On-line engine blitz tourney June

[hgm]

I don't quite understand what you are doing. What do you mean by 'trying two instances'? Kibitzing is an ICS thing, and in zippy mode there is at most one engine. Were you playing two different XBoard instances, each with a Polyglot + ZuriChess against each other on an ICS?

From the logs you show of the ZuriChess instance it does not look like XBoard 'crashes'. It just seems to shut down the engine. It would not do that if it crashed; then it would just be suddenly gone. What makes you conclude it crashes? The XBoard instance running Stockfish is suspect, however: Polyglot says it receives an EOF, and it is not clear whether there was a preceding 'quit' command.

Can you run XBoard with option -debug, and post the resulting xboard.debug file from the instance that crashed? (You could use -debugfile XXX to alter the name of the debug file in case you want to make two at once.

[brtzsnr]

I don't quite understand what you are doing. What do you mean by 'trying two instances'? Kibitzing is an ICS thing, and in zippy mode there is at most one engine. Were you playing two different XBoard instances, each with a Polyglot + ZuriChess against each other on an ICS?

Yes. That's right. Two different XBoard instances each with a Polyglot + Zurichess against each other on winboard.nl.

Can you run XBoard with option -debug, and post the resulting xboard.debug file from the instance that crashed? (You could use -debugfile XXX to alter the name of the debug file in case you want to make two at once.

xboard log pasted here

Xboard crash means SIGSEGV. I compiled with -g and included a stack trace.

Code: Select all

Issuing: GuestDFLJ (++++) Zurichess (1342) unrated blitz 2 12.
--** Zurichess is a computer **--
fics% 
Zurichess accepts your challenge.
fics% 
Creating: Zurichess (1342) GuestDFLJ (0) unrated blitz 2 12

{Game 2 (Zurichess vs. GuestDFLJ) Creating unrated blitz match.}
[New Thread 0x7fffeed3a700 (LWP 28356)]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff6ec9f41 in XtWidgetToApplicationContext () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff6ec9f41 in XtWidgetToApplicationContext () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6
#1  0x00007ffff6ee2d64 in XtSetValues () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6
#2  0x00000000004843cd in SetColor (colorName=0x494110 "#FFC000", box=0x6b5428 <chatOptions+72>) at xaw/xoptions.c:707
#3  0x000000000046bf24 in OutputChatMessage (partner=0, mess=0x7fffffffd0c0 "!!! +0.06/10 (3.28 sec, 1605920 nodes, 489 knps) PV=e3 Nf6 d4 d5 h3 h6 Nf3 Bf5 Bb5+ c6 Be2\n")
    at dialogs.c:1943
#4  0x000000000040d418 in read_from_ics (isr=0x10e35c0, closure=0x6c31a0 <telnetISR>, 
    data=0x10e35e8 "\n\rZurichess(1342)(C) kibitzes: !!! +0.06/10 (3.28 sec, 1605920 nodes, 489 knps) PV=e3 Nf6 d4 d5 h3 h6 Nf3 Bf5 Bb5+ c6 Be2\n\rfics% 120 120 1 P/e2-e3 (0:00) e3 1 0\n\r\n\rfics% .}\n\r\n\r<12> rnbqkbnr pppppppp -"..., count=129, error=0) at backend.c:3085
#5  0x000000000048106c in DoInputCallback (closure=0x10e35c0 "\001", source=0x10de048, xid=0x7fffffffd3a8) at xaw/xboard.c:2410
#6  0x00007ffff6ed8817 in XtAppProcessEvent () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6
#7  0x00007ffff6ecd89d in XtAppMainLoop () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXt.so.6
#8  0x000000000047e744 in main (argc=15, argv=0x7fffffffdbd8) at xaw/xboard.c:1360

[hgm]

OK, thanks for the stack trace, that is really useful. It seems XBoard segfaults when it wants to change the color of the button in the chat window, to indicate a chat message arrived. It is a bit strange that the kibitz message received from the ICS goes to the chat window anyway ('OutputChatMessage'); normally it should go to the Engine-Output window. (Unless it hardly contains any digits.)

Do you have the ICS/Chat window open, at this time, or is it trying to access a dialog that does not exist?

