Installing is not so easy (5.5.2 and/or 5.6)

1

I just received my ChipWhisperer 2Part from Mouser.
I was recommended to use a VirtualBox image, but could not find any.
I used the Windows installer. Worked okay, but then it could not find make.
Decided to download a Debian VMWare image. Chose to install ChipWhisperer using git.
Came to: python -m pip install -r jupyter/requirements.txt --user
It says: No module named pip
Changed to: python3 -m pip3 install -r jupyter/requirements.txt --user
It says: No module named pip3
I typed in: pip3
Commands and options were listed so pip3 exists.
I am a Windows guy and donā€™t have the faintest idea what to try next.

e

2

Have you looked at the instructions on our installation page?

Everything you need to know should be there. You can find the VirtualBox images on our github releases page. The latest VM image is: https://github.com/newaetech/chipwhisperer/releases/download/5.5.2/ChipWhisperer.Jupyter.7z

If instead you opt for a manual installation, make sure you have all the prerequisites in place.

Jean-Pierre

3

For the Windows installer, did you have ā€œInstall avr/xmega and arm compilersā€ checked? If not, then make isnā€™t installed.

Alex

4

Thank you for responding.

I have read the documentation more times than I care to talk about.

I was able to find the release directory in github. There I found the Windows 10 installers, but I found no way to the virtual images. Please pretend you know nothing and then go look for the images.

In my manual installation in Debian, I followed the Quick Install section. I have comments: The first command didnā€™t work without ā€œapt updateā€ first. How would a Windows person know that?
The second command didnā€™t work before I did a ā€œsudo su -ā€. How would a Windows person know that?
After the 4 commands, the documentation then said I was ready to install ChipWhisperer.

5

I did not remove the checkmark for compiler installation. I thought I did so I uninstalled and installed again. Still no make.

I have been a programmer all my life and in my opinion you have some work to do. You have to listen to people like me. Not just find a workaround. I tried very hard and failed.

e

6

I just wanted to verify, as make comes bundled with the AVR compiler, so if you donā€™t have that, you donā€™t have make. I figured that might not be obvious, so I wanted to make sure that wasnā€™t the solution. If possible, Iā€™d like to figure out why make isnā€™t showing up so that it can be fixed in a future release. Do you have WSL activated by any chance? I believe the bash from that can interfere with the one we use. Can you run the following command in a code block:

%%bash
echo $PATH
where bash

and let me know what the result is?

The VirtualBox image is called ChipWhisperer.Jupyter.7z. I can see how that name might not be obvious. Weā€™ll change the name in the future so that itā€™s more clear that that is the VirtualBox image.

Regarding Linux, thereā€™s a great deal of variability in what the commands need to be since different distributions of Linux come with different default software. For example, many distributions may have Python 3 as python or python3, some distributions use apt, some yum, some pacman, etc. Itā€™s difficult to account for all the different Linux setups when providing instructions.

Sudo is included in all the commands, so Iā€™m not sure why you needed to do sudo su, as the sudo before each command does the same thing.

Iā€™ve updated the docs so that they instruct you to update your packages before proceeding with grabbing the prerequisites.

7

Thank you for the clarification. We agree we want every customer to have a better experience.

The output from your commands was:

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/WPy64-3771/python-3.7.7.amd64/lib/site-packages/pywin32_system32:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/WPy64-3771/python-3.7.7.amd64/:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/WPy64-3771/python-3.7.7.amd64/Scripts:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/armgcc/gcc-arm-none-eabi-10-2020-q4-major/bin/:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/avrgcc/avr-gcc-10.1.0-x64-windows/bin/:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/bin:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/mingw64/bin:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/usr/local/bin:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/usr/bin:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/usr/bin:/mnt/c/Program Files/Common Files/Oracle/Java/javapath:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/VMware/VMware Player/bin:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/iCLS:/mnt/c/Program Files/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/iCLS:/mnt/c/windows/system32:/mnt/c/windows:/mnt/c/windows/System32/Wbem:/mnt/c/windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/NVIDIA Corporation/PhysX/Common:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/system32:/mnt/c/WINDOWS:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/DAL:/mnt/c/Program Files/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/DAL:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/IPT:/mnt/c/Program Files/Intel/IntelĀ® Management Engine Components/IPT:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/OpenSSH:/mnt/c/Program Files/Intel/WiFi/bin:/mnt/c/Program Files/Common Files/Intel/WirelessCommon:/mnt/c/Program Files/NVIDIA Corporation/NVIDIA NvDLISR:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/system32:/mnt/c/WINDOWS:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0:/mnt/c/WINDOWS/System32/OpenSSH:/mnt/c/Program Files/AutoFirma/AutoFirma:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/AppData/Local/Microsoft/WindowsApps:/mnt/c/Program Files/Intel/WiFi/bin:/mnt/c/Program Files/Common Files/Intel/WirelessCommon:/mnt/d/Jennic/cygwin/bin:/mnt/d/Jennic/Tools/ba-elf-ba2/bin:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/usr/bin/core_perl:/mnt/c/Users/ellin/CHIPWH~1/cw/home/portable/WPy64-3771/python-3.7.7.amd64/lib/site-packages/numpy/.libs:/snap/bin

-bash: line 4: where: command not found

It would be helpful if you in the documentation could recommend a linux distribution where the commands will do the job.

