RAD Software

Bitcoin Wallets

One of the most important things you will need before using any kind of Bitcoin mining software is a wallet.

Why?

This is because all Bitcoin mining software will ask you for a Bitcoin address that will be used to send your mining rewards and payouts. Once you create or download a wallet you will be able to get a Bitcoin address from your wallet.

Check out our guide on how to add funds to your wallet.

There are many Bitcoin wallets, but these are the ones we recommend if you are just starting out:

• Ledger Nano X – Secure Bitcoin hardware wallet for all platforms.
• iOS Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets for iOS.
• Android Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets on Android.
• Desktop Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets for desktop.

Now that we understand mining software and how it helps in the mining process, and you have your Bitcoin wallet and address, let’s look at different software on different operating systems.

Lastly:

Disclaimer: Mining Bitcoin is NOT the best way to get bitcoins. Buying Bitcoin is.

To buy bitcoin in your country, check our country guides:

…or visit our exchange finder if your country is not listed above.

Mining Software Overviews

Find the Right Software for You

So which software should you choose?

Let's go over all the most important info for each mining software.

By the end, you should be able to pick the best bitcoin mining software for you.

Best Bitcoin Mining Software For Windows

Braiins OS is part of Satoshi Labs and is the creation of the original inventor of mining pools, Marek “Slush” Palatinus. You may also know Marek for his invention of the Trezor, the world’s first hardware wallet.

Unlike many other mining software and operating systems, Braiins is completely free. Satoshi Labs makes money off of Braiins OS by offering you incentives to join their Slush mining pool, although this is not required to use their software.

Supported Hardware

Braains OS+ currently supports Antminer S9, S9i and S9j. Support for Antminer S17 and T17 are coming soon. Thankfully, Braiins OS+ makes the S9 family so much more efficient, that it can extend the life of your Antminer S9 ASICs. It achieves this life increase through better mining efficiency, which we will cover next.

Performance

With Braiins OS, you can increase the hashrate of your S9 up to 17+ Terrahashes per second.

Braiins OS+ can also take an S9 on low power mode and deliver 20% better performance than even an S9i.

For aging hardware like the S9 family, this is a crazy performance boost, so we can’t wait to see what Braiin’s will be able to do once they launch support for next gen Antminers like the S17 and T17.

Cost

While there is no up front cost to buying the software, you will need to pay Slushpool dev fees by directing 2% of your hashing power to their pool regardless of which pool you end up mining on. However, if you choose to mine with Slushpool for all 100% of your hashing power, that rate drops to 1%.

This is how Satoshi Labs makes money off of Braiins OS.

Features

Braiins OS boasts many features, such as:

• Unlocked SSH
• Automatic Updates to the OS firmware
• Device installation on all your devices at once
• Super Fast boot up speeds
• Pre-heating to get mining faster
• Complete fan control

Command Line

For the more traditional, tech-savvy users, Braiins offers a simple but robust command line interface for their mining software in addition to the more common graphical user interface that most people are used to. Both have their advantages, but many are more comfortable issuing commands with a keyboard instead of mouse clicks.

Two-Factor Authentication

According to Slushpool,

Every important change made to a user account requires email verification. We furthermore recommend enabling two-factor authentication using either TOTP mobile app or a hardware token (U2F). For even better protection, there is a possibility to lock your payout address so it can be only changed in future by a signed message from said address.

Slushpool takes the security of your earnings very seriously, which means a robust set of two-factor authentication options are at your disposal.

Technical Support

Braiin’s OS comes with some of the best documentation of all the mining software. If that doesn’t answer you questions you can reach out to Braiins for help or join their telegram.

Implementation of Stratum V2

Braiins OS+ has also implemented its Stratum V2 communication protocol. This protocol offers truly advanced features for power miners such as bandwidth load reductions, hash rate variance control, and hash rate hijacking protection.

It also comes with a nifty Proxy so that you can still use Stratum on other pools even if it isn’t supported by them.

