Anatomist crashing X-server

Questions about Anatomist manipulation

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PeterK
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Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:18 pm

Anatomist crashing X-server

Post by PeterK »

My anatomist tends to crash X-server if try to overlay 3-D graphics with images - such dragging sucal mesh and placing on top of the raw image.
If that doesn't kill X - closing this window usually does the job.

I understand that this is probably an X-server bug that is getting "exploited" by anatomist.

Anyone knows a work around it?
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riviere
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Post by riviere »

Hi Peter,

I haven't seen such a problem for years. What 3D card/driver are you using ? Do you run anatomist in a remote display (on a network) ?
Denis
PeterK
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:18 pm

Post by PeterK »

riviere wrote:Hi Peter,

I haven't seen such a problem for years. What 3D card/driver are you using ? Do you run anatomist in a remote display (on a network) ?
Denis
I've done it both way e.g. locally and over the network and seems to do it. Strangelly enough it does it on at all the video cards that we have around here.
The X-version is 4.3.0, Released on 15 aug 2003.

I'm gonna check the logs for anything of value.
PeterK
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:18 pm

Post by PeterK »

PeterK wrote:
riviere wrote:Hi Peter,

I haven't seen such a problem for years. What 3D card/driver are you using ? Do you run anatomist in a remote display (on a network) ?
Denis
I've done it both way e.g. locally and over the network and seems to do it. Strangelly enough it does it on at all the video cards that we have around here.
The X-version is 4.3.0, Released on 15 aug 2003.

I'm gonna check the logs for anything of value.
Checked the logs and it says generic segmentation fault (signal 11) crash
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riviere
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Post by riviere »

Hi Peter,

Well, displaying over a network sounds less surprising to me: I guess most (not to say all) GLX network implementations have bugs. Especially shared OpenGL display lists and network GLX display seem not to like each other at all. This is not a problem for single-windowed applications (including almost all 3D games), but for anatomist it is crucial. In some cases only the first window displaying a particular object can show anything, or only garbage is displayed, or if you have less luck, the X server can crash. I can't swear there is no bug in anatomist, but I've checked the code very carefully many times, and direct display works on many different systems, so... well OK it doesn't prove anything but...
On linux (and only on linux) we had problems with many 3D cards and found that the only reliable configuration was nvidia cards with the driver from nvidia. (I don't get any money from nvidia, too bad). But we have not tried the latest drivers from ATI, and had sometimes also problems with XFree/XOrg OpenGL.
In the development version, the shared display lists are handled in a slightly different way as they were in anatomist 1.30 (now always allocating and destroying shared OpenGL lists in a single dedicated rendering context). It seems to help especially on ATI cards, but makes remote display even more unstable. And this trick is in my opinion just a workaround for X/OpenGL bugs (?).
Well... all this is to say: I'm not sure but I think it's not my fault...

Denis
PeterK
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:18 pm

Post by PeterK »

riviere wrote:Hi Peter,

Well, displaying over a network sounds less surprising to me: I guess most (not to say all) GLX network implementations have bugs. Especially shared OpenGL display lists and network GLX display seem not to like each other at all. This is not a problem for single-windowed applications (including almost all 3D games), but for anatomist it is crucial. In some cases only the first window displaying a particular object can show anything, or only garbage is displayed, or if you have less luck, the X server can crash. I can't swear there is no bug in anatomist, but I've checked the code very carefully many times, and direct display works on many different systems, so... well OK it doesn't prove anything but...
On linux (and only on linux) we had problems with many 3D cards and found that the only reliable configuration was nvidia cards with the driver from nvidia. (I don't get any money from nvidia, too bad). But we have not tried the latest drivers from ATI, and had sometimes also problems with XFree/XOrg OpenGL.
In the development version, the shared display lists are handled in a slightly different way as they were in anatomist 1.30 (now always allocating and destroying shared OpenGL lists in a single dedicated rendering context). It seems to help especially on ATI cards, but makes remote display even more unstable. And this trick is in my opinion just a workaround for X/OpenGL bugs (?).
Well... all this is to say: I'm not sure but I think it's not my fault...

Denis
Oh, I'm sure it is an X-server bug. After all X shouldn't crash no matter what you do.

What is the X-version that you run on your system. I wonder if mine is too old and needs upgrading.
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riviere
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Post by riviere »

We use mainly X servers coming with RedHat 9, Fedora 1, 2, and 3, Mandrake 10.0 and 10.1 distributions, and the binary distribs are built on the older RedHat 7.3 (for wider compatibility) but we don't use such systems everyday (and we will drop compatibility with RH7.3 for the next release in a few weeks). All our machines are using nvidia cards and drivers. I don't know the X servers versions by heart, but I think it includes XFree 4.3 and all Xorg servers. A few people use ATI cards at home, and they have to run with all 3D hardware acceleration diabled to get correct display. We are not aware of any 3D display problems on other systems (windows, mac, solaris, irix) but don't use them everyday either.
Denis
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