Gentoo blender question

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1

I’ve got a Gentoo server in the back that runs text-mode only (no GUI/X server), which is used for CVS. I’d like to experiment a bit with using it as a render node for Blender, but without installing Xfree/QT/etc… I’ve got my USE flags set up like so:

USE="-oss -gtk -gtk2 -kde -gnome -oggvorbis -opengl -png -qt -quicktime -sdl -X -xmms"

However, when trying to emerge Blender, it wants to install these:

[ebuild N ] media-libs/libmad-0.15.1b
[ebuild N ] dev-libs/glib-2.4.0
[ebuild N ] kde-base/kde-env-3-r2
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libid3tag-0.15.1b
[ebuild N ] media-libs/audiofile-0.2.5
[ebuild N ] media-libs/giflib-4.1.0-r3
[ebuild N ] x11-misc/ttmkfdir-3.0.9-r1
[ebuild N ] media-libs/fontconfig-2.2.1
[ebuild N ] app-arch/unzip-5.50-r2
[ebuild N ] app-arch/cabextract-0.6
[ebuild N ] x11-base/opengl-update-1.5
[ebuild N ] x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r5
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libungif-4.1.0.1b
[ebuild N ] x11-libs/qt-3.3.2
[ebuild N ] kde-base/arts-1.2.2
[ebuild N ] media-libs/svgalib-1.9.17-r3
[ebuild N ] dev-lang/nasm-0.98.38
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libsdl-1.2.7
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libogg-1.1
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libvorbis-1.0.1-r2
[ebuild N ] media-libs/smpeg-0.4.4-r4
[ebuild N ] media-libs/openal-20040303
[ebuild N ] media-gfx/yafray-0.0.6
[ebuild N ] media-gfx/blender-2.32

Most I don’t care about, except for xfree and qt. I don’t want to run the GUI, I only want to run, for example:

blender -b testRender.blend -f 1

Does blender require OpenGL for anything other than drawing the windows? I’d eventually like to set up a renderfarm of older machines and just have blender run in the background (no windows). I think blender just wants to link against the libs, but I’d like to avoid having to compile all of that if I didn’t have to. If anyone has any ideas, I’d appreciate hearing them.

Thanks in advance.

2

why can’t you use a release from blender.org?

(in tgz form)

though opengl is only required when not rendering from a command line, I think you may have problems starting blender without the libs

I really don’t know though

3

I think I’m using a newer version of libc, but I’ll give it a shot when I get into work tomorrow. I know I had problems with my main work system starting up blender in GUI mode because I’m stuck with onboard video (Intel 865G), and had to putz around for a few days getting the newest Mesa drivers to work.

Thanks again for the idea. I’ll see if it works tomorrow.

4

Well, I tried using the static version from the site, and got this:

./blender: error while loading shared libraries: libXmu.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So it looks like it does need the X libs. Oh well, it’s not like I’m going to have the money for a renderfarm any time soon. Thanks again for the idea, z3r0_d

5

try running it to render from text mode, not just starting it.

[edit] oh wait, that’s what you did, isn’t it?

6

Yup, I ran it with this command line (filename was different, though):

blender -b testRender.blend -f 1

So it looks like it was looking for the X libs. I can just install those and not run the X server, but it’s a production system for CVS, so I’m not going to mess with that one.

7

AFAIK there’s no confure “switch” to compile blender in a non-gui mode, so trying to compile it won’t work (even with the e-build). You may be able to use the static binaries if you’re just running Blender from the command line. If you have a gentoo box that has a gui, you can compile on that, and move the resuting binaries (I suggest making static versions) to the older CLI only machines.

Tommy

8

Looked into it some, you’ll probably have to install all that stuff, but no-one will force you to start x, so unless you’re short of hard drive space it shouldn’t cause you any problems (besides taking a long time to compile