Troubleshooting

This page compiles a list of common errors that can appear when using Scipion.

Contents

• Troubleshooting

  • Launcher scipion3 not found

  • Fixing fonts in a conda installation

  • Updating the installer

  • Xmipp dependencies

  • General error while installing/compiling Xmipp (non-development installations)

  • General error while installing/compiling Xmipp (development installations)

  • Installing Scipion/Xmipp from precompiled bundles

  • Compiling Xmipp to be used in both Intel and AMD cores

  • Cannot compile with Java

Launcher scipion3 not found

The scipion3 launcher is created at the end of the installation. Then, if the installation is not completed (e.g. Xmipp compilation has failed) it will not be created.

If you want to run something like scipion3 config, but you get an error like

scipion3: command not found

then, consider to run the Scipion’s installer in dry mode in order to get some hints

python -m scipioninstaller /path/where/you/want/scipion [-venv] -j 4 -dry

where -venv must be included if you are using virtualenv, whereas it must not if conda is used.

This command above prints a lot of information. Especially, at the end, it prints the content of the launcher. Therefore, take the text enclosed between horizontal lines and copy it in a file placed at <SCIPION_HOME>/scipion3 and run chmod +x $SCIPION_HOME/scipion3 to make it executable. That’s your launcher.

Fixing fonts in a conda installation

This will fix the ugly fonts issue when using conda installation

scipion3 run conda remove tk --force
wget https://anaconda.org/scipion/tk/8.6.10/download/linux-64/tk-8.6.10-h14c3975_1005.tar.bz2
scipion3 run conda install tk-8.6.10-h14c3975_1005.tar.bz2

Updating the installer

Updating the installer may fix several installation issues. It’s always a good practice to update it in case you find any issue.

If you’ve tried to install scipion3 sometime ago, you may have an old installer. To update it run the following commands:

python -m pip uninstall scipion-installer
python -m pip install scipion-installer

This should bring you the latest published version as show here: https://pypi.org/project/scipion-installer/

Xmipp dependencies

• Compiler

Xmipp requires C++17 compatible compiler. We recommend either GCC or CLANG, in the newest version possible. We have good experience with GCC-8 and bad experience with GCC-7.

We strongly recommend you to have this compiler linked to gcc and g++. Otherwise it might not be properly picked up by wrappers, such as MPI’s wrapper. We have good experince with using alternatives:

` sudo apt install gcc-8 g++-8 sudo update-alternatives --remove-all gcc sudo update-alternatives --remove-all g++ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 50 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8 50 `

• Cuda

Xmipp supports Cuda 8 through 11. CUDA is optional but highly recommended. We recommend you to use the newest version available for your operating system, though Cuda 10.2 has the widest support among other Scipion plugins. To install CUDA for your operating system, follow the official install guide.

• OpenCV

OpenCV is used for some programs: movie_optical_alignment (with GPU support) and volume_homogenizer, however, it is not required. If you installed OpenCV via apt (sudo apt install libopencv-dev), it should be automatically picked up by the Xmipp script

• HDF5

We sometimes see issues regarding the HDF5 dependency. We recommend removing all hdf5 versions and install just hdf5-devel. To do that: ` sudo apt remove hdf5 sudo apt remove hdf5-devel pip uninstall h5py ` Remove all files related to hdf5 in /usr/lib64/libhdf5*, /usr/include/hdf5* and …/anaconda3/include/hdf5*.

We strongy recommend you to install it via your default package manager: sudo apt-get install libhdf5-dev If you install it using other package management system (such as Conda), it might lead to compile/link time issues caused by incompatible version being fetched.

• Full list of dependencies

`sudo apt install -y libfftw3-dev libopenmpi-dev libhdf5-dev python3-numpy python3-dev libtiff5-dev libsqlite3-dev default-jdk git cmake gcc-8 g++-8`

`pip install scons numpy`

General error while installing/compiling Xmipp (non-development installations)

Scipion installation also includes the Xmipp compilation and installation, by default. You can install only Scipion (without Xmipp) by adding the -noXmipp flag to the installation command.

Xmipp can be installed separately using the plugin manager or by

scipion3 installp -p scipion-em-xmipp -j 4

If you are getting an error during the Xmipp compilation, consider to check the Xmipp’s configuration page.

