VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2019 - 15:35:39 CDT

Hi Shivam,
  I'm not personally an Ubuntu expert (we run RHEL derivatives here), however
there is usually a documented method you can follow to replace the
distribution-provided graphics driver with the latest NVIDIA-provided drivers.
This can be complicated in some cases, but it would resolve the
specific problem you're having where Ubuntu are far far behind where the
latest NVIDIA drivers are.

The situation you have described having run into sounds like
a version of the problems caused by conflicts between the open source
"nouveau" driver and the proprietary NVIDIA drivers (which are what
you need to use for VMD). I've pasted in some potentially useful links
below.

Perhaps an Ubuntu wizard can give more specific or better guidance here.

I don't know if the "PPA" upstream repo for Ubuntu is still active,
but this web site has some instructions that might be worth trying:
  https://websiteforstudents.com/install-proprietary-nvidia-gpu-drivers-on-ubuntu-16-04-17-10-18-04/
  https://itsfoss.com/install-additional-drivers-ubuntu/

Here is another page that similarly provides some guidance, albeit much
more hard-core (a fresh OS install) aimed at using the proprietary
NVIDIA drivers exclusively:
  https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/The-Best-Way-To-Install-Ubuntu-16-04-with-NVIDIA-Drivers-and-CUDA-1097/

Best,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 05:27:59AM +0000, SHIVAM TIWARI wrote:
> Hi, John
> Although my issue is not about vmd but it is related to vmd. I have Nvidia
> Quadro K620 and I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, some time back I have
> installed the latest drivers available for my graphics card from Nvidia's
> website, but after that my OS started having issues with boot (whenever I
> try logging in my system, it will go in an endless loop but it will not
> log in, and I have to restart my system), so I searched for the solution,
> and I found that the issue is due to the proprietary graphics driver which
> are somehow not compatible with Ubuntu, and you have to use the drivers
> available in the ubuntu's repository(which is pretty outdated). So I
> uninstalled the driver and installed the driver available on Ubuntu's
> repository and then I didn't have that issue, but then I have to use an
> outdated driver version (384.130). so is there any workaround you can
> suggest for this.
> regards
> shivam
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu <owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu> on behalf of John
> Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2019 8:10 AM
> To: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Subject: vmd-l: RTX-accelerated VMD 1.9.4 test build for 64-bit Linux
> posted...
>
> Hi,
> Now that the NVIDIA drivers with RTX support are generally
> available, I have made a current 64-bit Linux test build of VMD 1.9.4
> (a29)
> that includes RTX hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and it is
> posted on the web site. To use this version you will need the latest
> NVIDIA 418.xx (where xx >= 30) driver version from the NVIDIA web site.
>
> VMD users should expect TachyonLOPtiX ray tracing performance gains
> that range as high as 8x faster when comparing the new RTX GPUs with
> the new VMD with prior versions of VMD running on so-called
> Pascal and Volta class NVIDIA GPUs.
>
> Best regards,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> --
> NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> [1]http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> [2]http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
>
> References
>
> Visible links
> 1. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/
> 2. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/ 

-- 
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/