Should You Use Braiins OS?

There is no one more experienced in mining software than Satoshi Labs, so you really can’t go wrong. These guys are constantly innovating, so even if you are running Linux, you won’t be disappointed in choosing Braiins.

That being said, if you don’t plan to start mining with Slushpool, be aware that you will essentially pay a 2% fee to Slushpool (in the form of redirecting 2% of your hashing power to them). By mining with Slushpool, that cuts in half and becomes very attractive.

For more info on mining pools and how to pick one, see our complete guide on mining pools.

Best Bitcoin Mining Software For MacOS

Hive OS is a dashboard which allows miners to monitor and control all of their ASIC mining and GPUs from one centralized location. Doesn’t matter if they are made by Avalon or Nvidia - Hive OS has you covered.

Centralization is a scary word in crypto but in this case it’s great. Instead of having to monitor miners with different programs, it’s now possible to keep track of everything using Hive’s beautiful, one-stop dashboard.

Hive OS supports Bitcoin (BTC), Eth (ETH), Bcash (BCH), (XMR) and many other coins.

Whether you have three rigs or a thousand, Hive OS can easily integrate with all of them. Installation is easy as Hive OS automatically detects mining rigs and adds them to the dashboard.

HEADS UP!

Mining or buying bitcoins? You can't do either without a Bitcoin wallet.

Our guide on the best bitcoin wallets will help you pick one.
Read Our Wallets Guide

Tracking Metrics with Hive OS

As a full feature dashboard Hive OS allows miners to track a number of different metrics. That includes but is not limited to,

• Hash rate
• Online status
• GPU errors
• Pool configuration
• Electricity usage
• Team activity

What’s great about Hive is that all of this information can be accessed from anywhere in the world. That means that you can manage a mining operation from anywhere, you don’t have to be physically connected to the miners. You can even use Hive OS to update ASICs (all at one time, it’s not necessary to update them individually) or restart a GPU if it has frozen.

Quick Tip

Mining is not the fastest way to get bitcoins.

Buying bitcoin is the fastest way.

Besides updating their rigs Hive OS allows miners to do the following,

• Change which coins are being mined. Bitcoin or BCH, Litecoin, Ethereum or Ethereum Classic, you can switch on the go if one coin becomes more profitable than another. You can use our profitability calculator as well.
• Change miner configurations all at once, there’s no need to painstakingly change individual settings.
• Change mining pools.

No matter what coins you’d like to mine Hive OS has you covered. They support more than 500 different currencies as well as 85 different mining rigs. To increase the efficiency of your miners Hive OS has firmware that can boost hash rates as well as cut down on energy usage by as much as 25%.

Pricing

Hive OS is surprisingly affordable at $2 per month per ASIC. For larger operations Hive offers discounts to any business with more than 500 miners. It’s also possible to receive Hive for free if you purchase the Hive firmware upgrade for your rigs.

There are a couple of other discounts available. If you deposit three months worth of funds into your account Hive will give you a 30% bonus on your purchase. You have to make the deposit all at once but otherwise there are few restriction on what it takes to qualify. There is also an additional 3% bonus if you make the deposit using a stablecoin like USDT or TUSD.

Easy Install

Setup is super simple with HIVE OS. All you have to do is download the software and it will automatically detect your rig and add them to the management dashboard.

ETH Mining Pool

For Ethereum miners Hive hosts its own mining pool which they claim is one of the most profitable anywhere. Hive mentions that due to their worldwide servers their pool is secure, efficient and also has a high payout. As of publication the expected daily earnings are $1.35 (0.00794 ETH) per 100 MH/s.

The minimum payout for the pool is 0.1 ETH and currently the pool charges no commission fee. There are three servers available. One in Russia, one in Europe and one in North America.

Quick Tip

Using mining software is not the fastest way to get bitcoins.

Try an exchange below for the fastest way to get bitcoins.

