OOF: Finite Element Analysis of Microstructures

Tips and Workarounds for Known Problems with OOF1

OOF says it's using 8-bit PseudoColor on my 24-bit TrueColor display

Your X-server is starting up in the wrong mode. The default isn't 24-bit TrueColor on SGI's unless you change the file /usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers. It should contain the single line 

:0 secure /usr/bin/X11/X -bs -nobitscale -c
   -depth 24 -class TrueColor
   -solidroot sgilightblue
   -cursorFG red -cursorBG white
or something of the sort. The crucial part is -depth 24 -class TrueColor. Your file probably says -pseudomap 4sight instead.

I don't understand adaptive meshing in PPM2OOF

See the PPM2OOF hints page.

The downloaded executables won't run, or the downloaded .goof files won't load.

For some reason, the compressed (gzipped) files sometimes lose their .gz suffix during transfer, but aren't uncompressed. Rename the file to restore the suffix (eg, mv oof oof.gz). If it's a compiled program, uncompress it with (gunzip oof.gz).

We've also heard of instances where the opposite happens: the downloaded files are automatically uncompressed by a browser, but the suffix isn't stripped off. In this case, all you have to do is to rename the file to remove the suffix.

To determine whether or not your browser uncompressed the downloaded file, compare the file size reported by ls -l to the (rough) size listed on the download page. The executable programs must be uncompressed. The .goof files and sample images can be used in either format, but if they have a .gz suffix they must be compressed. Once you're sure that you have the programs are uncompressed, make them executable with chmod +x programname.

When I try to run OOF on linux, it complains about missing libraries.

You have a different version of linux than we have, and the shared object libraries have different names. Try making a symbolic link from the library you have to the one OOF or PPM2OOF wants. For example, if OOF is missing libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3, but you have libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 in /usr/lib, cd to /usr/lib and run 

ln -s libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3
This is a bit kludgy, but it should work, as long as you don't have a completely different version of the library (for example, it probably won't work if you try to link to a libc earlier than 6.something).

If OOF is complaining about libblas, you just need to download it again. As of 10/19/99 the version on the web page doesn't need a local copy of the BLAS library on your computer.

I get error messages "switch quantity not an integer" when I try to compile OOF.

You're using GCC 2.96, which is not a stable release of the GNU compiler. However, as of source distribution 1.026, OOF should compile with GCC 2.96. Try again with an up-to-date version of OOF.

Ascii goof files do not load correctly.

You may have told your operating system that your preferred language is not American English, so the ascii files have been written using a comma instead of a period as the decimal point. This confuses OOF. The only workaround at the moment is to set your language to English when reading and writing the files. Future versions of the program will correct this.

OOF crashes when it reads .goof files.

If you're using a Linux system with gcc 2.96 installed (notably Red Hat 7.x), there seem to be library incompatibilities with our precompiled binaries. You'll have to compile the source code yourself. (We have a report that installing the Suse Linux versions of the blas, xforms, and compat libraries will also fix the problem, at least on an Alpha system. (We cannot confirm either that this works or that it is safe...))