[Linux-gpib-general] pyvisa on ubuntu

[Glenton J. <gle...@go...>]

Hi All

I'm feeling like a Luddite here!  I've used pyvisa before on a windows
machine, but am now trying to get it running on Ubuntu (9.10).

At first I tried some of the National Instruments links, but
eventually got a response suggesting the linux-GPIB-drivers.  These I
installed along with the python components using synaptic.

I then installed pyvisa, and got the following:

*******************************************************************
>>> import visa
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/visa.py", line 1, in <module>
    from pyvisa.visa import *
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/visa.py", line
231, in <module>
    resource_manager = ResourceManager()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/vpp43.py", line
105, in __new__
    it.init(*args, **kwds)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/visa.py", line
227, in init
    self.session = self.vi = vpp43.open_default_resource_manager()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/vpp43.py", line
758, in open_default_resource_manager
    visa_library().viOpenDefaultRM(byref(session))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/vpp43.py", line
175, in __call__
    self.load_library()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyvisa/vpp43.py", line
146, in load_library
    self.__lib = self.__cdecl_lib = cdll.LoadLibrary(path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/ctypes/__init__.py", line 431, in LoadLibrary
    return self._dlltype(name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/ctypes/__init__.py", line 348, in __init__
    self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode)
OSError: /usr/local/vxipnp/linux/bin/libvisa.so.7: cannot open shared
object file: No such file or directory
******************************************************************

It seems that the /usr/local/vxipnp/linux/bin/libvisa.so.7 file is
important, and I get the impression that if I were ever lucky enough
to stumble through an NI installation that file might be created.

Anyway, let me quickly say what I'm trying to do.  I have a national
instruments GPIB-USB-HS, and I want to control some standard GPIB
devices using python.  I'm running a laptop with Ubuntu 9.10 on it.

Many thank!