Skylinearch How-To

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Startup

Turn on Projectors ( the Sanyo remote works for all ) PLEASE take care not to hit any other buttons on remote as this will really destroy the projector setup
- All backends will auto-login to X as "skyuser" and should be logged in
Turn on Plasma
Login as yourself
- open an Xterm
So far there are two main apps we run VMD for molecular vis and Amira for volume rendering.
- To start VMD
  - run "start_vmd"
    - Here's what 'start_vmd" is doing, well actually the 4 sub scripts....
      - it first starts dmx with the following options
        
        Xdmx :1 \-ac \-configfile /etc/dmx.conf \+xinerama \-ignorebadfontpaths &
      - it then sets $DISPLAY to :1 and starts gnome-wm
      - it then cds to /uufs/skylinearch.arches/sys/crconfigs and runs "python dmx.conf vmd" which established the dimension of the wall, protocal and ports to use, sets environmental variables and starts the mothership.
      - it the rshs to all the backend nodes and runs "crserver"
      - finally it sets some envir variables and runs VMD.

To control the mouse on the wall press "Scroll Lock" "0" "8"
To control the mouse on the plasma press "Scroll Lock" "0" "1"
- VMD will start up in stereo mode with all the appropriate windows present. So just load an PDB or other appropriate file ( tons in /scratch/local ) and go.
- You may have to set <Near Clip> in the <Display Settings> to 0.1(I couldn't set that variable in my vmd config script)

To start Amira
- run "start_amira"
  - under the covers "start_amira" is doing the following...
    - it cds to /uufs/skylinearch.arches/sys/crconfigs and runs "python skylinearch3x6.conf amira"
    - it then rshs to the backend nodes and runs "crserver"
    - it then starts Amira.
Amira currently only runs with Chromium w/o DMX, so control of the wall is done from the head node (plasma).

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VMD
- Close normally; select <File><Quit>
DMX
- DMX must also be shutdown properly
  - While on the Wall (scroll lock "0" "8") press "control+alt+q"
    - NOTE if DMX is stopped in any other way it will leave behind lock files in /tmp that will not affect you, but will effect other users' ability to start DMX.
Amira
- Close normally; select <File><Quit>
  - No need to shutdown DMX
run
```
sudo cleanup_wall
```
to kill mothership processes and clean up after yourself.