Xmipp bundle is placed at <SCIPION_HOME>/software/em/xmippSrc-v3.20.07 (production mode), see the Xmipp structure guide for more information regarding Xmipp.

You can manually set some variables in the <SCIPION_HOME>/software/em/xmippSrc-v3.20.07/xmipp.conf. However, Scipion will automatically override this config file when recompiling Xmipp. To prevent this, export XMIPP_NOCONFIG=True or include XMIPP_NOCONFIG=True in the <SCIPION_HOME>/config/scipion.conf prior to trigger a new compilation.

To retry the Xmipp compilation during the Scipion’s installation, run

python -m scipioninstaller /path/where/you/want/scipion [-venv] -j 4

Alternatively, if scipion3 is already installed you can go with the plugin manager or by running

scipion3 installb xmippSrc -j 4

If ERROR: Could not find target xmippSrc is gotten, try to run

scipion3 installp -p scipion-em-xmipp -j 4

If the problem persist, don’t hesitate to contact us or open a issue

General error while installing/compiling Xmipp (development installations)

Scipion installation also includes the Xmipp compilation and installation, by default. You can install only Scipion (without Xmipp) by adding the -noXmipp flag to the installation command.

Xmipp can be installed separately following the Xmipp’s installation guide.

If you are getting an error during the Xmipp compilation, consider to check the Xmipp’s configuration page.

Xmipp bundle is placed at <SCIPION_HOME>/xmipp-bundle (devel mode), see the Xmipp structure guide for more information regarding Xmipp.

You can manually set some variables in the <SCIPION_HOME>/xmipp-bundle/xmipp.conf. However, Scipion will automatically override this config file when recompiling Xmipp. To prevent this, export XMIPP_NOCONFIG=True or include XMIPP_NOCONFIG=True in the <SCIPION_HOME>/config/scipion.conf prior to trigger a new compilation.

To retry the Xmipp compilation during the Scipion’s installation, run

python -m scipioninstaller /path/where/you/want/scipion [-venv] -j 4 -dev

Alternatively, if scipion3 is already installed you can go with

scipion3 installb xmippDev -j 4

If ERROR: Could not find target xmippDev is gotten, try to run

scipion3 installp -p <SCIPION_HOME>/xmipp-bundle/src/scipion-em-xmipp --devel -j 4

If the problem persist, don’t hesitate to contact us. or open a issue

Installing Scipion/Xmipp from precompiled bundles

From Scipion’s version 3, no precompiled bundles are provided.

The reason is:

• Scipion is now a set of general Python modules, which are installed from ‘pip’ and nothing needs to be compiled anymore.

• From Scipion’s version 3, the installation configuration is more flexible. This makes things easier in compiling time, but becomes in an explosion of possibilities on final systems configuration (mostly related with different versions of common libraries). This ends up making it impossible to predict what configuration is on your system, to allow us to prepare a precompiled bundle for you.

Nevertheless, we have experimented a noticeable improvement in the stability in compilation time for the most used Linux distributions (and its most recent versions) during the beta-testing period. However, if you are in some troubles, please, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Compiling Xmipp to be used in both Intel and AMD cores

Xmipp is optimizing the compilation to the architecture found in the compilation time. However, this is not a good idea if it must run on both AMD and Intel cores at once (e.g. in a cluster or so). To make more flexible the optimization on the compilation, then the CXXFLAGS can be set properly.

Please, just

export CXXFLAGS="-mfma -mavx2 -m3dnow -fomit-frame-pointer -std=c++11 -O3"

before running the Scipion3 installer.

Please, check Xmipp’s configuration page for more details.

Cannot compile with Java

Checking Java configuration...
/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/javac Xmipp.java
/bin/sh: 1: /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/javac: not found
Check the JAVAC
Cannot compile with Java

Java compiler is missing. Needs to install the jdk-devel version. In ubuntu would be like:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-11-jdk

or activate a jdk with javac using alternatives.

If this is not the case, and you have <SCIPION_HOME>/config/scipion.conf (optional), review the JAVA_XXX variables there. They might be pointing to a non existing JAVA home.