visa 4.3 not workning under SUSE 10.0 and lv8.2

[Jon Sjöstedt]

I hve tried reinstall (that is, the administrator has reinstalled it for me). That did not help. I keep getting "Error -1073807202".

Any ideas?

[Adam Kemp]

QUOTE (Jon Sjöstedt @ Aug 14 2008, 08:58 AM)

I hve tried reinstall (that is, the administrator has reinstalled it for me). That did not help. I keep getting "Error -1073807202".

Any ideas?

Are you sure the administrator installed it correctly? There are special steps necessary for SuSE (detailed in the FAQ section of the README) in order for the kernel components to install properly. You also have to either restart or run updateNIDrivers before you can use the drivers. Try running visaconf to see if that will work.

[Jon Sjöstedt]

visaconf gave this funny dump (attached). I will ask admin to redo install with this new information. Thanks.

[Adam Kemp]

QUOTE (Jon Sjöstedt @ Aug 15 2008, 05:48 AM)

visaconf gave this funny dump (attached). I will ask admin to redo install with this new information. Thanks.

Just another thing to check: do you have 4GB or more of physical memory? I don't think the VISA or GPIB drivers will work with PAE enabled.

[Jon Sjöstedt]

Some progress on this matter:

visaconf seems to require root-access to work properly. Anyone with similar experiencies?

The Error -1073807202 is now resolved. The solution was to install ni488225L. This package contains support for Ethernet-GPIB bridges that I use.

Unfortenately, it gave me a new error: -1073807195. The explaination of this error seems like something more trivial: "VISA: (Hex 0xBFFF00A5) The interface type is valid, but the specified interface number is not configured."

Any ideas on this new issue?

[Adam Kemp]

It means what it says. The interface number isn't valid. If you used GPIB::1::INSTR then the error means that 1 doesn't refer to a valid interface. Check visaconf and see what's really available.

[Jon Sjöstedt]

I use this format <dns-name of Ethernet-GPIB device>::<GPIB-address of instrument>::INSTR when I get the error. In my case: GPIB97::17::INSTR. This format has been used with lv7.1.1 and visa 3.0 under solaris. I have made it work by defining my GPIB-ethernet bridge in gpib.ini (using gpibexplorer).

I would like something similar (not having to define resources in some ini-file) so that I dont have to configure some "resource" to point at my DNS or IP and then use that resource name in turn to open a VISA session to my instrument.

Is this possible?

[Adam Kemp]

I don't understand the question. You said you got it to work using gpibexplorer, so what's wrong with that?

[Jon Sjöstedt]

Clarification attempt:

The problem is that every time a GPIB-Ethernet bridge gets a new IP and/or DNS this must also be updated in the configuration file. In this specific case, this process must necessarily be automated, which will require extra development efforts. It will also complicate a process of moving from lv7.1 to lv8.2.

The problem is thus: using gpibexplorer to configure resources (manually) results in an unacceptable reduction of the level of automation.

Implementing automatic generation of configuration files is hopefully (unless the configuration file is loaded/read when lv is started) a solution, but I was hoping that there were some easier way, like the way it was done in lv7.1.

I hope this clarify what I am after

[Adam Kemp]

I see. I've asked around a bit, and so far I haven't been able to figure out what the old behavior was that allowed you to directly use the DNS name in the VISA resource name. I have been told, though, that they didn't anticipate having a resource which changes IPs and DNS names frequently. We expect that a GPIB-ENET resource will keep the same IP and/or DNS name. Can you prevent it from changing names or IPs? That would be the best option.

[Jon Sjöstedt]

I've got a message form NI Sweden that says that it cant be done without using either gpibexporer or edit the file. :thumbdown:

[Jon Sjöstedt]

I just got information that the lv 7.1 system at my site really has a file with every GIPB-Ethernet bridge within the organisation defined, so that all bridges can be used directly without extra configuration necessary. All resource names has a matching DNS. This is what tricked me. FYI, there are well over 100 bridges here!

[Adam Kemp]

You can associate the gpib device resources with DNS names instead of IP addresses. I'm not sure if the gpibexplorer lets you do that, but you can just modify the configuration file and replace the IP with the domain name. Does that help?

Surely if you have over 100 devices then they aren't constantly changing names, right?

[Jon Sjöstedt]

They are not changing names or IP:s, but they move around in the organisation (depending on what instrument stack you need at the moment). As long as I thought that the resource was accessible by IP/DNS directly, I expected eiter: extra load on users to define this resource every time they first have to use it OR extra development effort to automatically generate a working ini-file.

Since someone already has done the work of defining all the Ethernet-GPIB bridges, it is not a problem any more. Thanks anyway for all help. Sorry for the late reply.