Hi Bruce, The output from 'denv' is below. Thanks, George Demeter 0.9.18 with perl 5.014002 on linux using Ifeffit 1.2.11d Major modules version ================================================== Ifeffit ....................... 3.0.1 Moose ......................... 2.1005 MooseX::Aliases ............... 0.11 MooseX::Singleton ............. 0.29 MooseX::Types ................. 0.38 Archive::Zip .................. 1.30 Capture::Tiny ................. 0.23 Chemistry::Elements ........... 1.07 Config::INI ................... 0.021 Const::Fast ................... 0.014 DateTime ...................... 1.03 Graph ......................... 0.96 Graphics::GnuplotIF ........... 1.7 Math::Round ................... 0.06 Pod::POM ...................... 0.28 PDL ........................... 2.007 PDL::Stats .................... 0.6.3 Regexp::Assemble .............. 0.35 Regexp::Common ................ 2011121001 Heap::Fibonacci ............... 0.80 String::Random ................ 0.22 Text::Template ................ 1.45 Tree::Simple .................. 1.22 YAML::Tiny .................... 1.50 On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 8:48 AM, Bruce Ravel wrote:

On 10/27/2013 02:43 PM, George Sterbinsky wrote:

...

Hello,

I am writing to report a crash of Athena 0.9.18 running on Ubuntu 12.04 as a virtual machine. The terminal output is below. Let me know if I can provide any additional information.

At the command line, type "denv" and capture the output.

I am worried that your virtual machine has a very old version of perl or perhaps an old version of something Demeter depends upon. The error message seems really surprising to me....

B

-- Bruce Ravel ------------------------------**------ bravel@bnl.gov

National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Science Group at NSLS --- Beamlines U7A, X24A, X23A2 Building 535A Upton NY, 11973

Homepage: http://xafs.org/BruceRavel Software: https://github.com/bruceravel ______________________________**_________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.**gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.**gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffithttp://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit

Hi Bruce, I checked the demeter.ini file and nor1 is set to 150. In fact, I don't see any values ending in a trailing decimal point in this file. I have found however that I can reliably crash Athena by opening up a project, and trying to manually type a value (seemingly any value) for the start of the normalization range. Thanks, George On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 10:47 AM, Bruce Ravel wrote:

Hi George,

I now know what is causing the problem. For one of the main libraries that Demeter depends upon that, your computer has a version that is actually ahead of any of my computers. One of the things that library does is manage parameters, including type constraints. That means that it does early checking that, for example, a numerica parameter is being set to a numeric value.

A recent version of that library changed its definition of what constitutes a number.

Apparently, your initialization file (~/.horae/demeter.ini) has a value for the default of the lower bound of the normalization range of "15.". That value, with the trailing dot, is causing the problem. That is, I can replicate your problem by setting that parameter to that value.

I know how to fix Demeter to do the right thing given the current state of that library and such a perfectly reasonable numeric value as "15." That fix will make it into the next release.

The immediate work-around is to edit the file ~/.horae/demeter.ini and search for this section:

[bkg] e0_fraction = 0.5 spl2 = 0 nor2 = -100 clamp2 = 24 e0 = derivative kwindow = hanning pre1 = -150 dk = 0 fnorm = true nor1 = 150 nnorm = 3 kw = 2 nclamp = 5 spl1 = 0.0 clamp1 = 0 rbkg = 1.0 flatten = true pre2 = -30

You will have a line like

nor1 = 15.

Edit that to read

nor1 = 15

and try restarting Athena. If you get a similar error message, search through that section or elsewhere in the .ini file for numeric values that have a trailing dot.

Thanks for finding and reporting this!

B

-- Bruce Ravel ------------------------------**------ bravel@bnl.gov

National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Science Group at NSLS --- Beamlines U7A, X24A, X23A2 Building 535A Upton NY, 11973

Homepage: http://xafs.org/BruceRavel Software: https://github.com/bruceravel ______________________________**_________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.**gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.**gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffithttp://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit

Hi George, I spent some time on airplanes this week working on this problem, which proved to be deeper than I originally thought. I think I have a solution that will work (as opposed to last week's solution that didn't work!) but I need to do some more testing because the solution touches a surprisingly large number of Demeter's source files. Since your original question was about Demeter on a linux machine, I'll post to the list when you can pull the fix from github and rebuild Demeter on your machine. B On 10/28/2013 01:25 PM, George Sterbinsky wrote:

Hi Bruce,

I checked the demeter.ini file and nor1 is set to 150. In fact, I don't see any values ending in a trailing decimal point in this file.

I have found however that I can reliably crash Athena by opening up a project, and trying to manually type a value (seemingly any value) for the start of the normalization range.

Thanks, George

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 10:47 AM, Bruce Ravel mailto:bravel@bnl.gov> wrote:

Hi George,

I now know what is causing the problem. For one of the main libraries that Demeter depends upon that, your computer has a version that is actually ahead of any of my computers. One of the things that library does is manage parameters, including type constraints. That means that it does early checking that, for example, a numerica parameter is being set to a numeric value.

A recent version of that library changed its definition of what constitutes a number.

Apparently, your initialization file (~/.horae/demeter.ini) has a value for the default of the lower bound of the normalization range of "15.". That value, with the trailing dot, is causing the problem. That is, I can replicate your problem by setting that parameter to that value.

I know how to fix Demeter to do the right thing given the current state of that library and such a perfectly reasonable numeric value as "15." That fix will make it into the next release.

The immediate work-around is to edit the file ~/.horae/demeter.ini and search for this section:

[bkg] e0_fraction = 0.5 spl2 = 0 nor2 = -100 clamp2 = 24 e0 = derivative kwindow = hanning pre1 = -150 dk = 0 fnorm = true nor1 = 150 nnorm = 3 kw = 2 nclamp = 5 spl1 = 0.0 clamp1 = 0 rbkg = 1.0 flatten = true pre2 = -30

You will have a line like

nor1 = 15.

Edit that to read

nor1 = 15

and try restarting Athena. If you get a similar error message, search through that section or elsewhere in the .ini file for numeric values that have a trailing dot.

Thanks for finding and reporting this!

B

-- Bruce Ravel ------------------------------__------ bravel@bnl.gov mailto:bravel@bnl.gov

National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Science Group at NSLS --- Beamlines U7A, X24A, X23A2 Building 535A Upton NY, 11973

Homepage: http://xafs.org/BruceRavel Software: https://github.com/bruceravel _________________________________________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.__gov mailto:Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.__gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit

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-- Bruce Ravel ------------------------------------ bravel@bnl.gov National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Science Group at NSLS --- Beamlines U7A, X24A, X23A2 Building 535A Upton NY, 11973 Homepage: http://xafs.org/BruceRavel Software: https://github.com/bruceravel