Xilinx 10G MAC License
In order to build bitstreams, you must have a valid license for Xilinx 10G MAC (10GEMAC). In the Vivado IP Catalog it is found as “Ten Gigabit Ethernet MAC”.
The free of charge evaluation licenses are usually ”nodelocked”, and time limited. To obtain a license you need the MAC address of a “compatible” ethernet Interface (Linux). Open Vivado License manager vlm and get the detected MAC address from there because this one is used for the license checks.
Due to a Bug in Vivado 2014.4 only the eth0 and probably some other interfaces are used for license checks. Be careful on machines with multiple NICs. For example interfaces named “eno1, en3p1 etc.” are known to fail (Ubuntu 14.04 / Vivado 2014.4). You can rename your ethernet interfaces in Linux through udev rules. See Change NIC interface name below for details.
The process of obtaining a license is documented in UG973. Additional hints for installation are in this Xilinx Answer Record.
To install: put the .lic file in your ~/.Xilinxdirectory.
Check if your license is detected correctly.
To check wether the License is correctly installed in Vivado GUI, open „IP Catalog“, search for the IP ("Ten Gigabit Ethernet MAC") and right-click „Display License Status“ then: ten_gig_eth_mac show License Level: „Hardware Evaluation“ which is correct. When the license is missing it shows as “Design Linking“ (shipped with Vivado).
Another possibility and probably the best way to check the status of your license is through the Xilinx License manager (e.g. xlcm or from the GUI Help->Manage License). The command for Vivado 2014.4 is vlm. Check the status of ten_gig_mac_eth (especially the expiration date). When using a nodelocked “Hardware Evaluation” license (free of charge) then check also the “Host IDs match“ column of the Vivado license manager GUI.
As a general remark when debugging licensing issues: The core affected by the licensing issue needs to be regenerated to contain the new licensing information. For NetFPGA SUME the easiest way to do so is to issue a make in the top level directory and then (re)build the affected project. The 10GEMAC IP contains the PCS PMA IP and no separate license is necessary. However this was different for very early versions of Vivado.
This guide is was tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Adapted from this post on askubuntu.com.
If missing create /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and add a line similar to
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx", NAME="eth0" and reboot your system.
If this is your only NIC, change your network configuration accordingly i.e. edit /etc/network/interfaces or use network manager to do so.