Ugghh...

[Pixel3D]

Now, Blender 2.43 RC2 is crashing on render IN LINUX. What's going on?

It crashed out twice in a row. The second time, I copied (appended) all of my
objects from a hard disk file into a fresh Blender and tried to render.

I'm sorry if I shouldn't have posted a second topic. I'm just frustrated. As long
as it was just Windows 98, I could deal with working in Linux. Now that's it's
crashing in Linux too, I don't know what to do.

[LetterRip]

try 2.43 rc3 and see if you still get the crash, if so post a bug report.

LetterRip

[stiv]

If you are getting completely random crashes, the most likely cause is hardware. Possible culprits in no particular order

1) memory speed - go into your bios and change for slower memory settings
2) poor power - cheap or weak power supply or lack of surge protection/filtering. Use a good surge protector or better yet, a UPS. Replace the power supply.
3) heat - add another fan if components seem to run hot.

If you do file a bug report, we need a reproducible problem of the form "Blender crashes when I do x,yz."

There is nothing we can do with "Blender crashes randomly". These cases tend to be specific to your machine and setup.

[Pixel3D]

Right now, memory speed is determined automatically. Perhaps the BIOS
is not accurately detecting RAM speed. I will look at that and see if changing
it helps.

I'm trying to determine for sure whether it is a platform issue, and where
specifically the problem is. Since I'm getting crashes in both Linux and
Windows 98, it's beginning to look like it may not be the OS. It may be my
hardware. Yet, I don't know enough about how it all (Blender->OS->Hardware)
works together to really dig deep.

I have gdb though, and I can run Blender with it in Linux. Is there a chance
that the output resulting from one of these crashes while GDB is running can
help pinpoint the problem?

[LetterRip]

yes it could help - is just blender crashing or the entire os?

a backtrace could pinpoint if it is blender or hardware...

LetterRip

[Pixel3D]

Only Blender is crashing; the OS remains usuable. I've described the crash in
Windows in the other thread. As for Linux, Blender just suddenly disappears
(both Render window and GUI) and leaves me back at the Desktop (I run
KDE).

While it will crash with just a plain cube, it seems that transparency may be
increasing the regularity of the crash. That is, if I have one ray transparent
object inside another, Blender seems to crash out more often. It also seems
to crash earlier in the render. I'm not saying ray transparency is the cause of
the problem, but I wonder if it is somehow contributing to the frequency of the crashes.

I'll run GDB with Blender in Linux and see what I get. I've already ran it once
and it happened to render without crashing that time. I'll try again and see if
I can get some info.

[Pixel3D]

Ok, I've got some info from GDB.

Here is a copy of console output from Blender start to crash during render.
This is Blender 2.43 RC2, on Mandriva Linux 2006.0

I've included comments (\\) which were not part of the original output.

\\Start GDB Info

Compiled with Python version 2.4.
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Checking for installed Python... No installed Python found.
Only built-in modules are available. Some scripts may not run.
Continuing happily.
[New Thread -1266144336 (LWP 6777)]

Program received signal SIGFPE, Arithmetic exception.
[Switching to Thread -1266144336 (LWP 6777)]
0x0855fc62 in ?? ()
(gdb) bt \\I typed bt here
#0 0x0855fc62 in ?? ()
#1 0x3eabf8a8 in ?? ()
#2 0x3f800000 in ?? ()
#3 0xc0244f83 in ?? ()
#4 0x00000000 in ?? ()

\\End GDB Info


With GDB on, the render hangs, maybe Blender too. If it crashes without
GDB, it'll just disappear like I mentioned above.

I've also noticed KDE complaining about SIGSEGV. However, sometimes
Blender will continue to render despite this. If it does continue, and I then
exit Blender, no errors are sent to gdb. So I'm not sure if KDE's
problem is related to this or not.

[LetterRip]

can you do a build yourself? ie do a make debug (or a scons debug build, or cmake, whatever build system you use) and then do a debug backtrace again?

LetterRip

[Pixel3D]

I can try. Building programs from source becomes a familiar chore when
dealing in Linux software. Alas, I still don't know as much about it as I'd
like.


I was in fact wanting to do that. I have a dial-up connection that makes it
difficult to download the sources. I do have the main Blender source
"blender/" though and the "lib/windows" module. I can try to collect the module
for the Linux libs.

I tried to build on Windows using cygwin and make, but the make program
complained about a syntax error in one of the sh files- cpidiff.sh I think.

I've never used SCons before.

[Pixel3D]

I'm pretty sure I've finally found and solved the problem.

It wasn't Blender, thank goodness. I would like to apologize to the developers.

I'm sorry. I originally suspected Blender because until recently it was the
only program that was exhibiting the exact behavior I was discussing.

Then the other night, Firefox crashed twice with a page fault. On a hunch,
I looked at the register information, and the segment registers were giving
the same values as were in some of Blender's crashes.

First I thought it was my RAM. I tested it a couple of times, it was fine.
Changed the RAM modules around, didn't help.

Finally I decided to look at my CPU temp in the CMOS after a Blender
crash. It was 70-75 degrees celsius.

I had assumed that heat issues would exhibit themselves as system
wide crashes (IE, blue screens). Apparently, most of the Windows
programs that run on my machine don't seem to really work the CPU.

Except of course for Blender. I didn't realize just how much it does work
the CPU until I solved the heat problem. Over the last 2 years, I'd barely
touched the CPU heatsink/fan assembly and it had collected A LOT of dust.

I was afraid to try to clean it, because the CPU underneath was so fragile.
Finally I got up the courage, and cleaned both the heatsink and the fan.
Left the machine a couple of hours and plugged it back in. This time, I got
CPU temp readings in the mid 50's to about 60-a good bit cooler than what
it was before I cleaned it.

Booted up Windows 98, and loaded Blender with the file that had been constantly
crashing during render. This time, it rendered just fine.

It also rendered without crashing in Linux when I tried it.

I've rendered the file several times since and have yet to get another crash. While
I'm not 100% sure the problem is gone, it's looking very good, and I'm
thrilled.

Thank God I don't have to give up Windows 98 just yet. Right now, I don't
really have the dough to upgrade, and I've had trouble managing Linux.
Still, I will probably have to upgrade at some point.

Again, I apologize to the devs for blaming Blender for the crashes. I really
like the program, and I hope Windows 98 support will continue for the time
being.

3)heat - add another fan if components seem to run hot.

Way to go, stiv! That was the problem. Thanks to you and everyone else
who offered advice.

I was wondering if I could ask one more question. I need some help
getting Blender to build on my machine. I don't really have to build it now,
but I'd really like to learn how just the same. Whom or where should I
ask for help?

Thanks again.