NI-VISA 2023 Q3 for Linux/x86 64-bit Architecture Readme

July 2023

This file contains installation instructions and compatibility information for NI-VISA 2023 Q3.

You can find more release information on ni.com.

System Requirements

Installation Instructions

Accessing the Documentation

Finding Examples

Linux Limitations

System Requirements

NI-VISA software for the Linux/x86 64-bit architecture has been tested on the following distributions:

  • openSUSE Leap 15.4
  • openSUSE Leap 15.3
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Ubuntu 22.04
  • Ubuntu 20.04

NI-VISA requires a 64-bit distribution and does not support 32-bit applications.

Visit NI Hardware and Software Operating System Compatibility and NI-VISA Features and OS Compatibility pages to view supported operating systems for different releases and feature support for various operating systems.

Installation Instructions

NI provides a repository add-on for all supported drivers that you can install using your Linux distribution's native package manager.

  1. Visit ni.com/info and enter the Info Code LinuxRepository.
  2. Download the installer for the repository add-on for your Linux distribution.
  3. Install the repository add-on using the rpm command.
  4. Select and install the following NI-VISA driver packages through your Linux distribution's package manager:

After the driver package(s) are installed, you must rebuild the new packages for the system kernel. NI recommends that you run the command 'dkms autoinstall' after installation, and before rebooting the system, to install the latest revision of all modules that have been installed for other kernel revisions. After doing so, the installed device drivers will function immediately on the next system start.

Updated LabVIEW Compatibility Policy

The ni-visa-labview-support package supports applications using NI-VISA ​with LabVIEW 2022 or later. When installing NI-VISA, this package will be recommended if you have already installed LabVIEW 2022 or later and installs to the LVAddons directory.

LVAddons directory location: /usr/local/natinst/share/lvaddons

Accessing the Documentation

Use a web browser to view the NI-VISA documentation by searching NI-VISA at ni.com/docs.

Finding Examples

This release includes examples showing the use of NI-VISA in C and LabVIEW.

C examples are located in usr\share\doc\ni-visa\examples. Make files are provided that link to the necessary libraries.

By installing the NI-VISA LabVIEW support, LabVIEW examples will be located in the LabVIEW examples directory.

Linux Limitations

NI-VISA 2023 Q3 for Linux does not support 32-bit versions of LabVIEW.

The VISA user must have write access to the file that represents the USB device, which is typically somewhere in a subdirectory within /dev/bus/usb. If this is not the case, the USB device is not accessible by VISA (it will not be found using viFindRsrc and viOpen will fail). The default configuration on most systems is that the 'root' user has write access; however, no other user has this access.

There are a number of options that you can take to provide a non-root user access to a USB device.

  1. Use udev rules. By default, NI-VISA installs scripts to give all users write access to all USB TMC devices and a framework for USB RAW devices. To add write permissions for a specific USB RAW device, run the included script: 
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ni-visa/usb/AddUsbRawPermissions.sh
    For more information about udev, please visit: kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev/udev.html
  2. The root user may add write permissions to the file that represents the USB device which is typically somewhere in a subdirectory within /dev/bus/usb. Unfortunately, these permissions will be lost if the device is unplugged and then plugged back in. Because of this, this approach is not recommended.