• Bits of Gold

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• eToro

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• Luno

  • Best for Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia
  • East to use interface
  • Trusted exchange
• Coinbase

  • High liquidity and buying limits
  • Easy way for newcomers to get bitcoins
  • 'Instant Buy' option available with debit card
• Bitbuy

  • Exchange based in Canada
  • Very high buy and sell limits
  • Supports Interac & wire
• Coinberry

  • Crypto exchange based in Canada
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• Independent Reserve (AU/NZ)

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• eToro

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  • Your capital is at risk.

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The Hive OS Mobile App

One of the great things about Hive OS is that they have a mobile app that allows you to execute all of the same functions and monitor all of the same metrics as the dashboard. With some recent updates the app also appears to function well, based on user reviews.

In the Google Play store the app has 4.4 review score and although there is not yet an Apple iPhone app, Hive has indicated that they plan to release one soon.

Coin Statistics

One of the cool things about Hive OS is that even if you’ve not yet signed up for the service you can get an idea of who is using it. On the Hive statistics page there is a bunch of relevant data that miners may be interested in. For instance as of publication:

• 54% of all Hive OS mining is for Ethereum and 9% is Bitcoin
• The Radeon RX 570 4GB is the most popular AMD miner and the P106-100 6GB is the most popular NVIDIA miner. For Bitcoin the Antminer S9 Hive One is the most popular model

The Hive OS Advantage

If you’re in the business of cryptocurrency mining Hive OS can offer a real advantage in terms of efficiency, setup speed and ease of use. The centralized dashboard is well thought out and beautiful to look at. What used to be difficult is now easy with essentially plug and play mining for Ethereum, Bitcoin and hundreds of other coins.

Whether you’ve already got the equipment or you’re considering a new investment, Hive OS is definitely worth checking out as an all-in-one mining dashboard.

Hive OS is a dashboard which allows miners to monitor and control all of their ASIC mining and GPU mining activity from one centralized location.

What is the Best Mining OS?

Now that we’ve talked about the best mining software, let’s talk about the best computer operating system to have when using a mining software.

This is really a matter of taste as a lot of the big mining software developers support multiple platforms (MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc.).

However, if you had to choose one OS over all the others, Linux is probably going to be the best bet. Nearly all mining software supports some version of Linux so you have flexibility to try multiple mining software suites.

On top of that, Linux is by far the most open OS, which means you can make changes to it if you feel confident enough to do that.

For those that want a more traditional OS experience, windows is probably the way to go.

Best Bitcoin Mining App Software for Android

You may be wondering why I left out mobile OS’s like Android.

Well…that’s because it really makes no sense to use mining apps on mobile devices to mine cryptocurrency.

There is just not enough power on your mobile device to mine bitcoin profitably.

You’ll just bog down your device and waste our battery.

If you are serious about mining, you need to:

• Get an actual rig built for mining
• Use one of the software suites outlined above
• Manage your operation using a desktop OS like MacOS, Windows, or Linux

Viruses in Mining Software

Be aware that a lot of cryptomining software may try to steal your bitcoins. Be sure to read reviews on any software you download.

Also:

Make sure you are downloading from the actual site and not a copy-cat site.

Using Tor with Mining Software

It’s also worth noting that you can use Tor to route your traffic through to remain especially anonymous while mining.

Cash Out your Coins

Once you have this setup and are mining, you may need to cash out some of your coins in order to pay off your expenses such as electricity.

For this you can use Buy Bitcoin Worldwide to find a Bitcoin exchange in your country, whether that be the USA or elsewhere! Just make sure the exchange rate is good.

Mining Software

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some of our most asked questions by readers.

If you're wondering about a topic on this page, odds are we have the answer here.

Why Do You Need a Bitcoin Mining Operating System?

Bitcoin mining rigs and systems have come a long way since the beginning. The first Bitcoin miners made do with the tools they had at their disposal and set up various software to control the mining hardware in their rigs.

