Crashing IDL 8.2 while writing object code is not that unusual, in both Windows and UNIX. The good news is, this is usually because of a programmer error. :-) But, to get to the bottom if it, you are going to have to figure out what your program was doing at the time it crashed. The problem may or may not be reproducible. If you are using the object graphics system, I would try running your program with software rendering turned on, rather than the default hardware rendering. At least you would be able to eliminate an out-of-date graphics card as the culprit.

Thanks for the suggestion. But IDL 8.2 kept crashing no matter what I did. do I need to reinstall it? Is it the usual situation?

I think I would set a breakpoint and step though the code. I'd at least like to know what line in my program is causing the crash. It could be MANY things! I'm just saying that IDl 8.2 and object programming together makes IDL more fragile than it is otherwise. I don't know why this is. But, when IDL crashes, 9 times out of 10 I am working with object programs. I suspect a problem with the automatic object clean-up mechanism, but I've never been able to isolate a test case. If you know which line is causing the crash, though, it can narrow the universe of possibilities.

Perhaps you could try renaming the gl_driver.so and see if that helps with your situation. To do this, enter the following commands (you might need to have ROOT permissions): cd /usr/local/exelis/idl82/bin/bin.linux.x86_64 mv gl_driver.so gl_driver.so.bak mv gl_driver.so.8.2 gl_driver.so.8.2.bak NOTE: Do this will automatically make IDL use Software rendering.