* Install libmotif3 for 32 bits and run the 32 bits version of FPGA Editor (same segfault).

P.S.:  The segfault appears just after I get this message:

Warning!!: XKEYSYMDB environment variable is set to a wrong location

 (but, according to fransschreuder's experience, fixing that doesn't seem to workaround the problem)

P.S.2:  The function wuGetTextExtent() seems to be part of a library called libgdi50.so, which seems to be part of Wind/U, which seems to be some sort of application for porting programs from Windows to Linux in an easy way (sort of like Cygwin but the other way around).  Apparently, FPGA Editor is the only Xilinx application that still relies on that library...  it would be nice that it were ported to something else (say, Wine or something).

[stmartin81]

Great, same problem here and I'm using CentOS 6.3 which should be binary compatible to RHEL 6.3.

According to this thread FPGA Editor should have been replaced starting with version 11.1: http://www.fpgarelated.com/usenet/fpga/show/69996-1.php

The comment about replacing FPGA Editor was made in november 2007 and I don't see any replacement in 2012.

Too bad I don't have RHEL 6.3 but I don't see any reasons why it should be running there as CentOS and RHEL are binary compatible.

I'm wasting hours when trying to use this software which is really frustrating and costs a lot of money...

[bassman59]

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@stmartin81 wrote:

Great, same problem here and I'm using CentOS 6.3 which should be binary compatible to RHEL 6.3.

According to this thread FPGA Editor should have been replaced starting with version 11.1: http://www.fpgarelated.com/usenet/fpga/show/69996-1.php

The comment about replacing FPGA Editor was made in november 2007 and I don't see any replacement in 2012.

Too bad I don't have RHEL 6.3 but I don't see any reasons why it should be running there as CentOS and RHEL are binary compatible.

I'm wasting hours when trying to use this software which is really frustrating and costs a lot of money...

---

The "hours and money wasted" could've been mitigated had you just sprung for whatever RHEL costs.

Sure, the distros "should' be binary compatible, but you've proven that they're sufficiently different.

[voinauiw]

The segmentation fault seems to happen during/after font query. I found two different solutions for this problem. Either

1. Install xfonts-75dpi and restart X, or
2. put the following into your ~/.Xresources file and restart X

*SystemFontSpec:-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-p-*-*-*
*systemFont:-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-p-*-*-*

wrt Wind/U: I doubt that xilinx will port fpga_editor to another toolkit. The "Open Implemented Design" of Vivado seems to be the fpga_editor replacement. It is just a pity that Vivado does only support series 7 devices and has a completely different constraint format.

[cousteau]

I did a very silly thing today:

* Installed Wine 1.4

* Installed Visual C++ 2008 runtime using winetricks  (maybe the installer provided by Xilinx would have worked too)

* Mounted the Windows OS partition as read only  (I have a Windows partition with Xilinx 13.4 installed, but I rarely use it since all my scripts are mainly intended for Linux)

* Configured Wine to use the Windows partition as D:

* wine 'D:\Xilinx\13.4\ISE_DS\ISE\bin\nt\fpga_editor.exe'

Surprisingly, everything seemed to work like a charm.  The program loaded quickly and I was able to successfully create and save a hard macro without any apparent issue.

I don't think it's a good idea to use Wine for running programs installed on a Windows partition (which is why I mounted it as read only), but in this case it worked, so maybe it would be a good idea to use Wine instead of Wind/U.  The Wind/U project seems to have disappeared, while Wine is in active development.

However, as voinauiw mentioned, it's unlikely that Xilinx moves FPGA Editor to Wine since FPGA Editor seems to be deprecated or nearly abandoned now that Vivado is out.

[moicez]

I am on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64bit-Intel and I HAD the same problem running the FPGA Editor from Xilinx ISE 14.5.

The only thing I had to do was intsall xfonts-75dpi and xfonts-100dpi using synaptics. Then restart the comptuer.

However I still get a connection refused but it will run ok.

Thank you very much.

This blog helped a lot too: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XilinxISE

[hwertz]

     I know it's an old thread, but I was running into difficulty with fpga_editor as well (Ubuntu 12.04).  So, I installed libstdc++5, xfonts-100dpi, xfonts-75dpi.  I was getting ready to run Xilinx ISE in a virtual machine, and realized -- I did not have libmotif4 (openmotif) installed on my real system, but had lesstif instead!

