I found a snag with Chrome Remote Desktop after upgrading to OpendTect 6 under Debian-based linux- Ubuntu and Mint to be specific. I found that launching OpendTect was producing a segmentation fault before anything else. I tried everything in the beginning- changing video drivers, changing desktops (Unity, Gnome, XFCE4), reinstalling OpenGL libraries. Nothing was working, and there was very little online help for this scenario. Most forums have not caught up to version six, so I was on my own.  I did find my solution, and I’m sharing it with you to keep you moving with your workloads.

Without further adieu, here’s how I got OpendTect6 to work on a Debian-based workstation:

  • Ensure you have installed the GL drivers for your system’s graphic card. I started with Nvidia, but reverted back to the OpenSource driver as it is faster locally and remotely. What happened Nvidia, you used to be worth the trouble?
  • Determine where your GL libraries live. Use the ‘locate’ command within a terminal.
    • ‘locate libGL.so’ to find out where any/all of your OpenGL libs are.
    • ‘locate libstdc++.so.6’ to find out where any/all of your c++ runtime libraries are.
  • Set the correct path to each of the libs using Environment variables. This may be trial and error as systems having multiple video cards (i.e. onboard and PCI) may bring their own drivers to your system. My system uses the generic video driver with the Mesa GL libs, so my environment variables become
    • export LD_PRELOAD=’/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6′
    • export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=’/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu’
  • Set the variables above in a terminal and run ‘start_dtect’ or prepend those variables to your launcher like this:
    • export LD_PRELOAD=’/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6′ && export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=’/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu’ && /opt/OpendTect/6.0.0/bin/start_dtect.

Happy Day! Now OpendTect works beautifully both locally and remotely. I currently use this with two desktop environments under Mint 18 (Serena). The local desktop environment is Cinnamon whereas the remote desktop environment is Xfce4. I switched the remote because Xfce4 plays very well with remote desktops by having such a light footprint. It also helps to keep a solid color for the desktop background.