Installing Altera Quartus II and Modelsim under Ubuntu Linux

Required Versions

Ubuntu Linux

Please follow the links on the Ubuntu Website for Download and Install Instructions.

Quartus and Modelsim Download

The Linux Versions of the Quartus and Modelsim Software are available from the Altera Downloadpage or from here

https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~beckmanf/restricted/10.0sp1_modelsim_ase_linux.sh

https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~beckmanf/restricted/10.0sp1_quartus_free_linux.sh

Installing Altera Quartus II

Altera only supports the commercial Redhat Unix versions and there are some differences between Ubuntu and the Redhat distributions. Therefore some fixes are necessary to install the Quartus software on Ubuntu.

The first problem is a compatibility problem in the libXi library. Ubuntu has installed version 6.1.0 but Quartus requires the 6.0.0 version. So download the 6.0.0 version from here:

https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~beckmanf/restricted/libXi.so.6.0.0

Then copy the file to the /usr/lib directory and change the libXi link with the following commands in a terminal window. You need superuser rights for this.

sudo cp libXi.so.6.0.0 /usr/lib
sudo rm /usr/lib/libXi.so.6
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libXi.so.6.0.0 /usr/lib/libXi.so.6

Then copy the Quartus download file “10.0sp1_quartus_free_linux.sh” to your home directory.

Now type the following in a terminal:

cd
bash 10.0sp1_quartus_free_linux.sh

The Altera installation windows will appear. Just follow the instructions there. You can use the default settings.

After the installation, add the Quartus path to your PATH variable by appending the following line to your .profile file.

export PATH=$PATH:/home/<your login name>/altera/10.0sp1/quartus/bin

Now you have installed the Altera Software!

USB Blaster

For getting access on a FPGA you need to install the Altera USB Blaster. On Ubuntu you just have to add these three lines

# ALTERA USB Blaster
mount --bind /dev/bus /proc/bus
ln -s /sys/kernel/debug/usb/devices /proc/bus/usb/devices

to the file /etc/rc.local. Pay attention that the line with “exit 0” is below these lines. After saving this changes (you need to be root) you have to make this file executable. Enter

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

in a terminal. After a reboot the USB Blaster should be available in the Altera Software!

Installing the Modelsim Software

Run the following in a terminal window

bash 10.0sp1_modelsim_ase_linux.sh

The Altera installation window will appear. Just use the default settings.

Finally add the following line to your .profile file

export PATH=$PATH:/home/<your login name>/altera/10.0sp1/modelsim_ase/linuxaloem

You have installed modelsim.