WOMBAT – A program for Mixed Model Analyses by Restricted Maximum Likelihood

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wombat:answerfaq2 [2018/07/02] (current)
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 +??? FAQ: Crash "​Segmentation fault" ????
  
 +  * **Q:** WOMBAT crashes with a "​Segmentation fault" with a heap of unintelligible numbers to follow -- this seems to happen quite early on, i.e. during the set-up phase before any likelihoods are printed to the screen. What is wrong?
 +   * **A:** A `segmentation fault' (or '​access violation'​) message is a run-time error message generated by the FORTRAN compiler. In contrast, the majority of error messages in WOMBAT are programmed in to catch mistakes made by the programs user -- you. It usually means that an array has the wrong dimensions, but it can also be a consequence of other `bugs' somewhere else in the program. Further, it can reflect a RAM or stack size problem ​
 +      * If you are working under Linux and have a larg(ish) analysis, make sure you have set the stack size as large as possible. The command is **''​unlimit -s''​** (or similar, depending on the flavour of Linux). NB: Putting this into your login file may be a good idea.
 +      * There is a **known problem** with WOMBAT that it can crash with a segmentation error  or simply hang up during the set-up phase when trying to establish the optimum ordering of equations. Fortunately,​ this is rare -- it occurs most often for larger problems and/or when using the **<​nowiki>​MeTiS</​nowiki>​** option, either implicitly (program default for large problems) or explicitly specified, in particular when the model of analysis includes a fixed effect with very few levels or covariables. ​
 +      * WOMBAT incorporates three different ordering strategies, all using subroutines available in the public domain. Unfortunately,​ none of them are totally reliable. In particular, <​nowiki>​MeTiS</​nowiki>​ can misbehave and does not provide a `graceful'​ exit when problems occur, i.e. there is no facility to fault-trap this and shut down WOMBAT with an explanatory message.
 +      *  So what can you do in this case? Strategies to try:
 +        - Use a different ordering strategy, i.e. the approximate minimum degree ordering invoked with the **''​−−amd''​** ​ run time option.
 +        - Use different options for <​nowiki>​MeTis</​nowiki>,​ e.g. reduce the number of graph separators considered (option 1), switch from random to standard edge matching (a "​3"​ for the third option), or change from two-sided to one-sided node refinement (a "​2"​ for the fourth option) -- see the [[http://​agbu.une.edu.au/​~kmeyer/​WOMBAT/​WWW/​manualse13.html|manual]] for details.  ​
 +        - WOMBAT has a guess at the space required in the set-up phase. Usually, this is quite appropriate and tends to err on the large side. Occasionally,​ however, it is too small for <​nowiki>​MeTiS</​nowiki>​ to work properly. So, you could try to give it some extra space using the ''​−−choozhz''​ run time option (this will print out a screen message giving a the default value WOMBAT would use and allow you to type in a different value  overriding the default).
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