Starting ECCE FAQ
I'm trying to run ECCE remotely from another machine, but nothing shows up on my display. Why?
Why do the ECCE user interfaces sometimes display improper colors making them unreadable?
Why do the ECCE user interfaces all look messed up?
Why am I having problems displaying graphics in ECCE from a PC using Exceed3D?
Question: Why can't I run some ECCE applications on an SGI displaying to a Sun console as an X server and vice versa?
Answer: ECCE visualization applications such as Builder and Calculation Viewer rely on OpenGL. OpenGL is a networked graphics library similar to X so that the OpenGL implementation of the console you are running on is responsible for the display. Unfortunately the SGI and Sun implementations are not compatible so you cannot sit at an SGI console and run the graphics applications on a Sun or vice versa. This is true only if you are using hardware graphics. If you use a software implementation of OpenGL (via X windows), it will work. The drawbacks to this solution are that the performance is much slower and special software licensing is required. ECCE currently does not support software rendering due to these drawbacks.
Question: I'm sitting at a Sun console and am remotely logged into another Sun machine, but ECCE fails to run. Why?
Answer: Solaris users must use the distribution of ECCE built for their hardware graphics capability. There are two versions: one for the Creator3D hardware board and one for Template Graphics software. At this time only the Creator3D version is being released. Therefore the problem will show up when logging in remotely to a machine with Creator3D graphics but trying to display on a Sun without the Creator3D board. A message resembling "fatal: relocation error: symbol not found: glXIsOverlayTGS" indicates that the user is displaying on a non-Creator 3D machine.
Question: I'm trying to run ECCE remotely from another machine, but nothing shows up on my display. Why?
Answer: Most likely the remote machine is not authorized to display to the local console. ECCE, like other X windows applications, when executed on a different machine than the machine being used for the display (such as via telnet) requires the user to issue a "xhost +" command on the display machine for it to accept non-local X clients.
Question: Why do the ECCE user interfaces sometimes display improper colors making them unreadable?
Answer: This commonly occurs when ECCE is run at the same time as other colormap intensive applications (e.g. netscape without the "-install" option). Coloring all locations may result in unreadable text, garbled pixmaps, etc. If possible, exit out of any unnecessary applications freeing up X windows colormap entries. Much work has gone into making ECCE conserve colors. However other applications that display graphics beyond the control of the application (e.g. web pages) allocate many more colors exhausting the colormap.
Question: Why do the ECCE user interfaces all look messed up?
Answer: In rare case there may be conflicts between ECCE X Window resources and a user's X resources. Make sure known conflicting entries do not appear in ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources using the following shell command: egrep "borderContext|borderWidth" ~/.Xdefaults ~/.Xresources. Remove any conflicting resources.
Question: Why am I having problems displaying graphics in ECCE from a PC using Exceed3D?
Answer: If you run ECCE from a PC using Exceed3D, you will not be able to generate images at your desktop. We have tested versions 6.0 and 6.1 and neither of them work. If you need access to a Unix box to generate the images, the machines in the EMSL Graphics and Visualization Lab can be used. Send account requests to mscf-consulting@emsl.pnl.gov.