Hi, I am having some problems with Athena. I reformatted my hard drive the other day (windows XP Pro), and downloaded Athena etc. After installing the programs, they work fine. However, once I download the updates, Athena refuses to work. I try to open the program and all I get a black command-style box filled with odd words/text. I do not have a virus (first thing I checked), and all the updated versions of the other programs all work fine (e.g. Artemis, Hephaestus). I just wanted to check if anyone else has ever had this problem? Alistair "SRC provides Smart Science Solutions" This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended only for the named recipients and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please do not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail without the consent of the sender.
Hi Alistair, Once, I had the same problem you reported. After downloading the update (ifup_15.zip file) and decompressing it I noticed the installation was succesful. When opening Athena (or Artemis) only the black command screen appeared. I went to the following path (C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Temp\par-your_username) and deleted the content of that folder. After that, everything worked fine! Cheers, Fabio. At 04:11 PM 6/6/2005, you wrote:
Hi, I am having some problems with Athena. I reformatted my hard drive the other day (windows XP Pro), and downloaded Athena etc. After installing the programs, they work fine. However, once I download the updates, Athena refuses to work. I try to open the program and all I get a black command-style box filled with odd words/text. I do not have a virus (first thing I checked), and all the updated versions of the other programs all work fine (e.g. Artemis, Hephaestus).
I just wanted to check if anyone else has ever had this problem?
Alistair
"SRC provides Smart Science Solutions"
This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended only for the named recipients and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please do not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail without the consent of the sender.
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Hi folks, Alistair said:
I am having some problems with Athena. I reformatted my hard drive the other day (windows XP Pro), and downloaded Athena etc. After installing the programs, they work fine. However, once I download the updates, Athena refuses to work. I try to open the program and all I get a black command-style box filled with odd words/text. I do not have a virus (first thing I checked), and all the updated versions of the other programs all work fine (e.g. Artemis, Hephaestus).
Then Fabio said:
Once, I had the same problem you reported. After downloading the update (ifup_15.zip file) and decompressing it I noticed the installation was succesful. When opening Athena (or Artemis) only the black command screen appeared. I went to the following path (C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Temp\par-your_username) and deleted the content of that folder. After that, everything worked fine!
Then I went searching for the source of this problem. I am not thrilled about what I found. First things first. If you have not observed this problem, great! Hopefully you won't. If you are seeing this problem, try Fabio's suggestion. If that still doesn't help, try downloading this executable: http://leonardo.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/misc/athena+artemis/athena.exe That may improve the situation. I should mention that, in the course of tracking down the reported problem, I found and fixed a bug that may cause odd behavior when importing an Athena project file on Windows (but which does not seem to be a problem on linux). Now on to the issue at hand. I'll explain this as bullet points: * I am now using a tool called PAR (http://par.perl.org/index.cgi) to create Windows executables. I switched to this from PerlApp (http://www.activestate.com/Products/Perl_Dev_Kit/) because it is free. I could see no reason that I or my boss should purchase a software product that no one in my research group needs. * A PAR executable is actually a self-extracting, self-executing zip file. It extracts itself to a cache folder in "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\par-username". * Each of these cache folders is about 6.4 megabytes. By default they do *not* get cleaned up once you quit the application. (That was news to me. I did not know that until this afternoon!) As you use Athena, Artemis, and Hephaestus, you build up a mighty collection of 6.4 MB folders. * PAR has a compiler flag for cleaning up the cache. Doing so does not work well with Athena. That is, if I use the clean-up flag, Athena cannot read project files. At this time I see no way to reconcile those two facts. * I cannot include code in Athena to clean up the cache folder before it exits. Windows does not allow a program to delete a file it is currently using. At this time, I would say that my software is behaving like a slow but nasty virus in that it is slowly filling up your hard disk with useless stuff. The best work-around I can suggest at this time is that you occassionally delete "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\par-username", as Fabio suggested. I can see a couple ways for this situation to be resolved. 