I also see that you are using the Xaw build of XBoard. What happens when you use the GTK build? (./configure --with-gtk)

[brtzsnr]

Dialog doesn't exist. With chatbox opened it doesn't crash anymore.

It also works with --with-gtk. And it's a lot more beautiful

[hgm]

OK, so probably a bug crept into the Xaw build. The chat window was changed compared to earlier versions (accomodating also general output). I did not really test the Xaw build much, and must have missed this particular combination of auto-kibitzing and chat window closed. When I changed something in the chat window, I tend to test with that window opened. It is still a bit weird that kibitzed engine output goes to the chat window; the whole idea of -autoKibitz is that it would go to the Engine Output window, like you were running the opponent engine locally.

I am sure I have enough info to debug it now. But I will do that tomorrow.

[zd3nik]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for May will take place on:

Saturday June 6, 3pm Boston time (21:00 Amsterdam time)

To connect:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost winboard.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz

(for UCI engines, add -fUCI)

I'd like to try this out but I've never done it before. I'm using linux so I must run winboard via wine. On the winboard startup dialog is it sufficient to select "Just view or edit games" and put the parameters in the "Additional options" box? I tried that just now, and it connects to winboard.nl and as far as I can tell it didn't register the engine. But I don't know what's suppose to happen.

Is there any documentation on this stuff? Or would someone give a brief description of how these tournaments work, what you're supposed to see when you connect your engine, etc? I've never used ICS or FICS or the like and I don't use winboard much so I'm pretty ignorant in this area.

[jdart]

Don't use winboard. Install xboard for Linux. Best to build it from source. Do "configure --enable-zippy --disable-sigint" then build the program.

A typical command line might look like this (substitute your engine's executable path for the quoted string after "fcp" and your engine's directory for the quoted string after "fd"):

./xboard -keepAlive 5 -debugMode true -ics -zp -icshost winboard.nl -fcp "/home/jdart/chess/engines/tourn/arasanx-64-popcnt -H 20G -c 24 -ics -t" -fd "/home/jdart/chess/engines/tourn"

--Jon

[zd3nik]

Don't use winboard. Install xboard for Linux. Best to build it from source. Do "configure --enable-zippy --disable-sigint" then build the program.

I'm not having any trouble running the engine under winboard. I just don't know what the behavior is supposed to be when connecting an engine to winboard.nl for a tournament. So all I'm asking is: Can I connect now to test it out or must I wait until the tournament is started and just hope it works? In either case what should it do when it connects/registers successfully?

But as long as we're on the subject, I have tried xboard but haven't had any luck with it because it requires polyglot to run UCI engines and I can't find polyglot. The polyglot link on the gnu website is broken, and there isn't anything for it in the Fedora RPM repositories (I'm using Fedora).

I don't think using xboard instead of winboard is going to answer my questions, but it would certainly be more convenient if I could get polyglot installed so I can use xboard.

Thanks,
STC

[hgm]

I don't know which distro you are using, but a recent Polyglot is available from the Ubuntu repositories and as a Debian package. For other distros you could download the latest snapshot from my source repository, and install that from source. (Be sure to use the 'learn' branch.)

As for XBoard: don't forget to also include the argument --with-gtk with ./configure, when you build from source, and don't forget to "sudo make install". When you properly installed your engine (i.e. it is in a directory in your path), the command

xboard -zp -ics -icshost winboard.nl -fcp "ENGINECOMMAND" -fUCI

would be enough, although -keepAlive 5 will be helpful if you plan to leave the engine logged in for a long time unattended. (The ICS would log you out after an hour of inactivity.) And -icshelper timeseal would be useful if you are on a laggy connection, but you would have to acquire and install a Linux timeseal binary for that. (Should be obtainable from freechess.org .) Also do not forget that if your engine is not in a PATH directory, you must invoke it as ./ENGINECOMMAND in Linux (and possibly include a -fd PATH/TO/ENGINE/DIRECTORY if the engine is in another directory as where you start xboard)!

You can login and try out now; the ICS is supposed to be up 24/7 (although sometimes maintenance on the rented VPS system takes it down), and you can login as a guest without much impairment of functionality. (Only for the automated tourney you need a registered account.)

[Daniel Anulliero]

Hi hgm!
I sent you a pm for Jars and Isa engines
Bests
Dany