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Maya Hypershade System Freeze on Linux

I know this is a very general question

But anybody who has been using Maya under Linux for a few years would have seen this crop up.

Occasionally connecting nodes together in the Maya Hypershade causes the system to be unresponsive.

Does anybody have a good idea of what is going on relating to:

  • Double Buffering XOrg
  • NVidia Driver versions
  • General OS configuration including Kernel Modules

Or is there a general Voodoo dance work around: ie open close, minimise maximise, wait 3 seconds?

This is starting to be a hassle for someone here at work.

Sam

Add comment viewed 336 times Latest activity 7 months ago

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julian
-

I don’t have an answer, but I experienced that with RH/fedora. Never with Suse. It noticed it would happen when I would shift drag a node to another in the dependency graph. It would hang before the connection editor popped up.

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3 answers

  • 1

paul nendick [ Editor ]

Hello Sam,

I've not familiar with this particular problem per se, but I can share some best-practices learnt the bloody hard way making Maya behave itself on Linux. First rule of Maya-on-Linux Club: Maya is a complete slut and wants all of your system's resources to itself. So the best plan for getting things working smoothly is to to cave and give Maya an absolute minimalist environment in which to stomp, snort and be generally boorish. That said:

  • Use the latest NVIDIA drivers. If you're using an ATI card, buy an NVIDIA Quadro then use the latest NVIDIA drivers.

  • If you run KDE, look in the bottom-right corner of the desktop for a clipboard icon called 'Klipper' and kill it. Kill it with fire. This is the most insidious trouble maker for Maya on Linux. It's responsible for heaps of Maya segfaults stemming from interfering with Maya's fragile clipboard implementation. Even better advice: don't use KDE at all and switch to something like OpenBox for your Window Manager.

  • If you run GNOME, be certain to turn off all the swishy 'Desktop Effects' that come with Compiz. These all use OpenGL and tend to fight with Maya's desire to do what-it-wants in your frame buffers, bedroom, etc. Second, open the gconf-editor for Gnome and set /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/a11y-keyboard/active to false (thanks for finding that Fred!) This is is the setup we use where I work and it's been quite stable. Even better advice: don't use Gnome at all and switch to something like OpenBox for your Window Manager.

  • Use something like OpenBox for your Window Manager.

  • Be suspicious of Wacom drivers. They're working a treat for us now but they are notorious for wreaking havoc on others' Linux systems for years now. Good rule is to disable the Wacom settings in your Xorg.conf when you don't really need it.

Regards,

Paul

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  • 1

profilespinkwerks

I used to have this problem. Without knowing for sure I believe this problem is related to maya locking when it tries display an overlay plane. This happens in the hypershade when you drag plugs or drag and drop file textures. I've seen this behavior with the hypershade and the hotbox. Basically it steals the xserver input and a top will show you Xorg going nuts.

If it does lock up you need to remote login and kill maya to get control back of your X server.

Anyway after much trial and error I've arrived at a golden age of maya stability. Using the 185 series NVIDIA drivers along with these options in xorg.conf for a couple years now without problems.

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "fbdevhw"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "record"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "type1"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier     "Videocard0"
        Driver         "nvidia"
        VendorName     "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName      "NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400"
        Option          "CIOverlay" "On"
        Option          "UseEvents" "True"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option      "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection
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  • 0

olivier gagnon [ Editor ]

For testing purpose, try to add the "System Monitor" CPU usage in your panel to look at at your CPU. Also add a sensor applet to watch your temperatures and fans activities.

Most of the time, graphics problems are related to drivers/libraries issues. Specially with AMD CPUs, if the video card is not handled properly, it will tend to go hot because the instructions are going to it instead of the video card. Specially with an ATI card.

If your CPU and temperatures are OK and it still hangs, there's a faulty module loaded. Since you did not give your peripherals, I cannot say.

As you said, it seems to only happen when you do the same thing. Is everything frozen ? Can you ALT+CTRL+FX to a console ?

Finally, the "easiest" answer could be a RAM problem so you should do a memtest.

Even if Maya does something that the system "doesn't like", only Maya should hang so you can kill it. It is not Windows. That's why I'm pretty sure it's a lower layer problem (drivers, hardware, etc).

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