I've followed your guide and it didn't work

[G-Pereira]

OS: Arch Linux I think this output can be helpful:

ls ~/.local/share/mime/application 
sla.xml

What information can I provide to further investigate the error? I already rebooted my pc. PS: sudo update-mime it does not wotk on my computer, the command isn't found

[kaklik]

Hello,

I can confirm this behavior on Ubuntu 18.04.1. It seems to be corrupted by some changes in OS. I am unable to solve this issue, although it seems to be similar to the following reports: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/50494 https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/410395/custom-thumbnail-generation-fails

[hcremer]

Having the same problem on Ubuntu 16.04.5 is there any workarauound to get this going?

[kaklik]

I do not know, what is the difference. But here https://github.com/MLAB-project/stl-thumbnailer/issues/6 seem to be proof that at least some machines the same version still works. Isolating the trouble will be a great improvement of this thumbnailer.

[pczekalski]

Same problem with Ubuntu 20.04. No thumbnails at all. Any hints on how to troubleshoot it?

[OZ1SEJ]

Same problem with Ubuntu 22.04.

[Smartich0ke]

Hi, I'm also having this problem with Ubuntu 22.04 .

[hcremer]

Try https://github.com/unlimitedbacon/stl-thumb that should work.

[Smartich0ke]

Try https://github.com/unlimitedbacon/stl-thumb that should work.

I tried this one too and it didn't work. Just installed the deb file with GDebi and rebooted but the STL files just show blank document icons like before.

[hcremer]

Is OpenGL installed?

[Smartich0ke]

Isn't openGL support built into the GPU?

[hcremer]

Sorry, I meant OpenSCAD

[Smartich0ke]

Yes, it is installed.

[yebo29]

I'm able to run the python script on its own and get a good result. However, I too can't get any thumbnails to show up after following the guide, including logging out and back in. What I did see in the logs is: openscad[506240]: segfault at a8 ip 0000560bea2b42e4 sp 00007ffc6e774698 error 4 in openscad[560bea02d000+51a000] Whenever it tries to generate a thumbnail. I don't know enough about how nautilus/ubuntu calls the script to troubleshoot further.

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=22.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=jammy DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS"

[Smartich0ke]

Sounds like a problem with your OpenSCAD installation. Whats your OpenSCAD version?

[yebo29]

OpenSCAD version 2021.01

[yebo29]

I agree this looks like it might be an openscad issue, but why does the script work when I run it manually? Maybe it's a Nautilus issue?

GNOME nautilus 42.2

[Smartich0ke]

have you tried running OpenSCAD just from command line manually? Like giving it an input file to turn into an image (like what the thumbnail does)?

[yebo29]

No, because I don't fully understand how the code converts the stl file to a scad one. If I have time later today I'll try to understand it better and run it manually. Or I can just try to find any scad file online and try that

[yebo29]

I found a .scad file on thingiverse and was able to use openscad to convert it to png:

$ openscad -o out.png --imgsize=256,256 ../Downloads/Nut_Job.scad 
Compiling design (CSG Products normalization)...
Normalized CSG tree has 1903 elements
Geometries in cache: 707
Geometry cache size in bytes: 875472
CGAL Polyhedrons in cache: 0
CGAL cache size in bytes: 0
Total rendering time: 0:00:00.354

File from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:193647/files

Next I'll try to isolate the code that converts stl to scad and re-running the openscad command manually and see what happens.

