VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 09 2006 - 11:08:19 CST

Bogdan,
  I could certainly setup a VMware build box. Since I'm the only
one doing all of this work, I don't really have the time to build
any more linux versions of VMD. We make the source code available,
so people running versions of linux that are far behind or far ahead
of what I'm running here can build their own VMD binaries. It takes
a lot of testing to determine that a build of VMD is even worth making
available, and so one of the problems with adding VMware and several new
linux versions is that it assumes I'll have time to test these additional
builds, but in reality I'm already maxed out desparately trying to keep
up with incoming VMD related emails and testing the builds I already
provide. I would definitely like to make it easier for people to
build VMD from source code, so I'm willing to accept any suggestions
that would make the source distribution much easier to use.

  John

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 05:51:55PM +0100, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Feb 2006, John Stone wrote:
>
> > The 32-bit builds of VMD are done on a Redhat 9 box, which is as old
> > as I can go (and even this, I had to beg our sysadmin not to upgrade
> > it even with the obvious security issues that RH9 has).
>
> How about changing to CentOS-3 ? This costs nothing, is very similar
> to RH9 (IMHO RHEL3 is some cross between RH9 and FC1) and is updated
> by the CentOS team including security-wise. Plus that Tru is also part
> of the CentOS team, specifically the CentOS-3 part :-)
>
> If you really want to go even more backwards, then how about
> CentOS-2.1 ? This is based on RHEL-2.1 sources which are based on the
> RH 7.x releases which seem to still be preferred by a lot of people.
>
> [ Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the CentOS project. I am only a
> user. ]
>
> > I may have to distribute two different 32-bit builds of VMD 1.8.4,
> > one build on RH9, and one built on RHEL4.
>
> I'm actually contemplating putting all 3 present CentOS versions in
> VMWare "containers" to allow me to compile using the different
> libraries and compilers and compare the results; in my case, there is
> no graphics involved, so I could even run in these virtual machines.
> For graphics (as in the case of VMD using OpenGL), this is still
> different than running in these 3 environments on real hardware, but I
> think that it is better than compiling in one and just hope for the
> best in the others.
>
> With VMWare (or some other virtualization software), you don't need to
> ask your sysadmin for anything. You can be the syadmin... if these are
> only used for compilation tests, then they don't need any complex
> configuration.
>
> --
> Bogdan Costescu
>
> IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
> Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
> Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
> E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu_at_IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078