VMD-L Mailing List

From: Per Larsson (larsson.r.per_at_gmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 18 2021 - 14:21:04 CST

Hello again,

Just to close this thread, I was able to get it to work (i.e. no more transparent windows) by forcing the remote server to use 24-bit color instead of 32 (edit of /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini)

/Per

> 10 nov. 2021 kl. 09:07 skrev Per Larsson <larsson.r.per_at_gmail.com>:
>
> Thanks John for input.
>
> The window manager is Gnome. Running
>
> $ lspci -nnk | grep -i vga -A3
>
> I get
>
> Kernel driver in use: wmwgfx
> Kernel modules: vmwgfx
>
> This is a virtual server so it does not have a proper GPU - might that be the issue?
>
> I can also add that running the glxgears software also results in transparent windows, but not e.g. xmgrace for plotting.
>
> Thanks,
> /Per
>
>
>
>> 9 nov. 2021 kl. 22:36 skrev John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>:
>>
>> Hi,
>> What GPU and video drivers are you using? This could also be a but in
>> the desktop compositing-based window manager -- what window manager are
>> you using? Gnome? KDE? Something else, what version? I've heard of
>> two other users encountering something that sounded like this on recent
>> Ubuntu systems with unknown hardware/software configurations, but
>> otherwise I've not heard of anything like this in recent times.
>> It strikes me as a bug in your system software however.
>>
>> The warning from VMD about the "Composite" extension is only
>> relevant to stereoscopic rendering. Today, most window managers
>> use compositing and stereoscopic displays are extremely rare, so
>> the current test versions of VMD 1.9.4 no longer emit this warning
>> even though it's still an issue.
>>
>> Best,
>> John Stone
>> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 09:33:47PM +0100, Per Larsson wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have installed VMD version 1.9.3 on a machine which runs RedHat linux. The machine is a virtual server which I access using Remote Desktop and the rdp-protocol.
>>> The installation itself was ok and the program starts and runs, but the problem is that some of the windows, in particular the ???VMD Main??? window have semi-transparent drop-down menus (File, Molecule, Graphics etc???). I say semi-transparent, because the degree of transparency seems to be dependent on the background color. A black background gives almost no transparency, whereas opening the menus against a white background results in almost full transparency making it very hard to read the text.
>>>
>>> Upon startup I get the message ???Detected X11 ???Composite??? extension: if incorrect display occurs try disabling this X server option. This seems relevant, but after some googling I have still not been able to identify where I need to look to disable this extension. I am also not sure if the fact that I am using Remote Desktop complicates things. I did reach out to our universities support, and they told me to try asking for help here first. I would appreciate any hints about what I could do to solve this issue.
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>> /Per Larsson, Uppsala University.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> 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/
>