error launching mathematica 9.0.1 in linux

Questions
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1

Hi,

I just installed Mathematica on Arch Linux. The install seemed to complete successfully. However, when I try to run mathematica, it gets stuck at start up. When I try to launch it from the terminal, I get an error:
LinkConnect::linkc: -- Message text not found -- (LinkObject[akt_shm, 3, 1])

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nick

2

Probably a difficulty starting the Mathematica Kernel (the part that performs the calculations).

  1. Restart the computer and launch Mathematica from a terminal window with the -clean option,
mathematica  -clean &

This will make sure all preference and other start-up files are reset to default contents.

  1. If that does not fix it, does the Mathematica Kernel run by itself? The Kernel can be launched by entering “math” in a terminal window.
    The bare Kernel has a plain-text interface, so you can just type 2+2 ENTER, for example, to verify that it works.
    If there are error messages, send them to support@wolfram.com with a description of the computer and OS level.
    Copying and pasting the whole Kernel session into the email is usually convenient.
3

Thanks for your response, Bruce. I tried running mathematica with the clean option like you suggested, but it still gets stuck, and the same error mentioned above shows in the terminal. I tried to run math from the terminal, and it asked for my activation key (I just installed Mathematica and haven’t been able to open it successfully). I copied my activation key into the terminal but it just hangs.

4

Look for what the system-call utility on your computer is called. (“strace” is common.)

Start the Mathematica Kernel with command line syntax like

strace -o /tmp/mcrashlog.log math

substituting the correct name of the trace utility and option.

After a second of hanging, please kill the kernel process and send the mcrashlog.log to Technical Support.
If it is over one MByte, please upload it via http://upload.wolfram.com/, rather than emailing.
For the “Recipient:” field, put support@wolfram.com . In the “Additional notes:” field, put
“Community 197049 for Bruce”.

Which version of Arch Linux? What CPU chip?

5

Check whether your loopback network interface is configured correctly. Are you able to ping localhost?

6

Thanks everybody for the help! The problem was indeed with my loopback network interface, as Ilian pointed out. I needed to add a rule in my iptables configuration to allow loopback traffic. Now Mathematica is up and running.