warning sagemath9 matplotlib plotting bug

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Jean-François Ingenbleek

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Jan 29, 2020, 8:21:03 AM1/29/20
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Be careful! Do not go to version 9 if you work under windows8 !!

an instruction as simple as

plot(x*sin(1/x),x,-2,2,plot_points=500)

gives

opt/sagemath-9.0/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py:281: UserWarning: Matplotlib is building the font cache using fc-list. This may take a moment.
  'Matplotlib is building the font cache using fc-list. '




No solution that works on this forum!!

E. Madison Bray

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Jan 29, 2020, 12:28:19 PM1/29/20
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Hello,

As I wrote in your previous thread on this topic, please do not scare other users with potentially misleading information.  While I don't believe you're the only one who has reported this problem, it's not universal either.  See the attached screenshot of this working just fine, even after I cleared my existing matplotlib cache dir.  Admittedly this is on Windows 10, though I would be highly surprised if this problem is unique to your Windows version.

It's possible no solution has been found yet because no one with the expertise to debug it has been able to reproduce it.  If I could have access to someone's computer where this was happening I might be able to, but other than that it is a mystery.  Maybe interference from a virus scanner?  You can check to see if you have any software on this list running on your computer: https://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda
2020-01-29.png

Jean-François Ingenbleek

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Jan 30, 2020, 3:09:36 AM1/30/20
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indeed

Norton/McAfee/Symantec antivirus or antispyware

is running.

and now what should i do?

My warning is not potentially wrong: a user under windows8 with Mcaffee is not able to use sagemath9, no patch known to date, it is a fact that it is better to know to not lose his time

thanks for your quick intervention

Dima Pasechnik

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Jan 30, 2020, 3:27:56 AM1/30/20
to sage-support


On Thu, 30 Jan 2020, 08:09 Jean-François Ingenbleek, <jinge...@gmail.com> wrote:
indeed

Norton/McAfee/Symantec antivirus or antispyware

is running.

and now what should i do?

Please check that it is indeed the problem.
Disable it and check whether it fixes the issue.



My warning is not potentially wrong: a user under windows8 with Mcaffee is not able to use sagemath9, no patch known to date, it is a fact that it is better to know to not lose his time

it is a wonder in itself that 8.9 worked with Mcaffee installed and running.


thanks for your quick intervention

Le mercredi 29 janvier 2020 14:21:03 UTC+1, Jean-François Ingenbleek a écrit :
Be careful! Do not go to version 9 if you work under windows8 !!

an instruction as simple as

plot(x*sin(1/x),x,-2,2,plot_points=500)

gives

opt/sagemath-9.0/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py:281: UserWarning: Matplotlib is building the font cache using fc-list. This may take a moment.
  'Matplotlib is building the font cache using fc-list. '




No solution that works on this forum!!

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E. Madison Bray

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Jan 30, 2020, 6:36:31 AM1/30/20
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On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 9:27:56 AM UTC+1, Dima Pasechnik wrote:


On Thu, 30 Jan 2020, 08:09 Jean-François Ingenbleek, <jinge...@gmail.com> wrote:
indeed

Norton/McAfee/Symantec antivirus or antispyware

is running.

Wait, which is it?  Both?  All of these have potential to interfere in unusual ways with unsigned open-source software (which many virus scanners attack as "evil").  Having multiple virus scanners installed is highly discouraged as they are likely to interfere even with each other.
 
and now what should i do?

Please check that it is indeed the problem.
Disable it and check whether it fixes the issue.

For starters, please only install security software that you're sure you actually need.  For virus scanners, most allow you to configure exceptions.  For example, please create an exception for the SageMath installation directory, as well as any LaTeX distributions you have installed.

 
My warning is not potentially wrong: a user under windows8 with Mcaffee is not able to use sagemath9, no patch known to date, it is a fact that it is better to know to not lose his time

Maybe, but no one has confirmed yet what the actual problem is, so it's not helpful to make broad pronouncements that may not apply to most users.  I've seen at most 2 other reports of this issue so it clearly isn't just you, but please let the software developers make pronouncements like this if/when we have full information.

 
it is a wonder in itself that 8.9 worked with Mcaffee installed and running.

It's not always a problem.  I haven't seen too many problems with McAffee interfering with Cygwin programs.  Avast is much worse.  But I haven't done a comprehensive review of how different virus scanners affect Sage/Cygwin.  Perhaps I should install them one by one in a VM and see but it's time I don't have.  I would like to have comprehensive instructions for how to add path exceptions for different virus scanners.

