cannot write to flash on Ubuntu 18.04 using Arrow programmer

[basseuph]

In our setup we use various machines and OSs to access our boards via JTAG.

We noticed that running Ubuntu 18.04, kernels 4.15.50-generic or 5.4.0-113-generic does not allow for successful writes of the flash using the lates Linux driver version 2.5.1. After completing the steps erasing the flash and check empty flash completed successfully the write to the flash fails for the first write access (address 0x0) using quartus_pgmw of uqartus version 21.4 and 22.2.

On Windows 7 and Windows 10 the Arrow programmer driver (2.5.21.3) is used successsfully using quartus 21.4 to write to the flash of the board.

The tests have been reproduced on the same machine with the same programmer and the same board running a dual boot setup (Windows 7 and Ubuntu 18.04) to rule out machine specific issues.
This specific machine is a Dell Latitude E6430s Laptop with an intel i5-3340M processor.
The programmer has been baught 1-2 months ago.

In a comparison on the same Linux platform writing to the flash with an intel USB Blaster II is possible.

Also, we are using the default JTAG bit rates (20 MHz for the Arrow programmer) quite often for various tests, e.g. BERTs and eye scans, we think that this is not a signal integrity issue.

[JH]

Hi,
sorry for late reply. Do you have still problems?
I'm not sure if we can help, drivers are from Arrow and we use manly WinOS.
Can you check one time priority for USB devices from udev rules:
https://wiki.trenz-electronic.de/display/PD/Arrow+USB+Programmer#ArrowUSBProgrammer-Linux
The error pattern is actually different with the problem but maybe it helps also with your issue.
br
John

[basseuph]

Hi John,

yes, the problem still persists.

I will modify the setup once I am in the lab again to check if the priority changes anything, but I doubt this as we can use the programmers pretty well as long as we do not want to write to the flash.

Could you point me somewhere at Arrow to further investigate this issue?

Thanks!

Ulrich

[JH]

Hi,
I have asked Arrow if they know what the problem is.  I will get back to you as soon as I get an answer
br
John

[JH]

Hi,
I've got feedback from Arrow. Currently, they can not explain it either. The Arrow drivers make "only" the programmers visible and then it should actually the same JTAG accesses where the data is transferred.  This will be done by Quartus and intel drivers. So it should be the behaviour. So something must be different in transferring the bits over JTAG chain, depending on windows drivers and linux...and between intel programmer and ftdi programmer...
Sorry, at the moment it looks like we can not help much there.
Maybe you try one time older Ubuntu version oder older quartus version(only programmer part) to check if this works there.

br
John