IRIX 6.4 Applications 1997 August

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- 1 - 4. _K_n_o_w_n__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__a_n_d__W_o_r_k_a_r_o_u_n_d_s This chapter describes the known problems with InPerson 2.2.1 and, where known, ways to work around them. When reporting problems with the software, it imperative to include as much detail as possible to help the developers to reproduce the problem. 4.1 _K_n_o_w_n__p_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__i_n__t_h_e__I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__p_h_o_n_e +o Dragging an icon representing a person from the "Let's Make a Call Window" to the IRIX 6.3 Indigo Magic Desktop results in an "Unknown" icon. For the time being, you can only drag icons between PeoplePages and InPerson. +o InPerson will fail if the X color map is not initialized properly. +o The Indigo Magic desktop Xsession file contains these commands to setup the color map: ////uuuussssrrrr////lllliiiibbbb////ddddeeeesssskkkkttttoooopppp////mmmmaaaakkkkeeeeIIIIccccoooonnnnVVVViiiissssuuuuaaaallllssss ////uuuussssrrrr////lllliiiibbbb////ddddeeeesssskkkkttttoooopppp////pppprrrreeeeaaaallllllllooooccccCCCCoooolllloooorrrrssss If you have a private .xsession file, include those commands in it. +o You can't place calls if you're out of disk space on /. +o Running InPerson via a remote X11 display is not supported. Make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is not set or set to ":0". +o If any of the following are true, InPerson may not work and produce a core file. +o A zero-length ~/.Sgiresources file +o A zero-length ~/.desktop-<host>/InPerson file +o A file called InPerson in your home directory +o A ~/.desktop-<host> directory that is not writable. - 2 - 4.2 _K_n_o_w_n__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__w_i_t_h__I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__a_n_d__I_S_D_N +o When running InPerson over an ISDN line, reasonable video frame rate requires that both B-channels of the ISDN line be used continuously, rather than letting the second B-channel come up when the ISDN software determines it is needed. +o If you are connecting an ISDN line directly to your Indy workstation, create an InPerson-specific entry in your machine's /etc/ppp.conf file. Add the lines "mindevs=2", "-ccp", "-tx_bsd", "-rx_bsd", "qmax=200" and "mtu=300" to to force the Indy to always use both B channels and to give better audio performance. For example, an InPerson-specific entry in /etc/ppp.conf may look like this: hhhhuuuuddddssssoooonnnn rrrreeeemmmmooootttteeeehhhhoooosssstttt====0000 sssseeeennnndddd____uuuusssseeeerrrrnnnnaaaammmmeeee====iiiinnnnppppeeeerrrrssssoooonnnnuuuusssseeeerrrr sssseeeennnndddd____ppppaaaasssssssswwwwdddd====iiiinnnnppppeeeerrrrssssoooonnnn mmmmiiiinnnnddddeeeevvvvssss====2222 ----ttttxxxx____bbbbssssdddd ----rrrrxxxx____bbbbssssdddd ----ccccccccpppp qqqqmmmmaaaaxxxx====222200000000 mmmmttttuuuu====333300000000 +o Also, it is important to include a similar entry for incoming InPerson calls. The following is an example of correctly configuring for an incoming InPerson call. iiiinnnnppppeeeerrrrssssoooonnnnuuuusssseeeerrrr mmmmiiiinnnnddddeeeevvvvssss====2222 ----ttttxxxx____bbbbssssdddd ----rrrrxxxx____bbbbssssdddd ----ccccccccpppp qqqqmmmmaaaaxxxx====222200000000 mmmmttttuuuu====333300000000 ____IIIISSSSDDDDNNNN____IIIINNNNCCCCOOOOMMMMIIIINNNNGGGG rrrreeeeccccoooonnnnffffiiiigggguuuurrrreeee rrrreeeeccccvvvv____uuuusssseeeerrrrnnnnaaaammmmeeee====iiiinnnnppppeeeerrrrssssoooonnnnuuuusssseeeerrrr See _p_p_p(1M) for explanation of the ppp.conf parameters. +o This can also be accomplished through the pppsetup tool. To set up for outgoing InPerson calls, there is a button on the setup menu that specifies that the call is for InPerson. To setup for incoming calls, your must first create a incoming user account. Then you must go to the Configure->Outgoing menu and create an outgoing connection with the same name as the incoming user account. Then set the B Channel usage to "For - 3 - InPerson". +o When using InPerson over ISDN, increasing the bandwidth beyond 100 kbits/second may adversely affect the audio and video quality. +o In general, if you have an Indy that has both Ethernet and ISDN configured, you must work with your system administrator to carefully configure routing in order to be able to send multicast packets over the ISDN. Without this careful configuration, multiway InPerson calls will not work over ISDN, regardless of the bandwidth constraints. 4.3 _K_n_o_w_n__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__i_n__t_h_e__I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__C_a_l_l__V_i_e_w__(_i_n_p_v_i_e_w_) +o When 3 or more people have been invited to a conferences, InPerson uses IP multicasting for efficiency. This requires IP multicast routing support by the network routers if the users are on different networks. In a multiway call, if a dialog box is displayed that warns you that your network appears not to have multicast support, then use the following command to see if your network has a multicast router: ////uuuussssrrrr////eeeettttcccc////ppppiiiinnnngggg 222222224444....4444 If there's no response, then call your network administrator and ask that a multicast router be added to your network. See the InPerson Setup and Administration Guide for more information. With InPerson 2.2, the /_u_s_r/_l_i_b/_I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n/_t_e_s_t_m_c_a_s_t tool can help diagnose multicast routing problems. It's described in the Setup and Admin. Guide. +o If you are mounting a directory of faces images from an NFS server, the call view may hang if the server is down. +o Occasionally, when you change video display sizes in the Call Control Panel, not enough width is reserved in the InPerson Call window for the video displays. Open and close the whiteboard to fix it. 4.4 _K_n_o_w_n__p_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__i_n__a_u_d_i_o +o Setting the audio "Digital" input to is not supported. Only "Microphone" and "Line" inputs are supported. - 4 - +o Do not use _a_p_a_n_e_l's monitor mode when using InPerson. +o Excessive memory paging or swapping may cause audio dropouts or overlapping sound. +o Large amounts of network traffic to your machine can cause audio dropouts. The kernel has to process the network packets; this delays inpview from playing back audio in a timely fashion. You can enable _r_t_n_e_t_d(1M) to give more priority to audio. 