Installation

System Requirements

  • Any recent 64-bit Linux distribution or a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or later.

  • If using the WIENER VM-USB VME Controller:

    • WIENER VM-USB VME Controller with a recent firmware

      The VM-USB firmware can be updated from within mvme. See VM-USB Firmware Update for a guide.

    • Latest USB chipset driver for your system.

      Updating the driver is especially important for Windows versions prior to Windows 10 in combination with a NEC/Renesas chipset (frequently found in laptops). The driver shipped by Microsoft has a bug that prevents libusb from properly accessing devices. See the libusb wiki for more information.

    • USB Driver: libusb-0.1 (Linux) / libusb-win32 (Windows)

      The windows installer can optionally run Zadig to handle the driver installation.

  • No additional drivers are required when using the Struck SIS3153 Controller. Just make sure you are using a GBit/s ethernet connection to the controller.

  • At least 4 GB RAM is recommended.

  • A multicore processor is recommended as mvme itself can make use of multiple cores: readout, analysis and GUI (which includes histogram rendering) run in separate threads.

Linux

The mvme archives for Linux include all required libraries. The only external dependency is the GNU C Library glibc. When using a modern Linux distribution no glibc version errors should occur.

Installation is simple: unpack the supplied archive and execute the mvme startup script:

$ tar xf mvme-x64-1.0.tar.bz2
$ ./mvme-x64-1.0/mvme.sh

VM-USB Device Permissions

To be able to use the VM-USB controller as a non-root user a udev rule to adjust the device permissions needs to be added to the system.

Create a file called /etc/udev/rules.d/999-wiener-vm_usb.rules with the following contents:

# WIENER VM_USB
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16dc", ATTRS{idProduct}=="000b", MODE="0666"

This will make the VM-USB usable by any user of the system. A more secure version would be:

# WIENER VM_USB
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16dc", ATTRS{idProduct}=="000b", MODE="0660", GROUP="usb"

which requires the user to be a member of the usb group.

Reload udev using service udev reload or /etc/init.d/udev reload or service systemd-udev reload depending on your distribution or simply reboot the machine.

Windows

Run the supplied installer and follow the on screen instructions to install mvme.

At the end of the installation process you are given the option to run Zadig to install the driver required for VM-USB support to work. Refer to the description text in the installer and VM-USB Driver Installation for details.

VM-USB Driver Installation

To be able to use the VM-USB VME Controller the libusb-win32 driver needs to be installed and registered with the device. An easy way to install the driver is to use the Zadig USB Driver Installer which comes bundled with mvme. You can run Zadig at the end of the installation process or at a later time from the mvme installation directory.

In the Zadig UI the VM-USB will appear as VM-USB VME CRATE CONTROLLER. If it does not show up there’s either a hardware issue or another driver is already registered to handle the VM-USB. Use Options -> List All Devices to get a list of all USB devices and look for the controller again.

_images/installation_zadig.png

Fig. 5 Zadig with VM-USB and libusb-win32 selected

Make sure libusb-win32 is selected as the driver to install, then click on Install Driver. Zadig will generate a self-signed certificate for the driver and start the installation process.

It is highly recommended to restart your system after driver installation, especially if you replaced an existing driver. Otherwise USB transfer errors can occur during VME data acquisition!

In case you want to manually install the driver a ZIP archive can be found here: libusb-win32.

SIS3153 Hostname/IP-Address configuration

Using DHCP

On powerup the SIS3153 tries to get an IP address and a hostname via DHCP. The requested hostname is of the form sis3153-0DDD where DDD is the decimal serial number as printed on the board. For example my controller with S/N 042 will ask for the hostname sis3153-0042. During this phase the L-LED will flash quickly and turn off once the DHCP assignment succeeded.

Using a static ARP entry

In case DHCP with hostname assignment should not or cannot be used an alternative approach is to manually associate the MAC-address of the controller with an IP-address.

The MAC-address of the SIS3153 is 00:00:56:15:3x:xx where x:xx is the serial number in hexadecimal. So for my development controller with S/N 42 the serial becomes 0x2a and the resulting MAC-address is 00:00:56:15:30:2a.

  • Creating the ARP entry under linux:

    With root permissions an ARP entry can be addded this way:

    # arp -s  192.168.100.42 00:00:56:15:30:2a

    To make the entry permanent (at least on debian and ubuntu systems) the file /etc/ethers can be used. Add a line like this to the file:

    00:00:56:15:30:2a 192.168.100.42

    This will take effect on the next reboot (or when restarting the networking services I think).

  • Creating the ARP entry under windows:

    Open a cmd.exe prompt with administrator permissions and use the following command to create the ARP entry:

    arp -s  192.168.100.42 00-00-56-15-30-2a

To verify that the connection is working you can ping the controller. It will send out ICMP replies and for each received packet the L-LED will flash briefly.