While Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very popular with the VFX crowd, those relying on the SideFX Houdini 3D animation software are running into a bit of a pickle if trying to use RHEL 9.4. There’s a glibc bug causing random crashes for Houdini that Red Hat has been slow to pickup but is now going to be shipped by AlmaLinux early to satisfy VFX users.
There’s been a known upstream bug going back to May that the glibc update in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 is making SideFX Houdini practically unusable. There are crashes when performing random operations with the software. But RHEL 9.3 and older work just fine.
The fix has been available the past month and upstreamed in Glibc. It has also worked its way to CentOS Stream 9 but not yet released as a RHEL 9.4 package update. Thus those using Houdini on RHEL need to stick to RHEL 9.3 or older, but that means missing out on recent security updates.
To protect those needing to use Houdini in production, AlmaLinux is steaming ahead and working to ship the glibc fix from CentOS Stream 9 even without it being picked up yet by RHEL. They are currently testing the update and for those interested there is more information on the AlmaLinux blog.
