[Paraview] pvserver disconnecting...

[Karl Battams]

I'm pretty new to paraview so could be doing fundamentally wrong here, but
here's my issue...

I have paraview 3.10 compiled/installed from source on Ubuntu 10. I'm using
a python script to connect to pvserver, iterate over a bunch of vtk files,
do some stuff, and saving the output as a png. I'm running the python script
and the pvserver on the same (8-core) machine.

So I start pvserver with (e.g.) mpirun -np 6 pvserver and it sits happily
listening for a client. In another terminal, I run my python script which
connects (successfully) to pvserver, and starts running through the files
exactly as I ask it to. So far so good.

Problem is, after a random length of time, and/or number of files, the
pvserver abruptly dies and so the whole python script obviously dies with
it. The pvserver gives no error message... just dies. If I just run the
script for one file (or even a few of them), it runs without an issue.

What I have noticed is that the less processors I use, the more files my
script will process before pvserver dies. If I use pvserver by itself (i.e.
one processor) it will do about 120-or-so files. If I use four processors,
it'll only go through 30-or-so before one of them throws a kill signal and
takes the whole thing down. It is not a particular file that does it, nor is
it at a particular point in the processing script. The length of time and
number of files processed is also not fixed. (It's almost like it's a memory
leak issue..??)

So... questions:
1) Am I being inefficient/stupid by using pvserver + python script to do
this batch processing? If so, what's the recommended practice?
2) My script only does one server connect (via Connect('localhost') ) and
then loops over the files. Should I do a new server connect for each file
instead?
3) Assuming yes to question 2, how do I cleanly disconnect from pvserver
without killing the server altogether (see below)?
4) If I run a single instance of file processing (i.e. one file) the script
runs fine... but when it's done, the pvserver disconnects the client and
dies. Is that normal? Is there a 'keep-alive' flag for pvserver? Why does
dropping the connection kill the server?
5) Does pvserver leave any logs anywhere? Anyway I can trace what's causing
the kill signal?

I just can't shake the feeling that the pvserver process should be a lot
more robust than what I'm seeing.

Many thanks for any help!
Karl
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