Hello people,
Apologies that my first post on the list here is going to be a somewhat long
one. :)
I'm trying to get the headnode of our university computing cluster (linux) to
run ovito (sphere rendering atomic visualisation program), and send that to me
via X11. That would save me transferring loads of big data files produced on
the cluster to a local machine first. Using XQuartz 2.7.8_rc1 it starts up but
then quits with an error that is internal to ovito ("Failed to make OpenGL
context current on offscreen surface. Cannot query OpenGL vendor string.").
For the cluster admin it also doesn't work (running probably some flavour of
linux or Widows), but for one of his IT collegues it does run remotely from the
cluster headnode under X11 under centOS 7 with Nvidia drivers.
The author of ovito says running via X11 is not officially supported.
Furthermore he said
"I’m not an X11 expert at all, so I’m not sure if I can give you any definite
answers. But my current understanding is this: OVITO uses advanced OpenGL calls
(offscreen buffers, shader programs etc.), which require direct rendering mode
(forwarding function calls via network to a remote graphics card is not
supported)."
He also said the machine running ovito should be running VirtualGL, but that
was more out of network performance considerations, I think, to send over only
the final displayed image instead of huge to-be-rendered data every time the
user would change the viewing angle, zoom in or out, etc.
From what the ovito author said, would someone know if those requirements are
the reason it doesn't work under XQuarts 2.7.8_rc1, and that with the features
currenrtly implemented in XQuarts, it simply won't? Or could some small tweaks
maybe make it work as on the centOS 7 machine?
I have carried out a number of tests to see up to what level of complexity I
could get things to work. Maybe from that data someone here could see when and
what goes wrong.
- xterms and xclocks sent from linux cluster headnode and from an old MacOS X
10.5 PowerPC machine to my OS X 10.10 machine work. So the basics are ok.
- glxgears (to test if openGL stuff is working proprly) run from an old MacOS X
10.5 PowerPC machine and sent to my OS X 10.10 machine via X11 works.
- glxgears run on cluster headnode and sent to 10.10 Macintosh shows the gears
but not spinning and the reported framerate is nonsense, so only part working.
- Ovito run on cluster headnode (linux) and sent to centOS 7 machine works
- Ovito run on cluster headnode and sent to whatever linux or Windows flavour
one of our IT support people is using does not work, produces the error
mentioned above.
- Ovito run on cluster headnode and sent to my Macintosh running OS X 10.10
does not work, produces the error mentioned above.
Any ideas anyone?
greets,
Peter
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