1. The batch files used to launch the codes could be rewritten to clean up PAR's caches. That should work. Windows prevent's Athena from cleaning up the cache, but doing so at the level of the batch file should work. 2. Someone could volunteer to buy me a copy of PerlApp and then I'll go back to using it rather than PAR. I should say that I am very busy this month and will not have a lot of time to spend on this problem. Indeed, it's not a very pressing problem to me since the Windows versions of the codes are something I provide only as a service to many of you. I am not a Windows user myself. This whole situation really underscores the need for someone who cares about these codes and who is a Windows user to step forward and help out with these packaging issues. Matt and I have made many requests over the past year for help with the software on Windows and we have been repeatedly disappointed. Windows users have been relying on Matt and I to continue providing a high level of support for a system that neither of us understands well or enjoys supporting. At some point, our patience is liable to run dry. Indeed, at some point one or both of us are likely to just through up our hands and say "fuck it." That would probably not be in the interests of those of you using Windows. B -- Bruce Ravel ----------------------------------- bravel@anl.gov -or- ravel@phys.washington.edu Environmental Research Division, Building 203, Room E-165 Argonne National Laboratory phone and voice mail: (1) 630 252 5033 Argonne IL 60439, USA fax: (1) 630 252 9793 My homepage: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel EXAFS software: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/exafs/
Hi Bruce and Matt, I've just spent a few hours trying to track down a bug that showed up in one of my complicated Artemis files. I've boiled it down to the point where I can make it happen in one of the example files, although of course in this context it looks a little pointless. At any rate, take Ifeffit/examples/Artemis/Cu/oneshell.apj, and change the sigma2 for path 1 to: (1)*sigsqr + signor*(1) and run a fit. For me, that generates the ifeffit message: path(1, sigma2 = (1)*sigsqr + signor*(1)) syntax error: (1)*sigsqr)+signor*((1) parentheses not used properly and causes a sigma2 of 0 to be used. Artemis doesn't report any error; you have to look in the ifeffit buffer or notice that you're getting a funny value of sigma2 (i.e. 0) assigned to path 1. Now change the sigma2 to read: (1)*sigsqr + signor*(1)*1 and everything works fine. Weird, huh? I'm using Artemis 0.7.015 and ifeffit 1.2.7 on Windows XP. --Scott Calvin Sarah Lawrence College
Hi Scott, Yep, that is an ifeffit error. It turns out to be specific to math expressions in path() commands, but it is definitely a bug. It seems that a math expression for a path parameter that starts with '(' and ends with ')' and for which these '(' and ')' are not a matched pair will incorrectly raise a syntax error. This doesn't happen for set() or def(). I think this is an historical accident (that is it got fixed a long time ago for set() and def() and never got fixed for path()). It seems easy to fix, though I should probably test it carefully, and I don't know that I'll have Windows dlls soon. It also seems easy to work around. Let me know if it isn't. Anyway, thanks!! --Matt On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Scott Calvin wrote:
Hi Bruce and Matt,
I've just spent a few hours trying to track down a bug that showed up in one of my complicated Artemis files. I've boiled it down to the point where I can make it happen in one of the example files, although of course in this context it looks a little pointless.
At any rate, take Ifeffit/examples/Artemis/Cu/oneshell.apj, and change the sigma2 for path 1 to:
(1)*sigsqr + signor*(1)
and run a fit.
For me, that generates the ifeffit message:
path(1, sigma2 = (1)*sigsqr + signor*(1)) syntax error: (1)*sigsqr)+signor*((1) parentheses not used properly
and causes a sigma2 of 0 to be used. Artemis doesn't report any error; you have to look in the ifeffit buffer or notice that you're getting a funny value of sigma2 (i.e. 0) assigned to path 1.
Now change the sigma2 to read:
(1)*sigsqr + signor*(1)*1
and everything works fine. Weird, huh?
I'm using Artemis 0.7.015 and ifeffit 1.2.7 on Windows XP.
--Scott Calvin Sarah Lawrence College _______________________________________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit
Thanks, Matt. Yes, I've been working around it by just adding "+0" to path expressions that end in a parentheses. I hadn't quite figured out that it required starting with a non-matched parentheses to trigger the error; it's good to know exactly what circumstances cause it to arise. A suggestion for Bruce--ifeffit flags these kinds of syntax errors pretty well. Is it possible for Artemis to look at the ifeffit output and alert the user to examine the iffefit output if there is an error? --Scott Calvin Sarah Lawrence College At 09:33 AM 6/7/2005 -0500, you wrote:
Hi Scott,
Yep, that is an ifeffit error. It turns out to be specific to math expressions in path() commands, but it is definitely a bug. It seems that a math expression for a path parameter that starts with '(' and ends with ')' and for which these '(' and ')' are not a matched pair will incorrectly raise a syntax error. This doesn't happen for set() or def().
On Tuesday 07 June 2005 11:13, Scott Calvin wrote:
A suggestion for Bruce--ifeffit flags these kinds of syntax errors pretty well. Is it possible for Artemis to look at the ifeffit output and alert the user to examine the iffefit output if there is an error?
One of the features new to ifeffit 1.2.7 is a scalar flag, &status, that gets set to something other than 0 when something bad happens. Matt added this so there would be an easy way for A&A to know when an error was encountered. I have not yet implemented any functionality surrounding &status, but it's on the list of things to do. B -- Bruce Ravel ----------------------------------- bravel@anl.gov -or- ravel@phys.washington.edu Environmental Research Division, Building 203, Room E-165 Argonne National Laboratory phone: (1) 630 252 5033 Argonne IL 60439, USA fax: (1) 630 252 9793 My homepage: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel EXAFS software: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/exafs/
participants (6)
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Bruce Ravel -
Fabio Furlan Ferreira -
Matt Newville -
McCready, Alistair -
Scott Calvin -
Scott Calvin