MapServer incompatibility with RHEL4/CENTOS4.2

[Doyon, Jean-Francois]

Hello,

OK well I've tracked down the source of my problem to the operating system
itself it seems.

Regardless of the versions/combinations of mapserver/gd/freetype I use,
there are definite visual rendering problems when on this OS.  On RedHat
7.3, everything is fine!

Example:

http://atlas.gc.ca/family-good.gif
http://atlas.gc.ca/family-bad.gif

Note the small dot that appears on the symbol?

Also:

http://atlas.gc.ca/the-market-good.gif
http://atlas.gc.ca/the-market-bad.gif

Notice how on the bad version, a bunch of point symbols are missing?

I tried various combinations of:

MapServer 4.6.1 and 4.8.1
FreeType 2.0.9 and 2.1.9
GD 2.0.28 and 2.0.33

A given combination works on 7.3, but not on CentOS.

Without luck.  The problem with the strange shape of the symbols (
http://atlas.gc.ca/mapserver-symbol-problem.png ) seemes to be related to
the version of FreeType for some reason?  FreeType 2.0.9 acts as we expect
it to, FreeType 2.1.9 does not.  There may be cumulative effects also.

CentOS 4.2 uses GCC 3.4.4 and GLIBC 2.3.4.  I had gotten a horrible crash
message at some point with a version of mapserver on this OS
(http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0602&L=mapserver-users&P=R60802&I=-3&
X=106ECE1CAE6B73E23F), but upgrading from 4.6.1 to 4.8.1 had fixed it.  This
was related to memory allocation.  Could something related to that be
causing this?  Turns out I've got 4.6.1 running on this platform now, but
that really didn't help.

I'm out of ideas :( Anyone?

Jean-François Doyon
Internet Service Development and Systems Support / Spécialiste de
dèveloppements internet et soutien technique
Canada Centre for Remote Sensing/Centre Canadien de télédétection
Natural Resources Canada/Ressources Naturelles Canada
http://atlas.gc.ca
Tel./Tél.: (613) 992-4902
Fax: (613) 947-2410