Quartus II Can't see the USB BLaster

I had a similar issue under SuSE 11.3, but it was not the same error message as you received. Here is my config and solution.

I added the /etc/udev/ rules file and created the .jtag.conf, but couldn't mount my USB blaster on a DE3 board.

jtagconfig resulted in the following status message:

$ jtagconfig 
No JTAG hardware available                    
~/src/nios2de3
$ 

Here was my /etc/fstab configuration of usbfs:

usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0

And here was the 'dmesg' output showing the device being correctly detected when I plug in the device:

 usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5
 usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=09fb, idProduct=6001
 usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
 usb 2-1: Product: USB-Blaster
 usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Altera
 usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 91d28408

mount -a wouldn't mount it, so I modified the usbfs line in /etc/fstab from 'noauto' to 'devmode=0666'. Then mount -a added the device. jtagconfig then read my USB blaster just fine.

Hope this helps...