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Troubleshooting

The OOMMF developers rely on reports from OOMMF users to alert them to problems with the software and its documentation, and to guide the selection and implementation of new features. See the Credits for instructions on how to contact the OOMMF developers.

The more complete your report, the fewer followup messages will be required to determine the cause of your problem. Usually when a problem arises there is an error message produced by the OOMMF software. A stack trace may be offered that reveals more detail about the error. When reporting an error, it will help the developers diagnose the problem if users cut and paste into their problem report the error message and stack trace exactly as reported by OOMMF software. In addition, please include a copy of the output generated by tclsh oommf.tcl +platform so that the OOMMF developers will know the details of your platform configuration.

Before making a report to the OOMMF developers, please check the following list of fixes for known problems:

When compiling, there is an error about being unable to open system header files like stdlib.h, time.h, math.h, or system libraries and related program startup code. This usually indicates a bad compiler installation. If you running on Windows and building with the the Microsoft Visual C++ command line compiler, did you remember to run vcvars32.bat to set up the necessary environment variables? If you are using the Borland C++ compiler, are the bcc32.cfg and ilink32.cfg files properly configured? In all cases, check carefully any notes in the chapter Advanced Installation pertaining to your compiler.
When compiling, there is an error something like:
```
<30654> pimake 1.x.x.x MakeRule panic:
Don't know how to make '/usr/include/tcl.h'
```
This means the header file tcl.h is missing from your Tcl installation. Other missing header files might be tk.h from the Tk installation, or Xlib.h from an X Window System installation on Unix. In order to compile OOMMF, you need to have the development versions of Tcl, Tk, and (if needed) X installed. The way to achieve that is platform-dependent. On Windows you do not need an X installation, but when you install Tcl/Tk be sure to request a ``full'' installation, or one with ``header and library files''. On Linux, be sure to install developer packages (for example, the XFree86-devel RPM) as well as user packages. Other platforms are unlikely to have this problem. In the case of Xlib.h, it is also possible that the tkConfig.sh file has an incorrect entry for TK_XINCLUDES. A workaround for this is to add the following line to your oommf/config/cache/platform file:
```
$config SetValue TK_XINCLUDES "-I/usr/X11R6/include"
```
Adjust the include directory as appropriate for your system.
When compiling, there is an error indicating that exceptions are not supported.
Parts of OOMMF are written in C++, and exceptions have been part of the C++ language for many years. If your compiler does not support them, it is time to upgrade to one that does. OOMMF 1.2 requires a compiler capable of compiling source code which uses C++ exceptions.
Compiling with gcc/egcs produces syntax errors on lines involving auto_ptr templates.
This is known to occur on RedHat 5.2 systems. The auto_ptr definition in the system STL header file memory (located on RedHat 5.2 systems in the directory /usr/include/g++) is disabled by two #if statements. One solution is to edit this file to turn off the #if checks. If you do this, you will also have to fix two small typos in the definition of the release() member function.
When compiling there is an error message arising from system include directories being too early in the include search path. Try adding the offending directories to the program_compiler_c++_system_include_path property in the platform cache file, e.g.,
```
$config SetValue program_compiler_c++_system_include_path \
      [list /usr/include /usr/local/include]
```
On Solaris, gcc reports many errors like
ANSI C++ forbids declaration `XSetTransientForHint' with no type

On many Solaris systems, the header files for the X Window System are not ANSI compliant, and gcc complains about that. To work around this problem, edit the file oommf/config/cache/solaris.tcl to add the option -fpermissive to the gcc command line.
On Windows, when first starting oommf.tcl, there is an error:
```
Error launching mmLaunch version 1.x.x.x:
	couldn't execute "...\omfsh.exe": invalid argument
```
This cryptic message most likely means that the pre-compiled OOMMF binaries which were downloaded are for a different version of Tcl/Tk than is installed on your system. Download OOMMF again, taking care this time to retrieve the binaries that match the release of Tcl/Tk you have installed.
When first starting oommf.tcl, there is an error:
Error in startup script: Neither Omf_export nor Omf_export_list set in

The file oommf/ext/net/omfExport.tcl may be missing from your OOMMF installation. If necessary, download and install OOMMF again.
When launching multiple OOMMF applications on Windows 9X, there is an error:
couldn't open socket: no buffer space available
OOMMF uses network sockets for communications between its various components. On Windows 9X, the socket resources are limited, and most OOMMF applications use several sockets. The only workaround is to close unneeded OOMMF applications, and any other applications that may be using network resources. The system command line utility netstat can be used to monitor network communications. This problem does not arise on Windows NT or Unix systems.
In the Cygwin environment on Windows there is an warning like:
```
Tcl version mismatch:
        C:/Cygwin/lib/tclConfig.sh from 8.0p2
        Running Tcl 8.0.4
```
This is caused by broken tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh files in the Cygwin distribution. You may ignore the warning, or edit the tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh files to change the TCL_PATCH_LEVEL and TK_PATCH_LEVEL values from ``p2'' to ``.4''. However, the best option is to upgrade Tcl/Tk. The stock Tcl/Tk 8.4.1 (and presumably later) release works in Cygwin.
I ran out of memory!
Are you using mmGraph to monitor a long-running simulation? All data sent to mmGraph is kept in memory by default. See the mmGraph documentation for information on how to manage this problem.

OOMMF Documentation Team
October 30, 2002