VMD-L Mailing List

From: doug irvine (dirvine_at_biochem.dental.upenn.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 17 1999 - 14:19:21 CST

I've looked around on the list, an some users are having problems
running VMD on Linux. Here's some tips:

I compiled from the source tar.Z, so you first need to get all the
libraries:

libg++
(special version incl. w/ vmd in vmd-1.3/lib/libg++. compile in that
dir, following README instructions)

STRIDE
(available at http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/stride/stride_info.html. DL
to vmd-1.3/lib/stride and follow instructions in README for modifying
stride.h and stride.c prior to compilation)

babel
( available from http://www.eyesopen.com/babel.html. follow incl
instructions and install into your path (i.e /usr/bin for RedHat Linux))

surf
(Included in src VMD-1.3 tarball. Follow instructions in
vmd-1.3/lib/surf in README.VMD)

MesaGL
(available from www.mesa3d.org. DL lib and demo tarballs. compile and
install the includes and libs to /usr/include & /usr/lib.

For using with the Nvidia TNT/TNT2 cards, click on the link on the main
page of www.mesa.org to goto their ftp server and DL:

XFree86-3.3.3.1-49riva.i386.rpm
XFree86-libs-3.3.3.1-49riva.i386.rpm
XFree86-SVGA-3.3.3.1-49riva.i386.rpm
XFree86-rivaGL-3.3.3.1-49riva.i386.rpm
XFree86-devel-3.3.3.1-49riva.i386.rpm

>From elsewhere find:
XFree86-xfs-3.3.3.1-49.i386.rpm
(it is in any of the mirrors of RedHat-6.0/i-386)

Run Xconfigurator and follow its instructions.

Run the demos from the Mesa-3.0/demos (after compiling them) to make
sure your card is working right.

Install the rpm for Xforms

Make sure you have tcl/tk installed.

Now start the configuration for vmd. Add SURF to the options in
configure.options. Edit the "configure" script to point to /usr/lib and
/usr/include for the Mesa libs, the tk libs etc. (check in your /usr/lib
and make sure there is symbolic links from libtkx.so to libtkx#.#.#.so.
do this for the .a libs also. any errors in linking usually are a result
of the compiler not looking for the libBlah.VersionNumber.so but instead
looking for liobBlah.so.) Also edit the directory for the hardware
headers for GL to point to /usr/X11R6/lib/GL (for gl.h, glx.h, etc)
And finally make sure the install directory is where you want it
(/usr/bin or /usr/local/bin)

Run the configure script

cd to src
Edit the makefile to remove the grep commands from the "make depend"
section at the end of the Makefile. ( take out from th || through thee
grep command, but make sure you put the closing ";" and the line
continuation "\" at the end of the deletion)

now follow the vmd instructions and make clean;make depend;make; make
install.

***********************
now when you run VMD and can't see any graphics display of molecules...

cd to the /usr/lib/vmd dir, and edit the .vmd_init script to comment out
or edit the initial placement and sizes for the display (otherwise it
appears off the desktop and its nigh impossible to find)
**************************

This is pretty cursory, feel free to email me...I just wanted to sketch
it out before I forgot how I got it to work. Hope this helps somebody...