From lilley at asel.udel.edu Thu Apr 12 17:00:36 2007 From: lilley at asel.udel.edu (Jason Lilley) Date: Thu Jan 10 14:15:01 2008 Subject: [HTK-Users] Documentation inconsistencies and Demo run problems Message-ID: <461E57A4.1030701@asel.udel.edu> Greetings to the group, I'm a brand-new user of HTK. I'm trying to run it on a Solaris UNIX machine; my network administrator installed it yesterday. I admit that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about how to do things on Unix in general. I'm writing for two reasons: (1) to note apparent inconsistencies in the documentation, and (2) for help with some error messages I'm getting in trying to run the Demo. The former may have something to do with the latter. First, the documentation inconsistency. The README file in the HTKDemo directory lists what should be in that directory. Among other things, it says that my /HTKDemo should contain the following directories: accs/, hmms/, proto/, and test/. But all 4 of these directories are missing. Also, the website's documentation page on installing HTK on Linux/Unix (http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/docs/inst-nix.shtml) states that to run the demo, you should use the command: perl runDemo.pl configs/monPlainM1S1.dcf But this is apparently incorrect, as the README states that "runDemo.pl" is actually the Windows NT version of the Perl script (indeed, when I tried to use it in the HTKDemo directory, I got the absurd error that I must be in the HTKDemo directory to use it). Now, when I try to run the README's recommended command: ./runDemo configs/monPlainM1S1.dcf the demo stops with the following two error messages: Can't open proto at ./MakeProtoHMMSet line 101, <> line 21. Can't open hmms/hmm.0 I noticed in the mailing list archives that choumane at irisa.fr posted this same problem on February 2nd, and eventually got past it, but how (s)he solved it is not in the archives. I note that "proto" and "hmms" are the names of two of the missing directories noted above. My network admin, who knows something about Perl, says that the Perl script is apprently trying to either read these directories or create them itself but failing. But he says that I have the proper permissions to create new directories in this directory, so he doesn't know why the Perl script would fail to create them. Next, after some experimentation I found that if I *manually* create the directories proto/, hmms/, and test/ myself, as well as the subdirectories hmm.0/, hmm.1/, hmm.2/, and tmp/ within the hmms/ directory, the perl script will finally run to completion without error, with the correct output. (The accs/ directory is apparently unnecessary.) So, it seems that the problem could stem from several possible causes: 1) The HTK-samples-3.4.tar.gz archive from the website is incomplete (missing the directories noted above). 2) The HTK and/or samples were installed incorrectly. 3) The Perl script (runDemo) is erroneous. 4) Our Perl compiler/interpreter is not working correctly. 5) Our permissions are not set correctly. Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to proceed? More importantly, can I be certain that HTK is installed correctly? Thanks for reading, Jason