octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

[Wyser Klaus]

Hej---

I got a new computer in September and installed Cygwin/X11 and many more packages, among others Octave (I think it was 5.2 back then). I have been using cygwin and octave for 20 years already, so I'm not new to this. Well, everything worked just fine until I happened to update some cygwin packages in December, among others octave (to version 6.4). Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to what else was updated in that go, usually these regular updates (marked as "pending" in the setup) just work fine. Not this time though: octave is still working, but not the graphics output. When entering a command to plot something a figure window opens under X11, but it is just a copy of the background and doesn't show what I wanted to plot. Octave doesn't freeze, I can still work and do all the math stuff, it's just the plotting that doesn't work any longer. After some troubleshooting I found that it likely is a problem with the graphics_toolkit, I can make plots if I set it to "gnuplot" but get the problem when it is set to "qt" (which is the default).

So should I use "gnuplot" then? Well, that's not really an option because gnuplot doesn't allow interaction with the figure (rotating, zooming), and some of the more complicated plotting routines don't work properly any more (e.g. contour plots). 

First I suspected this being a problem of the Octave update, but apparently it's not the case. Even when going back to Octave 5.2 I still have the same problem with the figure window. Searching the Internet didn't help, so I wonder if I'm the only one having this problem with Octave? As said above, I don't know exactly what other Cygwin packages have been updated at the same time, so in principle it is possible that there is an incompatibility with some other packages (OpenGL?) that were updated at the same time, I tried reverting some libraries but it didn't help. I also tried to isolate the problem by installing a very limited Cygwin setup from scratch, basically only X11 and Octave, nothing else. I get the exact same error even with this very restricted setup.

When searching for help I also came across this page: https://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Microsoft_Windows There is a Windows version of Octave that can be installed independently from Cygwin (relying on mingw64 in my case) and that installation works well (including graphics). This is also a newer version of Octave (7.3) compared to the Cygwin package (6.4). The Windows installation is a fallback option, however, I cannot integrate it with my Cygwin environment which makes my workflows way more complicated and I would prefer to have an Octave package for Cygwin.

So my questions are:
- Am I the only one in the Cygwin/X11 community with this kind of Octave problem?
- Is there something I can do about it (OpenGL/Qt...)?
- Will there soon be a new Octave 7 release for Cygwin that hopefully solves all my problems?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

=====
Klaus Wyser
Rossby Centre
SMHI

Re: octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

[marco atzeri]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 3:32 PM Wyser Klaus via Cygwin  wrote:
>
> Hej---
>
> I got a new computer in September and installed Cygwin/X11 and many more packages, among others Octave (I think it was 5.2 back then). I have been using cygwin and octave for 20 years already, so I'm not new to this. Well, everything worked just fine until I happened to update some cygwin packages in December, among others octave (to version 6.4). Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to what else was updated in that go, usually these regular updates (marked as "pending" in the setup) just work fine. Not this time though: octave is still working, but not the graphics output. When entering a command to plot something a figure window opens under X11, but it is just a copy of the background and doesn't show what I wanted to plot. Octave doesn't freeze, I can still work and do all the math stuff, it's just the plotting that doesn't work any longer. After some troubleshooting I found that it likely is a problem with the graphics_toolkit, I can make plots if I set it to "gnuplot" but get th
>  e problem when it is set to "qt" (which is the default).
>
> So should I use "gnuplot" then? Well, that's not really an option because gnuplot doesn't allow interaction with the figure (rotating, zooming), and some of the more complicated plotting routines don't work properly any more (e.g. contour plots).
>
> First I suspected this being a problem of the Octave update, but apparently it's not the case. Even when going back to Octave 5.2 I still have the same problem with the figure window. Searching the Internet didn't help, so I wonder if I'm the only one having this problem with Octave? As said above, I don't know exactly what other Cygwin packages have been updated at the same time, so in principle it is possible that there is an incompatibility with some other packages (OpenGL?) that were updated at the same time, I tried reverting some libraries but it didn't help. I also tried to isolate the problem by installing a very limited Cygwin setup from scratch, basically only X11 and Octave, nothing else. I get the exact same error even with this very restricted setup.
>
> When searching for help I also came across this page: https://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Microsoft_Windows There is a Windows version of Octave that can be installed independently from Cygwin (relying on mingw64 in my case) and that installation works well (including graphics). This is also a newer version of Octave (7.3) compared to the Cygwin package (6.4). The Windows installation is a fallback option, however, I cannot integrate it with my Cygwin environment which makes my workflows way more complicated and I would prefer to have an Octave package for Cygwin.
>
> So my questions are:
> - Am I the only one in the Cygwin/X11 community with this kind of Octave problem?
> - Is there something I can do about it (OpenGL/Qt...)?
> - Will there soon be a new Octave 7 release for Cygwin that hopefully solves all my problems?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
>
> =====
> Klaus Wyser
> Rossby Centre
> SMHI
>

Hi Klaus,

the following works for me

 graphics_toolkit("qt")
 x=1:10;
 plot(x,x)

can you provide your cygcheck.out as attachment ?

see https://cygwin.com/problems.html

About Octave 7, I am currently not very active on updating any package
so do not expect anything short term.

