VMD-L Mailing List

From: Daniel Beaman (dbeaman_at_uoregon.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2007 - 19:30:32 CST

John,
The glxgears test works properly locally, but when executed on the
remote machine I get the following error:

Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display "localhost:12.0".
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual

It seems like all indications show that VMD should be able to work as
I want it to, I'm just not sure where to go from here? Seems like
there is some settings file that needs to be modified to allow VMD to
run over the net.
Thanks for the help thus far,
Dan

On Nov 26, 2007, at 5:00 PM, John Stone wrote:

>
> Dan,
> Can you run the "glxgears" test program that comes with X-windows?
> If you can run that, then there should be a way to get remote display
> to MacOS X to work for VMD as well. If that doesn't work, then VMD
> won't
> either.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 03:27:48PM -0800, Daniel Beaman wrote:
>> Axel,
>> Thank you for the information. Running xdpyinfo gives me 26
>> extensions, one of which is actually GLX. So now that I know GLX is
>> supported on the mac OS, is it a matter of figuring out how to
>> configure it properly to run VMD? Any ideas how I could do this?
>> Has anyone else out there had to configure GLX to allow VMD to run,
>> if so, what did you do?
>> Thanks Again,
>> Dan Beaman
>> University of Oregon
>>
>> On Nov 21, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Daniel Beaman wrote:
>>>
>>> hello,
>>>
>>> DB> $ xhost +computername.edu
>>>
>>> please note that with this setting, _anybody_
>>> logged into "computername.edu" can connect
>>> to your laptop and monitor _everything_ that
>>> you are doing, including logging every single
>>> keystroke (including those when you type in
>>> a password).
>>>
>>> DB> $ ssh -X -l name etc...
>>>
>>> this enables X11 tunneling which would _not_
>>> be needed with the xhost setting. so you can
>>> skip the xhost for reasons outlined above.
>>> (... and i better not get started on "xhost +",
>>> which is still use by far too many people).
>>>
>>> DB> I think these two lines allow me to have graphical displays
>>> piped to my
>>> DB> computer. What I'd like to have is the VMD GUI piped ( not
>>> sure if this is
>>> DB> proper terminology? ) to my Mac from the Linux Machine. As VMD
>>> starts up on
>>> DB> the Linux machine, it opens a window on my powerbook and shows
>>> me technical
>>> DB> data about the cluster, ie. #CPUs, etc.. but then spits out the
>>> following
>>> DB> errors:
>>> DB>
>>> DB> the x server does not support the opengl glx extension
>>> DB> unable to create openGL window
>>>
>>> this means, that your X server does not include
>>> the "OpenGL over X" protocol which is required to
>>> display VMD graphics over the net.
>>>
>>> DB> From multiple hours of searching the internet I have learned a
>>> DB> little about openGL (I'm a newbie to this type of stuff) but
>>> have
>>> DB> absolutely no idea how I could enable this or get openGL loaded
>>> DB> properly on my computer. The main
>>>
>>> please open a terminal window and run "xdpyinfo" that
>>> should give you a list of supported extensions to the X
>>> protocol. if GLX is not amongst them, you'll have to
>>> a find a way to "load" or configure it. that is the
>>> problem of the MacOS.
>>>
>>> DB> reason I would like to use these programs and computers in the
>>> way I'm
>>> DB> describing is that the files are prohibitively large to be
>>> transfered to my
>>> DB> machine (I can get VMD to run my powerbook from the Mac version
>>> of VMD that
>>> DB> I installed, but this still isn't much of an option) and the
>>> files live on
>>> DB> the Linux cluster where there are TBs worth of storage space.
>>> I also don't
>>> DB> have direct access to the cluster so I can't sit in front of it
>>> and view the
>>> DB> stuff that way. So, is there anyone out there who has done
>>> what I am trying
>>> DB> to do (I would imagine this is somewhat common, the only
>>> exception being the
>>> DB> Mac part of it) or anyone who has any ideas on how to get this
>>> to work? I
>>> DB> can get this to work on a Lab mates computer who is running
>>> Linux and it
>>> DB> seems to work fine. I've also looked into using Virtualbox but
>>> I am unable
>>> DB> to because I have a powerpc rather than an intel chip. Any
>>> other ideas?
>>>
>>> the alternative would be to have something like a webdav server
>>> running on the cluster and then mount the file system to your
>>> mac and thus keep the data remotely and process it locally.
>>> the drawback is that in this case you have to pull the data
>>> all the time across the net. it is usually more efficient for
>>> small data sets and visualization and less efficient for analysis,
>>> but in the latter case you can run those in text mode. i'm doing
>>> this quite often these days: copy a small segment of the data
>>> to my machine, write/debug my scripts and then run them in text
>>> mode on the machine with the full trajectory and load and process
>>> the data in batches.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> axel.
>>>
>>> DB>
>>> DB> Thank you very much in advance.
>>> DB> Dan Beaman
>>> DB> University of Oregon
>>> DB>
>>> DB>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ====================================================================
>>> ==
>>> =
>>> Axel Kohlmeyer akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu http://
>>> www.cmm.upenn.edu
>>> Center for Molecular Modeling -- University of Pennsylvania
>>> Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA
>>> 19104-6323
>>> tel: 1-215-898-1582, fax: 1-215-573-6233, office-tel:
>>> 1-215-898-5425
>>> ====================================================================
>>> ==
>>> =
>>> If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better
>>> idiot.
>>>
>
> --
> 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
>