From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 12 2001 - 17:44:29 CST

Hi Robert,
  What do you get if you do "vmd -dispdev text"?
Does that work? If so, then try editing the end of the /usr/local/bin/vmd
startup script at the end to read like this:

# if DISPLAY is set, spawn off a terminal, else just use
# the current terminal
#if($?DISPLAY) then
# exec $VMD_WINTERM -T "vmd console" $VMD_WINGEOM $VMD_WINOPTS \
# $VMDDIR/$execname $* &
#else
  $VMDDIR/$execname $*
#endif

Then run it the normal way, and tell me what it does.

I have a second VMD build for LINUX which may work better for you
if this version doesn't work. (slight redhat machinations make a
difference on which binaries work for which people...)

Let me know how this works for you.
If you (or anyone else) would like to try the alternate Linux binary

I've built, it is here:
  ftp://ftp.ks.uiuc.edu/pub/mdscope/vmd/vmd-1.6.bin.LINUX-2.opengl.tar.gz

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 02:41:52PM -0800, Robert Milius wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm having trouble getting the hardware accellerated version of vmd
> to run on linux.
>
> I downloaded the DRI version vmd-1.6 for linux
> (vmd-1.6.bin.LINUX.opengl.tar.gz).
>
> I am running redhat 6.2 with XFree86 4.0.2 with the nvidia 0.9-5
> drivers (GeForce2 GTS card). My kernel is 2.2.16.
>
> I installed Mesa-3.4 to get the libGLU and libglut libraries residing
> in /usr/local/lib. I removed the libGL.so* in /usr/local/lib (created
> by the Mesa-3.4 install) and replaced them with softlinks to the
> nvidia libraries (/usr/lib/libGL.so) and verified that I could get
> hardware accelerated 3d graphics (eg quake3, gears, O, etc worked
> wonderfully).
>
> After installing vmd, it would fire up a small terminal window and then
> exit immediately. There may have been an error message but it was gone
> to quick to read.
>
> It seems to be using the appropiate shared libraries (ie they all
> are pointing to real files or appropiate symlinks)
>
> $ ldd /usr/local/lib/vmd/vmd_LINUX
> libGL.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x40015000)
> libGLU.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x4027e000)
> libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40291000)
> libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4036c000)
> libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x40371000)
> libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40374000)
> libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40391000)
> libvga.so.1 => /usr/lib/libvga.so.1 (0x40486000)
> libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x404cb000)
> libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x404d4000)
> libXmu.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x404eb000)
> libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x404ff000)
> libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x4050c000)
> libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40514000)
> /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
> libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x40527000)
>
> On a lark, I changed /usr/local/lib/libGL.so.1 from pointing to
> the nvidia library to the one that Mesa-3.4 created and then vmd ran
> ok. However, as expected, there wasn't any hardware acceleration of the
> 3D graphics.
>
> I tried downloading the source and compiling it myself, but I ran
> into several problems which I could describe in greater detail later.
> Right now I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to get the
> pre-compiled version to run with hardware accelerated 3D graphics.
>
> -thanks
> bob
>
> Robert P. Milius, Ph.D. 612-626-2771 (office)
> Basic Sciences Computing Laboratory 612-625-4433 (fax)
> University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute milius_at_msi.umn.edu
> for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation
>

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078