Altera Monitor Program Error in Win8

[Altera_Forum]

Hi everybody  

 I'm trying to realize a simple project using Altera Monitor Program on a PC with Win8. but when I'm going to compile the C source I receive the following error.   0 [main] bash 14212 find_fast_cwd: WARNING: Couldn't compute FAST_CWD pointer. Please report this problem to the public mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com  Please note that the same project works perfectly on a older PC (with Win7 and maybe with a  older release of Altera Monitor Program)  Any suggestion ?  Thanks in advance

[Altera_Forum]

Adding some observation: 

 I've realized the problem comes from a not updated version of "cygwin" present in the tool Quartus. I've tryed to substitute the entire cygwin directory located inside quartus with a newest one.  Now the warning does not appear and the compilation seems to work fine (both the .elf and the .srec file are genereted)  But the download of the file to the board does not work (and even the connection to the board fails) Probably due to a problem in the JTAG UART connection.  Howevere using the previous version of cygwin it was the opposite The JTAG connection works but the compilation fails

[Altera_Forum]

Probably I've found tyhe solution: 

 I've downloaded the cygwin new release (both the 32 and the 64 bit) and I've used them to substitute the cygwin software delivered with quartus.  Moreover remember to include during the installation of cygwin the "perl" utility.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Probably I've found tyhe solution:  I've downloaded the cygwin new release (both the 32 and the 64 bit) and I've used them to substitute the cygwin software delivered with quartus.  Moreover remember to include during the installation of cygwin the "perl" utility.  --- Quote End ---    Thank you! Worked perfectly for me running on Windows 8.1.

[Altera_Forum]

hi there :D 

Could you provide me some more detail information about how to install the cywind, please? i did a very simple example with qsys but my eclipse can not generate the elf file. The build log shows some error that it cannot compute FAST_CWD pointer.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Probably I've found tyhe solution:I've downloaded the cygwin new release (both the 32 and the 64 bit) and I've used them to substitutethe cygwin software delivered with quartus.Moreover remember to include during the installation of cygwin the "perl" utility.  --- Quote End ---  Thanks for this info - I'm also getting the warning: couldn't compute fast_cwd pointer problem on Windows 8.1.I found that the default install for cygwin doesn't include gcc or g++ so you also have to include the devel package in the installation options (or at least some of it, the whole devel package brings the cygwin install up to 4GB, which is quite a lot and not really necessary).

[Altera_Forum]

or may be you just simply scroll to the bottom of this page and download the patch: 

http://www.altera.com/education/univ/unv-index.html  it says the patch is for quartus 13.1 but i find out it works for 13.0sp1 too.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  or may be you just simply scroll to the bottom of this page and download the patch: http://www.altera.com/education/univ/unv-index.html  it says the patch is for quartus 13.1 but i find out it works for 13.0sp1 too.  --- Quote End ---    I'm using quartus 14.0, but I'll give the patch a try. Thanks.

[Altera_Forum]

I too am having this problem but in the NIOS Eclipse tools - though it will all be using the same Cygwin toolset. I tried to use the patch but it doesn't work with Quartus 14 - basically after extracting it as instructed NIOS stops being able to compile the smallc library. I checked the log file and that says something along the lines of "gcc cannot produce executable" (can't remember the exact wording). 

 Any suggestions?

[Altera_Forum]

That sounds like an error from autoconf building some host tool.

[Altera_Forum]

After extracting the zip (I've tried using windows, 7-zip, and Cygwin 'unzip'), if I open cygwin in the quartus directory and try typing gcc and pressing enter, nothing happens - the command silently fails. In the version that came with the quartus download gcc commands work as expected except for the FAST_CWD warning. 

 One thing I notice is that when I start the patched cygwin I see this:  " Your group is currently "mkpasswd". This indicates that your gid is not in /etc/group and your uid is not in /etc/passwd.  The /etc/passwd (and possibly /etc/group) files should be rebuilt. See the man pages for mkpasswd and mkgroup then, for example, run  mkpasswd -l [-d] > /etc/passwd mkgroup -l [-d] > /etc/group  Note that the -d switch is necessary for domain users."  Which was not happening on the unpatched version.  Edit: I tried the commands it suggested and that got rid of the messages but hasn't fixed gcc.

[Altera_Forum]

Right, problem solved for me. Here is how: 

 (1) extract the patch into some directory that is not the quartus one. (2) copy the contents of the "bin" folder (not the "bin64" folder) from the extracted files (3) paste this into <quartus directory>\quartus\bin64 replacing any files and folders.  For some reason quartus 14 comes with a 32bit version of Cygwin installed in its bin64 directory (I discovered that when trying to use the 64bit Cygwin setup to upgrade it). So basically you have to use the 32bit files to patch it.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Probably I've found tyhe solution:  I've downloaded the cygwin new release (both the 32 and the 64 bit) and I've used them to substitute the cygwin software delivered with quartus.  Moreover remember to include during the installation of cygwin the "perl" utility.  --- Quote End ---     I return on this old thread because I have exactly the same problem described by marsi but I can't solve it.  OS: Win8.1  Quartus 13.1 Original cygwin distributed with Quartus generates a lot of "FAST_CWD pointer" warning messages Updating cygwin eliminates the "FAST_CWD pointer" warning messages, but I'm no more able to download the elf program to Nios.  As marsi suggested, I updated both the 32bit and the 64bit parts and installed perl and afaik all other required packages.  My current situation is:  the project compiles fine, without errors   nios2-configure-sof works perfectly  nios2-download executes with no apparent error, but it actually does nothing  If I launch the Run or Debug in Eclipse I get a generic error message  I saved the old installation in \quartus\bin\cygwin_old directory.  If I go back to the original cygwin installation by simply renaming it quartus\bin\cygwin I go back to the original situation: I can still download and debug nios project, but I get again FAST_CWD warnings  Please help me. I'm really stuck on this point.

[Altera_Forum]

New Link: http://help.ece.ubc.ca/altera 

 Details at bottom of page solved it for me.

[Altera_Forum]

Perfect! 

Now it works both for compilation and debugging. The problem was with updating directly from cygwin website, which fixes the compiling problem but somehow corrupts the download/debug features.  Thank you!

[Altera_Forum]

Windows 10, 32bit 

Quartus 13.0sp1  worked for me (http://help.ece.ubc.ca/altera):   --- Quote Start ---   To solve this issue, the Cygwin that is installed with Quartus II must be updated as follows:  

• Download the patch at ftp://ftp.altera.com/up/pub/cygwin_patch/cygwin_patch.zip 
• Extract the contents of cygwin_patch.zip to your Quartus II install directory, overwriting existing files. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Cygwin are included in the zip file; extract both of these versions to your Quartus II install folder. The default path to the Quartus II install folder is “C:\altera\13.1\quartus”. 

   --- Quote End ---