Bugs: graphic cards & drivers

ChIPS - and tools that use it such as Sherpa, prism, and the CIAO version of ds9 - can cause the following message to be displayed on Mac OS-X Snow Leopard machines:

Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display "/tmp/launch-rSzMqw/org.x:0". 

This message can be ignored (for more details see the MacPorts FAQ on RANDR), or you can install the latest version of XQuartz (which is 2.7.4 at the time of the CIAO 4.5 release) from the XQuartz web site.

Systems using OpenGL Mesa version 6.5.* may experience problems with chips crashing due to a bug in mesa. The problem can occur if chips has been running a while and windows have been created and destroyed. In most cases the problem will be exposed by chips smoke test 3 failing.

The only known workaround is to update to a later version of Mesa (at least 7.0.2). To check your version of mesa run:

unix% glxinfo |grep version

Systems using OpenGL Mesa version 6.5.* may also experience problems when the environment variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT is set or while remote logged into another machine and trying to run chips. Attempts to run chips under these circumstances has caused the xserver to crash. The problem has been observed on FC6 and FC7 machines. The problem no longer exists on FC8 machines running OpenGL Mesa version 7.0.3

Some ATI graphics cards produce the following warning:

libGL warning: 3D driver claims to not support visual 0x4b

This does not seem to have any effect on ChIPS.