Hi folks,
I've got a problem, and I don't think that it's ‘exclusiely’ me who got it, as some of the friends of mine experience the same:

OS: Linux Mandrake 10.0 Community, 2.6.4 kernel
GeForce2MX 64MB VideoCard with 53.36 nVidia drivers.

Houdini works fine, UNLESS:
unless you perform view-changing operations, like Ctrl+1..Ctrl+5 and Space+T - then it often crashes with a message of this kind:
—————————————————————————————-
(sent by pid 2770)estic]$ 2770: Fatal error: Internal abort
Saving application data to /tmp/madjestic.2770.hip
Spawn Error: : No such file or directory
Error running xmessage
Argument list:
0: xmessage
1: Fatal Error: data saved to /tmp/madjestic.2770.hip
Crash log saved to /tmp/crashlog_madjestic
Error: The core dump handler was called recursively.
——————————————————————————————

And also the redrawing issues a pretty common when you are pressing Ctrl+1…Ctrl+5.

Wonder , If there is any way to bypass this problem,

Thanks.

There's a Houdini config variable called HOUDINI_X11_SYNCHRONOUS - try setting it with:

setenv HOUDINI_X11_SYNCHRONOUS 1

(if you're using a csh) and see if that helps. I just recently got Houdini working on SUSE 9.1 with an NVidia FX3000 card and the latest drivers (SUSE 9.1 and Houdini HOWTO to come )and I had consistent lockups followed by core dumps when switching desktops. Given both 9.1 and M10 are pretty recent releases of XFree/kernel/libc/etc, this might be related.

It's supposedly slightly slows down your display when redrawing(since it's not trying to draw several things at once), but with the FX3000 I sure can't notice it.

Cheers,

J.C.

I LOVE you,JColdrick!!!

(take it easy - I'v got a girl-friend)

It worked! Oh. thanks, god, - I was afraid it was nVidia driver's problem! Thnks again.

BTW - this another problem is not that nagging as the previous one, but still - whenever I choose and click one of the houdini items in the help menu (Help->03 Objects OBJ for example)
- the terminal says:
————————————————
xmessage: Command not found.
————————————————
and the help file wouldn't open.

If there is a way to fix this up also - I would be happy!

Thanks again!

hehe - s'ok - I'm engaged… Glad that was the problem, and I know the feeling. I was beginning to think that and another frustrating problem with the SESI license server not working between platforms were the Fate's way of telling me to stop running such new software, but now everything works a treat.

Now the xmessage thing - what that is telling you is that the little program “xmessage” that SESI uses to display “you don't have the pdf docs installed” is missing. It's a very basic program which is why SESI assumes you have it installed - do a hunt on your install disks for it - I'd be surprised if it wasn't there. I think it may be bundled under “XFree86-tools” or something like that. If that's no good, go looking on www.rpmfind.net .

Not sure why the docs are missing tho - although I notice Jim mentioning the latest cut of 6.5 beta has the new doc structure…things are changing there…

Cheers,

J.C.

The funny thing is that I've got xpdf installed and some other application that I could use to manually open .pdf files in houdini/Documents dirrectory.

Still I get:
———————————————–
$ xmessage: Command not found.
———————————————–

Whenever I click help->OBJs/SOP/etc..

Also when using Houdini in Windows - normally I could get messages in a Message Bar concerning, you know, all those click RMB to select and LMB to finish the operation - that kind of stuff. But now it doesn't work!

I am sure this is a minor problem, but still it troubles me.

Thanks.

Well, like I said - the problem isn't really acroreader or whether or not the docs are there(if you're using the latest beta they *aren't* there) - it's this program “xmessage”. You should be able to type that in a shell and get some help - my guess is that you won't - it's not installed for some reason. That indicates an incomplete install - it's often in /usr/bin/X11…

Cheers,

J.C.