While these make-shift solutions were better than nothing, they didn’t exactly work efficiently. Not only did that slow down the mining process, but it also made it difficult for newcomers to join in on the fun.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, so along came solutions like Awesome Miner, ethOS, and SimpleMining that streamlined the mining process. Let’s briefly review some of these early solutions.

What is CGMiner?

CGMiner is an open source ASIC/FPGA mining software written in C designed for several platforms - Windows, OS X and Linux. CGMiner is one of the oldest bitcoin mining software and it has the ability to run on any computer and is compatible with multiple mining hardware.

What us BFGMiner?

BFGMiner is designed for FPGA and ASIC mining. BFGMiner offers advanced users the opportunity to mine multiple cryptocurrencies by simultaneously hashing on mining algorithms like Scrypt and SHA256d. BFGMiner has remote interface capabilities.

What is Multiminer?

Multiminer is a free mining software optimized for Windows computers, but it also comes with directions to simply install it on Mac and Linux. There’s no need for coding or technical skills. The software is available for anyone to download and use.

What is Awesome Miner?

Awesome miner is a total software suite to manage your mining operation. It features support for as little as one and as many as 200,000 miners. Users can also use the ‘profit switching’ feature to switch which coins your miners are mining in real time, based on revenue and power consumption. Users of Awesome Miner can expect 10% higher performance for their Antminer S9s and a whopping 40% for Antminer S17.

These days, mining operating systems are the standard.

But many users of the existing systems still experience issues with:

• Managing multiple mining devices.
• Maintaining a steady mining performance.
• Fixing spontaneous errors.
• Managing the mining system remotely.
• Maximizing the efficiency of their hardware.
• Difficulty adjustments

What are FPGA miners?

FPGA stands for ‘Field Programmable Gate Array’. According to BH Miner, the company that produces FPGA mining hardware, FPGA chips supposedly deliver higher hash power at lower rates of energy consumption compared to ASICs. However, given than these are multi-algorithm mining hardware, you should be very skeptical that these claims actually bear out.

What is a GPU Miner?

GPU involves using a Graphics Processing Unit (normally used to play video games on PC) to mine cryptocurrencies. GPU mining was very popular in Bitcoin mining a few years ago, but that is no longer profitable due to highly advanced ASIC miners. Now, GPU mining is mainly done on Ethereum and Monero.

What is a CPU Miner?

GPU involves using a Central Processing Unit (normally used to run desktop PCs) to mine cryptocurrencies. Almost no one uses their CPU to mine any coins today, but it can be a god way to learn how mining works without spending much money.

What is EasyMiner?

EasyMiner is another free open-source mining software available to anyone who wants to use it and mine using their GPU or CPU.

Can I Mine Bitcoin on my PC?

You can, but you will lose lots of money doing this. The cost of the electricity will cost more than the tiny amount of Bitcoin you are able to mine with a modern GPU.

Even if you have the very best GPU on the market, it will never compete with the ASICs that are specially developed to mine Bitcoins.

You are really just better off buying Bitcoin than mining it at home. If you don’t believe us, just use our cryptomining profitability calculator to see for yourself!

Where Can I Mine Bitcoin for Free?

Unless you live in a country with free electricity like Iran or Venezuela, you really can’t mine cryptocurrency for free.

In fact, even if you did live in those places, you’d still need to buy some kind of mining hardware in order to mine Bitcoins.

So really, there is no place on Earth where you can mine cryptocurrency for free!

Contents

• Platform Notes and Installation
• Usage

Features

Ease of Use

Vina's design philosophy is not to require the user to understand its implementation details, tweak obscure search parameters, cluster results or know advanced algebra (quaternions). All that is required is the structures of the molecules being docked and the specification of the search space including the binding site. Calculating grid maps and assigning atom charges is not needed. The usage summary can be printed with 'vina --help'. The summary automatically remains in sync with the possible usage scenarios.

