VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 17 2020 - 11:00:06 CST

Hi,
  A CUDA driver mismatch warning indicates that the GPU system software
on the computer in question is either too old, or inconsistent and
not functioning correctly. That said, VMD should NOT be terminating
as a result of the condition indicated by this message, it should
continue running, but with all of the CUDA features of the program disabled.
In all of the cases I'm familiar with so far, VMD continues running
with CUDA disabled as I describe, this system seems to be an outlier
in that respect, and I'm not sure what could cause the crash except that
there may also be problems with the OpenGL graphics drivers. Unlike
CUDA, OpenGL is required and not optional, and if there are problems
with the OpenGL graphics drivers, that could indeed cause a crash.

I would suggest that the owner of the laptop try and update their
GPU graphics driver to current software and then run basic OpenGL
software tests to verify that it is working correctly before
trying to run VMD again. If you can put the student in direct
contact with me, I'm happy to try and walk them through this.

Best regards,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 10:39:20AM +0100, Stefan Boresch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> on the odd chance that someone has an idea:
>
> I am presently running a course in which I use VMD a bit, and students are
> expected to install it on their own hardware. This has worked well so
> far, on Linux, Mac and Windows, with here in Europe Win10 being the
> dominating OS.
>
> Yesterday I got a 'plea for help' from one student saying
> that suddently VMD is not starting up anymore on her Win10 laptop, though
> it worked before. I got some screenshots; the terminal window comes
> up, prints
>
> "mismatch between CUDA runtime and GPU driver"
>
> and terminates. Restarting the machine, reinstalling VMD (both 1.9.3 and
> the new 1.9.4alpha) apparently has not helped. Since this isn't my
> hardware and since I don't have access to it because of the lockdown, this
> is all the info I have.
>
> I normally run VMD on my Linux workstation, though I also have it on a Win10
> laptop, with an NVIDIA card and all updates installed, where both vmd 1.9.3
> and 1.9.4alpha run fine.
>
> The one observation I can add from my own experience is that for me (on the
> Win10/Nvidia laptop) VMD comes up, but hangs for a while (the main menu
> is not operational, up to minutes). Hitting Enter or Ctrl-C in the terminal
> window usually helps.
>
> Any hints / suggestions to pass on welome, best regards,
>
> Stefan 

-- 
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/