What do I do if AFNI crashes?
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Q3. What to do if AFNI crashes?
Please try to duplicate the situation that creates the error. If possible, run AFNI with the "-TRACE" option so that it will tell where it is in the code when it dies. Then send me (rwcox@nih.gov) e-mail with the description of the problem and the output of "afni -TRACE". You may be asked to provide data files (e.g., BRIK and HEAD files) as well.
(N.B.: This internal tracing is disabled on the Solaris versions of AFNI, since it causes problems there for unknown reasons.)
An alternative to "-TRACE" is to start AFNI using the GNU debugger, run it to the crash point, then print out the stack trace:
gdb afni
> run
... do stuff until it crashes ...
> backtrace
> quit
This will help localize the problem, and may make it possible to
figure out what is going on.
Plugin problems:
Sometimes a problem occurs when you have multiple installations of
AFNI in your path. If this occurs, and you don't have
the environment variable AFNI_PLUGINPATH, then the plugin
startup code searches all directories in your path for plugins. If
there is an older version of AFNI somewhere in the path,
then its plugins will be loaded. However, an older plugin may not
be compatible with newer AFNIs, and then the plugin's
startup code may crash the whole program.
The solution to this plugin problem is to set correctly AFNI_PLUGINPATH. The procedure for doing this is described in Q53.
Memory problems (the computer's, not yours):
On some Linux systems, AFNI programs can fail with an error
message saying that "malloc failed" or "out of memory", even when
there is a lot of memory left on the system. This seems to be due
to a bad interaction between the Linux C library's
malloc() and mmap() functions when allocating
large chunks of memory (100+ Mbytes).
The solution to this problem is to set the environment variable AFNI_NOMMAP to YES; this can be done in your .cshrc, .profile, or .afnirc file, as appropriate for your configuration. See README.environment for more details on AFNI environment variables and how to set their values.
[Answer last changed 12 Nov 2001]
This FAQ applies to: Any version.
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