Implementation Quality

• By design, the results should not have a statistical bias related to the conformation of the input structure.
• Attention is paid to checking the syntactic correctness of the input and reporting errors to the user in a lucid manner.
• The invariance of the covalent bond lengths is automatically verified in the output structures.
• Vina avoids imposing artificial restrictions, such as the number of atoms in the input, the number of torsions, the size of the search space, the exhaustiveness of the search, etc.

Flexible Side Chains

Like in AutoDock 4, some receptor side chains can be chosen to be treated as flexible during docking.

License

Tutorial

Frequently Asked Questions

How to get started learning to use Vina?

Watching the video tutorial might be the best way to do that.

What is the meaning or significance of the name 'Vina'? Why was it developed?

Please see this mailing list post.

How accurate is AutoDock Vina?

See Features

It should be noted that the predictive accuracy varies a lot depending on the target, so it makes sense to evaluate AutoDock Vina against your particular target first,if you have known actives, or a bound native ligand structure, before ordering compounds. While evaluating any docking engine in a retrospective virtual screen, it might make sense to select decoys of similar size, and perhaps other physical characteristics,to your known actives.

What is the difference between AutoDock Vina and AutoDock 4?

AutoDock 4 (and previous versions) and AutoDock Vina were both developed in the Molecular Graphics Lab atThe Scripps Research Institute. AutoDock Vina inherits some of the ideas and approaches of AutoDock 4, such as treating docking as a stochastic global opimization of the scoring function, precalculating grid maps (Vina does that internally), and some other implementation tricks, such asprecalculating the interaction between every atom type pair at every distance. It also uses the same type of structure format (PDBQT) for maximum compatibility with auxiliary software.

However, the source code, the scoring funcion and the actual algorithms used are brand new,so it's more correct to think of AutoDock Vina as a new 'generation' rather than 'version' of AutoDock. The performance was compared in the original publication ^[*], and on average, AutoDock Vina didconsiderably better, both in speed and accuracy. However, for any given target, either program may provide a better result, even though AutoDock Vina is more likely to do so.This is due to the fact that the scoring functions are different, and both are inexact.

What is the difference between AutoDock Vina and AutoDock Tools?

AutoDock Tools is a module within the MGL Tools software package specifically for generating input (PDBQT files) forAutoDock or Vina. It can also be used for viewing the results.

Can I dock two proteins with AutoDock Vina?

You might be able to do that, but AutoDock Vina is designed only for receptor-ligand docking. There are better programs for protein-protein docking.

Will Vina run on my 64-bit machine?

Yes. By design, modern 64-bit machines can run 32-bit binaries natively.

Why do I get 'can not open conf.txt' error? The file exists!

Oftentimes, file browsers hide the file extension, so while you think you have a file 'conf.txt', it's actually called 'conf.txt.txt'.This setting can be changed in the control panel or system preferences.

You should also make sure that the file path you are providing is correct with respect to the directory (folder) you are in, e.g. if you are referring simply to conf.txt in the command line, make sure you are in the same directory (folder)as this file. You can use ls or dir commands on Linux/MacOS and Windows, respectively, to list the contentsof your directory.

Why do I get 'usage errors' when I try to follow the video tutorial?

The command line options changed somewhat since the tutorial has been recorded. In particular, '--out' replaced '--all'.

Vina runs well on my machine, but when I run it on my exotic Linux cluster, I get a 'boost thread resource' error. Why?

Your Linux cluster is [inadvertantly] configured in such a way as to disallow spawning threads. Therefore, Vina can not run. Contact your system administrator.

Why is my docked conformation different from what you get in the video tutorial?

The docking algorithm is non-deterministic. Even though with this receptor-ligand pair, the minimum of the scoring function corresponds to the correct conformation,the docking algorithm sometimes fails to find it. Try several times and see for yourself. Note that the probability of failing to find the mininum may be different with a different system.

My docked conformation is the same, but my energies are different from what you get in the video tutorial. Why?

The scoring function has changed since the tutorial was recorded, but only in the part that is independent of the conformation:the ligand-specific penalty for flexibility has changed.

