[Newbie] USB Blaster on Ubuntu Linux Xenial (16.04) won't probe chain

Altera_Forum · ‎08-05-2016

Hi Folks,

I'm just trying to get Quartus 16.0 (Also tried 15.1) running on my 64 bit Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 machine. I've fixed the permission/udev errors etc and can 'see' the USB Blaster....unfortunately that's as far as I get. If I try to program it times out, and if I try to probe the chain it doesn't like it;

dmarples@steal:~/bin/altera_lite/16.0/quartus/bin$ sudo ./jtagconfig

1) USB-Blaster [2-1.3.1.1.4]

Unable to read device chain - JTAG chain broken

I've tried two different boards, two different USB Blasters and two different cables, in many combinations. I've also tried USB2 and USB3 ports. I'm reasonably sure it's a software problem exacerbated by my lack of capability, so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

DAVE

Altera_Forum · ‎08-06-2016

OK, I'd best post the resolution to this in case someone else bumps into it. I don't lay claim to have fixed it myself, onto to have applied a little more Google-fu. The solution was actually from https://www-acc.gsi.de/wiki/timing/quartusinstallubuntu1404. Just in case that page ever disappears, it seems that the problem is due to a missing 32 bit libudev, fixed with;

$ sudo apt-get install libudev1:i386
$ sudo ln -sf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0

After this you'll need to rebuild your libs, or just reboot...then, at least in my case, all was good;

dmarples@steal:~/bin/altera_lite/16.0/quartus/bin$ ./jtagconfig 
1) USB-Blaster 
  020F10DD   EP3C(10|5)/EP4CE(10|6)

DAVE

Altera_Forum · ‎11-02-2016

Thanks a lot for this, I was banging my head to the wall for months to solve this, thought it was an USB3/USB2 incompatibility and tried everything, from cable length to USB hubs to forcing USB speed on the bus! Can confirm this works in Ubuntu 16.10 too :-D

Altera_Forum · ‎11-03-2016

...spoke too soon... it works sometimes with SOFs and never with POFs in linux... but it works always in Win7 running in a VirtualBox VM...