VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed May 22 2013 - 12:06:50 CDT

Brian,
  It sounds to me like someone may have modified your VMD startup
scripts, or perhaps system shell scripts, such that your directory
is being reset, as this is not at all the behavior that I experience
on our VMD installations here. On Unix, the VMD startup scripts are
simple shell scripts (for either C-shell or Bourne shell) that simply
set some environment variables and launch the program. If your current
working directory is getting reset inside a freshly launched VMD,
it is likely tied to the behavior of your system shell. Which shell are
you using? Do you have anything in your .cshrc or .bashrc or similar
that would affect the current working directory when a new shell is invoked?
VMD normally inherits the current working directory from the shell that
it was invoked from, so I'm not sure what's happening in your case.

The situation on MacOS X and Windows is a bit different, because in those
cases VMD inherits the current working directory from the Windowing system
itself, which is generally either the user's home directory, or else the
root partition of the boot drive.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 04:59:28PM +0000, Bennion, Brian wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
>
> We have found that among various linux versions, the default directory is
> not where it was initialized.
>
>
>
> The default working directory always defaults to the home directory for
> the user.
>
>
>
> This is slightly annoying and I am wondering if there is a quick fix for
> this. Vmd1.9 on fedora doesn't show this behavior, however, vmd1.9.1 does
> set the default directory as the home directory even when it is executed
> in the current working directory.
>
> There was a posted fix for this in windows by adjusting the vmd.rc file.
> However, nothing was found for linux distributions.
>
>
>
> Ideas?
>
>
>
>
>
> Brian 

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