[47224] in Hotline Meeting
Ultra 10 OpenGL problems solved! (we hope...)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alex T Prengel)
Fri Apr 16 15:10:16 1999
To: bmurphy@MIT.EDU
Cc: alexp@MIT.EDU, nschmidt@MIT.EDU, facdev@MIT.EDU, wdc@MIT.EDU,
hotline@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 15:10:07 EDT
From: Alex T Prengel <alexp@MIT.EDU>
Brian,
I have more work for the hotline guys- I've convinced myself that a reinstall
fixes a problem we have been seeing on certain Ultra 10s running 3d OpenGL
applications- most of the machines in 2-032 have this problem- I just fixed
two of them with a reinstall: m2-032-8 (which also had other bad problems,
now fixed- windows would get totally blurry when you dragged them) and
m2-032-13.
I wrote two test scripts that will show if the problem is there or not. To
use these (you don't need to be root):
1. add evaluate
2. for the first, type "vtktest"; after about a minute or two, a bunch of
stuff should print on the screen, then a window should open with a spiked ball
in it (if it works OK). You should test that you can zoom and rotate the
ball by using the mouse buttons inside the window where the ball is- sometimes
when it's "bad" the ball appears but you can't move it. Ussually when it's
bad the window stays black, and you get random colored areas drawn outside
any windows, in the upper right side of the screen.
3. for the second test, after doing the "add evaluate", type "javatest".
After a bit, if it works OK, a small window will pop open with a rotating
color cube inside it. If it fails, you will get a blank screen, and then
an Athena login screeen (i.e. you will get logged out).
A "good" machine should pass both tests cleanly. The first will leave a number
of working files in /var/tmp that it would be a good idea to delete when you
are done. Any machine failing either test should be reinstalled and retested.
I think it would be a good idea to test all Ultra 10s, but almost
all the ones I tested outside 2-032 work OK (but of course I wasn't able
to check every machine).
It would also be nice if we could determine how the problem originated to
avoid it in the future, but that may not be possible (at least I don't know
how to do it).
Thanks,
Alex
PS- the problem with Matlab not running on allegretto still needs to be
checked out- it's a different problem that only seems to affect that machine-
JJ knows how to test that.
