Running Spock

The default configuration for spock is a menu-driven graphics mode. Just typing ``spock'' on the command line will start in this mode. Several files can also be specified on the command line, for example: PDB files, and spock command files. PDB files are recognized by an extension of ``.pdb'' or ``.ent''. If your PDB file does not have this extension, you can force spock to treat the file as a PDB file by preceding the filename with a ``-pdb'' flag. A full list of the extensions and files spock recognizes is given in §5.2.2. A file with an unrecognized extension is assumed to be a spock command file. See §7 for more information on spock history and command files.

Spock's command line syntax is:  

spock [options] [[-pdb] pdbfiles] [otherfiles]
 Possible options are:
   -ng or -nographics: text-only mode       
                   -s: silent mode, do not echo history commands to console
                 -pdb: force next file to be treated as a PDB file
               -debug: include debugging information
              -stdout: use the terminal instead of Motif output window
               -stdio: don't use graphical input or output windows
      -h[istory] name: use name for history log instead of .spockhist

    When spock first starts, it looks for a Spockrc initialization file in the $SPOCK/ directory. This file is a spock history file (See §7) that may be customized by the system administrator to perform certain operations each time spock is started. Spock next looks for a .spockrc file in the user's home directory and executes this file, allowing user customizations to override system defaults.

If spock is started with no command-line arguments, it displays a banner message before turning control over to the user.  

Two concurrent spock sessions:

    Spock keeps a history log file of all user action (in $SP_HISTORY/.spockhist by default). If you wish to run two spock sessions at the same time, you should use the "-h[istory] option in order to keep the second process from clobbering the history file of the first. Additionally, you may want to run each process from a different directory, as some of the temporary files may interfere with each other, but that's generally not as much of a problem as the history file collision.