jdb2's Journal: How to get Xilinx' ISE WebPACK 10.1 to run under (K)Ubuntu

How to get Xilinx' ISE WebPACK 10.1 to run under (K)Ubuntu

Having moved from Windows to Linux over a year ago, I've been migrating what I used to do while imprisoned by Microsoft to the free world of Linux. One of these things is digital hardware design via FPGAs. I'd used to use Xilinx' tools under Windows, but since I had no Windows installation save for VMWare I needed to get the latest WebPACK tools running under Kubuntu ( 8.04 ) -- Xilinx' tools are officially only supported under RHEL and Suse. Here's my step-by-step guide on how to do it.

1. First you'll need some prerequisites in the form of shared libraries and the portmap server.
   • sudo apt-get install libmotif3
   • sudo apt-get install portmap
   • sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
2. Unzip the installation package : unzip 10.1_Webinstall-1.zip -d webpack
3. Run the installation script : cd webpack ; sudo -E ./setup
4. Set up the startup script
   1. cd /opt/Xilinx/10.1/ISE ; sudo cp settings32.sh /usr/local/bin/startise
   2. sudo echo -e 'export DISPLAY=:0\nexport LD_PRELOAD=/opt/usb-driver/libusb-driver.so\nexec ise' >> /usr/local/bin/startise

      ( The 'LD_PRELOAD' will be explained later.)

   3. sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/startise

   Remember *Don't execute startise yet* -- we're not finished. :)

5. Getting the cable to work

   Xilinx' jtag cable (usb and parallel) programming drivers are compiled against specific versions of RHEL and Suse so we can't use them. But, luckily there is a user mode driver that emulates their functionality. This is the driver that the LD_PRELOAD environment variable points to. We need this as it tells the loader to override the RHEL/Suse shared library dependencies in Xilinx' iMPACT tool with our own custom shared library.

   1. sudo apt-get install libusb-dev
   2. wget 'http://git.zerfleddert.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi/usb-driver?a=snapshot;h=HEAD;sf=tgz'
   3. tar xvzf usb-driver-HEAD.tar.gz
   4. cd usb-driver ; make
   5. sudo mkdir /opt/usb-driver ; sudo cp libusb-driver.so /opt/usb-driver

   6. ( Some of the following may be redundant. Better safe than sorry though )
      sudo usermod -a -G lp,scanner root ; sudo usermod -a -G lp,scanner [YourUserName]

6. Setting up your environment
   1. cd ; mkdir Xilinx ; cd Xilinx ; cp /opt/Xilinx/10.1/ISE/settings32.sh .
   2. cd .. ; echo -e 'source /home/[YourUserName]/Xilinx/settings32.sh' >> .bashrc
7. You're done -- just type startise to launch ISE WebPACK 10.1 . Happy FPGA/CPLD programming! :)

If you find any omissions or errors in this guide please comment