Official bladeRF forum

Posted: **Mon Aug 26, 2013 1:15 am**

Hi,

I am trying to get my board working and am having trouble flashing the new FW imange:-

********************************************************************************
* ENTERING LEGACY MODE, PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST FIRMWARE BY RUNNING:
* wget http://nuand.com/fx3/latest.img ; bladeRF-cli -b -f latest.img
********************************************************************************
Flashing firmware...
Using legacy alt setting to flash firmware
Error: failed to flash firmware: File or device I/O failure
Could not flash firmware
Could not load fpga
Could not load scripts
Could not launch interactive shell

To complicate matters I am running under the bladeRF under Linux Mint in a virtualbox instance on a WIn7 host, I won't get a chance to try it native until next week.

The probe command gives:-

Code: Select all

$ bladeRF-cli -p

    Backend: libusb
    Serial: �
    USB Bus: 3
    USB Address: 1

Any thoughts?

*EDIT*

I built bladeRF-cli with debug enabled and get:-

Code: Select all

mike@mike-LinuxMint ~/projects/bladeRF/host/build $ bladeRF-cli -f ../../latest.img 
********************************************************************************
* ENTERING LEGACY MODE, PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST FIRMWARE BY RUNNING:
* wget http://nuand.com/fx3/latest.img ; bladeRF-cli -b -f latest.img
********************************************************************************
[DEBUG /home/mike/projects/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:298] Claimed all inferfaces successfully
Flashing firmware...
Using legacy alt setting to flash firmware
[DEBUG /home/mike/projects/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:465] Erasing 3 sectors starting @ sector 0
[DEBUG /home/mike/projects/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:482] Failed to erase sector 0
[DEBUG /home/mike/projects/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:486] Received erase failure status from FX3.
Error: failed to flash firmware: File or device I/O failure
Could not flash firmware
Could not load fpga
Could not load scripts
Could not launch interactive shell

Posted: **Thu Aug 29, 2013 12:45 pm**

There might be a problem of lack of USB3.0 support in VirtualBox. You should perhaps try to use usb2.0 port if you have it or wmvare with usb3.0 enabled in preferences.

Posted: **Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:21 am**

Hi drelectro,

I think your going to quickly run out of luck with this configuration but I guess you gotta use what you have for now.

What is your dmesg output show when you plug in the device?
Have you tried enabling the USB controller under the Virtualbox Settings? Go to Virtualbox Manager > select the VM, go to preferences / settings. USB tab. Tick the checkbox option "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller? Does toggling this option make any changes?

I just had a quick play with a Debian VM hosted by Virtualbox on a Linux Mint 15 laptop. I'll need to install the non-free version of virtualbox to test this USB 2.0 controller option but I wasn't able to get the device to be detected inside the VM.

Posted: **Sun Sep 01, 2013 10:27 pm**

OK, things are much better now that I am using a real machine rather than a Virtualbox.

I have been able to re-flash the FX3 FW to V1.1 and much of bladeRF-cli is now working correctly.

I am now having trouble loading the FPGA image as shown below:-

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mike@mike-X58A-UD5 ~/ntc-build/gnuradio/bladeRF/host $ bladeRF-cli -l hostedx40.rbf 
[DEBUG /home/mike/ntc-build/gnuradio/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:249] Found a bladeRF
[DEBUG /home/mike/ntc-build/gnuradio/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:315] Claimed all inferfaces successfully
[DEBUG /home/mike/ntc-build/gnuradio/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/bladerf.c:129] bladerf_open: fw=v1.1 serial=407d3f0895d72b8885ceaa771ce9086a trim=0x99f5 fpga_size=40
Loading fpga...
[DEBUG /home/mike/ntc-build/gnuradio/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/backend/libusb.c:219] Change to alternate interface 0
Error: failed to load FPGA: An unexpected error occurred
Could not load fpga
bladeRF>

But I think that's a separate issue for a different thread.

BTW, I tried VMWare which is supposed to supposed USB3.0 but in that case I couldn't even redirect the USB device to the virtual machine (it didn't show up in the list).

Posted: **Mon Sep 02, 2013 1:27 am**

I'm curious now as to how much of the bladeRF can work with a VM, hosted by QEMU / KVM.
I don't have any development test areas with KVM setup at the moment so that'll be something worthy of playing with at a later time (when I have some spare hardware).

Might sound a bit dumb but have you tried redownloading the FPGA firmware and confirm that the MD5 hash is okay?

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