[Chimera-users] "Floating exception" error message

[Greg Couch]

We compile a little bit of fortran code for chimera, and so far, we have 
not had any problems substituting gfortran for g77.  But I understand your 
reluctance.  For chimera, we use a newer version of gcc than what comes 
with the system by compiling our own from source and giving the 
"--prefix=/home/chimera" configuration option.  Then users, who wish to 
use that compiler, put ~chimera/bin into the PATH environment variable and 
~chimera/lib into the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.  You could do 
something similar to check if the new compiler is really a problem or not 
before upgrading.  You could also upgrade Linux and install an older 
compiler in a similar fashion.

 	- Greg

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, hsosa at aecom.yu.edu wrote:

>> I would also expect upgrading to the current SUSE Linux to fix the problem.
>
> One thing (not particularly related to Chimera) that is preventing us to 
> upgrade the system, is the risk of breaking other programs. In a particular 
> the newer versions of Linux come without G77 (Fortran 77 compiler) and come 
> with the newer "better" G90 compiler. I suspect a big headache when trying to 
> compile old Fortran coded programs that we still use.
>
> Greg Couch wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Dong-Yan Tan wrote:
>>
>> 
>>> Dear all,
>>> 
>>> We have just installed chimera-1.2470-linux.exe in our Linux computer
>>> (SUSE LINUX 9.0 ). We keep getting error message "Floating exeptions" when
>>> we are just trying to open a PDB file and the program quits automatically.
>>> Has anyone encountered such a problem or have clues about where to look
>>> for solutions? Thanks a lot.
>>> 
>>> Dong-Yan
>>> 
>> 
>> This sounds like a Linux kernel bug or C library bug.  Please make sure 
>> that you have applied all of the recommended patches to your SUSE system 
>> (use the yast program to update it).  In particular, there is a security 
>> patch related to floating point exceptions, that should be applied 
>> (<http://www.novell.com/linux/security/advisories/2004_17_kernel.html>). 
>> It's not clear if that patch will fix the problem, so please apply the 
>> rest.
>> 
>> I would also expect upgrading to the current SUSE Linux to fix the problem.
>>
>>  	Good luck,
>>
>>  	Greg Couch
>>  	UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
>> _______________________________________________
>> Chimera-users mailing list
>> Chimera-users at cgl.ucsf.edu
>> http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users
>> 
>>
>> 
>
> -- 
> -----------------------------------
> Hernando Sosa
> Dept. of Physiology and Biophysics
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine
> 1300 Morris Park Av.
> Bronx NY 10461
> phone	(718) 430-3456
> FAX	(718) 430-8819
> email	hsosa at aecom.yu.edu
> -----------------------------------
>
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