Why do my results look weird in PyMOL?

PDBQT is not a standard molecular structure format. The version of PyMOL used in the tutorial (0.99rc6) happens to display it well (because PDBQT is somewhat similar to PDB).This might not be the case for newer versions of PyMOL.

Any other way to view the results?

You can also view PDBQT files in PMV (part of MGL Tools), or convert them into a different file format (e.g. using AutoDock Tools, or with 'save as' in PMV)

How big should the search space be?

As small as possible, but not smaller. The smaller the search space, the easier it is for the docking algorithm to explore it.On the other hand, it will not explore ligand and flexible side chain atom positions outside the search space. You should probably avoid search spaces bigger than 30 x 30 x 30 Angstrom, unless you also increase '--exhaustiveness'.

Why am I seeing a warning about the search space volume being over 27000 Angstrom^3?

This is probably because you intended to specify the search space sizes in 'grid points' (0.375 Angstrom), as in AutoDock 4.The AutoDock Vina search space sizes are given in Angstroms instead. If you really intended to use an unusuallylarge search space, you can ignore this warning, but note that the search algorithm's job may be harder.You may need to increase the value of the exhaustiveness to make up for it. This will lead to longer run time.

The bound conformation looks reasonable, except for the hydrogens. Why?

AutoDock Vina actually uses a united-atom scoring function, i.e. one that involves only the heavy atoms.Therefore, the positions of the hydrogens in the output are arbitrary.The hydrogens in the input file are used to decide which atoms can be hydrogen bond donors or acceptors though,so the correct protonation of the input structures is still important.

What does 'exhaustiveness' really control, under the hood?

In the current implementation, the docking calculation consists of a number of independent runs, starting from random conformations.Each of these runs consists of a number of sequential steps. Each step involves a random perturbation of the conformation followedby a local optimization (using the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno algorithm) and a selection in which the step is either accepted or not. Each local optimization involves many evaluations of the scoring function as well asits derivatives in the position-orientation-torsions coordinates.The number of evaluations in a local optimization is guided by convergence and other criteria.The number of steps in a run is determined heuristically, depending on the size and flexibility of the ligand and the flexible side chains. However, the number of runs is set by the exhaustiveness parameter. Since the individual runs are executed in parallel, where appropriate, exhaustiveness also limits the parallelism.Unlike in AutoDock 4, in AutoDock Vina, each run can produce several results: promising intermediate results are remembered.These are merged, refined, clustered and sorted automatically to produce the final result.

Why do I not get the correct bound conformation?

It can be any of a number of things:

• If you are coming from AutoDock 4, a very common mistake is to specify the search space in 'points' (0.375 Angstrom), instead of Angstroms.
• Your ligand or receptor might not have been correctly protonated.
• Bad luck (the search algorithm could have found the correct conformation with good probability, but was simply unlucky). Try again with a different seed.
• The minimum of the scoring function correponds to the correct conformation, but the search algorithm has trouble finding it. In this case, higher exhaustiveness or smaller search space should help.
• The minimum of the scoring function simply is not where the correct conformation is. Trying over and over again will not help, but may occasionally give the right answer if two wrongs (inexact search and scoring) make a right. Docking is an approximate approach.
• Related to the above, the culprit may also be the quality of the X-ray or NMR receptor structure.
• If you are not doing redocking, i.e. using the correct induced fit shape of the receptor, perhaps the induced fit effects are large enough to affect the outcome of the docking experiment.
• The rings can only be rigid during docking. Perhaps they have the wrong conformation, affecting the outcome.
• You are using a 2D (flat) ligand as input.
• The actual bound conformation of the ligand may occasionally be different from what the X-ray or NMR structure shows.
• Other problems

How can I tweak the scoring function?

You can change the weights easily, by specifying them in the configuration file,or in the command line. For example

Functionality that would allow the users to create new atom and pseudo-atom types,and specify their own interaction functions is planned for the future.

