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Last modified: 2 April 2013

URL: http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/bugs/smoke.html

Bugs: Installation & Smoke Tests

Return to: Bug List Index

The following is a list of known issues that may be seen when installing CIAO 4.5. If you encounter a problem that is not listed here, contact Helpdesk for assistance.

Table of Contents

ciao-install

ChIPS

Sherpa

Prism

ds9

ObsVis

Bugs

ciao-install

    [New] (6 Mar 2013) Problem downloading ciao-install with Chrome browser.

    Users have reported problems downloading the ciao-install script using the lastest version of the Chrome web browser on OSX 10.6.8 and some Linux systems. Those users should try with Safari or another browser.

    Running ciao-install fails with: 

    ERROR: Unable to retrieve ftp://cxc.harvard.edu/pub/ciao/all/ciao-control
ERROR: Unable to download ciao-control
ERROR: Bad Download. Please try again. If the problem continues Please
contact the CfA helpdesk.

    or

    Resolving cxc.harvard.edu... 131.142.185.90
Connecting to cxc.harvard.edu|131.142.185.90|:21... connected.
Logging in as guest ...
Error in server response, closing control connection.

    These messages indicate a conflict in FTP configurations between the user's machine the the CXC. (This is often seen with home internet providers such as a cable company.) If you have access to another computer and/or IP address, e.g. in a university office, you can run ciao-install with the --download-only flag to get the tarfiles. Then transfer them, if necessary, to the home machine.

    If you do not have access to another machine or IP address, contact Helpdesk for help with the download.

    When running 32bit smoke tests on 64bit machine, obsvis or sherpa smoke tests fail.

    This occurs when switching from a 32 to 64bit build (or vice versa), leaving incompatible .fontconfig files cached on the user's system.

    Workaround:

    Remove the .fontconfig cache: 

    unix% rm ~/.fontconfig/*

    and the GUIs should run.

ChIPS

    [New] (15 Feb 2013) ChIPS freezes

    A few Linux users have reported a problem where the smoke tests freeze at the first chips test. The plot window may remain and have to be killed by the window manager and/or the chipsServer process may run-away and start to consume 100% of a CPU.

    If this happens, you should first check that you have the latest version of the display driver available for your distribution and hardware.

    Runtime Error: Chips Error: Unable to connect to server

    If the X server takes too long to initialize, the ChIPS smoke tests will fail with this message. Run the smoke tests a second time and the errors should go away.

    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gnomebreakpad": libgnomebreakpad.so:
    cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    OR
    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": libcanberra-gtk-module.so:
    cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory
    OR
    Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks"

    The warning is cosmetic and doesn't impact how ChIPS works. It does, however, cause all the ChIPS smoke tests to fail, e.g.: 

    Running test chips-smoke001
chips-smoke001 FAILED
  Review /tmp/smoke.user/chips-smoke001/diff.log for details
make[1]: *** [test-chips-smoke001] Error 1

    Examining the diff.log files will show that the warning message is the only difference: 

    % cat /tmp/smoke.user/chips-smoke001/diff.log
3d2
< Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gnomebreakpad": 
libgnomebreakpad.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or 
directory
3d2

    Workaround:

    The gnome session sets GTK_MODULES to load some debugging tools. If the user simply unsets the GTK_MODULES environment variable, then the warning messages will disappear: 

    unsetenv GTK_MODULES


    *** Cannot find the double-buffered visual.
*** Trying single-buffered visual.
*** No appropriate OpenGL-capable visual found.

    The messages may be accompanied by a traceback error: 

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/smoke.al/chips-smoke001/chips-smoke001.py", line 2, in <module>
    strip_chart(3)
  File "/usr/ciao-4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pychips/extensions.py", line 3436, in strip_chart
    __pychips_base__.grid_objects(1, entries,0, gaps,1)
  File "/usr/ciao-4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pychips/pychips_base.py", line 935, in grid_objects
    return _pychips.ChipsRemoteMod_grid_objects(*args)
RuntimeError: chips ERROR: No current window to perform operation on

    Workaround:

    • This error may indicate that the necessary graphics drivers are not installed on the machine running CIAO. For example, if you have a Nvidia graphics card and are running the 32-bit version of CIAO, you must have the 32-bit Nvidia drivers installed.

