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install (c46b1)

CHARMM Release and Installation

Welcome to the Fortran95 conversion of CHARMM, the result of about two
years of intense effort by a core group of developers, and major
contributions from many of the active development sites. Note that while
all of the features included by default have been fully converted and
verified via cross testing vs. different compilers and pre-conversion
code, some optional features may not yet be functional; caveat emptor.

Two new performance features available for the first time with this release are an
implementation of the domain decomposition code of D.E. Shaw » domdec
and an interface to the GPU based OpenMM code from Vijay Pandy » openmm .

Problems and questions related to the installation and post-installation
testing of CHARMM may be posted in the "Installation and Performance"
forum at www.charmm.org (registration required to post).

This document contains a formal definition of the current CHARMM release
followed by a detailed installation procedure. We describe here
features and end-line-user-site installation. Issues regarding
developer sites are documented in » developer


* Contents | List of Contents of the current release
* Machines | Machines supported
* Install | Installation Procedure
* Documentation | CHARMM Documentation via emacs INFO program
* TOPPAR | Standard CHARMM Topology and Parameter Files
* UserForm | CHARMM User Group support


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CHARMM Release Package


The CHARMM release package for CHARMM developers and user sites includes

(1) complete source and include files,
(2) updated documentation files,
(3) some supporting data files,
(4) testcases,
(5) the tools needed to set up CHARMM development environments and
(6) standard topology and parameter files.

The files are organized in the followoing subdirectories.
~/ denotes the directory where you have unpacked (via tar) the CHARMM
release package delivered to you. In ~/cnnXm, nn is the version number,
X is the version trunk designator (a for alpha or developmental, b for beta
release and c for gamma or general release) and m is the revision
number. For example, c36b1 is CHARMM version 36 beta release revision 1.

~/cnnXm/ The main directory of CHARMM

~/cnnXm/source/ Contains all CHARMM source files

~/cnnXm/doc/ The most recent CHARMM documentation
If 'info' is available on your host
machine, you may 'soft' link this directory
to the info directory to access the
documentation via the info program.

~/cnnXm/support/ Supplementary programs and data files

~/cnnXm/test/ CHARMM testcases; post installation tests

~/cnnXm/tool/ Preprocessor, FLECS translator and
other CHARMM installation utilities

~/cnnXm/toppar/ Standard topology/parameter files

~/cnnXm/build/ Contains Makefile, module makefiles and
the log file of the install make command
for each machine in the subdirectory named
after the machine type.

Created by the first use of configure and make install:

~/cnnXm/bin/ The CHARMM executable charmm will be
stored here when installation is completed.

~/cnnXm/lib/ Contains library files


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Supported Machine Platforms

The current release version is available on the following platforms:

altix SGI Itanium Altix series (64 bit)
* em64t ifort compilers on x86_64 Linux
* gnu Linux; GNU gfortran compiler by default
** gpu GPU using CUDA library
g95 G95 compiler (Linux)
hpitanium HP-UX Itaniums
ibmaix IBM AIX not parallel
ibmaixmp IBM AIX parallel
ibmlnxmp IBM GNU/Linux parallel
itanium INTEL Itanium 2 using ifort compiler
nag Numerical Algorithms Group compiler (Linux)
* osx Mac OSX machines
xt4 Cray XT4/XT5 using compute node Linux

* confirmed to work; others may work, but are unconfirmed (no reports)
** developmental versions only

The new code relies on the full Fortran95 feature set, and some common
Fortran2003 extensions implemented by most modern Fortran compilers.
The suggested compiler release versions are:

GCC gfortran 4.4.x or later, except 4.5.1
Intel ifort 11.1 or later
PGI pgf95 11.1 or later

The above lists are expected to change as usage of the Fortran95
conversion becomes more widespread. The older Fortran77 version
of CHARMM was historically available on these types of machines:

Alliant
Apollo
Convex
Cray X-MP, Cray Y-MP, Cray-2, and Cray T3E
DEC Stations running Ultrix
DEC Alpha Stations running OSF
Hewlett-Packard Apollo 700 Series
IBM-3090 running AIX
IBM-RS/6000
Intel iPSC Hypercube
Silicon Graphics (SGI)
Sun, Hal

» parallel for details on historical parallel versions.


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User Site CHARMM Installation


The installation is carried out by the shell script ~/cnnXm/configure and then
make install.
Change your working directory to ~/cnnXm and run configure.
The configure script may take options. Execute
$ ./configure --help
to see a list of current options. See also doc/cmake.info.

When install switches other than the machine type are changed for subsequent
builds with different features, it is very important to first delete any
existing build/machine-type and lib/machine-type subdirectories.

