Dear users,

I have Ubuntu 16.04 (64bit) and I would like to use freesurfer.

I first installed version 5.3 but got the well-known 'nu_correct' error:

nu_correct: crashed while running nu_estimate_np_and_em (termination 
status=65280)

Some searching revealed that this error is also described here:
https://www.mail-archive.com/freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/msg47050.html

In this thread it was recommended to either downgrade perl to some earlier version (not which one), or to download the development version. 

I downloaded two development versions:
freesurfer-Linux-centos6_x86_64-dev (on oct 10)

and 

freesurfer-Linux-centos6_x86_64-stable-v6-beta-20161019-e582155 (on oct 19)

But for both versions I get the same error when trying to test if the installation was correct:

nielsj@nielsj-XXXX-D2H-USB3:/usr/local/freesurfer/subjects$ mri_convert sample-001.mgz ~/sample-001.nii.gz
mri_convert.bin sample-001.mgz /home/nielsj/sample-001.nii.gz 
$Id: mri_convert.c,v 1.226 2016/02/26 16:15:24 mreuter Exp $
reading from sample-001.mgz...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: Invalid FreeSurfer license key found in license file /usr/local/freesurfer/license.txt
  If you are outside the NMR-Martinos Center,
  go to http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/registration.html to 
  get a valid license file (it's free).
  If you are inside the NMR-Martinos Center,
  make sure to source the standard environment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I copied the same license.txt file as for the 5.3 version, where it worked, so I know the license.txt file is OK.

One observation: after untarring the user:group properties of the files in /usr/local/freesurfer look weird and are 8481:1590 for all files, except the license.txt which is root. Is this normal?

Can I install freesurfer on my machine or should I revert to Ubuntu 14.04?

Thank you.

--
Niels Janssen
Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Institute of Biomedical Technologies
Center for Biomedical Research of the Canary Islands
University of La Laguna
Tenerife, Spain