    • If you have SSH-ed into another machine to run CIAO, be sure that the -X or -Y (or both: "ssh -XY") options were used to enable X11 forwarding. If that doesn't resolve the issue, set 

      setenv LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT 1

      This should happen by default when logging into a remote machine, but occasionally the system needs it set explicitly.

    If this information does not resolve the problem, contact Helpdesk for additional diagnostic help.

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

    All chips smoke tests may fail due to this warning produced by some ATI graphics cards. The warning is benign and can be ignored.

    CIAO is installed as root and the Chips/GUI smoke tests fail

    The ChIPS and the GUI applications, such as prism and obsvis, open windows as part of running the smoke tests. Often the root account is not allowed to open a window on the machine, which causes these tests to fail.

    The path to diff.log indicates this test was run as the root user: 

    /tmp/smoke.root/prism-smoke001/diff.log

    It is is strongly suggested that CIAO be installed as a non-privileged user and not as the root user. If CIAO must be installed in a directory owned by root and you are following the manual process, then

    1. unpack CIAO as root (so creating the ciao-<ver>/ directory);
    2. use the chown utility to change ownership of this directory to the installer's username.

    ChIPS smoke test comparison fails due to comma in place of decimal point

    Some system languages (e.g. Italian) use a comma in place of decimal point by default. This will cause the ChIPS smoke test comparison to fail, because the file packaged with CIAO uses decimal points: 

    unix% cat /tmp/smoke.user/chips-smoke001/diff.log
5c5
<     Plot [plot1]   (0,15,0,65)  .. (0,90,0,90)
---
>     Plot [plot1]   (0.15,0.65)  .. (0.90,0.90)
11c11
<     Plot [plot2]   (0,15,0,40)  .. (0,90,0,65)
---
>     Plot [plot2]   (0.15,0.40)  .. (0.90,0.65)
20c20
<     Plot [plot3]   (0,15,0,15)  .. (0,90,0,40)
---
>     Plot [plot3]   (0.15,0.15)  .. (0.90,0.40)

    If the decimal point/comma difference is the only thing recorded in the log file, ChIPS is fine to use.

Sherpa

    Sherpa: "ERROR: test_image (sherpa.image.tests.test_image.test_image)"

    The Sherpa smoke test fails and the log contains these errors: 

    ERROR: test_image (sherpa.image.tests.test_image.test_image)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
ValueError: total size of new array must be unchanged

    This is an intermittent error in the code that Sherpa uses to talk with DS9 via XPA. Run the smoke tests a second time and the errors should go away. If they do not, contact Helpdesk for further assistance.

    sherpa-smoke001 fails with an AssertionError
    (Linux 64-bit) 

    .........................................ERROR: XSXSabsori model evaluation failed
F.................................................................................
.........................................................
======================================================================
FAIL: test_xspec_models (sherpa.astro.tests.test_xspec.test_xspec)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/astro/ciao-4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sherpa/astro/xspec/tests/test_xspec.py", line 80, in test_xspec_models
    not numpy.isinf(vals).any() )
AssertionError

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 180 tests in 24.795s

FAILED (failures=1)

    Running the smoke tests again often reports a success for this test; the instructions for running smoke tests are in the Installing CIAO thread.

Prism

    (prism:2236): Gtk-WARNING **: GModule (/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines/libclearlooks.so)
    initialization check failed: Gtk+ version too old (micro mismatch)

    This warning messages may be generated when prism is run during smoke testing or run from the command line. The warnings are harmless, but annoying.

    Workaround:

    Remove or rename the $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0 and/or $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0-kde4 file to eliminate the warnings.

    Segmentation fault

    The prism smoke tests will segmentation fault if there are incompatible .fontconfig files cached on the user's system. Remove the .fontconfig cache: 

    unix% rm ~/.fontconfig/*

    If this does not fix the prism problem, contact Helpdesk.

    CIAO is installed as root and the Chips/GUI smoke tests fail

    The ChIPS and the GUI applications, such as prism and obsvis, open windows as part of running the smoke tests. Often the root account is not allowed to open a window on the machine, which causes these tests to fail.

    The path to diff.log indicates this test was run as the root user: 

    /tmp/smoke.root/prism-smoke001/diff.log

    It is is strongly suggested that CIAO be installed as a non-privileged user and not as the root user. If CIAO must be installed in a directory owned by root and you are following the manual process, then

    1. unpack CIAO as root (so creating the ciao-<ver>/ directory);
    2. use the chown utility to change ownership of this directory to the installer's username.

ds9

    The ds9 smoke test results may differ in the least significant figure.

