VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 12 2009 - 15:36:23 CDT

Hi Mengjuei,
  Just to clarify your note: The method that you'd used previously
for 2.3.0 does not work for 2.3.1? Or it works in both cases?
Technically, it should not be necessary to delete the .dylib files
included with VMD, as the NVIDIA drivers are intended to be forward
compatible from one revision to another. I've previously filed a bug
on the symptoms you and others have seen with 2.3.x with NVIDIA, as
has someone else, so hopefully this will be completely addressed in
an upcoming version. In the mean time, so long as you don't have new
bugs appearing as a result of switching from the 2.2 runtime to the 2.3.1
runtime (by virtue of deleting the 2.2 runtime library from the VMD install)
that might be a reasonable short-term solution. It may be a bit of
good fortune that you're able to run VMD with the 2.3.x runtime library,
normally I wouldn't expect that to work at all.

The next VMD release I make will be based on CUDA 2.3.x or later, and I hope
that future MacOS X revs and CUDA revs will not create unforseen compatibility
issues like the one you and others have run into with the switch from
MacOS X 10.5.x to 10.6.x and CUDA 2.2 to CUDA 2.3.x.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 04:23:52PM -0700, Mengjuei Hsieh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure if this issue had been addressed or not, but VMD 1.8.7
> CUDA seems to be unable to identify my GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M) of
> my Macbook Pro. Before this I already have CUDA Driver (2.3.1a)
> installed so I am wondering that perhaps the runtime libraries are not
> happy with my system.
>
> Since I already installed CUDA Toolkit (2.3a) as well, I did a small
> test by removing libcuda.dylib libcudart.dylib libtlshook.dylib from
> the vmd directory and making symbolic links of these files from
> /usr/local/cuda/lib (the default install path of the CUDA Toolkit).
> And now this VMD 1.8.7 recognizes my geforce 9400M!
>
> Bests,
> --
> Mengjuei 

-- 
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