2009 Mac Pro w 5,1 firmware, 48GB RAM, High Sierra 10.13.6 (up to date)
NVidia GTX 1080 8GB RAM
NVidia Driver 387.10.10.10.40.108 (up to date)
Houdini 17.0.352 Indie

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Worked until a simple test file crashed it.
Since then it does not start again - double clicking shows splash dialog, then bombs out without any comment, alert etc.

I thought my Houdini was always crashing because of small 2GB VRAM on my GTX 670 so I swapped in a 1080 with lots (8GB) Ram. Still crashes on simplest of files. I guess thats a mac special.

Anyway, if someone has advice for how to get my H17 to start again that would be great (and I will live with occasional crashes, restoring files from backup folder…)

From my Console/system.log:

Nov 15 19:42:24 Mac-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd (com.sidefx.HoudiniIndie.26976): Service exited with abnormal code: 5
Nov 15 19:42:24 Mac-Pro systemstats: assertion failed: 17G3025: systemstats + 914800 : 0x40
Nov 15 19:42:27 Mac-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd (com.apple.preference.displays.MirrorDisplays): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

Problem solved. For future reference:

Delete /Users/<my name>/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0/

and restart.

Did you by any chance update the Game Developer Tools? I have found that to cause Houdini startup crashes. In my experience, the reason was some wackiness in the Houdini.env file.

Some other 3rd party products could also be the culprit.

Yes, I do have the latest Game Dev Toolshelf loaded (which is as usual awesome)
(I was not messing with any GD functions at the time though)

Yes confirming that updating the game dev tools (both release and daily) can cause H17 to crash on startup.

Remedy (at least on mac) is to delete the folder
~/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0
and restart Houdini

(I now have a zip archive of that folder right next to it so I can just unzip it after updating my Game Dev tools without having to redo all my Houdini prefs, desktops etc.)

One of you guys logged a bug for this, right?
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/15603/ [www.sidefx.com]

Erm.. Yessir just did now.

I have also recently run into this on OSX. H17. Deleting the H17 prefs folder fixes things. It does seem directly related to updating the Game DEV tools.

I was using v 1.86 no problem. And updated to 1.94 and then could no longer launch houdini, crash after splash screen. I wiped my H17 prefs folder.. and tried 1.97, and 1.96 with similar results.

So it seems something after 1.86 is causing issues. 1.72 which is the last production build was fine by the way. After I wiped my prefs folder. I initially tried to go straight to 1.97.. and things did not seem to install properly.. no icons in the gamed shelf. I had to install the production build 1.72 to get the icons and please restart houdini msg. I think tried to update to 1.97.. and was back to crashing.

** Doing a bit more testing its seems I can get builds 1.88 and 1.90 but nothing newer. Often the toolset update needs to be invoked multiple times for the .. successful install message, restart houdini msg to appear. I am not sure if its the updater or the packages (though it seems some packages can install correctly - i.e. 1.90 and earlier) It is easy to miss that the install has failed, as most people probably installed the game devs toolset 60+ builds ago at 352 etc. There have been times I got successful install msg and the yet when I launched Houdini again, none oft he shelf icons were there etc. If I had a previously installed version of the game dev tools I would of thought I had successfully updated.

I filed this as Side Effects Support Ticket: #69900 (using Mac H17 build 352)
GD 1.93 fixed it - ticket closed

But I just tried upgrading from GD 1.93 to 1.99 and the bug appears to be back.
I just filed this regression with reference to earlier ticket and this thread.

I am now familiar with filing issues (via https://www.sidefx.com/bugs/submit/) but do not know how to see/subscribe to existing bugs - are these probably in an internal database so filing is essentially a one way information path into SideFX ?

Cool I am seeing it with build H17 Mac build 416.. and GD tool 1.90+ basically.. have not tried all build but 1.97, 1.92 etc no dice.

I'll try and add to the bug.

I just ran into this issue as well. Turns out you don't need to delete your whole prefs folder, it seems to be an issue with improperly formatted environment variables in the env file.

The install adds this to the env file:
# GAMES DEVELOPMENT TOOLSET
PATH = “/Users/(yourhomefolder)/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0/GameDevToolset\17.0\1.110\bin:$PATH”
HOUDINI_PATH = “/Users/(yourhomefolder)/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0/GameDevToolset\17.0\1.110:$HOUDINI_PATH”


I changed it to this:
# GAMES DEVELOPMENT TOOLSET
PATH = “$PATH;/Users/(yourhomefolder)/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0/GameDevToolset\17.0\1.110\bin”
HOUDINI_PATH = “/Users/(yourhomefolder)/Library/Preferences/houdini/17.0/GameDevToolset\17.0\1.110;&”

And now it works. Hope this helps people.