    A sample diff log from test ds9-smoke001: 

    13c13
<  1.73363528e+02 2.58432381e+01 
---
>  1.73363528e+02 2.58432382e+01 
22c22
<  1.73357457e+02 2.58464050e+01 
---
>  1.73357457e+02 2.58464051e+01 
75c75
<  1.73322543e+02 2.58736917e+01 
---
>  1.73322543e+02 2.58736916e+01 
99c99
<  1.73310395e+02 2.58821467e+01 
---
>  1.73310395e+02 2.58821466e+01

ObsVis

    Mac OS X 10.7: incompatible library 

      [5/42] Running test obsvis-smoke004 .obsvis-smoke004.sh:
  line 57: 75615 Trace/BPT trap: 5       $OBSVIS_DS9 -source
  obsvis_test.tcl >> ${OUTFILE} 2>&1

    There is a conflict between CIAO and a system library on OS X 10.7.

    If you run the smoke tests without completing the workaround, obsvis-smoke004 will fail and the diff file will contain a library error: 

    unix% cat /tmp/smoke.username/obsvis-smoke004/diff.log

< dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
<   Referenced from: /usr/X11/lib/libXft.2.dylib
<   Reason: Incompatible library version: libXft.2.dylib requires
    version 14.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version
    13.0.0

    Workaround:

    The workaround is to rename the link libfreetype.6.dylib in ciao-4.4/ots/lib, and then create a new link to /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib: 

    cd ciao-4.4/ots/lib
mv libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib.ciao44 
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib

    If you are installing CIAO with the ciao-install script, the suggested steps are:

    1. run ciao-install, answering "n" at the "Run smoke tests?" prompt
    2. complete the workaround
    3. run ciao-install a second time, answering "y" at the "Run smoke tests?" prompt

    OBSVIS Error: Retrieving calibration updates from server produced the following error: 'Network timeout'

    Occasionally the connection to the server times out during the smoke test before ObsVis can get the data it needs. Try running the GUI from the command line: 

    unix% obsvis

    If the problem persists, contact Helpdesk.

Bugs fixed in CIAO 4.5

The following is a list of bugs that were fixed in the CIAO 4.5 software release.

Mac OSX 10.8: incompatible libraries

Mac Mountain Lion, OSX 10.8, users will see a problem running the smoke tests for several of the GUIs. The behavior is the same as Lion (below) 

  [5/42] Running test obsvis-smoke004 .obsvis-smoke004.sh:
  line 57: 75615 Trace/BPT trap: 5       $OBSVIS_DS9 -source
  obsvis_test.tcl >> ${OUTFILE} 2>&1

Workaround:

Users will need to modify their CIAO installation to link certain libraries to the system version. 

cd $ASCDS_INSTALL/ots/lib
mv libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib.save
mv libfontconfig.1.dylib libfontconfig.1.dylib.save
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfontconfig.1.dylib libfontconfig.1.dylib

Mac OS X 10.7: incompatible library 

  [5/42] Running test obsvis-smoke004 .obsvis-smoke004.sh:
  line 57: 75615 Trace/BPT trap: 5       $OBSVIS_DS9 -source
  obsvis_test.tcl >> ${OUTFILE} 2>&1

There is a conflict between CIAO and a system library on OS X 10.7.

If you run the smoke tests without completing the workaround, obsvis-smoke004 will fail and the diff file will contain a library error: 

unix% cat /tmp/smoke.username/obsvis-smoke004/diff.log

< dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
<   Referenced from: /usr/X11/lib/libXft.2.dylib
<   Reason: Incompatible library version: libXft.2.dylib requires
    version 14.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version
    13.0.0

Workaround:

The workaround is to rename the link libfreetype.6.dylib in ciao-4.4/ots/lib, and then create a new link to /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib: 

cd ciao-4.4/ots/lib
mv libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib.ciao44 
ln -s /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib libfreetype.6.dylib

If you are installing CIAO with the ciao-install script, the suggested steps are:

  1. run ciao-install, answering "n" at the "Run smoke tests?" prompt
  2. complete the workaround
  3. run ciao-install a second time, answering "y" at the "Run smoke tests?" prompt

Last modified: 2 April 2013
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