Problem establishing connection with USRP

I’m trying to talk to a USRP using the vanilla install of the binaries
for Ubuntu.

I am simply trying to run usrp_fft.py to verify that the basic system is
working.

I have a machine with FC7 on it that talks to the USRP just fine. When I
try to run the FFT program on the Ubunto machine I get a long output
stream the gist of which seems to be that it is having problems with the
USB.

The first few lines of the output are:

usrp_open_interface:usb_claim_interface: failed interface 0
could not claim interface 0: Operation not permitted
open_nth_cmd_interface: open_cmd_interface fo;ed
usrp: failed to load firmware /usr/share/usrp/rev4/std.ihx

It then proceeds with a long Traceback, which I can provide if someone
would like.

The “Operation not permitted” makes me wonder if it’s a permissions
issue. I ran the program using sudo and it still failed, but with a
different error message. This time the only thing it said prior to the
Traceback is:

Can’t find fpga bitstream: std_2rxhb_2tx.rbf

I don;t know what the sequence of events is, but this makes me think
that running as sudo solved the USB problem. Anyone have any other
ideas?

Any suggestions as to how I can get it to find the bitstream file?

FYI: This is on a Dell netbook (Inspiron 910) and apparently you can’t
actually log in as root.

Thanks

On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:27 PM, William L. Bahn [email protected] wrote:

usrp_open_interface:usb_claim_interface: failed interface 0
could not claim interface 0: Operation not permitted
open_nth_cmd_interface: open_cmd_interface fo;ed
usrp: failed to load firmware /usr/share/usrp/rev4/std.ihx

It then proceeds with a long Traceback, which I can provide if someone would
like.

The “Operation not permitted” makes me wonder if it’s a permissions issue.

The binary installation on Ubuntu creates a user group ‘usrp’, and
sets the permissions for USRP access via USB to allow any user who is
a member of that group. The final part of the install instructions
tell you to add your user account name to group ‘usrp’ and then log
out and back in as that user for it to take effect. This is why
running as root via sudo got past this part.

Can’t find fpga bitstream: std_2rxhb_2tx.rbf

This should have been installed into:

/usr/share/usrp/rev4/std_2rxhb_2tx.rbf

First verify if it is there; if it is not, then the ‘usrp-firmware’
package didn’t get installed for some reason. You can do ‘apt-get
install usrp-firmware’.

FYI: This is on a Dell netbook (Inspiron 910) and apparently you can’t
actually log in as root.

Ubuntu, by default, disables the root account login, and allows the
user configured during installation to use sudo instead.

Johnathan