The bad X server connection errors you are getting are suspect. A pvserver that is properly using OSMesa should not ever attempt to connect to an X11 server.
>From your description, I don't know what could be going wrong there. You could try using ldd to make sure that pvserver is linking against all of the libraries you are expecting. You may also try running pvserver in a debugger to find out exactly where it is trying to open an X window. -Ken On 10/3/08 2:22 PM, "Tim Bowker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I am running paraview on a cluster with some success, however, it > seems incredibly slow and crashes often. The cluster has no graphics > hardware so I compiled and installed OSmesa, I then downloaded the > paraview CVS source and changed all open GL and mesa settings as per > the server wiki page. To circumvent firewall issues I ssh to the > cluster and start pvserver with the --use-offscreen-rendering flag. I > found I still got the bad X server connection message but this did not > lead to an immediate crash and although it was slow I could manipulate > everything up to a point (see below). Then, I downloaded and compiled > 3.2.3 and I no longer observe the bad X server connection error but it > still seems very slow and still crashes frequently. I have > successfully performed the test under 'Paraview does not scale' on the > server wiki page. I tried a 6M then 1M cell unstructured grid (ensight > file with one zone) containing a velocity vector and 4 other variables > running on various combinations up to 112 processors (14 nodes x 8 > processors per node & 8GB RAM per node) but it still seems slow. When > I look at the CPU load logs all processors are maxed out more that 95% > of the time. Typically my work flow is something as follows: > Import File > D3 > Extract Surface > Perform 2 clips on extracted surface > Add streamlines (this frequently causes a crash however coarse I make > the settings) > Make 1 of the clips opaque (almost always crashes) > Often it also hangs after viewer manipulation or even just upon > selection of a different filter. > > My questions: > Perhaps my expectations of the MESA library are too optimistic and > paraview really requires graphics hardware to run smoothly? > Has anyone got experience of which MPI library performs best? We have > openmpi gnu & intel, mpich2 & SCore and willing to install more :-) > Are there any benchmarks/tools that would give an indication of > whether the cluster is under performing / where the bottleneck is? > It's a new cluster and we don't have any software that we use > regularly with enough licences to test over all the cores. > On smaller grids on my desktop with a fairly recent graphics card the > serial paraview client zips along and does almost everything (see > below) I could wish for so I hope there are some tips out there to > improve the parallel performance. > > Second: > When I have a streamtrace with attached glyph can I control the glyph > seeding so that spheres are plotted at fixed time intervals along the > streamtrace i.e. in low velocity regions spheres are bunched up and > conversely spread out in high velocity regions. > > Thanks for reading this far and thanks in advance for any > comments/tips/solutions, > Tim > _______________________________________________ > ParaView mailing list > ParaView@paraview.org > http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview > > **** Kenneth Moreland *** Sandia National Laboratories *********** *** *** *** email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** *** ** phone: (505) 844-8919 *** fax: (505) 845-0833 _______________________________________________ ParaView mailing list ParaView@paraview.org http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
