BrainVISA and Mac OS X 10.6

[mparkmd]

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how to install or run BrainVISA on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)? There were a few posts earlier and I tried to follow it but I cannot install or run BrainVISA on our new Mac. We recently purchased a Mac before the new OS (Snow Leopard) was available. But when the machine was delivered (several months later - administrative delay), it was OS X 10.6. We clearly asked for the older version but this is what we got. We thought perhaps we could install the older OS X which BrainVISA works well on, but this cannot be done. Any suggestions? We are desparate.

Michael

[Yann Cointepas]

We do not have a recent Mac with OS X 10.6 in our lab but a collaborator will probably test the latest package on his wife laptop soon. Could you give us more information about what happen when you try to install the package ?

[mparkmd]

The Mac is a Mac Pro with 2,66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor. It has the Mac OS X 10.6.2. We were able to download BrainVISA/Anatomist version 3.2.0 but when we launched the setup application (which comes with the cartopack), nothing happens. Are we doing something wrong that is very simple to remedy?

[mparkmd]

This is what I have tried so far. I have tried to install the latest version of BrainVISA for Mac, 3.2.0 but nothing happens when you click on setup. I then tried installing the version prior to this, 3.1.6-2009_05_14. Interestingly, the setup application can be launched and the application is installed. However, when I tried to import T1 MRI, the application quits unexpectedly. I have also tried installing a parallel PC with Windows XP and attempted the Windows version for 3.1.6 and 3.2.0 but the setup.exe would not launch.

What I am going to do next is to see if Apple will send me an installation DVD for Leopard so that I can downgrade the OS for this machine. There is an instance of this mentioned on the Apple help forum.

But I am still open to your suggestions.

[riviere]

Hi Michael,

Wait a little bit, we will try the Mac version on a 10.6 system. I guess there might be a little bug somewhere in the package or/and installation script, but I think (and hope) we can make it work on 10.6, so it should not be necessary to downgrade to 10.5.
Denis

[mparkmd]

Dear Denis:

Of course I will wait for your final input/recommendation. I think downgrading is the last resort, if anything.

Michael

[riviere]

Hi Michael,
One of our users here has done the test and installed the latest BrainVisa on a MacOS 10.6 laptop. Apparently it worked for him. So it doesn't seem to produce the same result on every machine... which is quite strange...
The good news is that this proves it _can_ work. The bad new is that I cannot reproduce the problem, thus not really solve it easily.
I will try to make a debugging version of the setup script so that whe could have an idea of what it does and where it fails. I'll write it when I can find a minute and post it then.
Denis

[mparkmd]

Dear Denis:

It is good to hear that a user was able to install the latest BrainVISA on a MacOS 10.6 laptop and have it work for him. However, someone who has been working with BrainVISA on the older MacOS upgraded his laptop to the MacOS 10.6 and his BrainVISA failed to work. Also, I don't know if your user had a laptop with previous OS and upgraded to the 10.6 or he purchased a new laptop with the 10.6. I also don't know if there is a difference between the laptop and the desktop computer in terms of the OS. Either way, we have tried everything so far and could not install the BrainVISA (newest version) onto our computer. The file simply won't open or start to install.

Michael

[riviere]

Hi Michael,

I don't know if the problem might or might not be linked to the fact that MacOS was upgraded to 10.6 or initially installed with it (I don't think so and I hope not!). The guy who did it had a new laptop with 10.6 initially installed on it.

I have made modified versions of the setup scripts which will log a part of what they are doing so that I can know where it failed. Could you please try them ?
Do do so, please do the following:

• uncompress a new fresh installation of the BrainVisa package - don't run the setup yet, and don't re-use an existing BrainVisa directory.
• download the following two files:
  ftp://ftp.cea.fr/pub/dsv/anatomist/upda ... Install.py
  ftp://ftp.cea.fr/pub/dsv/anatomist/upda ... 0/setup.sh
  and put them in the root directory of your BrainVisa tree (the cartopack-... directory), replacing the existing scripts.
• then run the setup program.
• it should have created in your home directory, in the .brainvisa sub-directory, two lgo files: bvsetuplog.txt and bvsetuperr.txt.
  Could you please post these files so that I can trace what went wrong ?
  You may possibly have only one of these two files if the setup crashed before creating the bvsetuplog.txt file. Please send whatever you find from these two files...

Thanks
Denis

[mparkmd]

Dear Denis:

Thank you for the suggestion. I followed your instructions,

1) Downloaded a new cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05.tar and created a new BrainVISA directory.
2) Uncompressed the package within the new directory as cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05.
3) Downloaded the two files and replaced the existing scripts.
4) Run the setup program.

Following happened.

1) No response upon clicking the setup application.
2) No creation of the two log files: bvsetuplog.txt and bvsetuperr.txt.


However, we have found a solution. We were able to install the older version of the OS (Leopard) on a different hard drive so that we could switch back and fourth. We did try installing the new BrainVISA but only the Anatomist would work. So we installed the older version of the BrainVISA. It seems to work (as both BrainVISA and Anatomist can be opened along with Python) and I can work with the database already created.

I think I can work with this for now. I do not know exactly what is going on but for now, we have a temporary solution.

Let me know if there is anything else you want me to try.

Michael

[riviere]

Hi Michael,
Strange, this seems to mean that the setup app does not even start at all...
Could you please try to run it by hand: open a terminal, and type:

Code: Select all

/Applications/cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05/setup.app/Contents/MacOS/setup --debug

(I assume you have installed brainvisa in /Applications, but change the path accordingly)
If there is still nothing in ~/.brainvisa/bvsetup*.txt, then it might be the graphical app laucher which causes a problem (for an unknown reason). The try running the shell script directly from the terminal:

Code: Select all

/Applications/cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05/setup.sh --debug

I hope this time you will get log files...

Running the older package on an older system is a temporary solution but it's not an option in the long run - we have to find out why it doesn't work. Moreover the current package is built on 10.5 so it should work on 10.5 at least...

Oh, just an idea: could you also check that the setup program is really a symbolic link to the script shell ?
Still from the terminal, type:

Code: Select all

ls -als /Applications/cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05/setup.app/Contents/MacOS/setup

This should output something like:

Code: Select all

1 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  admin  17 Nov  5 15:49 /Applications/cartopack-MacOS-10.5-i386-3.2.0-2009_11_05i2bm/setup.app/Contents/MacOS/setup -> ../../../setup.sh

the important information is the end: ../../../setup.sh
If you don't have it the same way, then it's a problem when uncompressing the archive.

Denis

[mparkmd]

Dear Denis:

For some reason, I got the BrainVISA 3.2.0 to install onto the Mac OS X 10.6!!!

I don't know if it was just a simple mistake or what I did different but this is what I did.

I restarted by removing everything old.
I again placed the cartopack into a folder named BrainVISA in Application folder. I did this in the past and it didn't work and last time I had it placed in the user folder, not specifically an Application folder (this is how my other Mac is set up).
I decompressed the file.
I clicked on the setup.

Miracle?!?!, this time it installed and it asked me to update the databases created with the older version.

I am assuming that BrainVISA is working at this point and I will continue to explore it.

Thank you very much for your help and I'm sorry if this caused too much trouble for you.

Michael

[riviere]

Fine !
Well I don't know what happened during your previous trials, maybe you didn't completely erase the brainvisa directory between two installs and some old files remained ? Anyaway the important thing is that it now works...
Denis