Re: MMA 2.1 on HP9000 and HP 700/X X-terminals
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Re: MMA 2.1 on HP9000 and HP 700/X X-terminals
- From: jacobson at cello.hpl.hp.com
- Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 09:13:30 -0700
David Harrison writes: > I am having some trouble with the interaction between Mathematica 2.1 > on an HP 9000/750 and a HP 700/X X-terminal. In a nutshell, all graphics > commands cause the X-terminal to crash. Example: > > Mathematica 2.1 for HP 9000 RISC > Copyright 1988-92 Wolfram Research, Inc. > -- Motif graphics initialized -- > > In[1]:= Plot[ Sin[x], {x,0,Pi}] > > Out[1]= -Graphics- > > In[2]:= > > At this point, after about 10 seconds the X-terminal totally locks > up and I have to power-cycle it. I see no sign of a graphics > window trying to appear. When I rlogin back in to the HP9000, > I find a 'motifps' process using 'ps' with about 5 seconds of cpu > consumed. > [[Lots more details deleted.]] We experienced a similar problem here at HP Labs. We are running Mathematica 2.1 on an HP 9000/870, which is basically a snakes machine (9000/700 series) set up to be a timesharing machine. When we installed 2.1 it came only with the Motif window manager stuff (if I recall correctly). That seems to run okay, aliet a bit slow, when I use my personal workstation, an HP 9000/834 as an X server, but some of our users were using HP 9000/RX X terminals. (I don't know the exact model or configuration.) With that sytems it just ground to a halt. A relatively simply plot would lock everything up for over a half hour! It turned out that from on older version of Mathematica or from having been a beta test site or something, we had the old X11 files around, and I discovered that with those installed everything works perfectly. If you have the .../StartUp/X11.m and .../Bin.HP9000S[78]00/Display/x11ps files around, then you can fix the problem. If you can't find them somewhere then bug WRI to give them to you. (Of course, I am not actually advocating violating your license agreement or copyright laws. If in doubt, consult WRI or your legal advisor.) Your init.m file probably contains something like this: Which[ $Remote, <<"PSDirect.m", Environment["DISPLAY"] =!= $Failed, <<"Motif.m", True, <<"Terminal.m" ] Change it to this: Which[ $Remote, <<"PSDirect.m", Environment["DISPLAY"] =!= $Failed, <<"X11.m", True, <<"Terminal.m" ] When we made this change, everything worked perfectly, and the graphics had the "Out[23]" type labels, which we missed under motif. -- David Jacobson