I have been working with Houdini 9.5.303 on my laptop which is running Kubuntu Linux (32 bit Kernel revision 2.6.27-9) and an NVidia 8600 (Driver version 177.82). The graphics are quite broken, with window borders disappearing if the windo is smaller than the screen, and the upper right corner of the screen (about 2cmx1cm) just streaming random graphic data whenever the Houdini interface is trying to do anything. Pretty quickly, it crashes hard, requiring a power cycle.

Running XP under a VirtualBox virtual OS, the graphics are perfect, and no crash, but I *much* prefer never ever to boot windows, if I can avoid it.

Any configuration hints that will help Houdini run for me? I'll be most appreciative of any help, or pointers!

Thanks!

-caleb

We've noticed this as well with the 177 drivers on Linux with some distributions. Your best bet is to go back to 173, or wait until 180 is released for Linux (and hope that it fixes the issues).

twod
We've noticed this as well with the 177 drivers on Linux with some distributions. Your best bet is to go back to 173, or wait until 180 is released for Linux (and hope that it fixes the issues).

*Awesome* thanks. I'll give that a shot and confirm the results. Thanks!

Have you got all the fancy desktop stuff turned off? In systems/preferences/Appearance/visual effects, to none.

I'm on ubuntu 8.04 64bit and using the 173 drivers with success.
However, Houdini is the only app. that won't work with the visual effects, or compiz or emerald desktop functions.

I did find though that ubuntu runs apps somewhat faster with the 169 nvidia drivers. The 177 drivers are just generally unstable all across ubuntu flavours.

The only real annoying thing about the currently stable nvidia drivers is that they only support two monitors out. I want to use tv-out as well, but can't have the third output.

Hmm…

Well, I'll verify that the fancy stuff is turned off, though I have no use for such things, and try to leave them off as a matter of course.

I tried moving back to version 173 of the NVidia driver, but it fails to install. For the .deb file, it claims a conflict with a file which is also a part of the xorg distro. The NVidia installer, and the envy application both fail as well, claiming an inability to compile the kernel. Looking at the nvidia log file, it says that it can't find a header file in the source… I'm at work and will give more specific details when I get home. I did find a discussion of the error listed in the log file which suggested I run a command with a -menuconfig option (sorry, can't recall the command). When I tried that, it failed as well.

Any additional hints will be met with great enthusiasm and appreciation.

I'll try 169 tonight, and post more details.

Thanks!

-caleb

On installing the 173 driver via Synaptic package manager, I get:

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/nvidia-glx-173_173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4_i386.deb: trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libGL.so.1', which is also in package libgl1-mesa-glx

this is slightly different, but seems related to the other errors I've met with.

I suppose removing mesa isn't possible?

no, I get 143 dependencies which fail if I try. When I try to add nvidia-glx-173, I get:

Unpacking nvidia-glx-173 (from …/nvidia-glx-173_173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4_i386.deb) …
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/nvidia-glx-173_173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4_i386.deb (–unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so', which is also in package xserver-xorg-core
Processing triggers for man-db …
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/nvidia-glx-173_173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nvidia-glx-173-dev:
nvidia-glx-173-dev depends on nvidia-glx-173 (>= 173.14.12); however:
Package nvidia-glx-173 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing nvidia-glx-173-dev (–configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
nvidia-glx-173-dev



…so now it's complaining about xserver-xorg-core.


computers are irritating.

Thanks!

-caleb

OK nvidia's latest driver (180.22) just dropped. It fixed the problem.

I had to boot without X11 running,

use envyng -t to uninstall the previous nvidia driver (177.whatever),

and then install 180.22 using the driver installer from nvidia.

Now I'm working! Yay!

Thanks all y'all!

-caleb