i posted this already at 3dbuzz but noone seems to be able to help me out

i have a few questions ive searched and messed around for about a month now trying to get houdini running. (houdini 5.5.208, redhat linux7.3, kernel headers and source were installed from day one)houdini install went good but then……

i edited vi /etc/hosts but i dont know if i am doing it right?

this is what i did:

vi /etc/hosts
(replaced the names to localdave.davehost localhost but left the ip# as is)
esc
:w
:quit


do i replace the current host ip number and name or do i make a new entry? i couldnt find this online anywhere.

when i replace the number and name i get no gui and by default startx goes into gnome but i dont think houdini likes gnome how do i make it by default go into kde?

i try to start ./houdini_install and everything goes according to plan.(infact that got me excited for the first time i thought id finally got it to run) but i type houdini and it tells me the license server isnt running without giving me details a box with a big white X at the top pops up and just tells me it cant access the license server

sesinetd seems to be running when i start up and “ps -e | grep sesi” shows that it have 3 or 5 processes running

it just seems like im making a big mess of linux but i dont have anything on linux to play with - im depressed. i dont know jack about linux all the steps i took are from searching in various forums for other peoples solutions to these problems. someone please give me a foot up


thanks everyone

oh and im running it by typing



csh
cd /usr/hfs5.5
source houdini_setup
(it gives me a message saying it initalised or something similar) then:

houdini (and it goes downhill from here cant connect with server and it says it saved a .hip file to blah blah blah)

This is what a typical /etc/hosts file should look like:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
168.124.212.20 machinename.mywebaddress.com machinename


The second line has to be a fully qualified domain name.

still no success

but i feel a little closer

i named the computer something else and now when i try to start houdini i dont get an error message i get a little hard drive action and then nothing at all… are all programs in linux this hard to get to work?

im not giving up this easily ill be an old man before i get houdini to run but ill do it.

I still have no idea how to get this going incase anyone can and would help me out ….. i wanted to get started on some apprentice program stuff hopefully. i dont know where error logs are etc so if someone could help it would be awesome. is there any support for the apprentice version or do i have to pay thousands to get any kind of help? forums? emails? anything will be better than doing nothing im going insane. lol

thanks everyone

You can select “Diagnostic Infomation” from View menu of hkey.
Please post the Diagnostic Information here,
so perhaps someone can help you.
What kind of video card are you using?

Quote from another thread in this forum:
a. Type ‘ping localhost’ in the shell. You should get something like “Pinging localhost ( 127.0.0.1 )”

b. If you do, please type ‘setenv SESI_LMHOST=localhost’ in the shell.

c. Now, we'll restart Hserver by typing ‘hserver -q’ then ‘hserver’.

To make sure Hserver is properly set, type ‘hserver -S localhost’.

You should get ‘License server changed to localhost’.

d. Next, we'll start the license server. Please type ‘/usr/lib/sesi/sesinetd.startup start’ in the shell.

If the license server started without any errors, please start Houdini.

I have a problem is similar to you.

Good luck.

i didnt end up getting houdini running on mine in the end but ……… well im trying to set houdini 5.5 up on my cousins computer now its a pentium2 400 mhz acerpower 6100 with redhat8 (full install) 192 mb sdram and 3d rage iic agp graphics card. running kde, windowmaker or even gnome - nothing works.

it installs ok and sets up the license server etc but when i go to start it ( source houdini_setup - that works… but ….) when i type “houdini” or “hkey” it does the same as before makes hard drive noise then does nothing it seems to have started but i cant see it.

i tried to set the setenv SESI_LMHOST=localhost in a normal shell……. tsch shell…… as root….. as user…. everything they all come back syntax error or command not found.

what am i doing wrong? i just want to install houdini

Hi there,

I think you're out of luck with your cousin's computer. The graphics card is not certified to run Houdini & it probably does not support OpenGL which Houdini requires.

It would help if you post what your graphics card is. Currently, only Nvidia & ATI have Linux drivers which support OpenGL. If you're not using a graphics card from either vendor, it should not be able to run Houdini.

If you really want to run Houdini on the machine, you can install WinNT/2k/XP & set up an environment variable to run Houdini with software OpenGL. However, all graphics processing will be handled by the CPU in addition to running Houdini which will not make learning Houdini a nice experience. Definitely not worth the effort, IMHO.

Cheers!
steven