11.4 Troubleshooting on Linux

This section describes some of the most common problems that can occur during installation or configuration of LispWorks for Linux.

See also 11.7 Troubleshooting on X11/Motif below for issues specific to X11/Motif.

11.4.1 Processes hanging

Some versions of Linux have a broken pthreads library. To workaround this set the environment variable LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 before running LispWorks. LD_ASSUME_KERNEL allows using older versions of pthreads, some of which do not work.

LispWorks 8.0 supports any Linux distribution with glibc 2.6 or later.

11.4.2 RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX not set

On Linux, during installation of CLIM, Common SQL, LispWorks ORB or KnowledgeWorks from a secondary rpm file you may see a message similar to this:

# rpm --install tmp/lispworks-clim-8.0-1.i386.rpm
Environment variable RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX not set, setting it to /usr
LispWorks installation not found in /usr.
error: %pre(lispworks-clim-8.0-1) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping lispworks-clim-8.0-1
#

This is only a problem when LispWorks itself was installed in a non-default location (that is, using the --prefix RPM option). You would then want to supply that same --prefix value when installing the secondary rpm. A bug in RPM means that a required environment variable RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX is not set automatically to the supplied value. We have seen this bug in RPM version 4.2, as distributed with Red Hat 8 and 9.

The workaround is to set this environment variable explicitly before installing the secondary rpm. For example, if LispWorks was installed like this:

rpm --install --prefix /usr/lisp lispworks-8.0-1.i386.rpm

then you would add CLIM like this (in C shell):

setenv RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX /usr/lisp
rpm --install --prefix /usr/lisp lispworks-clim-8.0-1.i386.rpm

11.4.3 Using multiple versions of Motif on Linux

The version of Open Motif required by LispWorks 8.0 with the Motif GUI may not be compatible with other applications (including LispWorks 4.2). It is however compatible with LispWorks 7.1, LispWorks 6.x, LispWorks 5.x, LispWorks 4.4 and 4.3, so you for example you should be able to run LispWorks 8.0 and LispWorks 7.1 simultaneously with either Open Motif installed.

While it is not supported for LispWorks 5.1 and later versions, you can still use Lesstif for LispWorks 5.0 and earlier - see the Installation Guide for that version for details.

You may wish to maintain multiple versions of the Motif/Lesstif libraries in order to run various applications simultaneously. However, because the filenames of the libraries can conflict, this can only be done by installing libraries in non-standard locations.

When a library has been installed in a non-standard location, you can set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to allow an application to find that library. Specifically, if <motiflibdir> denotes the directory containing the Motif 2.2 or 2.3 file libXm.so then set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include <motiflibdir>.

Note: to find out which version of libXm your LispWorks 8.0 image is actually using, look in the bug form. See 11.9.3 Generate a bug report template for instructions on generating the bug form.