4.5 _K_n_o_w_n__p_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__i_n__v_i_d_e_o +o H.261 video compression is more CPU intensive than HDCC video compression. If you are running on a entry-level CPU (R3000, R4000/PC or R4600/PC), and not using a low-bandwidth network like ISDN or fractional T1/E1, HDCC is still probably the best choice. To set InPerson to use HDCC, bring up the Call Control Panel, click on the Finer Control button to open up the full panel, and adjust the bandwidth slider until the video compression scheme changes to HDCC. +o If you have the _c_a_p_t_u_r_e(1) tool running when you start an InPerson call, the call view cannot use video. Exit _c_a_p_t_u_r_e and then bring up the Call Control Panel, click on Static Image and then again on Live Video. InPerson will restart video capture. +o On systems featuring Galileo Video, Indigo2 Video or Indy Video, to switch between an NTSC camera (such as IndyCam) and a PAL camera, perform the following sequence of steps: +o From InPerson's Tools menu, select the "Video Control panel" to start up the video control panel. +o In InPerson's Call Control panel, change the "Outgoing Video" control to "Static". +o In the Video Control Panel, change the device's "Default In" setting to the new setting, analog or digital, composite or YIC. +o In the Video Control Panel, change the Device's "Input Timing" to PAL or NTSC, as appropriate for the new input source. - 5 - +o In InPerson's Call Control Panel, change the "Outgoing Video" to "Live". 4.6 _K_n_o_w_n__p_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__i_n__t_h_e__W_h_i_t_e_b_o_a_r_d__(_i_n_p_b_o_a_r_d_) +o The whiteboard only runs on systems whose graphics hardware features "overlay planes". This specifically excludes the old "GR1" graphics that were used on Personal IRISes (including the 4D/35). +o The whiteboard currently does not support international keyboards, only the standard American keyboard. +o Be careful when deleting pages on the whiteboard. If there are three pages, and two people in the conference decide they want to delete page 3, both pages 2 and 3 will be deleted. This isn't a bug. Both "Delete Page" menu requests were serviced, once for page 3, then again for the other user for the new "last page" that the user is on, page 2. Just be sure to communicate to other people when you intend to delete a page. +o The page tab menu allows direct access to the first 44 pages only. When creating more than 44 pages, you need to use the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys to access them. +o When typing text or dragging selected text, the border, i-beam, and highlight "flashes". This is normal. +o Be patient when importing large text files (more than 2 pages) "as lines". It may take a while. Also, after doing so, it may be the case that your page tabs may be out of sync (for instance, the tab shows page 2, but you are really on page 4). Simply click on a different page to resync them up. +o Adding multiple large images to the whiteboard, either by importing image files or by taking a snapshot of screen areas, windows or video, makes the whiteboard consume large amounts of memory. Although this problem has been improved for 2.2, if enough images are added, swapping makes the system become very slow, and eventually the system may run out of swap space and kill the whiteboard. To increase the swap space on your system, see the "Swap Space" section of the "IRIX Advanced Site and Server Administration Guide" for details on how to give your system more swap space. - 6 - +o Some 3D Inventor files will seem as if they do not import properly. You will find that Inventor Engines (See "The Inventor Mentor", Addison-Wesley) will not operate while in the whiteboard. Also, any files that contain nodekits may not import properly if the nodekits contain external file references. +o There is a known problem in the whiteboard where, under some rare conditions, when 2 or more people are in a conference, one user's whiteboard's contents will disappear. Along with this behavior there may be "invisible shadow" objects, and when the user continues to try to use the whiteboard, it will crash. This is an unfortunate problem and will be fixed in the next release. You can get into this state if one or more users are deleting objects while one or more users are deleting or drawing objects on the whiteboard. The best thing to do if this happens is to have one of the users in the conference, whose whiteboard is still intact, save it to a file, then: +o If a your whiteboard has crashed, try answering to the affirmative when it asks you if you want to try to restart it. Otherwise, +o Reinitiate the call and append the saved file back into the whiteboard. +o Sometimes when Copying and Pasting a 3D file from Iris Annotator (or Showcase, or any other Inventor Application), the "Paste" into the whiteboard fails (nothing shows up). Most likely, this is because the Inventor model you are pasting has "external file references". That is, there are pointers to other models or textures within this model. There are two ways to work around this: +o Save the file from Iris Annotator, then choose "Import 3D Model..." in the whiteboard. +o If the above method doesn't work, or is not possible (say, because you are running Iris Annotator remotely on another machine), save the file from Iris Annotator (say, as "oldfile.iv"), then use _i_v_c_a_t(1) to expand the file: iiiivvvvccccaaaatttt ----bbbbfffftttt ----oooo nnnneeeewwwwffffiiiilllleeee....iiiivvvv oooollllddddffffiiiilllleeee....iiiivvvv then Import "newfile.iv" back into Annotator. Now 'Copy' from Annotator, then 'Paste' in the Whiteboard should work fine. - 7 -