Hi,

We have a person at our company using Houdini 19.5 on a Centos 7.6 computer and every so often opening Houdini he gets the error:

The Houdini 19.5.435 environment has been initialized.
License server is already set to lic1.
The Houdini 19.5.435 environment has been initialized.
Set Houdin Server: lic1
run: /net/software/houdini/hfs19.5.435/bin/houdini
☠️ Mon Feb 27 10:07 $ user.person ~> ~ 👉 00:00:00 374MB | log started Mon Feb 27 10:07:10 2023
00:00:00 374MB | Arnold 7.1.4.1 linux x86_64 clang-10.0.1 oiio-2.4.1 osl-1.12.0 vdb-7.1.1 adlsdk-7.4.2.47 clmhub-3.1.1.43 rlm-14.2.5 optix-6.6.0 2022/11/29 11:24:49
00:00:00 374MB | running on box213.stellarcreative.lab, pid=64876
00:00:00 374MB | 1 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2265 CPU @ 3.50GHz (12 cores, 24 logical) with 64142MB
00:00:00 374MB | NVIDIA driver version 515.65 (Optix 60803)
00:00:00 374MB | GPU 0: NVIDIA RTX A4500 @ 1650MHz (compute 8.6) with 20186MB (16705MB available) (NVLink:0)
00:00:00 374MB | CentOS Linux 7 (Core), Linux kernel 3.10.0-1160.76.1.el7.x86_64
00:00:00 374MB | soft limit for open files changed from 1024 to 4094
00:00:00 374MB |
00:00:00 389MB | default ocio.config found in /net/software/autodesk/htoa/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435.py37/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435.py37/dso/../scripts/bin/../ocio/configs/arnold/config.ocio
00:00:00 389MB | loading plugins from /net/software/autodesk/htoa/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435.py37/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435.py37/dso/../scripts/bin/../plugins ...
00:00:00 389MB | htoa_mandelbulb_proc.so: mandelbulb uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 389MB | alembic_proc.so: alembic uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 395MB | usd_proc.so: usd uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 395MB | cryptomatte.so: cryptomatte uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 395MB | cryptomatte.so: cryptomatte_filter uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 395MB | cryptomatte.so: cryptomatte_manifest_driver uses Arnold 7.1.4.1
00:00:00 395MB | loaded 6 plugins from 4 lib(s) in 0:00.26
00:00:00 427MB | Begin registration ...
00:00:00 419MB | Registering procedurals ...
00:00:00 419MB | procedural registration done.
00:00:00 435MB | Registering operators ...
00:00:00 437MB | operator registration done.
00:00:01 443MB | Registering shaders ...
00:00:01 445MB | shader registration done.
00:00:01 445MB | Registering imagers ...
00:00:01 445MB | imager registration done.
00:00:01 445MB | USD shader translation registration
00:00:02 491MB | End registration.
00:00:02 491MB |
00:00:02 491MB | releasing resources
00:00:02 491MB | Arnold shutdown
libai.so already loaded
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Warning: /home/user.person/houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
64876: Fatal error: Segmentation fault (sent by pid 0)
Crash log saved to /tmp/houdini_temp/crash.untitled.user.person_64876_log.txt
sh: xmessage: command not found

In order to get everything working again he has to reboot the computer and it works again. Any ideas what could be causing this ?

Here is his description on what he is doing:

I do have an issue that start to became recurrent , there is not pattern in the occurrence so I can’t give you timeline of when it happens , but already happened 3 time last week and 1 time this morning, I do have a fix ( rebooting) but I would like to know what make it happen or potentially flag it to you so that you aware.

When I am launching Houdini most of the time after lengthy simulation go through ,(not always) seems I am able to launch a session(sometimes) but it will appears like this image > see image:

And give me error in terminal svgsicons not readable, but most of the times it just error(same error ) in the terminal and warning me that Houdini has crashed, at this moment my only solution is to restart the machine and everything come back to normal .

We are getting the same issue starting houdini and we tent to think it is something related to a fs locking mechanism, we are running it on Rocky Linux. We have a workaround (not ideal) which is to set the HOME directory system variable to another temporary path. And to be completely honest, houdini is not the only software which is affected, more rarely but also other software suffer from this issue.

Installed unit_expressions...
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
Failed to write lock /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
Warning: /home/.../houdini19.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial is not readable
1145727: Fatal error: Segmentation fault (sent by pid 0)
Crash log saved to /tmp/houdini_temp/crash.untitled...._1145727_log.txt
sh: xmessage: command not found

I was getting a crash on boot with Houdini 20.5 on ARM Macbook. In the error log I found this:

Failed to write lock /Users/.../Library/Preferences/houdini/20.5/config/Icons/SVGIcons.cache.serial
5373: Fatal error: Segmentation fault (sent by pid 0)
Crash log saved to ...

I found this post so it lead me to think it had something to do with paths or not having permissions.

I tried launching Houdini from the 'Houdini terminal' like(in my case for Houdini indie):

sudo hindie
I believes that launches with admin privileges and allows Houdini to read that file path. Anyway, finally got it to launch.

Hope this is useful to somebody.