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Altera_Forum
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16 years ago

HOWTO: Setting up the USB blaster on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

edit: as of quartus ii 11.0, altera finally supports /dev/bus/usb out-of-the-box and does not rely on usbfs. the original version of this post described how to "fake" usbfs support in ubuntu, but this is no longer easy to do and is not necessary with quartus ii 11.0+, so i have removed that part of the instructions. hence, this guide will only work with quartus ii 11.0 or newer.

I just spent a couple hours figuring this out, so I thought I'd post it here for everyone else. To use the USB blaster to program Altera parts on Linux, you need to do a bit of work to configure your machine to give Quartus access to it. Unfortunately though, Altera does not provide instructions for how to do this for Ubuntu. So I've put together instructions.

1) Create a new file at /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules ("sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules")

2) Put this in it:

ubuntu 9.04+ 

# Altera USB-Blaster rule to set mode to 666.
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666", NAME="bus/usb/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}", RUN+="/bin/chmod 0666 %c"

ubuntu 12.10+ 

# Altera USB-Blaster rule to set mode to 666.
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="09fb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666"

3) Save and close.

4) Run "sudo udevadm control --reload-rules".

It's now configured! Connect your USB blaster (or remove and reconnect if it's already in) and then launch Quartus. It should now be selectable in Tools -> Programmer -> Hardware Setup.

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  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Just upgraded to 10.1. Altera has done nothing about this issue. They are still blindly trying to use /proc/bus/usb, so you still need to either edit their binaries (my approach) or mount a new directory over /proc/bus.

    Way to go, Altera. :(
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    I was having a problem where nios2-download or something would freeze and after I killed it nothing would work with JTAG anymore until I rebooted. I was getting these errors: 

    $ nios2-configure-sof /data/my.sof
Error: Can't scan JTAG chain. Error code 89.
$ jtagconfig                                              
1) USB_Blaster 
  Unable to lock chain (Insufficient port permissions)
    Turns out jtagd was getting respawned as my user. This solves that problem: 

    killall jtagd
sudo /opt/altera/quartus/bin/jtagd
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Hi ykozlov, thanks for your solution.

    Do you still need to do any of the previous steps? as in editing the /etc/rc.local or creating rules at /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules

    or just doing

    killall jtagd

    sudo /opt/altera/quartus/bin/jtagd

    would work?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    jameric,

    You need to edit /etc/rc.local to set everything up on boot. Restarting jtagd manually just solves the problem of it getting restarted as your user at some point later.

    I don't think any of the udev rule suggestions ever did anything for me.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Too many variants...

    I have Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit, Web Edition 10.1, USB blaster = ?

    What I should do to get it working?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    The currently supported linux distributions have not changed, other distributions are not officially supported.

    In 11.0 jtagd will use /sys/bus/usb and /dev/bus/usb if those are available and correctly populated (some older kernels don't fully populate /sys/bus/usb so the correct node in /dev/bus/usb can't be found).

    You will need to set the correct permissions on the /dev/bus/usb node to let jtagd access the cable.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    cool thanks alot really a great tutorial .. load it on my ubuntu soon

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    I am using the latest version of Arch Linux and of Quartus II (10.1) on the VirtualBox virtual machine. I maganed to install and run Quartus however I've tried literally everything I found on the web and I still haven't managed to get the USB-Blaster to work.

    When I click on "Add Hardware" at the Hardware Setup, as no hardware appears on the list, it says:

    --- Quote Start ---

    Attempted to access JTAG server -- internal error code 82 occurred

    --- Quote End ---

    If I run "sudo /quartus/bin/jtagconfig" there is an error: 

    
/usr/altera/10.1sp1/quartus/bin/jtagd: line 73: /usr/altera/10.1sp1/quartus/linux64/jtagd: Success
Error (Server error) when scanning hardware
    Any pointers?

    Thanks.

    p.s. I've tried everything that has been written in this topic already.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    tabacof,

    Don't try to use virtualized USB in your Guest OS. Instead, use the virtual ethernet connection to your host to connect to a remote/ethernet-based "Blaster" on your Host OS.

    Just browse through the QII programmer GUI and it should be apparent how to set this up...on both the server (Host OS) side and client (Guest OS/Arch Linux) side.

    Regards,

    slacker