OK I have little hair left after trying to install Houdini on mandrake so instead i have installed it on Red Hat 8 which was a lot easier. I think i'm half way there.

i'm having problems with the Apprentice licensing i think. If i try and run houdini the splash screen pops up then disappears and that?fs it. I've run the ?esesinetd.install?f i thinks it's called and it started installing a license, but said that i need to run hkey. I tried doing this by going the directory where it installed but i can not run it.

I've looked around these forums but nothin seems to help me with my problem. Any ideas

What exactly happens when you run hkey? Are you simply unable to start hkey or does hkey is executed but then promptly quits? In the first case, this thread might help:
http://www.sidefx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=309&highlight=houdini_setup [sidefx.com]

If it's the second case, then which video card do you have and are you running the latest video drivers?

I have installed the lastest video drivers from Nvidia. I'm not sure how to run hkey to be exact. I've type it in ./hkey using the path where it is install but to no success, in other words it just does not run.

I see other people have created scripts and the such but there's no mention of having to do these on the houdini site. Its all a bit confusing for a newbie.

No error message at all? What does it say if instead of typing “./hkey”, you type “which hkey” ?

OK I slowly getting my head round this. I've type source houdini_setup and have the line echo back houdini env……etc

i've type in hkey and ./hkey but nothing happens. the prompt just reappears after a few seconds.

I've typed in houdini, hselect and hhalo and all i get is the splash screens for each. I assume it's something to do with the license but i'm not sure. i have a gforce 2 ultra and have 640 MB of ram Pentium III 850.

How do i find out if there is a license installed if this is the problem?

hkey does not require licensing. If you can't start hkey and source houdini_setup works, then it's a graphics card/driver problem. If you type “rpm -qa | grep -i nvidia” what do you get?

Anyhow, here's how you would check licensing without hkey: (note that on the hserver line, the option is a lowercase L.)
tcsh
cd /usr/hfs5.5
source houdini_setup
sesictrl -i
hserver -l

I just realised that my Network card is not being recognised on Red Hat. Does this need to be functioning to install a license? I can run other Houdini files that are in the bin directory but most echo back errors about no license.

I've installed some graphics drivers from the Nvidia website. they installed so i assumed that they were the right ones. I tried installing other but they didn't work anyway. i will double check they are the right ones.

Yes, your network card needs to be correctly set up on Linux even if it does not have internet access. If you check out a recent Linux thread, one problem might be that you don't have a loopback set up for the alias localhost. Do a seach for localhost on the forums.

You don't need an internet connection to obtain licenses. Instructions for the link can be found on the FAQ on the Apprentice CD.

Dont know if you treid this.Change to the directory and type “csh” and then followed by “source houdini_setup” you should then have setup the houdini env. Then type “houdini” or “hkey”

i do that that but when i type hkey nothing happens. If I type houdini or any other main executable from the hfs5.5 directory the splash screens come up but then disappear. Some exe's say no valid license found ie ‘vmantra’. Hence hkey i need to run. Must be something to do with the localhost. What can i do to test this?

i've pinged ‘localhost’ and its ‘pinging’ back. i not sure about loop-back but the IP address is set to 127.0.0.1.


What does the following mean?



# sesictrl -i
—– SERVER localhost.localdomain ——–

*** WARNING *** - No valid server lines found



# hserver
Existing server found at localhost:1714


# hserver -l
Hostname: localhost.localdomain
Uptime: 0:01:08
License Server: localhost.localdomain
Server Version: sesinetd5.5.208
Version: Houdini5.5.208
ReadAccess: +.+.+.*
WriteAccess: +.+.+.*

194 of 628 Mb available
CPU Usage: 1% load
0 active tasks (1 slots)

Disregard some of the above. After reading a few FAQ'a i need to change my host name. I'l give it another go.

I finally got it up and running. It was my display drivers that where not correctly installed and so prevented loading the custom Houdini interface graphics. I reinstalled the drivers and hkey finally loaded. This was a big learning process for me and now I know that little bit more about Linux.

Thanks for everyone?fs help. I will sure help anyone that is new to Houdini and Linux.