building NEURON on OSX 10.4 against X11

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:22 pm

I have been attempting to build NEURON 6.0.4 on MacOSX 10.4.10 (Intel) against X11. Although I was able to compile InterViews and NEURON successfully, running nrngui does not pop up the graphical menu bar (nrniv does start and displays its command-line prompt, however). Apart from a complaint regarding the default font, no error messages are printed. What could be wrong? I have confirmed that the DISPLAY variable is properly set and that X11 is running.

Post by **hines** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:49 pm

I haven't tried building with X11 on a mac for some years. Did you launch from an xterm or from a Terminal window? I'd expect the former to work properly.
What configuration lines did you use to configure InterViews and nrn?
Just curious-- where did you get X11?
If you continue to have problems I can
install x11 on my machine and see if I can
get NEURON working in that mode.

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:44 pm

I used the X11 development files and display server provided by Apple. The former are included with Xcode and the latter is available on the MacOSX 10.4 installation DVD and/or online (I am using version 1.1.3 of the latter; there may be more than one version available online).

I tried launching nrngui from xterm and from a Terminal window with the same results (i.e., the command prompt starts, but no menubar appears).

Here are the configuration lines I used when building the software (parent directory obviously generalized).

For InterViews:
./configure --prefix=/somewhere/iv --exec-prefix=/somewhere/iv --libdir=/somewhere/iv/lib --with-x

For NEURON:
./configure --prefix=/somewhere/neuron --exec-prefix=/somewhere/neuron --libdir=/somewhere/neuron/lib --with-x --with-iv=/somewhere/iv

(I have used these configuration settings on Linux without observing any GUI problems.)

Post by **hines** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:27 am

When I return from Woods Hole this weekend, I'll look for x11 in my
dvds and see what is necessary to make it work.

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 5:07 pm

Were you able to get it to work with x11?

Post by **hines** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:01 am

Sorry. Have just returned from another trip. Was not able to lay my hands on an installation dvd yet but hope to by the end of the week.

Post by **hines** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:34 pm

Found the dvd and to my surpise, when I tried to install it, X11 turned out to be already installed. For OS X 10.4 it must tag along with the xcode installation. Anyway, I do not experience a problem running the gui. I installed with

in neuron/ivx11
./configure --prefix=`pwd`
make
make install

in neuron/nrnx11
../nrn/configure --prefix=`pwd` --with-iv=$HOME/neuron/ivx11 --srcdir=../nrn
make -j 2
make -j 2 install

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin
startx&

and in the xterm that pops up...
$HOME/neuron/nrnx11/i386/bin/neurondemo
and the x11 windows that pop up work normally.

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:52 am

Thanks for looking into this.

When I built and installed iv/neuron in the manner you described, neither nrngui nor neurondemo displayed the menu interfaces after I started X11. This behavior was consistent regardless of whether I started X11 by clicking on X11.app in the Finder or started it with /usr/X11R6/bin/startx. When I tried accessing my Mac from a Linux box using ssh with X11 forwarding enabled, however, I was able to start nrngui on the Mac and get an interface on the Linux machine's screen. This seems to suggest that neuron is not connecting to the X11 server properly on the Mac, even though no X11 errors are printed and the X11 server is clearly up and running (as confirmed by my ability to run other X11-dependent programs without issue).

Any ideas as to how to debug this?

Post by **hines** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:35 pm

In the xterm that pops up when you do a
startx
what is the result of
echo $DISPLAY
what configure line did you use for iv and nrn (I hope the ones I mentioned in my previous email modulo the prefix)

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:51 pm

The DISPLAY variable is set to :0.0

I used the same configure options as you did with a prefix of /tmp/neuron

Post by **hines** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:31 pm

when you type
xclock&
in an xterm do you get a clock?

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:55 pm

Post by **hines** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:05 pm

Does anything appear on the screen if,
in the xterm, you execute iv/i386/bin/idemo

Post by **hines** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:14 pm

I forgot to mention. Make sure you
are using the latest sources from the svn repository or from http://www.neuron.yale.edu/ftp/neuron/versions/alpha/
and that includes the iv-17.tar.gz

If this problem persists those are the
sources that I will add debugging statements to.

avicenna · Post by **avicenna** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:27 pm

Although I configured, built, and installed iv as you previously described, I can't run idemo because its linking assumes that libUnidrawhines.3.dylib and libIVhines.3.dylib are located in /usr/lib. nrniv, however, correctly assumes that said libraries are where I installed them (i.e., in /tmp/neuron/i686/lib).

I will try building the latest iv and neuron code and let you know what I observe.