NI-KAL for Linux, Version 1.10 Copyright (c) 1997-2009 National Instruments Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

National Instruments, NI, ni.com, and LabVIEW are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation. Refer to the Terms of Use section on ni.com/legal for more information about National Instruments trademarks. Linux(r) is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. For patents covering National Instruments products, refer to the appropriate location: Help>>Patents in your software, the patents.txt file on your CD, or ni.com/patents. Thank you for using NI-KAL. This file contains important information about NI-KAL and is organized into the following sections: System Requirements Installing NI-KAL Uninstalling NI-KAL Known Issues Support ------------------System Requirements ------------------This release of NI-KAL has been tested on the following Linux distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop + Workstation 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4 openSUSE 11.1 (Beta support) openSUSE 11.0 openSUSE 10.3 These are the only Linux distributions and versions that are supported by this release. Support of or compatibility with any other distribution or version is neither expressed nor implied, nor should it be inferred. NI-KAL supports only the x86 and x86_64 architectures. Currently the the only supported x86_64 distribution is Red Hat EnterPrise Linux Desktop + Workstation 5. ----------------Installing NI-KAL ----------------The installation process compiles a small amount of code to customize the software to your installation. Before running the installer, you must have the following compiler facilities installed from your Linux distribution CD or other Linux distribution medium: * The GCC compiler and C++ support * The make utility * The kernel source files for building kernel modules that exactly correspond to the kernel version you are running. Note the name of this package can vary and it is recommended that the package descriptions are read to ensure the

correct package is installed. Common names for this package are kernel-devel, kernel-<buildname>-devel, or kernel-source. Red Hat users should install the kernel-devel package. openSUSE users should install the kernel-source package and ensure that the kernel sources have been configured before attempting installation. Refer to the "Installation Issues" section for directions on how to do this. Use the software-install facility of your Linux distribution to verify that the above-listed packages are present. You can then begin installation. You must have root privileges to install. Complete the following steps to install NI-KAL: 1. Copy the "INSTALL" and the nikal-1.10.0f0.tar.gz files to any directory. (Both files must be located in the same directory.) 2. As root, run "./INSTALL". 3. Follow the instructions of the installer. 4. Reboot your system, if the installer prompts you to do so. Installation Issues ------------------If you upgrade or change your kernel, you must rebuild part of your NI drivers after the new kernel is installed. To rebuild the software, use the updateNIDrivers utility, found in /usr/local/bin, and complete the following steps: 1. Install the new kernel. 2. Ensure the new kernel's sources and symbols are installed and configured. 3. Restart and load the new kernel. 4. As root, run "/usr/local/bin/updateNIDrivers". By default, the updateNIDrivers utility rebuilds the driver for the currently running kernel using the kernel sources and copies it to the appropriate location. 5. When prompted, restart again. After restarting, the NI drivers are running and ready for use with the new kernel. 6. To verify the version of the currently running kernel, run "uname -r" at the command prompt. Be sure to have sources for your kernel properly installed and configured on your system before running the utility. For more options, run "/usr/local/bin/updateNIDrivers --help". To compile the drivers for a different kernel than you are currently running, pass the kernel version as an argument to the utility, as shown in the following example: updateNIDrivers <kernelVersion> The kernel version format varies between distributions. Check the contents of /lib/modules or refer to your distribution documentation for more information. For the changes to take place, you must restart your computer after the utility completes. During installation on openSUSE, you may see the following error message: "Kernel source does not appear to be configured for the running kernel. Configuration of kernel source is required to continue installation." This message can occur even if you have installed the correct kernel sources, if the sources require configuration. This problem has been seen on openSUSE. However, it is possible that other distributions will require similar steps to resolve this problem.

On openSUSE complete the following steps: 1. Ensure you have installed kernel-source and kernel-syms packages corresponding to the version of the currently running kernel. The version of the currently running kernel can be determined by issuing the command "uname -r". 2. Change the directory to the /usr/src/linux-<version> directory, where <version> corresponds to the currently running kernel version. 3. Run "zcat /boot/symvers-<version>.gz > Module.symvers" as root to prepare modversion support. 4. Run "make cloneconfig" as root to configure the sources for the currently running kernel. 5. Run "make modules_prepare" as root to prepare the headers for compilation. 6. Run the NI-KAL INSTALL script. ------------------Uninstalling NI-KAL ------------------To uninstall NI-KAL, complete the following steps: 1. Copy the "UNINSTALL" and the nikal-1.10.0f0.tar.gz files to any directory. (Both files must be located in the same directory.) 2. As root, run "./UNINSTALL". 3. Follow the instructions of the uninstaller. -----------Known Issues -----------On 32-bit kernels NI-KAL does not support systems with hardware (memory or memory-mapped devices) beyond the first 4GB of physical address space. NI-KAL will fail to load if it detects hardware beyond this address limit. To ensure the successful operation of your National Instruments products on 32-bit Linux, you should use a kernel configuration that recognizes 4GB or less of physical memory. Refer to the documentation for your distribution to determine how to configure the distribution installer to select an appropriate kernel. Alternatively, you can dynamically restrict the addressable range of your distribution's kernel to a specific limit by passing "mem=#####" to the kernel at boot time. For example, to restrict the kernel to 4GB of addressable physical space, you should specify "mem=4096M". On openSUSE 11.1, users must run "updateNIdrivers" after installing all National Instruments software. ------Support ------National Instruments does not support the use of third-party kernel modules on NI-KAL. For more details on the National Instruments support policy for Linux, refer to <http://www.ni.com/linux/>. If you contact National Instruments for Linux driver support, be sure to include the output from /usr/local/bin/niSystemReport in your request.