Error and Fixing

1. OctaDist Startup Slow on Windows?

Windows Defender slow down OctaDist by scanning its file. You can fix this annoying issue by excluding OctaDist out of process scan list.

Here are the steps for adding OctaDist to exclusion list:

Go to Start > Settings -> Update & Security -> Virus & threat protection
Under Virus & threat protection settings select Manage settings
Under Exclusions, select Add or remove exclusions and select Add exclusion
Specify the name of OctaDist executable, for example:
```
OctaDist-3.1.0-Win-x86-64.exe
```
Close OctaDist and run it again.

2. Missing some packages

If error message says ImportError: or ModuleNotFoundError:, some important packages have not been installed. To install all required packages, stay at top directory of OctaDist and type this command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. tkinter is not properly configured to Python

If you are using an old version of Python e.g. 3.7, tkinter somehow could not configured to this Python.

raceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/nadia/Library/Python/3.7/lib/python/site-packages/octadist/octadist_gui.py", line 21, in <module>
    import octadist.main
File "/Users/nadia/Library/Python/3.7/lib/python/site-packages/octadist/__init__.py", line 112, in <module>
    from .src import molecule
File "/Users/nadia/Library/Python/3.7/lib/python/site-packages/octadist/src/molecule.py", line 22, in <module>
    from octadist.src import elements, popup
File "/Users/nadia/Library/Python/3.7/lib/python/site-packages/octadist/src/popup.py", line 17, in <module>
    from tkinter.messagebox import showinfo, showerror, showwarning
File "/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Library/Frameworks/Python3.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/tkinter/__init__.py", line 36, in <module>
    import _tkinter # If this fails your Python may not be configured for Tk

Solutions: Reinstall Tk and/or install Python 3.9 or newer version

Linux (Ubuntu): sudo apt install python3.9
macOS: brew install python@3.9

4. Failed to build PEP517

ERROR: Could not build wheels for scipy which use PEP 517 and cannot be installed directly

Solutions: - pip3 install --upgrade pip - pip3 install --user PEP517

5. MPL error

If program crashes with confusing errors messages, you may need to set MPLBACKEND environment variable before running the program, like this:

export MPLBACKEND=TkAgg

6. Cannot connect to X11 server

If you run GUI using octadist or octadist_gui and then it fails with the following error:

(py37) nutt@Ubuntu:~$ octadist

Program Starts >>>
... OctaDist 3.1.0 March 2024 ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/home/nutt/.local/bin/octadist", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(run_gui())
    File "/home/nutt/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/octadist/__main__.py", line 35, in run_gui
    app = octadist.main.OctaDist()
    File "/home/nutt/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/octadist/main.py", line 68, in __init__
    self.master = tk.Tk()
    File "/usr/lib/python3.7/tkinter/__init__.py", line 2023, in __init__
    self.tk = _tkinter.create(screenName, baseName, className, interactive, wantobjects, useTk, sync, use)
_tkinter.TclError: couldn't connect to display ":0"

The above message implies that your system cannot connect to X11 server used for displaying the GUI of program. This error usually happens on Debian or Ubuntu (and Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows). So, you need to install X11 server as follows:

X11 Client Installation

To install the xauth package, use apt-get:

sudo apt-get install xauth

X11 Server Installation

To install a minimal X11 on Ubuntu Server edition:

sudo apt-get install xorg
sudo apt-get install openbox

Tip

If you find any issues, do not hesitate to let us know. Your suggestions would help OctaDist getting improved.