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Hi Bill, re: > I'm trying to utilize some obsolete laptops my department has so > students have some Mcidas machines to take storm chasing in June--a > Gateway 450 something is the current problem. It is only capable of > handling 512Mb RAM. I got Fedora 10 and Mcidas built, but Mcidas hangs > on the initiation widget--back and forth back and forth, no text or > graphics window. Was there no error/warning messages in the Xterm/terminal window from which you launched McIDAS? > If I try 'mcidas config' I get a segmentation fault > (no other error message). This is very strange. 'mcidas config' will run the Tcl/Tk GUI configurator for McIDAS. At this point, McIDAS itself is not be run at all, so the amount of memory you have your system configured with should have no effect. > I've made the appropriate changes for IPCS What changes? > and just wonder, am I up against a memory limit, since the IPCS segments > are 512M also? No, I don't think so. I run McIDAS inside a VMware player virtual machine that is configured with 512 MB of memory on my Acer Aspire One netbook that is running Windows XP as the host OS, and I have no problems in Fedora (8|10), OpenSUSE 10.(2|3), or Ubuntu 7.4. I would be very surprised, therefore, if the small amount of RAM is the real cause of the problem on your laptop(s). Questions: - how many colors is the Display configured to use? - are the machines configured with ample swap space? - have you taken care to turn off all OS services that are not absolutely necessary? (to save on memory use) Swap may be a big issue given the small amount of RAM. Without being able to poke around on one of the machines, I don't have a good idea of why 'mcidas config' would cause a segmentation violation. Would it be possible for you to put one of the machines having the problem on the net and give me the login info for 'mcidas'? If yes, please send the password ** by itself ** in an email to address@hidden. In a separate email, please send the fully qualified name or IP address of the machine ** with no mention of the account or password **. Cheers, Tom -- **************************************************************************** Unidata User Support UCAR Unidata Program (303) 497-8642 P.O. Box 3000 address@hidden Boulder, CO 80307 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unidata HomePage http://www.unidata.ucar.edu **************************************************************************** Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: PJS-787763 Department: Support McIDAS Priority: Normal Status: Closed