This should make it easier to adapt the scoring function to specific targets,model covalent docking and macro-cycle flexibility,experiment with new scoring functions,and, using pseudo-atoms, create directional interaction models.

Stay tuned to the AutoDock mailing list, if you wish to be notified of any beta-test releases.

Why don't I get as many binding modes as I specify with '--num_modes'?

This option specifies the maximum number of binding modes to output. The docking algorithm may find fewer 'interesting' binding modes internally.The number of binding modes in the output is also limited by the 'energy_range', which you may want to increase.

Why don't the results change when I change the partial charges?

AutoDock Vina ignores the user-supplied partial charges. It has its own way of dealing with the electrostatic interactions through the hydrophobic andthe hydrogen bonding terms. See the original publication ^[*] for details of the scoring function.

I changed something, and now the docking results are different. Why?

Firstly, had you not changed anything, some results could have been different anyway, due to the non-deterministic nature of the search algorithm.Exact reproducibility can be assured by supplying the same random seed to both calculations, but only if all other inputs and parameters are the same as well. Even minor changes to the input can have an effect similar to a new random seed.What does make sense discussing arethe statistical properties of the calculations:e.g. 'with the new protonation state, Vina is much less likely to find the correct docked conformation'.

How do I use flexible side chains?

You split the receptor into two parts: rigid and flexible, with the latter represented somewhat similarly to how the ligand is represented. See the section 'Flexible Receptor PDBQT Files' of the AutoDock4.2 User Guide (page 14) for how to do thisin AutoDock Tools.Then, you can issue this command: vina --config conf --receptor rigid.pdbqt --flex side_chains.pdbqt --ligand ligand.pdbqt.Also see this write-up on this subject.

How do I do virtual screening?

Please see the relevant section of the manual.

Please note that a variety of docking management applications exist to assist you in this task.

I don't have sufficient computing resources to run a virtual screen. What are my options?

You may be able to run your project on the World Community Grid, or use DrugDiscovery@TACC. See Other Software.

I have ideas for new features and other suggestions.

For proposed new features,we like there to be a wide consensus,resulting from a public discussion,regarding their necessity.Please consider starting or joining a discussion on the AutoDock mailing list.

Will you answer my questions about Vina if I email or call you?

No. Vina is community-supported. There is no obligation on the authors to help others with their projects.Please see this page for how to get help.

Platform Notes and Installation

Windows

Compatibility

Installing

Running

Linux

Compatibility

Installing

The Chain To Bind You To Earth Mac Os Update

Running

Mac

Compatibility

Installing

Running

Building from Source

Step 1: Install a C++ compiler suite

Step 2: Install Boost

Step 3: Build Vina

The Chain To Bind You To Earth Mac Os Catalina

On OS X and Linux, you may want to navigate to the appropriate build subdirectory, customize the Makefileby setting the paths and the Boost version, and then type

