Frequently Asked Questions

Q: The GUI runs slowly on a remote machine. How can I improve the performance?

A: Turning compression on in ssh can help. To start the ssh session use the following.

ssh -Y -C user@machine

The -Y enables tunnelling of X (the -X option does the same things but seems to fail on some platforms; Mac-OSX for example). The -C option enables compression.

One tip: if you move the GUI window on the desktop, or resize it, it needs to be redrawn, which takes some time. It is best to leave the GUI window in one place, then things go fairly fast. I assume that ssh compression is helpful for any X application over a slow connection.

Q: How do I run multiple wizards?

A: Currently, you need to make seperate directories and start the Phenix GUI in each one. We will be working on making this more streamlined in the next few months.

Q: I sometimes see this printed out when I'm running something in the Phenix GUI, is it a problem?:

Exception in thread Thread-2 (most likely raised during interpreter shutdown):
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/tmp/phenix-1.24.1b/build/intel-linux/python/lib/python2.4/threading.py", 
       line 442, in __bootstrap
  File "/usr/tmp/phenix-1.24.1b/build/intel-linux/python/lib/python2.4/threading.py", 
       line 422, in run
  File "/usr/tmp/phenix-1.24.1b/build/intel-linux/python/lib/python2.4/SocketServer.py", 
       line 466, in process_request_thread
  File "/usr/tmp/phenix-1.24.1b/build/intel-linux/python/lib/python2.4/SocketServer.py", 
       line 266, in handle_error exceptions.AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no 
       attribute 'write'
Unhandled exception in thread started by
Error in sys.excepthook:

Original exception was: 

A: This is a message from within the Python socket server module, and does not indicate a problem with whatever you are running in Phenix. Hopefully in the future there will be a way to stop this message (which is generated by mistake in Python - something to do with timing of threads).