Wit!P GUI failed to start...


Unix (or Linux or Cygwin):

If you see a message like the following, you probably forgot to include the directory with the Wit!P executables in your execute search path:
widmer@luna ~]$ witnotp &
[1] 9566
witnotp: Command not found.
[widmer@luna ~]$
You should include the appropriate setup in your .cshrc (or .bashrc or...) file. Wit!P assumes that it will find everything it needs in the execute search path, so using an alias for witnotp will not work:
[widmer@luna ~]$ alias witnotp /home/wnprun/bin/witnotp
[widmer@luna ~]$ witnotp&
[1] 9578
[widmer@luna ~]$ netfsname: Command not found.
sorry, cant execute client sw_client.exe
Wit!P will start the GUI on the host defined by the command line argument host or by the environment variable DISPLAY (REMOTEHOST, if DISPLAY is not defined). If the GUI host is different from the machine where the witnotp script is executed (or even if Wit!P thinks that the two systems are different), the GUI (sw_server) will be started using a remote-shell command (rsh). The rsh command will fail, if you do not have the appropriate entries either in ~/.rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv:
AW on bigone 42> witnotp
Connecting to server on remote host
Permission denied.
rsh: connection failed
Waiting to make connection to server port_19945 on luna.ph.chbs...
If you are using a precompiled binary version, you may get messages like the one below:
[widmer@luna ~/junk]$ witnotp
Server changed directory to /home/widmer/junk
sw_client.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libreadline.so.4.1: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory
Fix: install the missing library (or in the case of missing readline library, build re-compile Wit!P without readline support).


Windows:

If the installation instructions for the Windows version of Wit!P have been followed, you should have three shortcut icons (only two for non-NT versions of Windows) on your desktop:

On a PC running Windows/NT, the middle shortcut (WitNotPNT) may be used to launch the Wit!P GUI server and the client. This method does not work for non-NT flavors of Windows. Instead, the left shortcut (WitNotP) should be used to start the GUI server, and the right shortcut (WitNotPC) should be used to start the Wit!P client (unless the client is used on a remote Unix (or Linux) host. The most common cause of failure is that Wit!P has been installed in a non-standard location (a directory other than C:\wnp-nt) without making the necessary changes to the batch files and shortcuts. If WIt!P fails to start, check the following:

  1. right-click on each of the shortcut icons, select properties, then shortcut, and check that the Target fields point to server.bat (WitNotP), witnotp.bat (WitNotPNT) and client.bat (WitNotPC), and that the Start in fields point to an exisiting directory.

  2. with the editor of your choice, verify that all references to C:\wnp-nt and /cygdrive/c/wnp-nt in the files server.bat, client.bat and witnotp.bat have been changed to the non-standard location. If you use a fancy word processor, instead of a text editor, make sure that you save your changes in ASCII format, or Wit!P will not be able to read the modified files.

  3. with the editor of your choice, check that the references to /cygdrive/c/wnp-nt in the file wnp_init have all been changed to point to the non-standard location.
If the GUI starts, but the graphics does not look right, or if you have wild flicker, or if the PC "freezes" when you read in a molecule you may be using a broken graphics driver. This seems to be a common problem (OpenGL support isn't that great on many of the cheap graphics chips). Entering Alt-T (hit T, while pressing the Alt key) may help. If it makes things worse, enter Alt-T again to toggle back to the previous text mode. In many cases, the only remedy is to install a newer version of the graphics driver.



A.Widmer, NIBR/CPC/CSG-SB