VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2007 - 19:00:24 CST

Dan,
  Can you run the "glxgears" test program that comes with X-windows?
If you can run that, then there should be a way to get remote display
to MacOS X to work for VMD as well. If that doesn't work, then VMD won't
either.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 03:27:48PM -0800, Daniel Beaman wrote:
> Axel,
> Thank you for the information. Running xdpyinfo gives me 26
> extensions, one of which is actually GLX. So now that I know GLX is
> supported on the mac OS, is it a matter of figuring out how to
> configure it properly to run VMD? Any ideas how I could do this?
> Has anyone else out there had to configure GLX to allow VMD to run,
> if so, what did you do?
> Thanks Again,
> Dan Beaman
> University of Oregon
>
> On Nov 21, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Daniel Beaman wrote:
> >
> >hello,
> >
> >DB> $ xhost +computername.edu
> >
> >please note that with this setting, _anybody_
> >logged into "computername.edu" can connect
> >to your laptop and monitor _everything_ that
> >you are doing, including logging every single
> >keystroke (including those when you type in
> >a password).
> >
> >DB> $ ssh -X -l name etc...
> >
> >this enables X11 tunneling which would _not_
> >be needed with the xhost setting. so you can
> >skip the xhost for reasons outlined above.
> >(... and i better not get started on "xhost +",
> >which is still use by far too many people).
> >
> >DB> I think these two lines allow me to have graphical displays
> >piped to my
> >DB> computer. What I'd like to have is the VMD GUI piped ( not
> >sure if this is
> >DB> proper terminology? ) to my Mac from the Linux Machine. As VMD
> >starts up on
> >DB> the Linux machine, it opens a window on my powerbook and shows
> >me technical
> >DB> data about the cluster, ie. #CPUs, etc.. but then spits out the
> >following
> >DB> errors:
> >DB>
> >DB> the x server does not support the opengl glx extension
> >DB> unable to create openGL window
> >
> >this means, that your X server does not include
> >the "OpenGL over X" protocol which is required to
> >display VMD graphics over the net.
> >
> >DB> From multiple hours of searching the internet I have learned a
> >DB> little about openGL (I'm a newbie to this type of stuff) but have
> >DB> absolutely no idea how I could enable this or get openGL loaded
> >DB> properly on my computer. The main
> >
> >please open a terminal window and run "xdpyinfo" that
> >should give you a list of supported extensions to the X
> >protocol. if GLX is not amongst them, you'll have to
> >a find a way to "load" or configure it. that is the
> >problem of the MacOS.
> >
> >DB> reason I would like to use these programs and computers in the
> >way I'm
> >DB> describing is that the files are prohibitively large to be
> >transfered to my
> >DB> machine (I can get VMD to run my powerbook from the Mac version
> >of VMD that
> >DB> I installed, but this still isn't much of an option) and the
> >files live on
> >DB> the Linux cluster where there are TBs worth of storage space.
> >I also don't
> >DB> have direct access to the cluster so I can't sit in front of it
> >and view the
> >DB> stuff that way. So, is there anyone out there who has done
> >what I am trying
> >DB> to do (I would imagine this is somewhat common, the only
> >exception being the
> >DB> Mac part of it) or anyone who has any ideas on how to get this
> >to work? I
> >DB> can get this to work on a Lab mates computer who is running
> >Linux and it
> >DB> seems to work fine. I've also looked into using Virtualbox but
> >I am unable
> >DB> to because I have a powerpc rather than an intel chip. Any
> >other ideas?
> >
> >the alternative would be to have something like a webdav server
> >running on the cluster and then mount the file system to your
> >mac and thus keep the data remotely and process it locally.
> >the drawback is that in this case you have to pull the data
> >all the time across the net. it is usually more efficient for
> >small data sets and visualization and less efficient for analysis,
> >but in the latter case you can run those in text mode. i'm doing
> >this quite often these days: copy a small segment of the data
> >to my machine, write/debug my scripts and then run them in text
> >mode on the machine with the full trajectory and load and process
> >the data in batches.
> >
> >cheers,
> > axel.
> >
> >DB>
> >DB> Thank you very much in advance.
> >DB> Dan Beaman
> >DB> University of Oregon
> >DB>
> >DB>
> >
> >--
> >======================================================================
> >=
> >Axel Kohlmeyer akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu http://
> >www.cmm.upenn.edu
> > Center for Molecular Modeling -- University of Pennsylvania
> >Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA
> >19104-6323
> >tel: 1-215-898-1582, fax: 1-215-573-6233, office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
> >======================================================================
> >=
> >If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better
> >idiot.
> > 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078