E. Madison Bray

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Jan 30, 2020, 9:07:04 AM1/30/20
to sage-support
For those not following the GitHub issue, I managed to reproduce the problem: https://github.com/sagemath/sage-windows/issues/42#issuecomment-580268035

As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with virus scanners, and instead impacts users of the texlive LaTeX distribution for Windows.  I was previously using MiKTeX, which for some reason does not exhibit the same problem.  A workaround, pending a better solution, is to remove texlive from your $PATH environment variable when running Sage.  It shouldn't be necessary to do this every time, I don't think.  Just once so that matplotlib can regenerate its font cache. 

Jean-François Ingenbleek

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Jan 30, 2020, 9:47:10 AM1/30/20
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a better solution, is to remove texlive from your $PATH environment variable  

hum, hum... how to do that?
thanks in advance 

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Jean-François Ingenbleek

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Jan 31, 2020, 8:04:57 AM1/31/20
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Here is the list of my $path

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;
C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.8-Q16;
C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.5-Q16;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\iCLS Client\;
C:\Program Files\Intel\iCLS Client\;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;
C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Druide\Antidote 9\Application\Bin64\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Druide\Antidote 9\Application\Bin32\

I do not find TexLive....

help is really welcome

E. Madison Bray

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Jan 31, 2020, 8:43:00 AM1/31/20
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On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 2:04:57 PM UTC+1, Jean-François Ingenbleek wrote:
Here is the list of my $path

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;
C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.8-Q16;
C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.5-Q16;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\iCLS Client\;
C:\Program Files\Intel\iCLS Client\;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;
C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Druide\Antidote 9\Application\Bin64\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Druide\Antidote 9\Application\Bin32\

I do not find TexLive....

help is really welcome

It looks like you have MiKTeX: C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\;

Which is strange because I also have MiKTeX, but was only able to reproduce the problem when I installed texlive instead.  It's possible the problem only arises in newer versions, and my MiKTeX is a bit old.
 
Le jeu. 30 janv. 2020 à 15:46, Jean-François Ingenbleek <jinge...@gmail.com> a écrit :
a better solution, is to remove texlive from your $PATH environment variable  

hum, hum... how to do that?
thanks in advance 

Le jeu. 30 janv. 2020 à 15:07, E. Madison Bray <erik...@gmail.com> a écrit :
On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 12:36:31 PM UTC+1, E. Madison Bray wrote:
On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 9:27:56 AM UTC+1, Dima Pasechnik wrote:


On Thu, 30 Jan 2020, 08:09 Jean-François Ingenbleek, <jinge...@gmail.com> wrote:
indeed

Norton/McAfee/Symantec antivirus or antispyware

is running.

Wait, which is it?  Both?  All of these have potential to interfere in unusual ways with unsigned open-source software (which many virus scanners attack as "evil").  Having multiple virus scanners installed is highly discouraged as they are likely to interfere even with each other.
 
and now what should i do?

Please check that it is indeed the problem.
Disable it and check whether it fixes the issue.

For starters, please only install security software that you're sure you actually need.  For virus scanners, most allow you to configure exceptions.  For example, please create an exception for the SageMath installation directory, as well as any LaTeX distributions you have installed.

 
My warning is not potentially wrong: a user under windows8 with Mcaffee is not able to use sagemath9, no patch known to date, it is a fact that it is better to know to not lose his time

Maybe, but no one has confirmed yet what the actual problem is, so it's not helpful to make broad pronouncements that may not apply to most users.  I've seen at most 2 other reports of this issue so it clearly isn't just you, but please let the software developers make pronouncements like this if/when we have full information.

 
it is a wonder in itself that 8.9 worked with Mcaffee installed and running.

It's not always a problem.  I haven't seen too many problems with McAffee interfering with Cygwin programs.  Avast is much worse.  But I haven't done a comprehensive review of how different virus scanners affect Sage/Cygwin.  Perhaps I should install them one by one in a VM and see but it's time I don't have.  I would like to have comprehensive instructions for how to add path exceptions for different virus scanners.


For those not following the GitHub issue, I managed to reproduce the problem: https://github.com/sagemath/sage-windows/issues/42#issuecomment-580268035

As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with virus scanners, and instead impacts users of the texlive LaTeX distribution for Windows.  I was previously using MiKTeX, which for some reason does not exhibit the same problem.  A workaround, pending a better solution, is to remove texlive from your $PATH environment variable when running Sage.  It shouldn't be necessary to do this every time, I don't think.  Just once so that matplotlib can regenerate its font cache. 

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Jean-François Ingenbleek

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Feb 2, 2020, 8:11:16 AM2/2/20
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i removed 

C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\;

 and it seems to work now!

Big thank you!
 
But now we have to manage the incompatibility with Miktex ...
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