Hi… well.. after over a month I'm using both my “old” Thinkpad (T43p single core) and new one (t60p duocore) i can say for 99% sure Houdini have problems with DuoCore machines.. I'm on Linux only so i cant talk about windows… and I'm not talking about Mantra… or VEX threaded SOPs since I'm on apprentice… but ther's something that annoys Houdini and makes the laptop freeze.. get totally stuck.

I've experienced this problem with both rendering or just SOP cooking… leaving my laptop during night (or lunch time) rendering sequences… or coocking sop network, which in both case doenst allocate anything close to 1 gb Ram… so memory shouldnt be an issue (I've fone tests with way more than my 2Gb ram AND Swap used.. with no problems… and after days of tries tweaking my Bios settings on the t60p I had one only way to have houdini to not freeze the machine.. by disabling the second Core.
now I'm working on a single core.. and the machine works like a charm…

that said.. i'm talking about same exact scenes which ran on t40p and t60p … never had probs on t40p … randomly got freezes on t60p…

last consideration … I did today my last test on “dual cpu” machine with a real two processors (not duo core) workstation.. and that caused no problems at all.. so is not even the “dual” that causes problems .. I guess is something about DuoCore.. Linux Kernel.. or dunno what else.. but this happens on my t60p only…

sorry for the long story.. just to ask… his anyone experiencing such problem?

cheers

If you're using an NVidia card and recent drivers, the driver is threaded. Try forcing the driver to run single threaded and see if that helps at all.

In the bash shell you would enter:

> export __GL_SINGLE_THREADED=1

and in csh and derivatives use:

> setenv __GL_SINGLE_THREADED 1

This might be the cause of the system freezes. Just a guess, though.

I'm using ATI card (with happyness in case you wonder )… Thinkpads comes with ATI only afaik.

but I'll give a try at that Env settings…. thanks

Ah, the env variable is specific to Nvidia, so it won't work with ATI. I'm curious if ATI has something similar, though.

just wondering … is there a way i can debug this issue (pretty important as far as I can imagine for Sesi as well) so to help tracking down the problem?… sadly the machine just hangs.. so I've no crash file.. or anything else… but I'd like to figure out what's the problem instead of using my laptop just Single core cause of houdini … and also .. my damn “beta tester” attitude still aint disappeared after many years… i want to find the solution!! .. eheh anyone at sesi who want drive me on the right route where/how to post this problem is welcome…

p.s. didnt checked yet about ATI “thread” options yet … just today ther's a new release.. but hey .. updateing drivers.. kernels… and all updates comes out every days.. aint that funny.. i'd like to know why this laptop hangs with houdini …. which happens since couple old releases of ATI drivers and Kernel updates anyway .. so i doubt that's the cause.. also.. same kernel/ATI drivers are on both Thinkpads.. but this t60p have the problem while t43p doesnt.


cheers.

…. ok no idea? :cry:

How hot does the machine get?

catlee
How hot does the machine get?

not enought to justify the hang… also .. I'm not only using Houdini on this machine.. but a lot XSI for the project I'm working on …. and a bit of Maya.. and the only app that make the machine to hang .. is Houdini … also … this never happened on the t43p (single core)… even if the temp was a bit higher (maybe this t60p have better heatsink also) …..I seriously doubt that's a cpu temperature problem.