Install Quartus II on CentOS

If you, like me, are a convinced Linux user and even an electronic engineer who wants to join the FPGA world, then in addition to misunderstanding from your colleagues, you are more likely to encounter problems installing the appropriate software. Therefore, I will try to talk about my path and facilitate the path of followers. Welcome to cat.

Altera claims that their software is capable of running RHEL-based systems. Therefore, we will install Altera Quartus II 13.0 sp1 Free (the most recent version that supports the crystals of interest to me) on the fresh CentOS 7. And the first feature: only the x64 version of the system is suitable for installation. Well, we have completed this point, go to the Altera website, go through tedious registration, select the version we need on the download page and download it:



After a long wait (4.8GB of archive is not a joke), unpack the archive and happily drive in:

./setup.sh

And! .. and nothing. Those. nothing at all, no mistakes, no signs of life. We climb into Google and find out, find out that altera, despite working only in x64 systems, requires some 32-bit libraries. Google further and finally collect a list of these very few libraries. Install them (do not forget to log in as root):

# yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686 expat.i686 fontconfig.i686 freetype.i686 glibc.i686 gtk2.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 gtk2-engines-2.18.4-5.el6.centos.i686 libpng.i686 libICE.i686 libSM.i686 libuuid.i686 ncurses-devel.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 PackageKit-gtk-module.i686 tcl-devel.i686 tcl.i686 zlib.i686# yum install libX11.i686 libXau.i686 libXdmcp.i686 libXext.i686 libXft-devel.i686 libXft.i686 libXrender.i686 libXt.i686 libXtst.i686

Here the following problem may occur:

Error:  Multilib version problems found. This often means that the root
       cause is something else and multilib version checking is just
       pointing out that there is a problem. Eg.:
         1. You have an upgrade for libgcc which is missing some
            dependency that another package requires. Yum is trying to
            solve this by installing an older version of libgcc of the
            different architecture. If you exclude the bad architecture
            yum will tell you what the root cause is (which package
            requires what). You can try redoing the upgrade with
            --exclude libgcc.otherarch ... this should give you an error
            message showing the root cause of the problem.
         2. You have multiple architectures of libgcc installed, but
            yum can only see an upgrade for one of those arcitectures.
            If you don't want/need both architectures anymore then you
            can remove the one with the missing update and everything
            will work.
         3. You have duplicate versions of libgcc installed already.
            You can use "yum check" to get yum show these errors.
       ...you can also use --setopt=protected_multilib=false to remove
       this checking, however this is almost never the correct thing to
       do as something else is very likely to go wrong (often causing
       much more problems).
       Protected multilib versions: libgcc-4.4.7-4.el6.i686 != libgcc-4.4.7-3.el6.x86_64
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
 You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles –nodigest

Instead of libgcc, you might have something else. For me, for example, it was libuuid. This means that the installed 32-bit library has a newer version than the existing 64-bit library. The problem is solved by updating the library. In my case, it looked like this:

# yum install libuuid.i686 libuuid.x86_64

(I did not immediately take a screenshot, and then it was too lazy to demolish the library.)

Now, when all the necessary libraries are installed, you can run setup:

./setup.sh

The windows-style installation window opens: We



carefully read the license agreement:



We select the directory for installation, after making sure that it is writable:



We decide which crystals we need support for : The installer



evaluates the available space:



We go and make tea ...



After tea drinking we return to the computer and we see the picture:



In fairness, I note that regardless of the placement of crosses, the window closes without any other action. That is, no shortcuts are created, nor a program starts.

Actually everything - Quartus is installed. What to do next and additional jokes awaiting Linux, in subsequent publications.