The downloader is not as unreliable as the help
messages on the forum suggest, otherwise the
forum would get flooded with dozens of such
problem reports every day. And the problems
usually resolve to
a) Servers temporarily unavailable/overloaded,
resolved by waiting a bit and retrying.
b) Misconfigured firewalls or proxies on users
side.
But failsafe fallback certainly wouldn't hurt, as
you propose. Can i take this as an offer from
you to provide one? It's obviously pretty simple:
Update your beta whenever a beta update comes
out, zip it to file, upload it to some ftp-server
at your institution. The Download page at the
Wiki could contain some info about this option
and a download link to your site.
"Updating" by zip file however makes for much
larger downloads and some extra effort. It also
means lots of extra bandwidth accounted to
your site by your internet provider, which at
some point turns into real spent money.
I don't want to do that extra work, i did that in
the beginning and it became annoying enough
to prevent frequent beta updates due to the
overhead of doing it. If someone feels like doing
it, he/she will certainly get some praise from all
the lost souls behind firewalls.
The SetupPsychtoolbox command makes it easy
to setup PTB from such a zip file.
best,
-mario
--- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, Alan Robinson <ar@...> wrote:
>
> It seems like it might be useful to people if there was an alternate way
> to just download the whole PTB's current version as a .zip file. The SVN
> method is really nice for upgrading, but it would be great if there was
> a failsafe fallback.
>
> Mario Kleiner wrote:
> > I checked our download logs. Your are special in the sense
> > that you seem to be basically the only person running
> > old Matlab 7.0.1 on the new OSX 10.5.x on a PowerPC,
> > at least there is only one such download registered.
> >
> > Most people (around 100) running PowerPC + Leopard seem to run
> > Matlab 7.3 or 7.4 (R2007a / b), a handful runs 7.2.
> >
> > The problem is a pretty special linker problem,
> > which only affects PowerPC, toolkits that still
> > support 10.3.x, and things like Matlab that
> > dynamically loads plugins (MEX files) at runtime,
> > and only if it uses a suboptimal dynamic loader
> > method. In that case Apple says:
> >
> > "Projects that call the loader directly may fail to resolve the $LDBLStub variants. In
these
> > cases, calls to the loader should be replaced with calls to the compiler to do the
linking. "
> >
> > in this document:
> >
<http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/Darwin/SymbolVariantsRelNotes/index.html>
> >
> > So yours is probably the "may fail" case.
> > Or its something completely different.
> >
> > So your OS might be too new or your Matlab may
> > be too old for the new OS. On 10.4 and 10.3
> > there are still quite a few Matlab 7.0.1 installs
> > in use without problems. There is a potential
> > workaround to PTB that may solve this, but
> > checking that will take a bit of time.
> >
> > So you could:
> >
> > a) Upgrade your Matlab.
> >
> > b) Work a bit on 10.3.9 if its readily available. You
> > can simply copy the Psychtoolbox folder from a
> > machine with Subversion support and run
> > SetupPsychtoolbox, so you don't need Subversion.
> > There are probably old versions of Subversion
> > somewhere in the internet that work.
> >
> > Also send me an e-mail. I will then send you some
> > testcode when i find the time.
> >
> > good luck,
> > -mario
> >
> >
> > --- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, "ls_delicato" <Louise.Delicato@> wrote:
> >> Dear Mario,
> >>
> >> Thanks for getting back to me, however, it does sound rather ominous
> >> why I am the only one getting this error!
> >>
> >> I used the following command
> >>
> >>>> cd ~/Desktop
> >>>> DownloadPsychtoolbox('current')
> >> which I gather is the same as beta?
> >>
> >> I don't have OS X.4 (only X.3 or X.5 and I gather I need X.4 or higher
> >> for subversion) so I can't try changing the OS to see if that makes a
> >> difference!
> >>
> >> best,
> >> Louise
> >>
> >> --- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, "Mario Kleiner"
> >> <mario.kleiner@> wrote:
> >>> Do you use the very latest PTB 'beta' release?
> >>>
> >>> This isn't a hardware problem, the error message points
> >>> to a dynamic linker problem, which is strange, because
> >>> i use the same Matlab version 7.0.1, and basically the
> >>> same PowerPC machine as yours to compile PTB.
