Hi Angelika,

Your problem is virtualgl configuration.  ChimeraX is probably working fine but it appears the Qt window toolkit can't get an OpenGL graphics context that is needed.  In the ChimeraX system requirements we discourage use of remote display ChimeraX, it often runs into configuration problems like what you are hitting and even when it works it often performs poorly (slow graphics update).

https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/system_requirements.html

That said ChimeraX can work with VirtualGL but we do not know how to debug VirtualGL problems.

  Tom

On Jan 18, 2026, at 7:43 PM, Angelika Dibijo via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Hi Chimerax Team,

Could you please assist me in making ChimeraX 1.11 work on my machine?

It was built without error from GitLab.

 ./ChimeraX --version
UCSF ChimeraX version: 1.12.dev202601140146 (2026-01-14)
© 2016-2026 Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

My machine is: 
nvidia-smi      
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 570.195.03             Driver Version: 570.195.03     CUDA Version: 12.8     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA L4                      On  |   00000000:E5:00.0 Off |                    0 |
| N/A   36C    P8             15W /   72W |      45MiB /  23034MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

                                                                                         

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A         1877027      G   /usr/libexec/Xorg                        39MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+



The window pops up, then crashes as below.

$ module load virtualgl
Loading virtualgl/2.5.0
  Loading requirement: libjpeg-turbo/1.4.2

$ vglrun ./ChimeraX

NOTE: available bundle cache has not been initialized yet
WARNING: GBM is not supported with the current configuration. Fallback to Vulkan rendering in Chromium.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807851:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(303)] No suitable EGL configs found.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807872:ERROR:gl_context_egl.cc(159)] Failed to get config for surface 0
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807885:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(303)] No suitable EGL configs found.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807889:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(1018)] No suitable EGL configs found for initialization.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807892:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(85)] gl::GLContext::CreateOffscreenGLSurface failed
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.807895:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(597)] Could not create surface for info collection.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808002:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(303)] No suitable EGL configs found.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808006:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(1018)] No suitable EGL configs found for initialization.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808062:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(303)] No suitable EGL configs found.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808065:ERROR:gl_surface_egl.cc(1018)] No suitable EGL configs found for initialization.
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808068:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(85)] gl::GLContext::CreateOffscreenGLSurface failed
[1896428:1897552:0115/140239.808070:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(597)] Could not create surface for info collection.
Fatal Python error: Segmentation fault

Thread 0x00007f62af7fe640 (most recent call first):
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/ssl.py", line 1382 in do_handshake
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/ssl.py", line 1104 in _create
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/ssl.py", line 517 in wrap_socket
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 1475 in connect
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 996 in send
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 1058 in _send_output
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 1298 in endheaders
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 1349 in _send_request
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/http/client.py", line 1303 in request
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 1348 in do_open
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 1391 in https_open
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 496 in _call_chain
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 536 in _open
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 519 in open
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/urllib/request.py", line 216 in urlopen
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/site-packages/chimerax/core/toolshed/available.py", line 62 in load
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/site-packages/chimerax/core/toolshed/__init__.py", line 516 in reload_available
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/threading.py", line 982 in run
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/threading.py", line 1045 in _bootstrap_inner
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/threading.py", line 1002 in _bootstrap

Thread 0x00007f6378614740 (most recent call first):
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/site-packages/chimerax/ui/gui.py", line 414 in event_loop
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/site-packages/chimerax/core/__main__.py", line 1064 in init
  File "/apps/src/CHIMERAX/src/ChimeraX/ChimeraX.app/lib/python3.11/site-packages/chimerax/core/__main__.py", line 1229 in <module>
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 88 in _run_code
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 198 in _run_module_as_main

Extension modules: chimerax.arrays._arrays, numpy.core._multiarray_umath, numpy.core._multiarray_tests, numpy.linalg._umath_linalg, numpy.fft._pocketfft_internal, numpy.random._common, numpy.random.bit_generator, numpy.random._bounded_integers, numpy.random._mt19937, numpy.random.mtrand, numpy.random._philox, numpy.random._pcg64, numpy.random._sfc64, numpy.random._generator, chimerax.geometry._geometry, PyQt6.QtCore, PyQt6.QtGui, PyQt6.QtWidgets, PyQt6.QtNetwork, PyQt6.QtPrintSupport, PyQt6.QtWebChannel, PyQt6.QtWebEngineCore, PyQt6.QtWebEngineWidgets, psutil._psutil_linux, psutil._psutil_posix, chimerax.atomic_lib._load_libs, tinyarray, chimerax.atomic.cymol, chimerax.atomic.cytmpl, chimerax.map._map, chimerax.pdb_lib._load_libs, PIL._imaging, chimerax.surface._surface, OpenGL_accelerate.errorchecker, OpenGL_accelerate.wrapper, OpenGL_accelerate.formathandler, OpenGL_accelerate.arraydatatype, OpenGL_accelerate.latebind, OpenGL_accelerate.vbo, OpenGL_accelerate.numpy_formathandler, OpenGL_accelerate.nones_formathandler (total: 41)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)





Thank you so much.

Please let me know if you need more information.


Regards,
Angel


--

ANGELIKA DIBIJO
System Administrator

Monash eResearch

Monash University, Clayton Campus

M: + 61 426371313
E: angelika.dibijo@monash.edu

W: Monash-eResearch 

We acknowledge and pay respect to the Elders and Traditional Owners of the land on which our four Australian campuses stand.
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