Vivado XVC problems

[rhb]

 I'm trying to communicate with my Zybo Z7.   I installed 2017.4 on Windows 7 Pro running on a VirtualBox VM.  Everything went fine until it tried  to install the Xilinx Virtual Cable drivers.  That crashed the VM with a BoD.  An attempt to install them manually produced the same result.

I posted to the Xilinx forums about this, got a not helpful answer ("navigate to to <install_path>/bin/nt[64]"), pointed out there were 30 directories which met that description and that the "wdreg" command  I was supposed to run once there doesn't exist on the system.  I've heard nothing since.

So I thought I'd ask here as there is a lot more activity here than there.  Does anyone here know how to make it work?  There are at least two missing DLLs, dpcomm.dll and djtg.dll.

[mac.6]

it's probably wdreg that's inside cable driver directory:
Xilinx\Vivado\2017.4\data\xicom\cable_drivers\nt64\dlc10_win7

I have regular issue with cable driver and windows 7 as old xilinx platform cable usb II use an outdated jungo driver.
If you happens to use another device that use jungo driver, it fails. You need to downgrade windows/system32/drivers/windrvr6.sys to version 10.21 (provided into xinlix cable install). But it's probably not related to your issue.
Can you try on non virtualized env (and why virt in the first place?).

[rhb]

Thanks.  I found wdreg and ran it successfully as recommended in a Xilinx article.  However, it did not resolve the problem of the missing libraries. I've not accessed *any* device since the install of Vivado.

Neither dpcomm.dll nor djtg.dll are anywhere on my system unless they are in a download file that did not get installed because the installer crashed. I cannot find any place to download the libraries from, just "we'll fix your PC, just run our program"  which I'm not about to do.

A physical machine is not an option as I need to run both Windows and Linux.  I also want software RAID 5 which Windows does not support.  So I'm running OI Hipster as the host with a 3 disk, single parity RAID array.  It was quite painful to setup, but works remarkably well once you get past all of the incorrect information on the web.

[senso]

Thats seems like a niche OS, what kinda of Virtualization software are you using?

Is it FULLY supported on your base OS?

[rhb]

I'm using VirtualBox which was also created by Sun Microsystems, the creators of Solaris.  So support is reasonably good even if Larry is trying to kill Solaris.

[NorthGuy]

A physical machine is not an option as I need to run both Windows and Linux.

AFAIK, Vivado can run on Linux.

[rhb]

Yeah, but doesn't like Debian.  So I have to configure another VM. 

I only recently condescended to use Windows for anything other than corporate email.  But there is a lot of electronics related software which only runs on Windows and is not coming to *nix any time soon.

The only thing I can think of to compare to Vivado is MATLAB.  I ran into problems installing it at work on Solaris about 20 years ago.  It had 30,000 lines of installation scripts!  I told MathWorks I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Some people write entire operating systems in fewer lines.  I instrumented the scripts to log when they ran and there were some that got run a ridiculous number of times.  I've written a number of installers.  It takes a little over 100 lines of shell script to write a bullet proof installer and about the same amount to write a bullet proof uninstall.

The Vivado installation is littered with cruft from testing, duplicate files, etc.  No one has any idea how it works.  They just hope.  I notice that after downloading 2017.4 on Tuesday I'm  already getting notifications of software updates.  Not a good sign.  Despite the April date, the version I installed was built in mid December.

[andersm]

Despite the April date, the version I installed was built in mid December.

It's not a date, it's the fourth quarterly release of the year.

[NorthGuy]

Yeah, but doesn't like Debian.  So I have to configure another VM.

Have you tried? I have ISE running in Debian without problems.

[asmi]

The Vivado installation is littered with cruft from testing, duplicate files, etc.  No one has any idea how it works.  They just hope.  I notice that after downloading 2017.4 on Tuesday I'm  already getting notifications of software updates.  Not a good sign.  Despite the April date, the version I installed was built in mid December.

  2017.4.1 release only adds new device support (including in free edition).

[rhb]

I'm running OI Hipster 2017.10 which is the October release.  So I assumed that Xilinx was using similar notation.  Thanks for the clarification.

Xilinx does not list Debian, so I'm currently installing a CentOS 7 VM.   Good to know that it should work on Debian.  I have too many systems to admin as it is.  I have gotten very weary of subtle incompatibilities among Linux distros. At least during the workstation wars there were only 5-6 major versions of Unix and all the processors were different, so you knew you needed a platform specific version.  So far as I can tell the number of Linux distros is denumerably infinite.

[asmi]

Xilinx does not list Debian, so I'm currently installing a CentOS 7 VM.   Good to know that it should work on Debian.  I have too many systems to admin as it is.  I have gotten very weary of subtle incompatibilities among Linux distros. At least during the workstation wars there were only 5-6 major versions of Unix and all the processors were different, so you knew you needed a platform specific version.  So far as I can tell the number of Linux distros is denumerably infinite.

If you use Vivado professionally, I'd advise you to build a dedicated workstation for it - especially if you plan to work with large devices (midrange Kintex and above, top-end Zynqs or almost anything from UltraScale/US+ family) as synthesis and P&R will consume a lot of CPU & RAM resources and will make computer virtually unusable while that's in progress. You can reduce a number of cores it uses for SYNTH/P&R, but this will obviously increase the time it takes to complete.