Simple Examples:

./configure
make -C build/cmake install

1. generates the proper ~/cnnXm/build/cmake/pref.dat file (PREFX data file)
with the FULL feature set,
2. generates makefile suitable for computers running under Linux
(~/cnnXm/build/cmake/Makefile),
3. processes FORTRAN and C source files, compiles and builds module
libraries in ~/cnnXm/build/cmake, and
4. links them to produce the executable ~/cnnXm/bin/charmm.

./configure --with-intel
make -C build/cmake install

1. As above, but using ifort compiler

Note that it is assumed the PATH variable has been set to point to
the locations of the compiler and optional MPI wrapper, and that
these are properly installed and working on your systems.

Adding features:

./configure --add CORSOL
make -C build/cmake install

1. As above, but adds the CORSOL feature » corsol

./configure --add ENSEMBLE
make -C build/cmake install

1. Adds ENSEMBLE replica exchange code » ensemble

./configure --with-repdstr --with-gcc
make -C build/cmake install

./install.com --with-redstr --with-intel
make -C build/cmake install

1. Adds REPDSTR replica exchange code » repdstr
2. Not compatible with ENSEMBLE; they are mutually exclusive

Additional Notes:

For MPI usage, the distribution of choice (OpenMPI, MPICH, MPICH2, etc.)
**MUST** have the mpi.mod file created from mpi.f90 using the same
compiler release version that will be used to compile CHARMM.

In some cases, it may also be useful to set the environment variables
MPI_HOME or else MPI_INCLUDE and MPI_LIB


To speed compilation, one can use multiple threads with make via
make -j4 -C build/cmake install

The command tool/NewCharmmTree creates a subdir with links to source,
etc., allowing for compile variations w/o having to copy the entire
distribution.


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CHARMM Documentation

The CHARMM documentation set is being updated and improved. The
up-to-the-date documentation set is included in the current release.
The documentation is an integral part of CHARMM.

The INFO format files can be converted to static HTML files
via support/htmldoc, or the doc2html package available in the
Script Archive forum at www.charmm.org

The files can also be made accessible through the info program or
GNU emacs. If either is available on your system, you may incorporate
the documentation into the info-tree structure. The following is the
info-building procedure.

* charmm: CHARMM Documentation

It should appear exactly as shown; asterisk (*) in the first
column, etc. The the part of dir file may look like this.

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Quick Key Reference

d return here
q exit
? list INFO commands
h help
mCHARMM<return> go into CHARMM documentation
1 go into CHARMM documentation (works for 1..5)
u go up

===========================================================================

* charmm: CHARMM Documentation
* Emacs: (emacs). Yours truly
* Info: (info). This documentation browsing system.

(3) Save the file and exit the editor. You now have to link the
CHARMM documentation directory as in the following.

ln -s ~/cnnXm/doc doc

Remember that ~/ is the parent directory that holds the charmm
directory.


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CHARMM Topology and Parameter Files

The current distribution has topology files:

top_all22_prot.rtf top_all35_ethers.rtf top_all36_carb.rtf
top_all36_cgenff.rtf top_all36_lipid.rtf top_all36_na.rtf
top_all36_prot.rtf

and matching parameter files:

par_all22_prot.prm par_all35_ethers.prm par_all36_carb.prm
par_all36_cgenff.prm par_all36_lipid.prm par_all36_na.prm
par_all36_prot.prm

These are now all in FLEX format, and have been modularized such that there
are no conflicts of chemical type names or integer code numbers used in the MASS
statements. As a consequence, there is no longer any need for pre-combined
files such as the previous "prot_na" or "prot_lipid" files.

Water and ion residues and parameters are now in toppar_water_ions.str
which should be read via STREAM after the other RTF and PARAM files.

The toppar/stream subdir has many additional molecules, along with
many of the model compounds used in the parameter development. There
are number of other special purpose subdirs, such as gbsw, drude, and
non_charmm.

However, new developments and updates, along with a wealth of
other material concerning CHARMM parameter sets can be found at URL

http://mackerell.umaryland.edu/MacKerell_Lab.html

The extended (united) atom parameters for proteins are the same as those
included with CHARMM20, which are based on Wally Reiher's thesis. For
the extended atom nucleic acid parameters, those of Nilsson and Karplus,
J. Comp. Chem. 7:591-616, 1986 are used. These were also included in
the CHARMM20 release and are the only set to include explicit hydrogen
bonding terms. Some alterations of the extended atom nucleic acid topology
and parameter files have been made in order to maintain compatibility
with the multiple dihedral scheme in CHARMM22.

Comments, questions, and problems related to the distributed
topology and parameter files should be posted in the Parameter Set
forum at www.charmm.org


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CHARMM User Support

Users are encouraged to register for the CHARMM forums hosted at
www.charmm.org, an active web based bulletin board with specific
forums for usage, and for questions and problems involving installation
and testing.

The forms, problem.form and bugfix.form in the support/form
directory may be useful in reporting problems and bugfixes.