VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 18 2009 - 16:32:12 CST

Hi,
  This is likely caused by a recent auto-patching/update on your machine
pulling in new (broken) X11 libraries related to GLX and/or fiddling the
video driver. Since reverting to your previously stable video driver
didn't cure the problem, I'm assuming this is a problem in the GLX
remote protocol libraries used by the X server itself. Can you determine
what files were actually updated? I'd check the dates on files in
/usr/X11* and look for things that have changed in the last month or so.
one month:
  find . -mtime -30

two months:
  find . -mtime -60

See what that turns up...

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 03:17:45PM -0700, Gard Nelson wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> I'm trying to run VMD remotely from my workstation. Everything used to
> work fine, but about a week ago, i started getting error messages saying
> "BadLength" and "GLXBadLargeRequest" (see below). About half of the
> representations seem to work fine (VDW and New Cartoon are ok), but the
> rest (lines, points, h-bonds, polyhedra...) don't show anything on the VMD
> window. I checked the mailing list and found that these messages tend to
> be related to graphics cards. Turns out my video drivers were updated
> recently, so i reverted to the old ones, but i still have the same
> problem. I've tried different files and file types with the same
> results. I can, however, view the files on an older (32 bit) installation
> with no problem. I've contacted the local tech support guys and we're all
> stumped. Any ideas? Thanks a ton for your help!
>
> Gard Nelson
>
> This is everything I get when I run VMD:
>
> Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.8.7 (August 1, 2009)
> Info) http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 4 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 7757MB (97%)
> Info) No CUDA accelerator devices available.
> Info) OpenGL renderer: GeForce 9500 GT/PCI/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL MDE MTX NPOT PP PS
> Info) GLSL rendering mode is NOT available.
> Info) Textures: 2-D (8192x8192), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture (4)
> Info) File loading in progress, please wait.
> Info) Using plugin pdb for structure file 4PTI.pdb
> Info) Using plugin pdb for coordinates from file 4PTI.pdb
> Info) Determining bond structure from distance search ...
> Info) Eliminating bonds duplicated from existing structure...
> Info) Finished with coordinate file 4PTI.pdb.
> Info) Analyzing structure ...
> Info) Atoms: 514
> Info) Bonds: 468
> Info) Angles: 0 Dihedrals: 0 Impropers: 0 Cross-terms: 0
> Info) Bondtypes: 0 Angletypes: 0 Dihedraltypes: 0 Impropertypes: 0
> Info) Residues: 118
> Info) Waters: 60
> Info) Segments: 1
> Info) Fragments: 61 Protein: 1 Nucleic: 0
> XRequest.143: BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length
> error) 0x1900045
> XRequest.143: BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length
> error) 0x1900045
> XRequest.143: GLXBadLargeRequest 0x2
> XRequest.143: BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length
> error) 0x1900045
>
> The error messages repeat for a while. If i try to load a representation
> it doesn't like (like lines or points), I get more of the same generated. 

-- 
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