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Gowin EDA on Linux
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gowin_eda_linux.md

Gowin EDA V1.9.9.03 Education Linux

On Debian Testing/trixie. With some adaptions the instructions described here should also work on other Linux distributions.

As regular user extract the Gowin EDA tarball into a directory e.g. gowin. This creates two directories, IDE and Programmer:

gowin/
├── IDE
├── Programmer

The installation of the udev rules file 50-programmer_usb.rules from Programmer/Driver is not necessary. The file contains a rule to unload the ftdi_sio kernel module - with proper configuration (the regular user is allowed to run sudo modprobe) the Programmer does this anyways, see section Errors and solutions/Programmer below.

Be aware however that when module ftdi_sio is removed from the system the /dev/ttyUSBx serial connections are not available anymore. These are required e.g. for the Tang Nano 20K Unboxing tutorial.

To make the serial connections available again run sudo modprobe ftdi_sio.

Errors and solutions

Runtime errors EDA/Programmer

  1. EDA fails to start

    Error message on console:

    $ IDE/bin/gw_ide
IDE/bin/gw_ide: symbol lookup error: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var

    Fix:

    export LD_PRELOAD=/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so

  2. Programmer fails to start from EDA

    Error message on console:

    Programmer/bin/programmer: Programmer/bin/libz.so.1: version 'ZLIB_1.2.3.4' not found (required by /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16)

    Fix:

    export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so

Combined LD_PRELOAD to start IDE/bin/gw_ide:

export LD_PRELOAD='/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so'

  1. Qt: Session management error

    Error message on console:

    Qt: Session management error: Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed

    Fix:

    unset SESSION_MANAGER

Programmer

  1. Error: Cable open failed. when start to program the FPGA.

    Error message in systemd journal/journalctl:

    user NOT in sudoers ; PWD=/opt/gowin/Programmer/bin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/sbin/modprobe -r ftdi_sio

    Fix:

    As root user create sudoers config file gowin_fpga_designer.

    Run visudo /etc/sudoers.d/gowin_fpga_designer, file content:

    <yourusername> ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/modprobe

    e.g.:

    joe ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/modprobe

  2. Error: Error found! when start to program the FPGA.

    Error message in Log Viewer -> query:

    2024-08-04 16:44:56,714 - ERROR :
1927@gw: removeftdi_sio--[Errno 13] Permission denied: '/etc/modprobe.d/ftdi_sio.conf'

    Fix:

    As root user run

    touch /etc/modprobe.d/ftdi_sio.conf
chmod 664 /etc/modprobe.d/ftdi_sio.conf
chgrp plugdev /etc/modprobe.d/ftdi_sio.conf

    This assumes your regular user account is a member of group plugdev.

  3. Error: Spi flash not found. when start to program the external flash of FPGA.

    Error message in Programmer:

    Error: Spi flash not found.

    Fix:

    Try again. Usually it works on the second run.

Miscellaneous useful information

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