Regards
Marco

SV: octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

[Wyser Klaus]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4433 bytes --]

Hej Marco---

Thanks for your reply. I tried to send the cygcheck output to the Cygwin mailing list last week, but the file was too big (2M) and the post was rejected. I therefore put the file on a temporary platform for file exchange:
http://exporter.nsc.liu.se/2ce844aaa0014c9f9cf889f2b062fdc7/cygcheck.out
from where you should be able to fetch it.

I tried to repeat exactly the example that you suggested, no success unfortunately. I attach the XWin logfile, maybe it helps you to spot anything.

Best wishes,
Klaus



> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: marco atzeri <marco.atzeri@gmail.com>
> Skickat: den 12 januari 2023 16:19
> Till: Wyser Klaus <Klaus.Wyser@smhi.se>
> Kopia: cygwin@cygwin.com
> Ämne: Re: octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit
> 
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 3:32 PM Wyser Klaus via Cygwin  wrote:
> >
> > Hej---
> >
> > I got a new computer in September and installed Cygwin/X11 and many
> > more packages, among others Octave (I think it was 5.2 back then). I have
> been using cygwin and octave for 20 years already, so I'm not new to this.
> Well, everything worked just fine until I happened to update some cygwin
> packages in December, among others octave (to version 6.4). Unfortunately I
> didn't pay attention to what else was updated in that go, usually these
> regular updates (marked as "pending" in the setup) just work fine. Not this
> time though: octave is still working, but not the graphics output. When
> entering a command to plot something a figure window opens under X11,
> but it is just a copy of the background and doesn't show what I wanted to
> plot. Octave doesn't freeze, I can still work and do all the math stuff, it's just
> the plotting that doesn't work any longer. After some troubleshooting I
> found that it likely is a problem with the graphics_toolkit, I can make plots if I
> set it to "gnuplot" but get th  e problem when it is set to "qt" (which is the
> default).
> >
> > So should I use "gnuplot" then? Well, that's not really an option because
> gnuplot doesn't allow interaction with the figure (rotating, zooming), and
> some of the more complicated plotting routines don't work properly any
> more (e.g. contour plots).
> >
> > First I suspected this being a problem of the Octave update, but apparently
> it's not the case. Even when going back to Octave 5.2 I still have the same
> problem with the figure window. Searching the Internet didn't help, so I
> wonder if I'm the only one having this problem with Octave? As said above, I
> don't know exactly what other Cygwin packages have been updated at the
> same time, so in principle it is possible that there is an incompatibility with
> some other packages (OpenGL?) that were updated at the same time, I tried
> reverting some libraries but it didn't help. I also tried to isolate the problem
> by installing a very limited Cygwin setup from scratch, basically only X11 and
> Octave, nothing else. I get the exact same error even with this very restricted
> setup.
> >
> > When searching for help I also came across this page:
> https://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Microsoft_Windows There is a Windows
> version of Octave that can be installed independently from Cygwin (relying
> on mingw64 in my case) and that installation works well (including graphics).
> This is also a newer version of Octave (7.3) compared to the Cygwin package
> (6.4). The Windows installation is a fallback option, however, I cannot
> integrate it with my Cygwin environment which makes my workflows way
> more complicated and I would prefer to have an Octave package for Cygwin.
> >
> > So my questions are:
> > - Am I the only one in the Cygwin/X11 community with this kind of Octave
> problem?
> > - Is there something I can do about it (OpenGL/Qt...)?
> > - Will there soon be a new Octave 7 release for Cygwin that hopefully
> solves all my problems?
> >
> > Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
> >
> > =====
> > Klaus Wyser
> > Rossby Centre
> > SMHI
> >
> 
> Hi Klaus,
> 
> the following works for me
> 
>  graphics_toolkit("qt")
>  x=1:10;
>  plot(x,x)
> 
> can you provide your cygcheck.out as attachment ?
> 
> see https://cygwin.com/problems.html
> 
> About Octave 7, I am currently not very active on updating any package so do
> not expect anything short term.
> 
> Regards
> Marco

[-- Attachment #2: XWin.0.log --]
[-- Type: application/octet-stream, Size: 2714 bytes --]

Welcome to the XWin X Server
Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project
Release: 1.21.1.4
OS: CYGWIN_NT-10.0-19044 C22197 3.4.3-1.x86_64 2022-12-16 12:38 UTC x86_64
OS: Windows 10  [Windows NT 10.0 build 19044] x64
Package: version 21.1.4-2 built 2022-09-21

XWin was started with the following command line:

