From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 27 2014 - 11:56:20 CDT

Cara,
  Are you able to run "glxgears" on your cluster and remotely display it?
If not, then you would not be able to run VMD either. You need to make
sure that your Windows MobaXTerm software actually supports GLX protocol
(required by OpenGL). Most of the free/cheap X11 emulators for Windows
don't implement GLX, or they implement a small subset that is insufficient
for sophisticated OpenGL apps like VMD. If you can run the "glxgears"
program that comes with linux, you would at least have demonstrated that
it might be possible to run VMD, but if that much doesn't work, then you'll
have to find a different X11 package for your Windows 7 machine.

An alternative to these methods is to use VirtualGL, which while not
perfect, is considerably better than using raw X11 protocol in most cases:
  http://www.virtualgl.org/

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 12:37:39AM +0800, Cara Kreck wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We're trying to get VMD to run remotely on a GPU cluster (RHEL) from our
> Windows 7 workstations using MobaXTerm. VMD was compiled from source on
> the GPU cluster in order to get it to run with CUDA 5. Remote
> visualisation using MobaXTerm works on a CPU cluster we have access to and
> this is the info I get there:
>
> Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.9.1 (November 19, 2013)
> Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 12 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 13839MB (77%)
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this optional X server feature.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro 600/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(16) MDE MTX NPOT PP PS
> Info) GLSL rendering mode is NOT available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (18x17), 3-D (18x17x18), Multitexture (4)
>
> The only things that seems special about the setup here is the unusually
> low texture numbers (is this due to the limited graphics ability of the
> remote CPUs?) and setting environment variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=y.
> However, if I try to use the same Windows workstation to run VMD on the
> GPU cluster I get this:
>
> Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.9.1 (August 19, 2014)
> Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 4 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 7062MB (89%)
> Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> Info) Detected 2 available CUDA accelerators:
> Info) [0] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Info) [1] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this optional X server feature.
> XRequest.146: GLXBadRenderRequest 0x0
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro 600/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(16) MDE MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFG)
> XRequest.146: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
> 0xa00001
> XRequest.146: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
> 0xa00001
> XRequest.146: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
> 0xa00001
> XRequest.146: GLXBadRenderRequest 0x0
> XRequest.146: GLXBadLargeRequest 0xfd
> XRequest.146: GLXBadLargeRequest 0x2
> XRequest.146: GLXBadRenderRequest 0x0
> XRequest.146: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) 0x0
> XRequest.146: GLXBadRenderRequest 0x0
> XRequest.146: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) 0x0
> Warning) GPU driver failed to compile shader:
> Warning) /usr/local/vmd-1.9.1/shaders/vmd
> Warning) This GPU/driver is buggy, or doesn't fully implement GLSL.
> Warning) Set environment variable VMDGLSLVERBOSE for more info.
> Info) GLSL rendering mode is NOT available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (16384x16384), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture
> (4)
>
> Although the menu and OpenGL display open, it can not display any
> structure file I try to load, instead giving me a long list of
> XRequest.146: GLXBadLargeRequest and XRequest.146: GLXBadRenderRequest
> errors. Setting LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=y or LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=y doesn't
> seem to make any difference. I have a couple of RHEL workstations that I
> have also tested. The first one has an ATI Radeon HD 5450 and didn't give
> any XRequest.146 errors but still didn't work:
>
> Info) Detected 2 available CUDA accelerators:
> Info) [0] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Info) [1] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this optional X server feature.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CEDAR
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(8) MDE MTX NPOT PP PS
> Info) GLSL rendering mode is NOT available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (16384x16384), 3-D (512x512x512), Multitexture (8)
>
> The OpenGL window displayed something similar to static. I tried
> installing the proprietary AMD drivers and now it causes the computer to
> crash and log off every time I try to run VMD remotely. Strangely enough,
> the local install still works fine:
>
> Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.9.1 (February 1, 2012)
> Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 4 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 6445MB (82%)
> Warning) Detected a mismatch between CUDA runtime and GPU driver
> Warning) Check to make sure that GPU drivers are up to date.
> Info) No CUDA accelerator devices available.
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this optional X server feature.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: ATI Radeon HD 5450
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(16) MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFGS)
> Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (16384x16384), 3-D (8192x8192x8192), Multitexture
> (8)
>
> However, another RHEL workstation with proprietary nVidia drivers can
> remotely use VMD on the GPU cluster perfectly:
>
> Info) Detected 2 available CUDA accelerators:
> Info) [0] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Info) [1] Tesla C1060 30 SM_1.3 @ 1.30 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, OIO, ZCP
> Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> Warning) try disabling this optional X server feature.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro FX 570/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(16) MDE MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFG)
> Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (8192x8192), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture (4)
>
> It is interesting that the 2-D textures numbers are lower here than what I
> see from Windows or the other linux machine. Instead they are the same as
> the those reported when running the locally installed version of VMD. I
> guess that is because of the limitations of the local graphics card. Could
> it be that reducing the textures makes remote visualisation more feasible?
> If so, is it possible to manually set this number lower than the limit of
> the graphics card? I've also found that MobaXTerm could not successfully
> run VMD remotely from either of the RHEL workstations. The only time
> MobaXTerm has succeeded was in the first example where the textures were
> very low. I've also tested VcXsvr as an alternative to MobaXTerm and
> didn't have any more luck there.
>
> Does anyone have any other suggestions to explain this erratic pattern?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cara

-- 
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/