Qt display issue with ChimeraX

[edouard.evangelisti@…]

Dear ChimeraX maintenance team,

I am writing you to report a GUI issue that may be a bug. Installation was done on Debian 12 bookworm with ucsf-chimerax_1.9ubuntu22.04_amd64.deb. Running the software leads to window display with black area inside (no molecules displayed), and the following warnings:

WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create temporary context
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create context
WARNING: WebEngineContext is used before QtWebEngineQuick::initialize() or OpenGL context creation failed.
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create temporary context
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create context
WARNING: Failed to create QRhi for QBackingStoreRhiSupport
ERROR: Could not create OpenGL context
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create temporary context
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create context
WARNING: Failed to create QRhi for QBackingStoreRhiSupport
WARNING: QQuickWidget: Failed to get a QRhi from the top-level widget's window
WARNING: QQuickWidget::resizeEvent() no QRhi
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create temporary context
WARNING: QRhiGles2: Failed to create context
WARNING: Failed to create QRhi for QBackingStoreRhiSupport
WARNING: QQuickWidget: Failed to get a QRhi from the top-level widget's window

It may not be directly related to ChimeraX, as it used to work (same OS, same version) until some recent update that I cannot easily trace back. Fresh install does not solve the problem.

Please let me know if you need further information. I would be happy to contribute as far as I can

With my best wishes,
Edouard


---
Edouard EVANGELISTI
Chair of Excellence UCAJedi

Sophia Agrobiotech Institute
UMR 1355 INRAE/7254 CNRS/UCA
400 route des Chappes – BP 167
06903 Sophia Antipolis Cedex
France
Phone: +33 4 92 38 65 27

[Tom Goddard]

This is probably caused by a bad graphics driver. You would need to update your graphics driver to fix it.

[Greg Couch]

Salut. What kind of graphics do you have installed? That is, what is the output from "lspci | grep VGA"? And what is the output of "glxinfo | grep OpenGL"? glxinfo is in the mesa-utils package, so "sudo apt install mesa-utils" first if need be. And I assume you're running ChimeraX directly on your computer, instead of trying to run ChimeraX on a remote server and displaying locally. Running remotely can be difficult to get working and is officially unsupported.

[edouard.evangelisti@…]

Dear all,

Thank you for your fast reply. The commands you requested helped solve the problem. First, I ran glxinfo:

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  152 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  24 (X_GLXCreateNewContext)
  Value in failed request:  0x0
  Serial number of failed request:  110
  Current serial number in output stream:  111

The X error prompted me to try nvidia-smi:

$ nvidia-smi
Failed to initialize NVML: Driver/library version mismatch
NVML library version: 535.247

Likely a problem caused by the system update. Restarting the computer solved the issue. ChimeraX is now up and running as before. Damn, I did not think about it.

Thank you again, and my apologies for the clutter.

Best regards,
Edouard

________________________________
De : ChimeraX <ChimeraX-bugs-admin@cgl.ucsf.edu>
Envoyé : mardi 10 juin 2025 21:16:30
À : gregc@cgl.ucsf.edu; Edouard Evangelisti
Cc : goddard@cgl.ucsf.edu; zjp@cgl.ucsf.edu
Objet : Re: [ChimeraX] #17952: Qt display issue with ChimeraX

#17952: Qt display issue with ChimeraX
--------------------------------------------+------------------------
          Reporter:  edouard.evangelisti@…  |      Owner:  Greg Couch
              Type:  defect                 |     Status:  assigned
          Priority:  normal                 |  Milestone:
         Component:  Platform               |    Version:
        Resolution:                         |   Keywords:
        Blocked By:                         |   Blocking:
Notify when closed:                         |   Platform:  all
           Project:  ChimeraX               |
--------------------------------------------+------------------------
Comment (by Greg Couch):

 Salut.  What kind of graphics do you have installed?  That is, what is the
 output from "lspci | grep VGA"?  And what is the output of "glxinfo | grep
 OpenGL"?  glxinfo is in the mesa-utils package, so "sudo apt install mesa-
 utils" first if need be.  And I assume you're running ChimeraX directly on
 your computer, instead of trying to run ChimeraX on a remote server and
 displaying locally.  Running remotely can be difficult to get working and
 is officially unsupported.
--
Ticket URL: <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/trac/ChimeraX/ticket/17952#comment:3>
ChimeraX <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/>
ChimeraX Issue Tracker

[Greg Couch]

Excellent! Thank you for telling us how the problem was fixed.