Installation Guide for Quartus on

Ubuntu Linux

James Bassett
December 2007

Version 1.0 December 2007

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 1/6

 Preface
This guide is for intended for those wishing to install Quartus, Modelsim and Megacore IP on an
Ubuntu system and is based upon the Quartus for Ubuntu availiable at the Nios Wiki
(http://nioswiki.jot.com/) which can be found here.
It has been tested using Quartus 7.2, Modelsim 6.1g and Megacore IP 7.2 for Linux on an Ubuntu
7.10 system, which, at time of writing are the latest versions avaliable although it may work for other
versions and even other Linux flavours.

Install process
Before proceeding ensure that you have tcsh installed as Altera's install scripts are written for csh,
using specific extensions only found in tcsh.
Next, you will need to download the installer tars from Altera's website and extract them.

Quartus
The first piece of software to be installed will be Quartus. which can be achieved by running the
install script as root from a console. This is located in the quartus/linux/ folder where the tar was
extracted to.
The path chosen for this guide is /opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2 and if you choose another path you will
need to make amend the path setup phase with the different path.

Megacore IP
Similar to quartus, run the install script as root from console. This is located in the ip/linux/ folder
where the tar was extracted to.
The path used by this guide is /opt/altera7.2/megacore

Modelsim
Under the modesim_ae directory edit the install.ms script by adding no­same­permissions to lines
172 and 174 so that it appears as shown below. This will clear the sticky bit when extracting the
other archives which would otherwise cause uncompress (which calls gzip) to exit without
extracting these other archives, preventing the installation from completing.
Line 172:
tar xfo {$script_path}/modeltech_altera_unix.tar ­­no­same­permissions 
Line 174:

tar xfo {$script_path}/modeltech_altera_unix.tar $file1.Z $file2.Z $file3.Z –no­same­permissions 

Next run install.ms as root from a console - /opt/altera7.2/modelsim is the install directory used by
this guide.

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 2/6

 Path setup

The following extract will need to be inserted into a suitable location, which will set the paths to the
Quartus/Modelsim binaries and various variables used by those binaries.
Before doing so however the extract below will need to be amended with any changes to the path
mentioned in the installation steps. Also a server or file location for the LM_LICENSE_FILE
variable, this will typically either be the absolute path to a license.dat file or in the format of
<port>@<host> for the license server (should no port be specified in the server's license.dat then
simply use @<host>). For more details on licensing please see the Quartus Linux installation
manual (http://altera.com/literature/manual/quartus_unix.pdf).
Once complete the extract should be placed into the .bashrc file in your home folder,
or /etc/bash.bashrc should you wish for multiple users to use Quartus.

## Altera Quartus environment variables 
LM_LICENSE_FILE=<ENTER SERVER LOCATION>
QUARTUS_64BIT=0 
MWOS=linux 
MWARCH=i86 
QUARTUS_MWWM=allwm 
QUARTUS_ROOTDIR=/opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2 
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2/bin:/opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2/linux 
PATH=$PATH:/opt/altera7.2/modelsim/linuxaloem 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2/linux 
unset GCC_EXEC_PREFIX 
export LM_LICENSE_FILE QUARTUS_ROOTDIR 

Once this has been completed you can try to run Quartus and Modelsim using the commands
quartus and vsim respectively.
One potential issue that may arise is that the use of the configuration menu may cause a crash when
running under Ubuntu due to an incompatibility. This incompatibility appears to stem from the use
of the Window managing toolkit used to port Quartus, at time of writing this issue has not been
resolved.

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 3/6

 USB Blaster setup

First, try the udev method by adding the following to /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules :

# Altera USB­Blaster 
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"

and in your home folder create an empty file named .jtag.conf and plug in the USB Blaster cable.
Now, when you run jtagconfig it should inform you that it has found your USB Blaster.
However, should jtagconfig inform you that no JTAG devices are found when the USB Blaster is
plugged in you should try the second method over leaf.

Should the SYMLINK created by udev not be picked up, then you may try this method:
sudo mount -t usbfs /dev/bus/usb/ /proc/bus/usb/
killall jtagd
sudo <quartus install path>/bin/jtagd
jtagconfig

Steps two and three are necessary as in this case there is nothing to set the permissions of the device
to user writable, thus jtagd will need root permissions to lock the USB Blaster.
Should this method be successful and you wish to make it permanent then
sudoedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh and uncomment the code on lines 42 45 so that it appears
as follows:

# 
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work 
# 
mkdir ­p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs 
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs ­obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644 
ln ­s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices 
mount ­­rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

this will ensure that usb devices are avaliable via /proc/bus/usb allowing jtagd to detect the USB
Blaster.
To ensure that jtagd is run as root upon startup an init.d script is provided in Appendix A, this script
also provides functionality to start, stop and restart jtagd.
Should you wish to utilise this, copy the script from the appendix into /etc/init.d/jtagd taking note to
update the directory where the empty .jtag.conf is located.
Then to install the service simply:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/jtagd

sudo update-rc.d jtagd defaults 20

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 4/6

 Troubleshooting

One error you may encounter is Quartus exiting simply saying Aborted , in this case check if there
is an IPv4 loopback entry in /etc/hosts such as:

127.0.0.1 <machine's hostname> localhost.localdomain localhost

For additional troubleshooting check the offical Altera support site (http://altera.com/support) in
particular for patches. Other locations you may wish to try are the Altera forums
(http://www.alteraforum.com/) or the NIOS forums (http://www.niosforum.com/).

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 5/6

Appendix A jtagd init.d file

NB: You will need to enter the path to your own home folder below.
#!/bin/bash 
# 
# Init file for Altera JTAGD 
# 
# chkconfig: 2345 60 25 
# description: JTAG daemon 
# 
# processname: jtagd 
# config: /etc/jtagd 

# source function library 
#. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions 
# Rough hack to port it for ubuntu as /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions is for RedHat 
. /lib/lsb/init­functions 

RETVAL=0 
prog="jtagd" 

PID_FILE=/var/run/jtagd.pid 
JTAGD=/opt/altera7.2/quartus7.2/bin/jtagd 
CONFIG=<CHANGE TO YOUR HOME FOLDER>.jtag.conf 

start() 
{ 
log_daemon_msg "Starting jtagd" "jtagd" 
if start­stop­daemon ­­start ­­quiet ­­oknodo ­­pidfile $PID_FILE ­­exec $JTAGD ­­ ­­config $CONFIG; 
then 
    log_end_msg 0 
            #start­stop­daemon isn't putting correct PID via ­­make­pidfile option so perform manually 
    pidofproc $prog > $PID_FILE 
else 
            pidofproc $prog > $PID_FILE 
    log_end_msg 1 
fi 
} 

stop() 
{ 
log_daemon_msg "Stopping jtagd" "jtagd" 
if start­stop­daemon ­­stop ­­quiet ­­oknodo ­­pidfile $PID_FILE; then 
    log_end_msg 0 
else 
    log_end_msg 1 
fi 
} 

case "$1" in 
start) 
start 
;; 
stop) 
stop 
;; 
restart) 
stop 
start 
;; 
*) 
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}" 
RETVAL=1 
esac 
exit $RETVAL

Installation Guide for Quartus on Ubuntu Linux Page 6/6