From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 03 2008 - 11:10:18 CDT

Ben,
  I have a special build for MacOS X that should avoid this problem.
The normal MacOS X builds make significant use of the core services
and carbon frameworks, which seems to result in contacting the windowing
system even when we're not really using it. If I build a MacOS X version
of VMD against the X11 libs, or with a text-only build, I can produce
a binary that doesn't encounter this problem. If you would like to try
a VMD 1.8.7 test version that's build this way, let me know.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 11:16:52AM +0100, Benjamin Hall wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm writing an a tool which uses vmd in an automated way to analyse
> various properties of a set of trajectories autonomously, and I've
> encountered a problem which specifically arises when running vmd in
> the background when not logged in (either with ssh or graphically). If
> logged in with ssh, vmd runs but gives an error message:
>
> _RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO establish the default connection to
> the WindowServer, _CGSDefaultConnection() is NULL.
>
> However, if I log out before completion, vmd aborts with the error
> message:
>
> FAILED TO GET ASN FROM CORESERVICES so aborting.
>
> I have tried compiling vmd without "OPENGL", "FLTK" and "TK" configure
> options (as advised in a previous post,
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/mailing_list/vmd-l/6192.html) , but
> this doesn't appear to help. I've also tried omiting plugins which might
> use gui elements, without success. I think that the error itself is
> related to a security feature of the operating system, described in the
> following technote:
>
> http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html
>
> Any advice on how to approach this problem would be greatly
> appreciated. Thanks in advance,
>
> Ben
>
> ************************************************************************
> Benjamin A. Hall
> Structural Bioinformatics & Computational Biochemistry Unit
> University of Oxford
> http://sbcb.bioch.ox.ac.uk/hall.php
> +44 (0)1865 275380
> benjamin.hall_at_bioch.ox.ac.uk
>
>
>

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