When I create new shelf first time, houdini give me this error
and in Houdini Console, it display
I/O error : Permission denied
error : xmlNewTextWriterFilename : cannot open uri

what is the problem? and how can I fix that, thx

Do you have write permissions to your home folder?

Hi Andy,
I've the same problem and I do have the right permission sets obviously. Do you solved your problem ?

I am having the same problem and I cannot fix it. SideFX please direct me in the right direction.

I had the same problem on Windows and solved it running just one time Houdini as administrator, using right mouse button and using “run as administrator” command

@ Madrenderman I have tried that also, but it has not worked for me. I don't know what's up.

xmlNewTextWriterFilename : cannot open uri
is another error message I get. I wonder should I reinstall Houdini. I don't have problems with any other programs but Houdini.

Old thread, but stumbled upon the same problem and found a fix. Disable Windows UAC. Maybe someone needs this sometime.

I tried to disable UAC but i keep getting this error anyway.
Anybody figured out a solution for this other than switching to linux?

-b

Hey Guys, I was struggling with the same problem and I tried few times to find the reason. The walk around of course as suggested by Madrenderman is to run Houdini as Administrator just to make a shelf or remove it and I was doing the same.

Lowering UAC works but it is not a quite secure advice, especially in some more organised facilities.

Today I finally got completely annoyed by it and started digging. With the help of https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/downloads/procmon [docs.microsoft.com] I quickly found what is going on…

So the problem lies in Houdini trying to access this file:
“C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 16.5.496\houdini\toolbar\ShelfDefinitions.shelf”
and to write something to it or create one. I doubt it actually do something there but the requests are clearly there whenever you want to mess around with you shelf.

So just change permissions of this file and it will work as it should.

Cheers!
Marek

Hey! This works.
Thanks for your effort @Marek.

Houdini actually modifies this file when i add shelve tabs. That cant be right.

-b

bonsak
Houdini actually modifies this file when i add shelve tabs. That cant be right.

Houdini never needs to write to program files. Disabling write protection/changing permissions may result in corrupting the program files.

Modified shelves go in your home directory. Giving write access to the install directory will cause modifications to be saved there instead and become permanent, but also lost when updating to a new version.

There is probably a problem with your home directory permissions or a software bug that is causing these errors in the first place.

Try deleting your home houdini folder and installing a more recent version of houdini.

This is a win10 thing that a lot of people struggle with. Im pretty sure it has noting to do with H actually. I finally managed to fix this by uninstalling and reinstalling H for the Nth time. Have no idea what fixed it this time as ive tried this before. Permissions in my home dir is hunky dory but win10 still messes things up. What i find a little weird is that H wants to write to $HFS even if i havnt told it to. Kind of like a fallback when its not allowed to write to $HOME/documents …

-b

I think this solved it for me:

just copy the ShelfDefinitions.shelf from

C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 16.5.496\houdini\toolbar\ShelfDefinitions.shelf

to

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\houdini18.0\toolbar


..I assume this way your local one supersedes the system template.

Hi.

So the two things we do are:
-redirect Houdini prefs using windows Environment variables

Name: HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR
Value: C:\Docs\houdini__HVER__

-And then use packages to also redirect all the shelf out of the program folder with this package file. If you have a look at our file it should make sense. This means no screwing around with admin rights or anything else.

the package file lives here with us:

C:\Docs\houdini18.0\packages
Best Mark

Piotr Stopniak
I think this solved it for me:

just copy the ShelfDefinitions.shelf from

C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 16.5.496\houdini\toolbar\ShelfDefinitions.shelf

to

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\houdini18.0\toolbar


..I assume this way your local one supersedes the system template.

This solved my problem. 18.5
Then I copied default.shelf from previous Houdini to this Toolbar folder, everything works just fine as before.

Thank you,

pirator
I think this solved it for me:

just copy the ShelfDefinitions.shelf from

C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 16.5.496\houdini\toolbar\ShelfDefinitions.shelf

to

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\houdini18.0\toolbar


..I assume this way your local one supersedes the system template.

Also fixed for me, THANKS! this has been bugging me for a year at least.