The installation of ubuntu seemed to go ok and I cd into the HFS folder and run source houdini_setup and that goes ok. But then when I enter houdini in the console I get a message that says:
line 8: /opt/hfs10.0.374/bin/houdini-bin: cannot execute binary file
but I ran chmod 777 -R on the HFS folder, so what could be wrong? Can someone tell me what I should put in my .profile or .bashrc file to keep the hfs binary folder in my path?

I update to different Houdini builds often, so I like to create 1 environment variable that holds my houdini directory. This way I don't have to update 3-5 places every time I update Houdini. So, in my .bash_profile (could use .profile) I place a variable called $HOUDNIK

HOUDNIK=/opt/hfs10.0.390
export HOUDNIK

#now i put this in my path
PATH=$PATH:$HOUDNIK/bin
export PATH


I also use a startup script placed in my $HOME directory.


#!/bin/bash
cd $HOUDNIK
source houdini_setup_bash
sudo $HOUDNIK/houdini/sbin/sesinetd
houdini -screen 0

Name it something you'll remember like runhoudini. Then make it executable with chmod u+x runhoudini.

If this doesn't work then make sure you downloaded the appropriate version of Houdini. Are you 32 or 64 bit? Besides that your version of gcc is usually the next most important consideration when making a selection.

Thanks Alan, Im a lot closer to getting it working now, but I get a problem with the sesinetd file as well as the same error as I got before. This is how it goes in the console:
shintaro@drak:~$ ./runhoudini
The Houdini 10.0.374 environment has been initialized.
/opt/hfs10.0.374/houdini/sbin/sesinetd: 1: ELF

: not found
/opt/hfs10.0.374/houdini/sbin/sesinetd: 3: Syntax error: “)” unexpected
/opt/hfs10.0.374/bin/houdini: line 8: /opt/hfs10.0.374/bin/houdini-bin: cannot execute binary file
/opt/hfs10.0.374/bin/houdini: line 8: /opt/hfs10.0.374/bin/houdini-bin: Success
shintaro@drak:~$
This may be a problem with using different versions of gcc or something like that, but maybe its something simpler you could catch.

what version of Ubuntu do you have?

It looks like you may have installed the wrong version of houdini.

To double check type this command

uname -a


The very end should have x86_64 GNU/Linux (64 bit) or i386 GNU/Linux (32 bit).

You can also find out your version of gcc with this.

gcc –version

looks like an issue similar to this one:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13635 [sidefx.com]

Weird, houdini installs an entry in the applications menu for me in ubuntu
I just run it from there, unless I really need to run it from bash, most of the time I use the menu.