Install Altera Quartus 12.1 in Ubuntu 12.04

Usually when make no progress in solving problems in study, I may play games like League of Legends or Age of Empires. The total time spent on those things in the past few months is so much. Therefore I use Ubuntu 12.04 instead of Windows 7 as often as possible to reduce the opportunity to touch the games. Here record the steps needed for installing Altera Quartus 12.1.

1. Download the software from https://www.altera.com/download/software/quartus-ii-se. Note that two or more files are needed. One is the Quartus software, and the others are device support files. Since the FPGA used is Cyclone II, only two files are needed for me.
2. Extract the files from the archives.

   tar zxvf 12.1_quartus_linux.tar.gz
   tar zxvf 12.1_devices_cyclone_max_legacy_linux.tar.gz

3. Start the installer

   sudo ./12.1_quartus_linux/altera_installer/bin/altera_installer_gui --gui

4. The installer will ask locations twice. The first one is the location of the files used by the installer, whose folder can be removed after the installation, and the other is the destination. The device file is similar, but the destination must be the same as the previous one.
5. After finishing the installation, it is time to set the USB-Blaster. Create a file at /etc/udev/rules.d/ called 51-usbblaster.rules. Copy the following, paste, and save.

   # Altera USB-Blaster rule to set mode to 666.
   SUBSYSTEM=="usb",\
   ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",\
   ATTR{idVendor}=="09fb",\
   ATTR{idProduct}=="6001",\
   MODE="0666",\
   NAME="bus/usb/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}",\
   RUN+="/bin/chmod 0666 %c"

6. Run the command.

   sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

To test whether the installation is success or not, you can use the Control Panel application. Here shows the steps for DE2.

1. Set the RUN/PROG switch of FPGA to the RUN position.
2. Select Tools > Programmer. Click on Add File and select the DE2_USB_API.sof file. Next, check the Program/Configure box.
3. Click Start to download the configuration file into the FPGA.

If the installation is success, the progress bar should display 100%.

WARNING

The above steps may disable your operating system. Please consider carefully in advance.

Reference

1. http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37072
2. http://www.cnblogs.com/oomusou/archive/2011/10/10/linux_quartus.html