Hmm, it seems that you have the Model Panel set to autostart in your preferences.  Now, Chimera probably should ignore autostarting tools when it is in nogui mode, but currently it doesn't.  So what you will have to do for now (until we fix this) is to start Chimera normally, turn off the autostart of the Model Panel (and any other graphical tools probably), save the new preferences, and then run your script.

If you look in the "Preferences" preference category, it will show the location of the preferences file.  You could squirrel away your original preferences file somewhere, make the version with no autostarting, copy that somewhere, and then put your original version back.  You would then be able to use the no-autostarting preferences by specifying it's location with the --preferences startup option.

--Eric 

                        Eric Pettersen
                        UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
                        http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu

On Mar 8, 2010, at 7:32 PM, Sumitro Harjanto wrote:

Hi Eric,
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t really script, I usually use a c++ code / excel to generate the command (.cmd) files. Should be okay for the automation for now, if I run into any problem then I will post it up here again. =]
 
Mean while I try running the command “chimera.exe –nogui” in PATH/chimera/bin but got the following error message. I followed the instruction and copy over the debug message (below). any advise? I’m on a win7 X86 platform btw.
 
Thanks,
Sumitro
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Chimera failed abnormally; the exit code was: 1
Use –debug command line option for the full error message.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cannot execute 'gzip': no automatic decompression of .Z files
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "E:\Chimera\share\__main__.py", line 65, in <module>
    value = chimeraInit.init(sys.argv)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimeraInit.py", line 401, in init
    extension.startup(startExtensions)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\extension\base.py", line 1056, in startup
    manager.autostartTools(extNames)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\extension\base.py", line 959, in autostartTools
 
    emo.activate()
  File "E:\Chimera\share\ModelPanel\ChimeraExtension.py", line 23, in activate
    display(self.module('base').ModelPanel.name)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\dialogs.py", line 77, in display
    dialog = find(name, create=1)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\dialogs.py", line 62, in find
    return d()
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\baseDialog.py", line 523, in __init__
    BaseDialog.__init__(self, master, *args, **kw)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\chimera\baseDialog.py", line 244, in __init__
    self.fillInUI(self.__top)
  File "E:\Chimera\share\ModelPanel\base.py", line 217, in fillInUI
    self._addColumns()
  File "E:\Chimera\share\ModelPanel\base.py", line 436, in _addColumns
    self._buildTable()
  File "E:\Chimera\share\ModelPanel\base.py", line 454, in _buildTable
    % len(filter(lambda s: s == 1, self.shownColumns)))
  File "E:\Chimera\bin\Lib\lib-tk\Tix.py", line 1306, in __init__
    cnf, kw)
  File "E:\Chimera\bin\Lib\lib-tk\Tix.py", line 307, in __init__
    self.tk.call(widgetName, self._w, *extra)
_tkinter.TclError: invalid command name "tixScrolledHList"
Return code: 1
Press return or enter to to exit