xbinst Command Reference

The FPGA acceleration card plugged into the host machine must have the associated Linux kernel driver, firmware, and runtime libraries installed before it can be used for running user applications. SDAccel™ provides a Xilinx® board installation utility, xbinst to generate all necessary files for the platform support package for the FPGA card. It also generates an installation script to compile and install the driver, firmware, and runtime libraries.

The xbinst utility requires superuser privileges on the host machine to run. The supported options are listed below:

Table 1. xbinst Options

Short Option

Long Option

Valid Values

Description

-h

--help

NA

 Print Usage Message.
-f <arg> --platform <arg> Supported platform from SDAccel installation or the full path to platform definition file for custom platforms Required.

All installed platforms are listed at SDAccel Developer Zone: Platforms.
-d <arg>

--destination <arg>

Valid path on the file system.

 Required destination directory for driver and firmware for the specified platform.

Follow the instructions below to install the driver and firmware for the FPGA card on the host machine. The ADM-PCIE-7V3 DSA is used as an example. Replace it with the DSA for the actual card plugged into the system.

All commands need to be run with superuser privileges.

  1. Create a board installation directory.
    sudo mkdir -p /opt/dsa/xilinx_kcu1500_dynamic_5_0
  2. Run xbinst to generate all necessary files. 
    
$ sudo xbinst --platform xilinx_kcu1500_dynamic_5_0
-d /opt/dsa/<file_path>/xilinx_kcu1500_dynamic_5_0
****** xbinst v2017.4_sdx
  **** Copyright 1986-2017 Xilinx, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

INFO: [XBINST 60-267] Packaging for ..
INFO: [XBINST 60-268] Packaging for ..Complete
INFO: [XBINST 60-667] xbinst has successfully created a board installation directory 
at <file_path>/*_dsa

    If you installed a custom platform, the full path to the platform package file needs to be provided to the xbinst command as shown in the following example:

    
$ sudo xbinst -f /platform/repo/vendor_board_name_version.xpfm -d custom_platform
  3. Install the driver, firmware, and runtime libraries. 
    
$cd <verson>_dsa/xbinst/
$ sudo ./install.sh

    This will do the following:

    • Compile and install Linux kernel device drivers.
    • Install the firmware files to the Linux firmware area.
    • Generate a setup.sh (Bash) or setup.csh (for csh/tcsh) to set up the runtime environment. Users must source the setup script before running any application on the target FPGA card.