[Chimera-users] How to launch chimera in a remote server

[Greg Couch]

If someone has experience with virtualgl, please respond.  The Chimera 
developers have no experience with it.

Our current position is that you should run Chimera locally.  Not over 
ssh, nor in a virtual machine.  Chimera works best (best interactivity) 
if it has direct access to the graphics hardware.

That said, it is possible to use Chimera remotely under the right 
circumstances.  For example, running an OpenGL application, like 
Chimera, over ssh, frequently fails to work due to incompatible 
implementations of X11's GLX protocol.  But if the same graphics driver 
is installed on both the local and remote system, it usually does work.  
That means exact same version of Linux and exact same version of the 
graphics driver.  This can be faked by copying the local version of 
libGL.so.1 to Chimera's lib directory on the remote system (or to a 
different directory that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable refers 
to).

An alternative solution for remote access is to use a remote desktop 
application.  The remote desktop software does the graphics on the 
remote computer and copies the image back to the local computer.    We 
have had success with applications that use the VNC protocol.  The EMAN 
author recommends using virtualGL with turbovnc, 
https://blake.bcm.edu/emanwiki/EMAN2/Remote, but we have used various 
VNC clients without virtualGL. virtualGL only helps if there is a 
graphics card installed on the remote computer along with the 
appropriate graphics driver.

     HTH,

     Greg


On 9/28/2019 10:48 PM, Sun Yeping wrote:
> Dear everyone,
>
> Chimera is installed in a remote CentOS 7 server, and it works 
> properly if working directly on the server. However, when I login to 
> that server from my local machine (also centos 7 system) wish ssh and 
> try to launch chimera, an error information window appears which reads:
>
> "Display misconfiguration. Please Increase the color quality (24 bit 
> color or greater), update your display (graphics) driver, and/or 
> upgrade your graphics card. Also see chimera Installation Instructions"
>
> I googled this error and find that someone solve it by installing 
> virtualGL, so I also installed virtualGL and try to launch chimera with:
>      $vglrun chimera
> But get the following errorL
> # vglrun chimera
> [VGL] WARNING: The OpenGL rendering context obtained on X display
> [VGL]    :0 is indirect, which may cause performance to suffer.
> [VGL]    If :0 is a local X display, then the framebuffer device
> [VGL]    permissions may be set incorrectly.
> [VGL] WARNING: The OpenGL rendering context obtained on X display
> [VGL]    :0 is indirect, which may cause performance to suffer.
> [VGL]    If :0 is a local X display, then the framebuffer device
> [VGL]    permissions may be set incorrectly.
> X Error of failed request:  GLXBadCurrentWindow
>   Major opcode of failed request:  154 (GLX)
>   Minor opcode of failed request:  5 (X_GLXMakeCurrent)
>   Serial number of failed request:  36
>   Current serial number in output stream:  36
>
> Do you know what the error is about and how to solve it?
>
> Thanks in advacnce
>
> Yeping Sun
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chimera-users mailing list: Chimera-users at cgl.ucsf.edu
> Manage subscription: http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-users/attachments/20191001/11446b2c/attachment.html>