/usr/bin/X :0 -auth /home/a001166/.serverauth.1382 

ddxProcessArgument - Initializing default screens
winInitializeScreenDefaults - primary monitor w 1280 h 720
[183955.468] (II) xorg.conf is not supported
[183955.468] (II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information
[183955.468] winUpdateDpi - primary monitor native DPI x 96 y 96
[183955.468] LoadPreferences: /home/a001166/.XWinrc not found
[183955.484] LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc
[183955.484] LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file...
[183955.515] winDetectSupportedEngines - RemoteSession: no
[183955.546] winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed, allowing ShadowDDNL
[183955.546] winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 00000005
[183955.546] winSetEngine - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking
[183955.546] winScreenInit - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel
[183955.578] winWindowProc - WM_SIZE - new client area w: 1264 h: 641
[183955.578] winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff
[183955.593] MIT-SHM extension disabled due to lack of kernel support
[183955.593] XFree86-Bigfont extension local-client optimization disabled due to lack of shared memory support in the kernel
[183955.593] (EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window
[183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (No such process)
[183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: unable to load driver swrast
[183955.843] (EE) GLX: could not load software renderer
[183955.843] (II) GLX: no usable GL providers found for screen 0
[183956.421] winPointerWarpCursor - Discarding first warp: 632 320
[183956.421] (--) 5 mouse buttons found
[183956.421] (--) Setting autorepeat to delay=500, rate=31
[183956.421] (--) Windows keyboard layout: "0000041D" (0000041d) "Swedish", type 4
[183956.421] (--) Found matching XKB configuration "Swedish (Sweden)"
[183956.421] (--) Model = "pc105" Layout = "se" Variant = "none" Options = "none"
[183956.421] Rules = "base" Model = "pc105" Layout = "se" Variant = "none" Options = "none"
[183956.656] winProcEstablishConnection - winInitClipboard returned.
[183956.656] winClipboardThreadProc - DISPLAY=:0.0
[183956.656] winClipboardProc - xcb_connect () returned and successfully opened the display.
[184209.390] winWindowProc - WM_SIZE - new client area w: 1264 h: 641
[184209.406] winWindowProc - WM_EXITSIZEMOVE

Re: SV: octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

[Marco Atzeri]

On 17.01.2023 12:29, Wyser Klaus wrote:
> Hej Marco---
> 
> Thanks for your reply. I tried to send the cygcheck output to the Cygwin mailing list last week, but the file was too big (2M) and the post was rejected. I therefore put the file on a temporary platform for file exchange:
> http://exporter.nsc.liu.se/2ce844aaa0014c9f9cf889f2b062fdc7/cygcheck.out
> from where you should be able to fetch it.
> 
> I tried to repeat exactly the example that you suggested, no success unfortunately. I attach the XWin logfile, maybe it helps you to spot anything.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Klaus
> 
> 

Hi Klaus,

my guess is that there is an issue with the drivers


[183955.593] (EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window
[183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so 
failed (No such process)
[183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: unable to load driver swrast
[183955.843] (EE) GLX: could not load software renderer
[183955.843] (II) GLX: no usable GL providers found for screen 0

on my system I see

glWinSelectGLimplementation: Loaded 'cygnativeGLthunk.dll'
(II) AIGLX: Testing pixelFormatIndex 1
GL_VERSION:     4.5.0 - Build 22.20.16.4815
GL_VENDOR:      Intel
GL_RENDERER:    Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620
(II) GLX: enabled GLX_SGI_make_current_read

Re: SV: octave doesn't work any longer with qt graphics toolkit

[Jon Turney]

On 24/01/2023 11:50, Marco Atzeri via Cygwin wrote:
> On 17.01.2023 12:29, Wyser Klaus wrote:
>> Hej Marco---
>>
>> Thanks for your reply. I tried to send the cygcheck output to the 
>> Cygwin mailing list last week, but the file was too big (2M) and the 
>> post was rejected. I therefore put the file on a temporary platform 
>> for file exchange:
>> http://exporter.nsc.liu.se/2ce844aaa0014c9f9cf889f2b062fdc7/cygcheck.out
>> from where you should be able to fetch it.
>>
>> I tried to repeat exactly the example that you suggested, no success 
>> unfortunately. I attach the XWin logfile, maybe it helps you to spot 
>> anything.
>>
[..]
> 
> Hi Klaus,
> 
> my guess is that there is an issue with the drivers
> 
> 
> [183955.593] (EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window
> [183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so 
> failed (No such process)
> [183955.843] (EE) AIGLX error: unable to load driver swrast
> [183955.843] (EE) GLX: could not load software renderer
> [183955.843] (II) GLX: no usable GL providers found for screen 0

Aha, I suspect the problem here is the same as [1].

You have no OpenGL, because the software rasterizer requires LLVM, and 
is failing to load due to that bug.

Please try updating to the latest Cygwin.

[1] https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2023-January/252805.html