kubuntu....

[Stefan Andersson]

Do I dare to ask? :) Anyone running Softimage and Kubuntu? They are about to release a new version which will be supported to 7 years, which is VERY appealing to me. The whole fedora sprint race is not even funny anymore.

I read this one, but haven't heard any success stories yet.

http://xsisupport.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/running-softimage-on-other-distros-like-ubuntu-kubuntu-pardus-and-gentoo/

Last I checked (many years ago) it crashed when trying to open scenes, and xsibatch also didn't work.

regards

stefan andersson

--

STEFAN ANDERSSON // Creative Director // Mad Crew AB // http://www.madcrew.se

[Sandy Sutherland]

I know that Blackginger tried to get Softimage running on a previous version -as far as I know it was not super successful and they are on FC - but I stand to be corrected on that!

S.

_____________________________
Sandy Sutherland
Technical Supervisor
sandy.su...@triggerfish.co.za
_____________________________

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Stefan Andersson [ste...@madcrew.se]
Sent: 06 March 2012 01:13
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: kubuntu....

[Stefan Andersson]

Right now we are leaning towards either Kubuntu or CentOS 6.2

/stefan

[Xavier Lapointe]

We've been trying Ubuntu for a while and worked even better than centos or fedora (snappier and better user experience). This required a few tweaks, but most of them are either documented on xsisupport or not rocket science.
I would prefer Ubuntu over Kubuntu ... that said I haven't install Kubuntu for a while now.

We've been using CentOS and FC14 mainly because we were not able to run xsibatch on ubuntu. Turns out we don't even need it (because you can start the render from the xsi binary directly)! So we're just waiting to have some free time to rebuild a computer and also waiting for the LTS which is coming soon.

In order to run xsi on a farm without a X session, you can use a X simulator: something called Xvfb

Here's an example of how to use it:

Start this on the render farm machine: /usr/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &
Then you can launch a xsi process.

This is mostly untested, but we were able to start a simple render and have it completed.

Cheers,

Xavier

[Stephen Blair]

Hi Xavier

Are you able to read icecaches without crashing?

thx

[Stefan Andersson]

I'm installing CentOS 6.2 now on two machines. So far there are only a few tweaks from our install procedure for FC14. Even my Macbook Pro seems to enjoy it :)

regards
stefan

[Xavier Lapointe]

hmm, you're right Stephen. Forgot about that point.
The main reason why we were still considering Ubuntu was Alembic taking over icecache (I think).

So, Ubuntu was giving us great performance (headache included).

Centos is great for that ... being newer than FC14, and keeps the installation setup simple. Still, I find the FC14/CentOS solution slower, esp. viewport wise.

I still consider this a big experiment, versus a tested redhat solution. Just nice to see that it might be possible (:

2012/3/6 Stefan Andersson <ste...@madcrew.se>

--
Xavier

[Darrin Hofmeyr]

I would not go Ubuntu - too many headaches.
We are on FC12 at the moment and I agree on the crazy life schedule they have.

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Xavier Lapointe
<xl.mail...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hmm, you're right Stephen. Forgot about that point.
> The main reason why we were still considering Ubuntu was Alembic taking over
> icecache (I think).
>

--
Darrin Hofmeyr
Animation Supervisor
BlackGinger
+27 21 4881188

[Stefan Andersson]

I can just say that I'm a CentOS fan righ now :) It was quite easy. I'm posting the installation script that we have there are a few packages that are unecassary, but that doesn't matter that much. And I've excluded the stuff that is just for our studio. I hope that can help someone else. 

After the inital OS install, start a terminal and become superuser. Then just copy what you need below and paste it into the terminal.

If you tend to install CentOS on a macbook pro, install CentOS with 'basic video', then you can disregard the nouveau stuff (which also goes for workstations).

==== SELINUX ==============================================

#change to "disabled"

nano /etc/selinux/config

==== YUM PRIORETIES FOR CONFLICTS =========================

yum install yum-plugin-priorities

==== Priorities of base repos =============================

#Add “priority=1” to the end of each section after gpgkey=file...

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

==== EPEL.repo =============================================

rpm -Uvh http://ftp.tlk-l.net/pub/mirrors/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

#Add “priority=2” to the end of each section after gpgcheck=1

#Also add “exclude=libupnp,libmodplug” to the end of [epel] section

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

==== RPM FORGE ==============================================

#Add “priority=3” to the end of each section after gpgcheck=1

rpm --import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

rpm -i http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo

==== Applications/Libs ======================================

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"

yum -y install ffmpeg PyQt4 PyQt4-devel libXpm control-center-extra wine.i686 libquicktime vlc filezilla openssh-server xorg-x11-apps python-sqlite2 htop gcc-c++ subversion openjpeg openjpeg-devel openexr-devel fftw-devel libtiff-devel csh libXmu.i686 libXt.i686 libXp.i686 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi libXrandr.i686 libXinerama.i686 libXft.i686 ld-linux.so.2 libXp kernel-devel PyOpenGL ypbind nfs-utils mercurial scons cmake gconf-editor gedit-plugins wacomcpl

chkconfig sshd on

chkconfig ypbind on

chkconfig nfs on

yum -y update

==== GRUB.CONF Edits ==========================================

#block nouveau from the kernel

sed -i.bck '/kernel/s/$/ nouveau.modeset=0/' /boot/grub/grub.conf

echo -e '\nblacklist nouveau' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

#REBOOT

#Install Nvidia drivers

[Christopher Crouzet]

We're running Kubuntu 10.04 here at work and Softimage seems fine so far.
Well no one is really using Softimage here but me for some very basic stuff so I can't really tell how it would react in a more full on context, but at least it runs fine and seems to be very responsive.

[Christopher Crouzet]

Let me Ctrl+Z this post... it just did a segmentation fault after clicking the button "Property" from the menu $&#%&!!!

[Xavier Lapointe]

Yeah, there's a tweak for that. lol

We had someone working on it for weeks, and the only thing was the icecache issue (which will be resolved soon).

2012/3/6 Christopher Crouzet <christoph...@gmail.com>

--
Xavier