Hi,

I am experiencing since 2 days extremely slow start-up times; between 8 and 10 minutes!
What to do?
Looking at the forum, I noticed that license-issues are related to the name of the machine and the ethernet address, so I attach 2 files from Activity Monitor, one during the startup with airport on and then when it's off.

I ran this night a defragmentation app, so this is not the point.

Nevertheless I have been working with huge files (which I also find strange): why does Houdini produce files that are 1.6Gb in disk size when everything is made with procedures?

So there are 2 issues: big files and slow start-up. Defragmentation didn't help.

Any ideas?

Thanks allot!
Gon

system: MacBook Pro Intel core2duo 2.33Ghz / 2Gb 667Mhz DDR2 RAM / 40Gb/160Gb free/used

update: I just ran a 20 hours full defragmentation with no apparent change in startup slowness: it takes about 10min to start up Houdini.
I'm using the latest built:

Houdini 9.5.241 Mac OSX 10.5 (64-bit Leopard) OSX 10.5 x86_64 gcc4.0

I noticed that Houdini takes up about 2Gb of space on my HD when starting up (which obviously is what it's doing when starting up).

Any help would be much appreciated! thanks,
Gon

Hi guys, I finally solved it by doing the following:

- uninstalling Houdini
- deleting all license files from //Library/Preferences/sesi/
- deleting the folder (including all preferences files in it) //usr/yourusername/houdini9.5/

- finally reinstalling Houdini's latest build with the option for Apprentice Licensing (which is not selected by default in the installer, yet is mentioned as being more reliable)

All to all Houdini now opens in less than 6 seconds, and I'm all happy again.
All bests,
Gon

I wonder what has changed two days ago for Houdini to slow down so much. The fact that Apprentice Local Licensing is fast, means that there are some system calls (most likely related to the network name lookup, perhaps DNS) that started being slow on your machine.

Anyway, good to know that local licensing works around the problem.

I am experiencing this exact same problem, however the steps above have not fixed it for me. I have identical system stats except that my machine has 3gb RAM and I'm running 10.5.6

I am running Apprentice HD build 303. And it worked fine until I got a Time Capsule and set it up for automatic backups. In order for this to work I had to go into System Prefs>Sharing and fill in the “Computer Name” field, which in turn invalidated my license as it changes your Local Host Name to “whateverYouTyped.local”.

I returned the license, and re-redeemed it and all of a sudden it takes 3 minutes to fire up hkey or Houdini. I could deal with that but the intolerable part is that it takes 6 minutes to open mplay, and that alone makes Houdini pretty much unusable for me.

I've done multiple reinstalls and it hasn't made a lick of difference. Any ideas?

to work around the problem, try configuring Houdini to use local licensing:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1283&Itemid=273 [sidefx.com]

I was having the same issue however i noticed it disappeared when i took my laptop to work.

It seems to be network related since when i pull the ethernet cable Houdini goes back to normal! maybe my slow wireless internet or a firewall setting that I missed has something to do with it.

Same problem here …
Osx 10.6.2 / houdini 10.0.528
Everything was just fine and now it took 5mn to launch on a macpro2009 and my HD license does'nt work anymore.
Uninstall/reinstall didn't changed anything.

Any help, someone ?
thanks

Ok, I've found out what was wrong.
For any reason my Hostname has changed…
(I suspect, vmware for that, but no proof)

I solved it with a :
sudo scutil –set HostName myhostname.local
to know for sure what my hostname has to be I've checked :
http://license.sidefx.com/licenses.php [license.sidefx.com]

That recover my license but houdini was still slow to launch.

To solve that point I've had to manually cleaned up library/sesi/licenses.local file and remove duplicates entries or entries with bad host name (there was a lot).

Edit : now and again only 3sec to launch !
As a 10years 3dsmax user, Houdini is just awesome. It's just like to break up with your old girl friend and forget her in a minute because of this new sweet one.

ben.

Hi guys,

I am using Houdini Apprentice 11.0.775 (on Mac OS X 10.6.8) and experience really long startup times for both the Houdini Master application, the License Administrator and MPlay. A few minutes from start to the respective UI coming up, the icon in the dock bouncing with the spinning beachball active throughout the process…

I tried all the solutions presented here, even deinstalled manually (removing everything Houdini), reinstalled and created a new user to test if my main one might have been the problem…

Is there anything you can suppose? Right now Houdini is barely usable.

Cheers, Flo

ben4096
To solve that point I've had to manually cleaned up library/sesi/licenses.local file and remove duplicates entries or entries with bad host name (there was a lot).

ben.

this did the trick for me… wow thanks! now Houdini starts up quickly and i can use mplay again!

- Rasmus

After I started using a wifi USB dongle I have been having really long delays to start up Houdini, open a file and start a render. Even if it is just a cube in the scene.

I'm on CentOS and using a local hosted Apprentice license. If I remove the dongle, Houdini works fine.

Any suggestions besides the ones already posted above?