Also, a link to the page containing the VirtualBox images would help a lot.

I am looking forward to test the new documentation.

e

8

The path ā€¦/cw/home/portable/avrgcc/avr-gcc-10.1.0-x64-windows/bin/ should contain make.exe (if you want, open this folder and verify that itā€™s there), so Iā€™m not too sure why it isnā€™t being found in this case. IIRC I have seen this behaviour before with WSL enabled (you can check if itā€™s enabled via the instructions at https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-know-if-I-have-Windows-10-with-WSL). Weā€™re currently looking into a fix for this. If you donā€™t have WSL enabled, Iā€™d suspect weā€™ve hit some weird corner case, in which case let me know and I can assist further.

As JP linked, the virtualbox image is https://github.com/newaetech/chipwhisperer/releases/download/5.5.2/ChipWhisperer.Jupyter.7z. .7z is a compression/archive file, similar to .zip or .rar, but offers better compression than either (which we need to use due to file size limitation with Github). Apologies for the different extension than the normal .vbox, as I can see how that can be confusing. You can decompress via 7zip: https://www.7-zip.org/ or https://peazip.github.io/ (both open source).

Also, completely missed this, but I believe if you ran python3 -m pip instead of python3 -m pip3, or if you ran pip3 instead, in your original post, I believe the command would have worked. Iā€™ll add some additional context to the installation instructions so that this is clear.

Also, when you say that the second command didnā€™t work unless you did a sudo su - beforehand, which command/set of commands in particular did you mean?

9
  • Yes, make is in that path.
  • To my huge surprise I have WSL. I suspect it was installed as part of an ESP32 programming environment. Will try to remove it as I donā€™t use it.
  • My problem was not being confused because of 7z. I was confused because VirtualBox images was recommended but impossible to find. No link in the documentation (that I could find).
  • python3 -m pip changed things. Now I get the error message Could no open the requirements file: [Error 2] No such file or directory ā€˜jupyter/requirements.txtā€™
  • I was referring to the box with 5 commands in Quick Install: sudo printfā€¦

I think we are getting somewhere now. BTW, did I answer all your questions?

e

10

Removed WSL. Uninstalled ChipWhisperer and manually deleted files. Rebooted and installed 5.6.0. First compile in the course SCA101 is now working.

Regarding how I did sudo su -:
sudo su -
sudo printfā€¦
exit

I am still interested in finishing my Debian VMWare image and are waiting for improvements in the documentation and info about what to do with ā€œError 2ā€

Thank you. I was desperate yesterday after having struggled the entire day.

e

11

About Error 2: The cause was me executing python3 -m pip without doing cd chipwhisperer first.
Sorry about that

I will now try to enjoy the weekend before doing more

e

12

It is Monday and I will write a short summary of what happened on Friday:

  • The Windows installation would have worked had WSL not been on my computer. I removed WSL.
  • The VirtualBox server method would have worked, but there was no link to download the VM from.
  • The manual Linux install needs debugging. I have made some comments already. The command python3 -m pipā€¦ does a lot of work before running into a number of problems. I will test again after the next release. BTW, there is a typo in the line that was added to the Quick Install section (says ā€œugradeā€ instead of ā€œupgradeā€). I was testing everything on a VMWare image of Debian 10.7.

e

13

Thanks for your patience with this.

The Windows installation would have worked had WSL not been on my computer. I removed WSL.

Yup. Iā€™ve added a note to the Windows installer about WSL. Based on my testing, using %%sh blocks instead of %%bash blocks seems to get the correct shell

The VirtualBox server method would have worked, but there was no link to download the VM from.

A direct link to the VM will be added shortly.

The manual Linux install needs debugging. I have made some comments already. The command python3 -m pipā€¦ does a lot of work before running into a number of problems. I will test again after the next release. BTW, there is a typo in the line that was added to the Quick Install section (says ā€œugradeā€ instead of ā€œupgradeā€). I was testing everything on a VMWare image of Debian 10.7.

Iā€™ve fixed the typo. Iā€™ve also fixed the instructions so that the printf should work. Additionally, Iā€™ve fixed the libusb install (was libusb-1.0.0-dev, should have been libusb-1.0-0-dev), so those install instructions should directly work. I tested on Ubuntu 21.04, but Debian is similar enough that it should work on that as well.

Alex

14

You know, I expected a steep learning curve when I ordered the ChipWhisperer. I didnā€™t expect the installation of the software to steal all my energy. Believe it or not, but now I donā€™t want other customers to have the same experience as I did.

Thanks for taking me seriously. I was really desperate after working a long day almost until bedtime getting nowhere.

I think it would be good to add to the instructions that the commands do the job on Ubuntu 21.04.

e

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