VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 23 2016 - 16:16:32 CST

Hi,
  If your system lacks rlwrap, the easiest way of getting past this is
to disable that part of the startup script. The 'rlwrap' program is used
to give the standard VMD text interface an arrow-editable
command history and other features that people often use in modern
command shells, or with the TkCon plugin in VMD itself. That being said,
it is optional and in cases where 'rlwrap' isn't working, you can simply
disable it in the VMD startup script that is used to launch VMD, by
commenting out the associated lines of code.

Original VMD csh startup script:
--------------------------------
# detect if we have rlwrap available to have commandline editing
set vmdprefixcmd=""
if (("${ARCH}" == "LINUX") || ("${ARCH}" == "LINUXAMD64")) then
  set rlwrap=`which rlwrap`
  if ( -x "$rlwrap" ) then
    if ( -f ${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat ) then
      set vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ -f ${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat "
    else
      set vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ "
    endif
  endif
endif

Modifications that disable the use of 'rlwrap' (csh startup script):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# detect if we have rlwrap available to have commandline editing
set vmdprefixcmd=""
#if (("${ARCH}" == "LINUX") || ("${ARCH}" == "LINUXAMD64")) then
# set rlwrap=`which rlwrap`
# if ( -x "$rlwrap" ) then
# if ( -f ${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat ) then
# set vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ -f ${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat "
# else
# set vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ "
# endif
# endif
#endif

Or you can just delete those lines, so that all you have left is this:
# detect if we have rlwrap available to have commandline editing
set vmdprefixcmd=""

If you're using the bourne shell version of the VMD startup script
(it is installed when /bin/csh or /bin/tcsh don't exist) then you would
make the same general modifications, changing the code from the original:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# detect if we have rlwrap available to have commandline editing
case $MACHARCH in
  *Linux*)
    if hash rlwrap 2>/dev/null
    then
      if [ -f "${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat" ]
      then
        vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ -f ${MASTERVMDDIR}/vmd_completion.dat "
      else
        vmdprefixcmd="rlwrap -C vmd -c -b(){}[],&^%#;|\\ "
      fi
    else
      vmdprefixcmd=""
    fi
    ;;

   *)
    vmdprefixcmd=""
    ;;
esac

And either comment out all of those lines or delete them, and
then add this line after the end of that block of code:
# force empty prefixcmd if rlwrap isn't working!
vmdprefixcmd=""

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 11:00:00PM +0100, Madaras Erzsébet wrote:
> Hi! I'm experiencing a problem with VMD on Linux Cinnamon Mint (Sarah).
> When I try to run VMD, I get an error message saying "rlwrap: no match". I
> tried all the suggestions, that I could find, but to no avail. Is it
> possible, that this version of Linux is simply incompatible with VMD? Or
> are there some other methods worth trying? If possible, I'd like to avoid
> installing a new op system.
> I appreciate any input. 

-- 
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/