VMD-L Mailing List

From: Andrew Dalke (dalke_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 05 1997 - 08:58:34 CST

Qiang Liu <qiang_at_carbo5.foodsci.cornell.edu> said VMD has a problem:
> But it quits automatically without giving any error message as soon as
> I click the left button anywhere within the graphics window.

> Even more strange, we actually have two copies on two SGI's and both
> of them stopped working today!

  I've never heard of anyone having this problem before, and all I
can offer are a couple of suggestions. My first guess as to the
problem; did someone apply some patches or otherwise upgrade the
operating system on those SGIs? We've tested VMD on IRIX 6.2 so
that shouldn't be the problem directly, but we've had some strange
acting patches in between.

  Failing that, you can start up VMD with the graphics but without
the text console. Right now, if VMD prints an error message and dies
you can't see the error message because it is displayed on a window
which also disappears.
  When you start VMD, the command 'vmd' actually just sets a few
environment variables and calls the correct OS dependant binary.
For SGIs, it defines that the default method to display the text
console is by using winterm. Now winterm has an option, '-H' or
'-hold' which "holds the winterm open after application exits, allowing
the user to read the output and close the winterm at their own pace."
You can modify the vmd startup script to change the line:
  set VMD_WINTERM=winterm
into
  set VMD_WINTERM="winterm -H"
Run vmd as normal, and when VMD exits, you can read the error message,
if there was one (there should be) and tell us what it is.
  Actually, what I did to test this out (so I won't change the system
installation) was:
    cp /usr/local/bin/vmd vmd.tmp
    vi vmd.tmp # and make the changes
    ./vmd.tmp # and reproduce any problems

If you don't want to do that, you might also be able to just start the
vmd binary directly. For me it is /usr/local/lib/vmd/vmd_IRIX5 .
However, if your system isn't relatively similar to ours, VMD won't
be able to find the appropriate startup files.

  Since I don't think this problem is of much interest to the rest
of the mailing list, we should probably continue this through private
email, either to vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu or to me directly at

                                                Andrew Dalke
                                                dalke_at_ks.uiuc.edu