Houdini on Kubuntu 15.10

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I am hoping to install Houdini 15 apprentice on my laptop running Kubuntu 15.10.

Has anyone had any issues running it on the Wily Werewolf or using it with KDE Plasma 5.4.2?
soho vfx
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I'm not using laptop nor Kubuntu, but I do use Plasma 5.4.2. And Houdini runs great.

Houdini 15 also requires OpenGL 3. There's a list of supported graphics hardware here:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2680&Itemid=390 [sidefx.com]
General system requirement:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3151&Itemid=424 [sidefx.com]
Andrew / アンドリュー
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Sweet I'll see if I can try it out tonight!

Is it ok to leave the compositor on or is it recommended to turn it off? Currently I have the compositor using OpengGL 3.1 in GLX mode.
soho vfx
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My Nvidia 9800m GTS with 512MB's does support OpenGL 3.3. Hopefully it is enough to tinker with things at home.
soho vfx
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I'm not sure what the official word is. I personally have mine on all the time with various eye candies turned on. I haven't gotten any issues specific to the composite mode. Though with composite turned on, more of your graphics card resources is probably used up, which means less available for Houdini. But I like my eye candies.
Andrew / アンドリュー
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Andrew, out of curiosity, what flavor of Linux are you using?
I'm o.d.d.
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I use Ubuntu 15, laptop. for me it's working fine except an old graphic bug which can be solved:
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=40972&view=next [sidefx.com]
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I'm on Debian Testing, which used to be “jessie”, but it's now “stretch”.
Andrew / アンドリュー
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All good to know! Thanks
soho vfx
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Hi!

I am actually having issues running houdini. I downloaded the current latest one from the website 15.0.244.16 (I also tested it with a version of 14 but that also wasnt working) After install, sourcing the houdini_setup_bash file works but as soon as I type houdini to run, it just hangs. It renames the terminal label to houdini-bin but thats it, no splash screen, nothing. I am also getting no windows showing up for any of other applications I am trying to run from the Kmenu just as the License Administrator or the Image Viewer etc… (One interesting thing happened though once. After I clicked to restart the computer linux started to shut down all the applications and for a split second the license administration window showed up in the corner of the screen for a split second)

So here is what I did:

As I have a new computer build, I freshly installed kubuntu 15.10, applied all the updates and upgrades available and installed the nvidia driver from the KInfoCenter which was suggested. It is 352.63 ( I also tried with an other fresh kubuntu when I installed the downloaded driver from the nvidia website, that one didnt work either)

My video card is a Titan Z, when I run glxinfo | grep “OpenGL version” it gives me OpenGL version string: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.63.

And the KDE Help Center Shows Revision Plasma 5.4(2015-07-30)


I would think it is something to do either with the linux graphics driver or kde. I havnt tried to install gnome or unity to see if it works whit that but that would be my next step. I also tried with kubuntu 15.04 doing the same steps, and it wasnt working either) And also the same houdini version runs on windows 10 without a problem.

I wonder if anybody run into similar problems?

Thanks,
Attila
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I have had the same exact issue, and i still havent figured out how to solve it or what the issue is on KDE. I say KDE since houdini runs fine if i try and run it in enlightenment desktop or any other than kde. What i do now, which is annoying as hell, is when i start my laptop, i jump quickly into enlightenment source houdini from the shell there, run sesinetd since for whatever reason it wont run automatically, and then run houdini. As soon as its up i close it and move to kde and run it there and it works. I already submitted this as a bug tho sesi guys said they couldnt reproduce it. Im absolutely sure this has to do with a deamon or process in kde that stops license admin from running or houdini from runnig, tho i havent figured out yet which one it could be.

The problem is that houdini just hangs in the shell, there is no output i tried attaching a debugging process to it but i could not find a single output info that explains what the hell is going on.

I have given up so far since i dont have time to start turning services on and off and to debug linux with houdini to see why it wont run.

Hopefully this will get solved somehow

p.s. i should mention im running houdini on opensuse 13.2
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I also submitted this problem as a bug just now. Maybe they will look into it again if more people having this.
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I just installed Kubuntu, and I can indeed reproduce the issue. I actually did come across this issue before with another user, but I completely forgot until now. The problem is a network port collision with a new-ish KDE service called KDEConnect [community.kde.org]. It happens to use the same port as Houdini's licensing tools. :?

You should be able to see the running process by running:
ps -C kdeconnectd

Fortunately, the package should be optional, unless you have one of the meta packages selected (like kubuntu-full or kubuntu-desktop). You should be able to remove the package by doing:
# do a dry-run first
sudo apt-get purge -s kdeconnect-plasma
# then, really remove the package
sudo apt-get purge kdeconnect-plasma


Then, either restart your machine, or kill the background process manually:

killall kdeconnectd

And now you should be able to run Houdini. I never ran into this issue myself, because I only installed the minimal KDE packages.
Andrew / アンドリュー
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Finally!

Thanks Andrew! You have saved me logging in and out of different desktops!

Cheers
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Thank you so much! I was just about to post the same solution as Silvina replied to my bug report and she suggested the same solution. Thanks again!

Attila
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Thanks a lot! I had the same issue with kubuntu 16.04.
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