[ncl-install] ng4ex gsun01n fails with segmentation fault on gentoo x86

[Pierpaolo Garofalo]

Hi all,
I have managed to successfully compile and install ncl on a couple of quad core x86_64 gentoo machines. Nevertheless there must be something wrong when I do the same on a Macbook Santarosa with x86 gentoo when preparing for wrf-3.2.

I realize that ncl is not properly working on this latter machine .

I have just been using it with a very simple script aimed to extract de-staggered data from wrf-3.2 wrfout files. As a matter of fact the script below does its job well:

------------------------------------------------------------
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_code.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/wrf/WRFUserARW.ncl"

begin

    a = addfile("wrfout.nc","r")

    U = wrf_user_getvar(a,"ua",-1)

    asciiwrite("U.tmp",U)

    V = wrf_user_getvar(a,"va",-1)

    asciiwrite("V.tmp",V)

end

------------------------------------------------------------

whereas the graphics doesn't seem to work:

ng4ex gsun01n

gives a quick flash of a white window opening and suddenly closing in less than a tick.

I did the following to investigate:

1) ulimit -s unlimited

the white window persisted for several seconds before closing and giving back the same error message:

-------------------------------------------------------
ng4ex gsun01n

NCAR Graphics NCL Example <gsun01n>


This example was set up to display the output to an
X11 window.

  Copying gsun01n.ncl

Running NCL...
Copyright (C) 1995-2009 - All Rights Reserved
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
NCAR Command Language Version 5.1.0
The use of this software is governed by a License Agreement.
See http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/ for more details.
Segmentation fault

ncl failed.

-------------------------------------------------------

2) I altered  gsun01n.ncl swapping X11 with ncgm but I got the same error message again. gsun01n.ncgm was created but

ctrans -d X11 gsun01n.ncgm

showed a black empty window this time.

3) In order to investigate further I gave the command:

strace ng4ex gsun01n &> log.err

whose output is available here:

http://pier.unirc.eu/cestino/log.err

4) As a last resort I tried to switch from intel to vesa xorg driver but that too didn't avail.

I would like to point out that:
a) I am able to use idt as well as ncview.;
b) compilation was performed by using gcc 4.3.4 and gfortran;
c) Kernel is gentoo-2.6.30.

Any hint on how to solve this would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Pier

------------------------------------------
Pierpaolo Garofalo
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Energetica
Università Politecnica delle Marche