This page contains common questions and answers about Altera® software installation for the Altera Complete Design Suite (ACDS) version 12.0.
You can refer to About Installing Altera Software in Quartus® II Help for instructions on how to download and install ACDS v12.0. You can also refer to Altera Software Installation and Licensing Manual (PDF) for more information about installing and licensing Altera software.
Q: How can I download and install ACDS v12.0?
A: You can download and install ACDS v12.0 from the Altera Download Center (www.altera.com/download) with the following options:
Altera Installer
The Altera Installer is an on-demand installation manager that allows you to download and install Altera software using the GUI or command-line method. An Internet connection is required during the download and installation process. The Altera Installer supports both Windows and Linux operating systems.
Individual Software Files
Individual software files are self-extracting installation executable files for Windows platform and tar.gz compressed archives for Linux platform. These files are named in the format of <version>_<product>_<windows/linux>.<exe/tar.gz>. For example, a Quartus II individual software file is named as 12.0_quartus_windows.exe or 12.0_quartus_linux.tar.gz.
For Windows, when the individual software file is run, it will self-extract to a temporary location. The Altera Installer will then install the individual software. For Linux, manually extract the content of the tar.gz archive into a folder and execute the “setup” script in the extracted folder. An Internet connection is not required during installation as compare to installation using just the Altera Installer. The individual software files are available for both Windows and Linux operating systems.
You can refer to the About Installing Altera Software in Quartus II Help for instructions on how to download and install ACDS v12.0 using the options described above. You can also refer to Altera Software Installation and Licensing Manual (PDF) for more information on installing and licensing Altera software.
Q: How do I uninstall ACDS v12.0?
A: To uninstall ACDS v12.0, please refer to section “Uninstalling Altera Software” in Altera Software Installation and Licensing Manual (PDF).
Q: Can I use spaces, special characters, or non-English characters in path names?
A: No. You must use only alphanumeric characters and do not use empty spaces, special characters, or non-English characters, such as "!$%^&*<>", in the Installer Source Directory box. This specification also applies to the Destination Directory that you specify in the Altera Installer.
Q: Can I run an anti-virus software when I download and install ACDS v12.0?
A: Some anti-virus scanner can prevent the Altera Installer from downloading and installing Altera software files to your machine. Thus, Altera recommends that you disable any anti-virus or malware scanner before the download and installation start.
Refer to KDB rd07222010_954 for more information.
Q: Can I manually resume the Altera Installer download after an interruption?
A: Yes. The Altera Installer resumes download in two ways:
Q: Can I install ACDS v12.0 via command line?
A: Yes. You can install Altera software for Windows or Linux at the command line with a custom installation script using command-line arguments. To install Altera software from the command line, you can run the Altera Installer command-line executable iteratively, using command-line arguments for different functions. You can locate the Altera Installer command-line executable at the following locations:
%TEMP%\altera\<ACDS v12.0 installer extraction directory>\bin\altera_installer_cmd.exe (Windows)Note: %TEMP% refers to the temporary folder specified in the TEMP environment variable. To find out the temporary folder, you can run the command "echo %TEMP%" at the command prompt.
<ACDS v12.0 installer extraction directory>\bin\altera_installer_cmd (Linux)Refer to Installing Software at the Command Prompt for more information.
Q: Can I install specific device families at the command line?
A: Yes. The Altera Installer supports customized device installation at the command line. Execute the altera_installer_cmd with the help option to see how to install with specific families at the command line.
Example:
CMD> path-to-altera-installer\altera_installer_cmd --help
Q: Can I download Altera software without installing the software?
A: Yes. Altera Installer allows you to download the installation files to your target folder and use them for installation later or share them in the network for installation deployment to multiple machines.
Please refer to Downloading and Installing Altera Software Separately for more information.
Q: I tried to download the individual software files but the file is too big. The time taken to download these files is too long and the downloads always failed halfway. Is there any way to work around this?
A: Altera provides the Altera Download Manager to manage large file downloads of the individual software files. The Altera Download Manager supports download resumes if the download was interrupted before completion. It is recommended that you use Internet Explorer 8 or Mozilla Firefox 3.6 as the Altera Download Manager works best with these browsers. The Altera Download Manager will start automatically upon opening of the download page.
Q: Why do I still get the “error connecting to the Internet” error message even though I have a working Internet connection and configured my proxy setting correctly?
A: You might be connecting to a NTLM proxy type. Please check with your IT administrator. If you are behind an NTLM proxy, please refer to Downloading and Installing Software at the Command Prompt on how to download and install Altera software behind an NTLM proxy. Note that only the command-line installation method supports NTLM proxy.
Q: What is MD5 sum value and what is it for?
A: MD5 sum is a string of letters and numbers that acts like a fingerprint for a file. If two files have the same MD5 sum value, then the files are exactly alike. You can use the MD5 sum values provided for each Altera software download to verify your downloaded file if it is the same as the file in our servers. To do that you can use any MD5 sum checker tool that is available in the internet (e.g. winMd5Sum) to verify your downloaded Altera software with the provided MD5 sum value.
Q: Where can i find the older releases of Quartus II software installation files?
A: Please contact quartusrequest@altera.com to request for older releases of Quartus II software installation files.
Q: Towards the end of an Individual Software File installation, a pop up will ask to remove extracted files, if click yes, why does the installer only remove the content inside the folder but not the entire folder?
A: If you have extracted the content into a network drive, it is expected that the entire folder will not be removed.
Q: Can I add other Altera software tools after installing Altera software?
A: Yes. Please refer to section “Modifying Altera Software” in Altera Software Installation and Licensing Manual (PDF) for more information.
Q: Why does the individual software file download fail with the Internet Explorer 6 or the Internet Explorer 7 browser?
A: You may see problems when downloading individual software files of sizes above 1.8 GB from www.altera.com when not using the download manager. This is due to a known issue with the Internet Explorer 6 or Internet Explorer 7, and large file downloads.
Some of the problems that you may encounter include cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors, corrupted download files, or incomplete download files.
Q: Can I specify a UNC path as the target install directory?
A: No. The Altera Installer does not support UNC paths. Alternatively, you can map the UNC path to a drive letter and specify it as the destination directory instead.
Q: Why are there extra files left in my C drive after the ACDS installation?
A: The files left in your C drive are Microsoft VC8 redistributable files from ModelSim®-Altera installation. The package is required for ModelSim-Altera installation. However, these files are safe to delete after the installation. Please refer to KDB 10312010_553 for more information about these files.
Q: Why does the Quartus II software installation sometimes fail on 64-bit Windows XP operating systems?
A: Because of a bug on some 64-bit Windows XP operating systems, Altera software installations may fail. For more information on this problem please refer to KDB rd02222011_412.
Q: I have installed ACDS into C:\Program Files\Altera. I use Nios II EDS. Upon launching the program from start menu entry "Nios II 12.0 Software Build Tools for Eclipse", why does the list under File > New > "Nios II Application and BSP from Template" appears to be empty?
A: You might have installed ACDS into a path with spaces, in this case, it's C:\Program Files. Please install ACDS into a path without spaces, e.g. C:\Altera.
Q: How can I specify the destination directory if I cannot browse to a specific directory?
A: This is a known issue for some operating systems. If this happens, you can manually type the destination directory path into the Destination Directory box.
Q: Why do I get the following message when I start my Quartus II software?
“quartus_map: error while loading shared libraries: <path to quartus/bin>/libcd_err.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied”
A: This is a known issue of running Quartus II software on a Linux OS with SELinux (Secure Enhanced Linux) firewall installed. Plese refer to this KDB spr329499 for the workaround.