Kipling Troubleshooting

Getting stuck loading the Splash Screen?

If Kipling is getting stuck at the Splash Screen with an error message "Finishing Installation" or "Failed to initialize IO Manager, Subprocess Failed", follow the steps below:

Close Kipling.
Delete the files in the temporary files folder as described below.
Re-start Kipling.
If Kipling still doesn't start correctly, delete the temporary files one more time, re-download our latest beta installer, install it, and try again.
On macOS or Linux: try the suggestions listed under the Additional Debugging Steps section.

If none of these suggestions fix the issue, please contact us.

Kipling's sub-process is crashing (is not initializing)

This error can happen either right after Kipling starts and when it first starts scanning for devices or after running for a while. This error is typically related to a runtime issue associated with scripting languages or due to a seg-fault.

First, follow the steps for "Getting stuck loading the Splash Screen?" above. If those don't work, try checking if other applications can run LJM_ListAll correctly:

Windows - Try using LJLogM - Beta to scan for devices.
Windows, macOS, or Linux - Try running one of the ListAll examples:
Python - Try the Python example: Examples\More\List_All\list_all.py
C/C++ - Try the C/C++ example: more\list_all\list_all.c
Other languages - See the full list of LJM examples

If device scanning isn't working in other applications or code examples, try re-downloading and installing our latest beta installer and running Kipling again.

If device scanning does work in other software, then there is likely an issue with Kipling that needs to be solved. To report the error, please follow the instructions on the Hacks and Hidden Features page to open the developer tools window. Go to the developer tools console view and take a screenshot. Please send the screenshot and a description of what was happening before the error occurred to support@labjack.com.

Temporary Files

Kipling uses the following directory to store application execution files and user settings. Program execution errors can happen because this folder either can't be created or if it already exists and invalid data has been written to them. The location of where Kipling creates temporary files is:

Windows: C:\ProgramData\LabJack\K3
macOS and Linux: /usr/local/share/LabJack/K3

Verify Write Access

In order for Kipling to start correctly, the user running Kipling needs to be able to have write access to the temporary files directory. This can be verified by running the following commands.

Windows

Verify that a file can be created

cd "C:\ProgramData\LabJack\K3"

echo "test-data" > test-file.txt

Mac and Linux

Verify that a file can be created

cd "/usr/local/share/LabJack/K3"

echo "test-data" > test-file.txt

Deleting the Temporary Files

Deleting the contents of this folder and re-starting Kipling fixes some issues.

Windows

The K3 folder can be deleted by running the following command in a Windows command prompt window:

RMDIR /s C:\ProgramData\LabJack\K3

On Windows, the ProgramData folder is hidden by default. You may need to adjust your system settings to show hidden files using the Windows file explorer.

macOS and Linux

On macOS and Linux, the temporary directory contents can be deleted by running the command:

rm -r /usr/local/share/LabJack/K3/*

Before you delete the temporary files, you may wish to save config files for later restoration:

Windows: C:\ProgramData\LabJack\K3\module_data\
macOS and Linux: /usr/local/share/LabJack/K3/module_data/

How do I save the list of registers in the Register Matrix?

Kipling saves the list of registers in the Register Matrix when you switch tabs from the Register Matrix to another tab.

Save location:

Windows: C:\ProgramData\LabJack\K3\module_data\register_matrix_fw\data.json
- On Windows, the ProgramData folder is hidden by default. You may need to adjust your system settings to show hidden files using the Windows file explorer.
macOS and Linux: /usr/local/share/LabJack/K3/module_data/register_matrix_fw/data.json

This save location gets cleared when you install a new version of Kipling, so save the data.json file somewhere else before you upgrade Kipling. To add, Kipling tends to overwrite old configurations when starting; to ensure your saved data.json file is loaded correctly run Kipling, navigate to the dashboard tab, copy your saved data.json back to the default save location, and finally navigate to the register matrix tab.

Additional Debugging Steps

macOS

When starting Kipling, if it hangs showing only the splash screen and the text "Extracting Static_files", you need to ensure you have permission to write to /usr/local/share/LabJack/ and /usr/local/share/LabJack/K3. A quick fix is to open a terminal window and type the following to make the folder readable and writable:

sudo chmod -R a+rw /usr/local/share/LabJack

Linux

Running the command labjack_kipling may give the following error:

/usr/local/bin/labjack_kipling: 10: /usr/local/bin/labjack_kipling: Syntax error: "fi" unexpected

In this case you need to open /usr/local/bin/labjack_kipling and edit it as necessary—you can uncomment line 9 (echo 'Waiting for Kipling to shut down'):

sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/labjack_kipling

Ubuntu

Ubuntu requires a few additional commands to be run before the application will work. If Kipling won't start, try starting it using the command below to get additional debugging information:

/opt/labjack_kipling/Kipling

You may need to install libgconf by running the command below according to this GitHub issue.
- Ubuntu 18.04: sudo apt -y install libgconf2-4
- Ubuntu 20.04: sudo apt install -y libgconf2-dev
There is a font issue related to libfreetype. There is another GitHub issue here. To fix, run the commands:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ artful-updates main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libfreetype6=2.8-0.2ubuntu2.1
sudo apt-mark hold libfreetype6
Additionally, if there is an issue loading the "canberra-gtk-module" which is an optional fix. To fix, run the command:
sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk0 libcanberra-gtk-module

Windows XP - No Longer Supported

Kipling version 3.1.x currently does not run on Windows XP machines. You can use an old version of the installer to get Kipling version 3.0.x and then upgrade the LJM driver manually.