     My big problem, I had libXm.so.2 (provided by lesstif) and historically had a symlink from libXm.so.2 to libXm.so.3 for some app that expected it.  *THIS DOESN'T WORK WITH FPGA_EDITOR*.  If you have that symlink, delete libXm.so.3, then install libmotif4 (or libmotif3 on older Ubuntu versions.)  You can keep lesstiff installed if you want.  Logout or reboot (the X server must restart to see the new fonts).  As others have said, fpga_editor still fails to do some rpc call and sits there doing nothing until it times out, but then seems to work 100% fine.

[dqbydt]

...and a few more years on, I can confirm that fpga_editor can still be coaxed to work, with ISE 14.7 on Ubuntu 16.04 x86-64.

To summarize what I had to do (as guided by the pioneers in this thread):

1. Install fonts:

sudo apt-get install xfonts-75dpi xfonts-100dpi

2. LOG OUT AND LOG IN (or reboot). This is still REQUIRED.

3. I already had libmotif4 and libstdc++5 installed, don't remember if by default, or for some other package.

4. I have in my .bashrc:

export DISPLAY=:0

5. I still get the following messages when I launch fpga_editor:

$ fpga_editor 
Cannot register service: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Connection refused
unable to register (registryProg, registryVers, tcp)
Wind/U Error (248): Failed to connect to the registry on server <machine_name>

Warning!!: XKEYSYMDB environment variable is set to a wrong location 
Cannot register service: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Success

But it does start fine after a bit, and seems to be working fine.

It popped up the following error dialog:

when I tried to open an ncd by hitting the Browse button, but worked just fine when I manually pasted the path to the ncd file in the textbox.

[jan.bredereke]

Since this thread provided me with a lot of help, I would like to share my results:

I succeeded in running the Xilinx ISE WebPack 14.7 under CentOS 6 in a Docker container. CentOS 6 is equivalent to RHEL 6, which is a Linux distribution supported by Xilinx. The basic idea of the approach used is to not install the IDE in the Docker container. Instead, it is expected to have been installed on the host under /opt/Xilinx/. This directory will then be handed into the Docker container at run-time. This approach eases the installation process a little. And, in particular, the Docker container becomes much more light-weight. The Docker container is created fully automatically by a Makefile supplied. A prerequisite is, of course, that the IDE runs at least so far that it can be installed, including the license manager.

Please find the gzipped tarball on my Web site: http://homepages.hs-bremen.de/~jbredereke/en/software/xilinx-docker/index.html

This version (1.0) has been tested under Lubuntu 1604 LTS. But it should run under other Ubuntu variants, too. Probably, every Debian-based system should do.

Remaining known limitation: the FPGA editor always starts with about 70 seconds delay. At the same time, stdout shows the above error message concerning a RPC access problem. (BTW: I solved the XKEYSYMDB quirk by setting: export XKEYSYMDB=/usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB )

Improvements are welcome.

[cousteau]

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jan.bredereke wrote:Remaining known limitation: the FPGA editor always starts with about 70 seconds delay. At the same time, stdout shows the above error message concerning a RPC access problem. (BTW: I solved the XKEYSYMDB quirk by setting: export XKEYSYMDB=/usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB )

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I vaguely remember coming across a solution to the long startup delay.  If I recall correctly it was related to the RPC error, and was due to some process attempting to register a printer, which it failed to do due to "credentials being too weak" or something like that.  I think this could be solved by installing something or running fpga_editor with sudo, but whatever the solution was I forgot about it because I rarely use fpga_editor anyway, so I just pay the price of waiting 70 seconds for it to start.

[claudiug]

Thought I'd add to this thread since it has been very helpful in getting fpga_editor from ISE14.7 up and running on newer Linux distros.

For example on Linux Mint 19.2:

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/; sudo ln -s libXpm.so.4.11.0 libXp.so.6

sudo apt install libstdc++5

sudo apt-get install xfonts-75dpi xfonts-100dpi

sudo apt-get install xemacs21-support

export XKEYSYMDB=/usr/share/xemacs-21.4.24/etc/XKeysymDB

RPC issue persists (1min delay), best to load ncd as command line argument.