Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 216539
xmaxima can't open socket
Last modified: 2008-08-02 19:40:33 EDT
Description of problem: I can use maxima in the console, but if i start xmaxima i get this error message: Maxima 5.10.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net Using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.7 (aka GCL) Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING. Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter. This is a development version of Maxima. The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information. (%i1) jfa: starting server on port 4008 couldn't open socket: Installed packages: maxima 5.10.0-8.fc6.i386 maxima-gui 5.10.0-8.fc6.i386 maxima-runtime-gcl 5.10.0-8.fc6.i386
Looks like we're not alone, Ubuntu has the same problem: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/gcl/+bug/43150 Their recommendations were to use a different maxima-runtime (one of maxima-runtime-clisp, maxima-runtime-cmucl, maxima-runtime-sbcl).
Upon closer inspection of ubuntu's report, they claim it to be a gcl bug, see https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/gcl/+bug/43150/comments/33 https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/gcl/+bug/43150/comments/34 http://librarian.launchpad.net/4873164/gcl.diff
Once gcl is fixed (see bug #216884), we can/will respin a fixed maxima-runtime-gcl package.
Strange, I cannot reproduce the bug on FC6 with the same versions...
Now that I have my fc6 box handy again, I can confirm Gerard's findings that I'm unable to reproduce the problem. Bjoern, do you have any other hints to help us reproduce the problem you're seeing?
I have this same problem on both of my fc6 systems. System1: x86-64, maxima on sbcl. System2: i686, maxima on cmucl. The cmucl error message is more informative: unknown host:"localhost". The host command has no problem getting the ip for localhost, but the /etc/hosts file only lists "::1". Replacing this with "127.0.0.1" allows xmaxima to work. Sbcl only reports host-not-found, but does not give the host name it was looking for. The same trick with the hosts file allows maxima to run.
OK, this sounds like an ipv6'ism. On my fc6 box (that works), I have 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost ::1 localhost.localdomain localhost So, you're saying that if the ipv4 entry for localhost is missing, then xmaxima borks? (I'm not necessarily surprised). Now, how/why is the ipv4 localhost entry missing? I'd argue that is the bug here.
Both fc6 systems are fresh install so the hosts file is the one left by the installer. Looking at the error message from sbcl, I see that error was reported by the gethostbyname library function. From the command line, host localhost returns both the ipv4 and ipv6 address. I believe that other apps have had problems which were fixed by adding the ipv4 entry, the problem does not seem to be with maxima. The problem seems to be either the installer or the gethostbyname library function. Fixing the hosts file would seem to be the simplest fix.
The problem with the hosts file is caused by system-config-network (BZ 214932). Comments for that bug note that if the ipv4 address is listed first, system-config-network will not remove it.
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