VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 05 2020 - 15:22:41 CST

Hi,
  I'm still catching up on this discussion...
VMD currently requires full OpenGL, and not OpenGL ES.

There are indeed ARM platforms that do have full OpenGL, but
they rely on NVIDIA graphics drivers and are either based on
the NVIDIA Tegra processors, or are recent ARM v8 platforms
such as the Marvell ThunderX2 that have full PCIe slots and
support the full stack of NVIDIA drivers, CUDA, OpenGL, and
many other libraries.

Can you run "glxgears" on the ARM machine?
If so, there's at least a chance you'd be able to run VMD
with interactive graphics, although that doesn't say much
about how fast it'll be.

Best regards,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 10:01:29AM +0100, Pawel Kedzierski wrote:
> W dniu 04.02.2020 o 03:47, Joey Gehring pisze:
>
> Pawel,
> I am pretty sure that I have successfully installed all of the tk and
> tcl files that I need. I am now perusing my need of the openGL header
> files. After a bit of research I am unsure if my board supports openGL
> or not. I am seeing that openGL ES is available and I am unsure if this
> will be enough to build NAMD or VMD. Do you happen to know more about
> this? Again, I can not thank you enough for helping me through this
> process.
>
> I'm glad I could be of any help. As for OpenGL, I haven't heard of ARM
> platform providing full OpenGL (not ES); apart form that, I lack any
> expertise here, sorry.
>
> You will need to rely on John Stone and other VMD/NAMD developers who
> actually compiled both programs on ARM. I don't even know if this is
> possible with OpenGL ES - they might refer to text-only version of VMD.
> The last question of John was what compiler/toolchain are you using. Since
> its Debian, the most likely bet is gcc, the second one being clang. Try to
> see where these links go on your system:
>
> ls -l /etc/alternatives/cc /etc/alternatives/c++
>
> you will see if the default compiler is gcc/g++ or clang. Then command:
>
> gcc --version
>
> or clang --version
>
> and provide this info to answer the John's question from Jan 23rd. To get
> most help, a good idea will be to provide any other relevant info, like
> the architecture your Debian system is configured for, versions of
> dependencies you have installed (like tcl-dev/tk-dev), the error the
> compilation ends with etc. The architecture is reported as the third word
> from apt list command, e.g. on mine laptop:
>
> apt list gcc
>
> shows "gcc/xenial,now 4:5.3.1-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]" where "amd64" is
> the architecture; on Pinebook it most likely is arm64 but better to make
> certain. In the same way you may check the versions of anything you
> installed from the Debian packages.
>
> Getting VMD to work on OpenGL ES platform may not be easy; its not only
> VMD which would need to support it, but also the FLTK library which IIRC
> provides the OpenGL window (and the GUI, of course). So I would start
> small and try to compile without OpenGL and FLTK to sort out a smaller set
> of problems first. OTOH, such binary will only be useful for scripting and
> not for interactive work :(.
>
> HTH,
>
> Pawel
>
> Best,
> Joey
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2020 at 11:14 AM Joey Gehring
> <[1]gehringjoseph123_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I appreciate the help. I will check back when I feel ready to move
> onwards. Thank you for your guidance ****
> Best,
> Joey
> On Sat, Feb 1, 2020, 6:36 AM Pawel Kedzierski
> <[2]pawel.kedzierski_at_pwr.edu.pl> wrote:
>
> W dniu 01.02.2020 o 05:54, Joey Gehring pisze:
> > I am still attempting compilation of vmd on the processor listed
> in
> > the subject line. I am following the instructions:
> >
> [3]https://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/doxygen/compiling.html#compiling
> >
> > It says that I need tcl/tk files but I'm sure they need to be
> packaged
> > for ARM. Is this correct according to your knowledge?
>
> Yes, but I guess the Debian configured on your PineBook has probably
> the
> default repositories setup for ARM architecture in
> /etc/apt/sources.list
>
> If so, then it will likely be sufficient to install just the
> development
> package. Check which tcl/tk version (8.x) you need an then try:
>
> sudo apt-get install tcl8.x-dev tk8.x-dev
>
> If they are not available, you may indeed need to compile from
> source.
> Again it may be advisable to get the (regular) Debian source package
> and
> use Debian tools to compile it. A good description is in the Debian
> Administrator Handbook:
>
> [4]https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/debian-packaging.en.html#sect.rebuilding-package
>
> To add another Debian repository to get the source packages not
> available for pinebook you may also need to add the signing key to
> your
> distro trust database. See `man apt-key`.
>
> HTH,
>
> Pawel
>
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Joey
>
> References
>
> Visible links
> 1. mailto:gehringjoseph123_at_gmail.com
> 2. mailto:pawel.kedzierski_at_pwr.edu.pl
> 3. https://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/doxygen/compiling.html#compiling
> 4. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.debian.org_doc_manuals_debian-2Dhandbook_debian-2Dpackaging.en.html-23sect.rebuilding-2Dpackage&d=DwMDaQ&c=OCIEmEwdEq_aNlsP4fF3gFqSN-E3mlr2t9JcDdfOZag&r=JBqQLS7jZ5whrB0hXJY8MNYcfDrh8UhlGJ2ANxoi8s0&m=jz9RMtYbVQH4lUVjXH5pSQFLDqMoDVMUxx1hg9O1ktE&s=OKuRq-muCC0djMyJRKR7xIFUeLAoD2WKkmasvAoWOVc&e=

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-- 
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/