Re: [Update REQ 5125]: Bug in Geomview v1.5 for Alpha?

["Daeron Meyer" <daeron>]

> 
> Message-Id: <9411021259.AA29305 at daria.ph.flinders.edu.au>
> To: software@geom
> Subject: Bug in Geomview v1.5 for Alpha?  
> Date: Wed, 02 Nov 94 23:29:48 +1030
> From: phbb at daria.ph.flinders.edu.au
> 
> Hi,
> 
> v1.5 of Geomview does not work properly on my DEC Alpha running OSF/1 V1.3
> By contrast, the previous version of Geomview worked fine. With v1.5, when
> I start up geomview, it works for a while and then just stops. I can do nothing
> but quit out of geomview. Once I quit, all the fonts in other applications are
> screwed up. Is the problem that my version of OSF is too old, or is it a 
> geomview bug?
> 
> Boris Blankleider              Tel: 61-8-201 2802
> Physics Dept                   FAX: 61-8-201 3035
> Flinders University
> Bedford Park, SA 5042
> Australia
> 
> 
> 

Hello Boris,

  Thanks for the bug report. It is unfortunate that we cannot provide full
support for the DEC Alpha version since we do not actually have one here.
However, I have some ideas about what may be causing the problem you
experienced. The main difference between the new version of geomview (1.5)
and the old beta version (1.4.3) is that version 1.5 is now using the MIT
shared memory extension (when possible) to quickly send rendered images
to the display server, as opposed to sending a stream of plain polygons to
the the server.

  Thus, the problem you're experiencing may indicate a bug in the X server
itself, being manifested only when shared memory with the server is attempted.
One thing you might try as an experiment is to run Geomview on your DEC
alpha, but bring up the display on another machine and see if that works
(this forces geomview to not use shared memory since the display is on a
different machine from the geomview process).

  Also, could you send us the result of "xdpyinfo" for your display? It
may be that DEC is aware of a bug in the server and has a fix for it, or
maybe not. In any case, you are the first person to report this problem
on a DEC alpha. I will try asking some of the other users of the program
whether they have had similar problems. Could also provide a little more
detail, like how long does Geomview run before it locks up? and how do
you have to terminate it, just by killing the process? Do you have to
reboot the machine to get the Display looking normal again? etc...

Thanks,

Daeron Meyer
daeron at geom.umn.edu

P.S. The DEC Alpha binary distribution was compiled under OSF/1 V1.3 with
     X11R4 libraries, so it is probably not a problem of your O.S. being
     to old.