[yebo29]

I understand now. We're using the import() function in openscad to convert the file, which is written in plaintext to the /tmp folder. That's then fed to the openscad command. Running that manually also worked, but only if I gave it the full absolute path (relative paths error out with not found as it tries to do from /tmp):

# HERE WE'RE USING RELATIVE PATH. ALL I'M DOING IN MY TEST SCRIPT IS WRITING THE FILE OUT AND PRINTING WHAT WE WE WOULD'VE RUN
$ ./test_stl_thumb.py ../Documents/HeroMe/HMG5_Creality_Direct_Drive_Adapter.stl testingout.png 256
/tmp/stl_to_png_2d4b4dba3cd071a8c6d3b022b419ac06.scad
openscad -o testingout.png.png --imgsize=256,256 /tmp/stl_to_png_2d4b4dba3cd071a8c6d3b022b419ac06.scad 2> /dev/null; mv testingout.png.png testingout.png
$ cat /tmp/stl_to_png_2d4b4dba3cd071a8c6d3b022b419ac06.scad

   1   │ import("../Documents/HeroMe/HMG5_Creality_Direct_Drive_Adapter.stl");

# WE FAIL DUE TO RELATIVE PATH
$ openscad -o testout.png --imgsize=256,256 /tmp/stl_to_png_2d4b4dba3cd071a8c6d3b022b419ac06.scad
WARNING: Can't open import file '/tmp/../Documents/HeroMe/HMG5_Creality_Direct_Drive_Adapter.stl', import() at line 1
Compiling design (CSG Products normalization)...
Normalized CSG tree has 1 elements
Geometries in cache: 1
Geometry cache size in bytes: 152
CGAL Polyhedrons in cache: 0
CGAL cache size in bytes: 0
Total rendering time: 0:00:00.107

# USE AN ABSOLUTE PATH
 $ ./test_stl_thumb.py /home/me/Documents/HeroMe/HMG5_Creality_Direct_Drive_Adapter.stl testingout.png 256
/tmp/stl_to_png_a2f9bbfd47187b05ca04309ca098b3ba.scad
openscad -o testingout.png.png --imgsize=256,256 /tmp/stl_to_png_a2f9bbfd47187b05ca04309ca098b3ba.scad 2> /dev/null; mv testingout.png.png testingout.png

# CONVERT USING THE GENERATED TMP FILE THAT NOW CONTAINS THE IMPORT FUNCTION WITH AN ABSOLUTE PATH
 $ openscad -o testout.png --imgsize=256,256 /tmp/stl_to_png_a2f9bbfd47187b05ca04309ca098b3ba.scad
Compiling design (CSG Products normalization)...
Normalized CSG tree has 1 elements
Geometries in cache: 1
Geometry cache size in bytes: 67832
CGAL Polyhedrons in cache: 0
CGAL cache size in bytes: 0
Total rendering time: 0:00:00.115
 $

So this seems to be a Nautilus issue. I'm going to see what else I can debug when Nautilus tries to run it.

[yebo29]

I see the issue: when nautilus runs it, it provides the input file as /tmp/name_of_stl. So the import .scad file that is generated point to a non-existent file in /tmp: import("/tmp/HMG7 Universal Face Down Base.stl");. The stl file to be thumbnailed is never copied there, but it really shouldn't. That would be unnecessary I/O. So we need to figure out how to appropriately format the import to include the full path to the stl. Log file: 4 ['/usr/local/bin/stl_thumb.py', '/tmp/HMG7 Universal Face Down Base.stl', '/tmp/gnome-desktop-thumbnailer.png', '256'] Generated scad file: import("/tmp/HMG7 Universal Face Down Base.stl"); The correct path to the stl file exists within a folder in my home directory. So the correct import function command should be: import("/home/me/path/to/HMG7 Universal Face Down Base.stl");

[kaklik]

Recently I merged the pull request https://github.com/MLAB-project/stl-thumbnailer/pull/11 which seems to resolve that long-term issue, by removing dependency on OpenSCAD and replacing it with stl-thumb that solution seems to be a less prone to errors, because it does not need temporary files. I had tested it on two different machines and it seems to work better, to me.

[yebo29]

Recently I merged the pull request #11 which seems to resolve that long-term issue, by removing dependency on OpenSCAD and replacing it with stl-thumb that solution seems to be a less prone to errors, because it does not need temporary files. I had tested it on two different machines and it seems to work better, to me.

Brilliant! I'll test it soon. Thank you!