Altera's Quartus II software is an FPGA development package for the Altera line of FPGAs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altera

This documentation is how to get Quartus to work on Linux.

USBBlaster

After installation it is somewhat difficult to get the "USBBlaster" software to work. The USBBlaster is the software that downloads the FPGA netlist image to the development board.

To get the USB hotplug system to work you need to add a "udev" rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev For older versions of linux the Altera web site documents them, see: http://www.altera.com/download/drivers/dri-usb_b-lnx.html . For newer versions of linux, one (only one) of the following seems to work

File: /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usbblaster.rules

# USB-Blaster
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6002", MODE="0666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6003", MODE="0666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"

# USB-Blaster
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666"
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6002", MODE="0666"
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="09fb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6003", MODE="0666"

# USB-Blaster
ACTION!="add", SUBSYSTEM!=="usb_device", GOTO="qcontrol_rules_end"
ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{idVendor}=="09fb", MODE="666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"
ATTRS{idProduct}=="6002", ATTRS{idVendor}=="09fb", MODE="666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"
ATTRS{idProduct}=="6003", ATTRS{idVendor}=="09fb", MODE="666", SYMLINK+="usbblaster"
LABEL="qcontrol_rules_end"

Now restart the udev system. On different systems, its done in different ways.

sudo service udev restart

or perhaps:

sudo service systemd-udevd restart

or if all else fails, just use the windows final solution, reboot.

You should check your log files for udev errors. Look in /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog depending on your linux distrobution (redhat/debian/ubuntu).

Now to verify things are working, we follow this: http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/USB-Blaster_under_Fedora_18

cd <alter_installation>/<install_version>/quartus/bin
./jtagd
./jtagconfig

You should see something like

user@localhost:~/altera/13.0sp1/quartus/bin$ ./jtagconfig 
1) USB-Blaster [5-1]
  020B60DD   EP2C70

64 Bit Installations

Issues with 64 bit OS. If you install Quartus on a 64 bit machine you can install the 32 bit libraries that it needs, or just run it as 64 bit. To run it as 64 bit just add "--64bit" to the end of the command line. For example, the "jtagconfig" above might complain about missing ld-linx.so or some such thingy. If so, just try

./jtagconfig --64bit

Running Quartus

To run Quartus

cd <alter_installation>/<install_version>/quartus/bin
./quartus

or for 64 bit installs:

cd <alter_installation>/<install_version>/quartus/bin
./quartus --64bit

To make things easier, I create a script file in /usr/local/bin like this:

/usr/local/bin/Quartus

#!/bin/bash

export PATH=${PATH}:/home/jkh/altera/CURRENT/quartus/bin
quartus --64bit &

I use a capital Q for the script file so that it does not get confused with the lower case q of the actual program name! Thus to start Quartus type

Quartus

with a capital Q.