ChimeraX 1.3 start up error

[jonathan.lefebre@…]

Dear all, 

I am trying to run ChimeraX 1.3 on my MacbookPro 2021 (Apple M1 Pro Chip) under MacOS Monterrey 12.3. 

Whenever I want to start the application I am getting the following error: 

UCSF ChimeraX quit unexpectedly

I also attached the whole error report as a txt file. In case it helps.

Thanks in advance! 

Best, 

Jonathan Lefebre

ChimeraX1.3_log.txt​

untitled-part.html​

[jonathan.lefebre@…]

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[jonathan.lefebre@…]

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[Tom Goddard]

I'm puzzled. I run ChimeraX 1.3 on macOS 12.3 on a Mac laptop with M1 Max CPU and never saw a problem starting. I am sure many hundreds of other users also have used this configuration without problems. So something is special about your computer environment.

The crash report is useful and says it crashed in the OpenGL graphics driver. I have not seen a single OpenGL graphics driver crash with the M1 chips since they came out a year and a half ago, which makes this report even more puzzling.

Do you have an external screen attached? If so, does ChimeraX start if there is no extra screen?

Did any older ChimeraX version work on this machine? Did ChimeraX work on macOS 12.2? Have you tried the ChimeraX daily build (it uses a new window toolkit version Qt 6 instead of Qt 5 in ChimeraX 1.3)? Does our older program Chimera (without the X) start on this machine?

[jonathan.lefebre@…]

I am also puzzled. I never ran any ChimeraX version on this machine, but I have quite some chimera . I just tried the daily build and ChimeraX 1.2.5 both give the same error. Surprisingly, Chimera works. 

Anyways, I just tested what happens if I set up a new blank user account on the MacBook and run ChimeraX from there… It works without problem. So I assume it is a problem of some other software I have installed. Could it be a python-related problem? I have Python 3.9.7 installed. 

Is there a way to remove any trace of chimeraX from a MacOS system (I just recently migrated from Windows to Mac)?

Best 
Jonathan 

[jonathan.lefebre@…]

Edit: I just saw that I have a bunch of Qt applications installed (Qt Assistant, Qt Designer, etc.) that will also not start from launchpad. Could this be related to the ChimeraX problem? 

Jonathan 

[Tom Goddard]

ChiimeraX uses Qt as the window toolkit. So if other Qt applications do not start that is very likely for the same reason that ChimeraX does not start. ChimeraX comes with its own Python and its own Qt libraries and it should not be using the versions that are installed outside ChimeraX. But I think your theory is right, that something else installed on your system is breaking all Qt applications. Do you have anti-virus running? Sometimes it can mistakenly decide software (e.g. Qt) is a threat and kill it.

ChimeraX has preference settings, command and recent file history in

~/Library/Application Support/ChimeraX

If you remove that directory, or rename it if you want to restore it later, and remove the ChimeraX app, then you have completely uninstalled ChimeraX. Worth a try, but I don't expect it will fix the problem since your other Qt apps aren't working.

Another step that might give more clues is to start ChimeraX from a terminal (on Mac use /Applications/Utilities/Terminal) by running the command

/Applications/ChimeraX.app/Contents/MacOS/ChimeraX --debug

if ChimeraX was installed in /Applications. The --debug will output lots of startup messages and maybe there will be some clue in those messages.

Also you could check in Terminal if some environment variable was set that Qt uses, possibly by the installation of some other package, that may have broken Qt. Just type command "set" in the terminal. You could send its output if you want me to look and see if any suspicious environment variables have been set.

[Tom Goddard]

The reason our older program Chimera works is because it does not use Qt.

[jonathan.lefebre@…]

I tested different things, including giving my Qt applications a fresh installation. This also made ChimeraX work as expected! No idea what the exact reason was, but it worked. 

Thanks a lot for your time! 

Best, 

Jonathan 

[Tom Goddard]

Glad it is working now.