Other Software

• Tools specifically designed for use with AutoDock Vina (in no particular order):
  • MGLTools, which includes AutoDock Tools (ADT) and Python Molecular Viewer (PMV). ADT is required for generating input files for AutoDock Vina, and PMV can be used for viewing the results
  • PyRx can be used to set up docking and virtual screening with AutoDock Vina and to view the results
  • The new Autodock/Vina plugin for PyMOL can be used to set up docking and virtual screening with AutoDock Vina and to view the results
  • Computer-Aided Drug-Design Platform using PyMOL is another plugin for PyMOL that also integrates AMBER, Reduce and SLIDE.
  • AutoGrow uses AutoDock Vina in its rational drug design procedure
  • NNScore will re-score Vina results using an artificial neural network trained on Binding MOAD and PDBBind
  • A Vina GUI layer for Windows by Biochem Lab Solutions can be used to facilitate virtual screening with AutoDock Vina
  • VSDK can be used to faciliate virtual screening with AutoDock Vina
  • PaDEL-ADV can be used to facilitate virtual screening with AutoDock Vina
  • DrugDiscovery@TACC allows you to do virtual screening with AutoDock Vina through their web site
  • NBCR CADD Pipeline provides access to virtual screening with AutoDock Vina on NBCR computers
  • MOLA is a bootable, self-configuring system for virtual screening using AutoDock4/Vina on computer clusters
  • SMINA is a modification of Vina that links with OpenBabel for I/O and supports additional tweaks of the scoring function
  • Off-Target Pipeline is a platform intended to carry out secondary target identification and docking
  • AUDocker can be used to facilitate virtual screening with AutoDock Vina
  • World Community Grid can be used by qualified projects to run AutoDock Vina calculations for free on the massively parallel network of computers, where volunteers donate their idle CPU time.
  • DockoMatic is a graphical user interface intended to facilitate virtual screening with AutoDock and AutoDock Vina.
  • VinaLC is a modification of Vina by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that takes advantage of MPI on computer clusters
• Other tools that you are likely to find useful while docking or virtual screening with AutoDock Vina:
  • PyMOL is one of the most popular programs for molecular visualization and can be used for viewing the docking results
  • OpenBabel can be used to convert among various structure file formats, assign the protonation states, etc.
  • ChemAxon Marvin can be used to visualize structures, convert among various structure file formats, assign the protonation states, etc.

Usage

Summary

Configuration file

For example:

Search space

Exhaustiveness

Output

Energy

RMSD

• rmsd/ub matches each atom in one conformation with itself in the other conformation, ignoring any symmetry
• rmsd' matches each atom in one conformation with the closest atom of the same element type in the other conformation (rmsd' can not be used directly, because it is not symmetric)
• rmsd/lb is defined as follows:rmsd/lb(c1, c2) = max(rmsd'(c1, c2), rmsd'(c2, c1))

Hydrogen positions

Separate models

Advanced Options

The advanced options allow

• scoring without minimization
• performing local optimization only
• randomizing the input with no search (this is useful for testing docking software)
• changing the weights from their default values (see the paper^[*] for what the weights mean)
• displaying the individual contributions to the intermolecular score, before weighting (these are shown with '--score_only'; see the paper^[2] for what the terms are)

Virtual Screening

The examples below assume that Bash is your shell. They will need to be adapted to your specific needs.

Windows

To perform virtual screening on Windows, you can either use Cygwin and the Bash scripts below, or, alternatively, adapt them for the Windows scripting language.

Linux, Mac

Suppose you are in a directory containing your receptor receptor.pdbqt and a set of ligands named ligand_01.pdbqt, ligand_02.pdbqt, etc.

You can create a configuration file conf.txt, such as

PBS Cluster

If you have a Linux Beowulf cluster,you can perform the individual dockings in parallel.

Continuing with our example, instead of executing all the dockings in a loop locally,we will write one *.job script per ligand,and use qsub (a PBS command)to schedule these scripts to be executed by the cluster.

Run this shell script to do it.The script assumes that vina and qsub are in your PATH.Otherwise, modify it accordingly.

Once the jobs have been scheduled, you can monitor their status with

Selecting Best Results

If you are on Unix and in a directory that contains directories with PDBQT files, all of which are AutoDock Vina results,you may find this Python script useful for selecting the top results. Run it as:

History

Citation

O. Trott, A. J. Olson,AutoDock Vina: improving the speed and accuracy of docking with a new scoring function, efficient optimization and multithreading,Journal of Computational Chemistry 31 (2010) 455-461

Getting Help

Reporting Bugs

Likely bugs:

• Early termination
• Failure to terminate
• Changes of the covalent lengths or of the invariant angles in the output
• 'Obviously wrong' clashes (check your 'search space' though)
• Disagreement with the documentation

Likely not bugs:

• Anything that happens before you run Vina or after it finished
• Occasional disagreement with the experiment
• Vina's refusal to open a file that does not exist (e.g. try ls conf.txt to see if the file is really there)

Reporting