# glGenFramebuffers errors in pvserver 5.8
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [February 21, 2020, 6:58pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632 "2020-02-21T18:58:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@razoumov](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/razoumov)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2020, 6:58pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/1 "2020-02-21T18:58:05Z")
I usually compile pvserver on our CPU cluster with the following flags:
```
-DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_OSMESA=ON
-DPARAVIEW_USE_MPI=ON -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF
-DVTK_USE_X=OFF -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_QT_GUI=OFF
-DPARAVIEW_ENABLE_PYTHON=ON
-DPARAVIEW_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
```
With 5.7 and earlier versions, I had no problems establishing client-server connections and doing offscreen rendering.
With 5.8, right after establishing a client-server connection (using 5.8 client), I receive the following message:
Accepting connection(s): …:11111
Client connected.
(15.960s) [pvserver]vtkOpenGLFramebufferObj:356 ERR| vtkOpenGLFramebufferObject (0x237b230): failed at glGenFramebuffers 1 OpenGL errors detected
0 : (1280) Invalid enum
Any idea of what might be wrong?
I just tried recompiling pvserver 5.7 and there are no issues, only with 5.8. No configuration or compilation errors in either case.
Thanks.
---
### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2020, 3:15am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/2 "2020-02-24T03:15:24Z")
@cory.quammen : this one may be important.
---
### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2020, 2:21pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/3 "2020-02-24T14:21:57Z")
The OpenGL error must be before the call to `glGenFramebuffers` because that call can’t cause an invalid enum error.
@razoumov could you quickly try the osmesa packages we provide on [paraview.org](http://paraview.org) and see if you can reproduce the error with that binary? [www.paraview.org/download](http://www.paraview.org/download) and look under the heading “ParaView Server for Headless Machines”. Thanks.
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### Author:  [@razoumov](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/razoumov)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2020, 5:44pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/4 "2020-02-24T17:44:36Z")
Thanks, @cory.quammen ! The precompiled headless pvserver works without this error, but is very slow (starting the server, handshaking, loading a small dataset). I also tried a custom-compiled 5.7.1 pvserver in the same interactive job, and it is fast. We really need to figure out these glGenFramebuffers errors. Was there anything in the source that required a more recent OSMesa?
---
### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/5 "2020-02-24T18:21:20Z")
We are using Mesa 18.2.2 FWIW. I’m not sure what the minimum required is. Can you build against that version and see if the error message persists?
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### Author:  [@razoumov](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/razoumov)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2020, 5:32pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/6 "2020-02-25T17:32:51Z")
Switching to Mesa 19.2.7 solved the issue. Thank you for your help!
---
### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2020, 5:58pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/7 "2020-02-25T17:58:54Z")
Great, thanks for the followup.
---
### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2020, 2:35am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/8 "2020-02-26T02:35:27Z")
Do we mention a minimum mesa version somewhere ? We should.
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### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2020, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/9 "2020-02-26T14:41:52Z")
We do not have a separate document that lists minimum third-party libraries required by ParaView or VTK. Frankly, we don’t have the time to figure out what the minimum version required is. _Working_ version is known, and is implicit in the import commits for third-party libraries or in the [`versions.cmake`](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/blob/master/versions.cmake) file in ParaView’s superbuild. A separate document will never be kept up to date with the code due to human tendency to forget to update such a document, unfortunately.
---
### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2020, 3:32am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/10 "2020-02-27T03:32:16Z")
fair enough. Then how should one figure out the used version of mesa ?
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### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2020, 4:54am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/11 "2020-02-27T04:54:12Z")
Consult [https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/blob/master/versions.cmake](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/blob/master/versions.cmake).
---
### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2020, 4:54am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/12 "2020-02-27T04:54:40Z")
Indeed ! Thanks @cory.quammen !
---
### Author:  [@paulmelis](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/paulmelis)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2020, 9:29am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/13 "2020-03-25T09:29:01Z")
How serious are those glGenFramebuffers errors? One of our users is seeing these as well in PV 5.8.0 with OSmesa support (Mesa 18.3.6), but he does get rendered output. Before I embark on trying Mesa 19.2.7 as above (which will be fun as they switched build systems to Meson) I’d like to ask an opinion if that is worth the trouble?
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### Author:  [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/14 "2020-03-25T15:31:19Z")
If rendering is fine, then the error messages are not important. They can become a problem if repeated with every render on hundreds or thousands of processes, though, as reporting the errors will consume a lot of CPU time and network transfer.
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### Author:  [@razoumov](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/razoumov)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glgenframebuffers-errors-in-pvserver-5-8/3632/15 "2020-03-25T18:21:19Z")
If I remember correctly, after getting the glGenFramebuffers error my client-server connection drops.