> >>>
> >>> The only obvious difference is that i'm using 10.4.11,
> >>> whereas you're using 10.5.2. There are still over 1000
> >>> PowerPC Macs in use with PTB, so the mystery
> >>> is why it only happens to you? I never heard of that error.
> >>>
> >>> According to the download logs, there are 45 installations
> >>> on 10.5.2 + PPC, so this makes some bug rather unlikely.
> >>>
> >>> Did anybody else see a similar error message?
> >>>
> >>> -mario
> >>>
> >>> --- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, "ls_delicato"
> >> <Louise.Delicato@> wrote:
> >>>> I think that it may be a hardware rather than a download problem as I
> >>>> don't get the same error with my laptop (intel macbook). I copied the
> >>>> PTB from my laptop to the G5 and still have the same error. Have I
> >>>> missed something obvious regarding the min spec that PTB requires?
> >>>>
> >>>> I have the following:
> >>>>
> >>>> Mac OS X.5.2
> >>>> PowerPC G5 Dual 1.8Ghz
> >>>> 1 GB DDR SD RAM
> >>>> GeForce FX 5200 (AGP) or ATI Radeon 9200 (PCI) Graphics Card
> >>>>
> >>>> Matlab 7.0.1
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I appreciate that the equipment is not up to date, but I thought at
> >>>> the very least I could use it to get my code up and running and take
> >>>> it from there...
> >>>>
> >>>> any help would be greatly appreciated!
> >>>>
> >>>> best,
> >>>> Louise
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, "ls_delicato"
> >>>> <Louise.Delicato@> wrote:
> >>>>> Dear All,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am having problems downloading and installing PTB. I have (to the
> >>>>> best of my knowledge) followed the download instructions
> >> properly and
> >>>>> tried to search for this error in the forum and through the FAQs but
> >>>>> am still stuck. At the point at which PTB is setting up I get the
> >>>>> following error:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The returned error message by Matlab/Octave was:
> >>>>> Last Error: Invalid MEX-file
> >>>>> '/Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac':
> >>>>> dlopen(/Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac, 2):
> >> Symbol
> >>>>> not found: _fprintf$LDBLStub
> >>>>> Referenced from:
> >> /Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac
> >>>>> Expected in: flat namespace
> >>>>> . (MATLAB:invalidMEXFile)
> >>>>> Error message does not contain a stack.
> >>>>> ??? Error using ==> AssertOpenGL
> >>>>> Problems detected in call to AssertOpenGL;
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Error in ==> PsychtoolboxRegistration at 60
> >>>>> AssertOpenGL;
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Error in ==> PsychtoolboxPostInstallRoutine at 207
> >>>>> PsychtoolboxRegistration(isUpdate, flavor);
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Error in ==> SetupPsychtoolbox at 178
> >>>>> PsychtoolboxPostInstallRoutine(1);
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> and then the following 'Screen' error:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Warning: Could not find an exact (case-sensitive) match for
> >> 'screen'.
> >>>>> /Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac is a
> >>>>> case-insensitive match and will be used instead. You can
> >> improve the
> >>>>> performance of your code by using exact name matches and we
> >> therefore
> >>>>> recommend that you update your usage accordingly.
> >> Alternatively, you
> >>>>> can disable this warning using
> >>>>> warning('off','MATLAB:dispatcher:InexactMatch').
> >>>>> ??? Invalid MEX-file
> >>>>> '/Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac':
> >>>>> dlopen(/Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac, 2):
> >> Symbol
> >>>>> not found: _fprintf$LDBLStub
> >>>>> Referenced from:
> >> /Applications/Psychtoolbox/PsychBasic/Screen.mexmac
> >>>>> Expected in: flat namespace
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am not sure how to rectify this (I am coming back to PTB after a
> >>>>> long break from using it in OS9 so I am VERY rusty!).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am running matlab 7.0.1 with mac os 10.5.2 on a powerpc dual
> >> 1.8 Ghz
> >>>>> with 1GB DDR sdram.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Help would be greatly appreciated!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Best,
> >>>>> Louise
> >>>>>
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Post your message to: psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com
> > Please indicate OS9, OSX, or WIN version, and include your full name.
> > Denis Pelli, David Brainard, and Allen Ingling.
> > http://psychtoolbox.org
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>