SHAKE Qmaster Help needed.
by Jalal Jemison
on
Jan 31, 2007 at 12:28:40 am
First off I am running into a lot of weird problems with sending Shake scripts to my render nodes with qmaster. They are not managed, they are just quickclusters.
I am running Shake 4.1, Qmaster is ver2.3, my rendernodes are intelMini's. I am rendering 4 shots that about 2000 frames each, all 2k full frame 35mm scans.
When I send to Qmaster, it of course breaks up the batches into groups, but I I'll get these weird errors, like...
Failed: 3x HOST [miniRender1.local] Unix command error: 1, error: /Volumes/HD/scripts/blah_blah.tga: No such file or directory
This doesn't make any sense, cause that is the dir for my scripts, and has nothing to do with the files I am rendering, I am rendering them to a different directory, and they are cineons, .cin, I have no idea where the .tga is coming from? But it does it all the time... Pretty much every frame.
So it will freeze on this error, when it is done rendering for that group, but then it starts over, like those frames haven't been rendered, though they have, and writes over already rendered frames.
Anyone know what the working setup right now is with Shake and Qmaster? Wasn't there some sort of incompatibility with Shake and a Qmaster update? Is that what I'm running into? So frustrated.
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by keicol on Jan 31, 2007 at 7:24:01 am
Is there a simple setup guide for Shake and Qmaster. I'm a bit frustrated trying in vain to set up any kind of cluster, even quick clusters, The manual is painful to follow and I would love a simple step by step guide for a simple 2 or 3 computer setup.
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by Andrew Shanks on Feb 1, 2007 at 3:09:03 am
Qmaster can be a right pain. Here is a step by step set-up that Macworld did for using it with Compressor (to use it with shake, just make sure the rendering check boxes are checked).
http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/secrets/marcchreateside/index.php?pf=1
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by Andrew Shanks on Feb 1, 2007 at 3:21:29 am
The other tips I have read have said to basically to use a managed cluster (quick clusters seem to be problematic to get going) and make sure you mount the volume with your source material on every node (make sure file sharing is on and maybe turn off any firewalls with no internet running).
A good thread on things is here on the apple support site
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by keicol on Feb 1, 2007 at 8:10:52 am
Andrew,
I am so thankful for your help, I'm up and running with incredible speed. The steps were very clear and easy to follow, the option click start services to reset was especially helpful on my service node which refused to show up in my Qadministrator browser, thanks so much for the links!!!
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. version 2 by keicol on Feb 1, 2007 at 9:39:51 am
Andrew,
I spoke too soon, the system works perfect for Compressor. The little green light lights up in both computer's Qmaster icon in the menu bar and also in the Qadministrator services window in the drop down node processor shows that compressor is working on both nodes.
So that's GREAT, However, if I drop a .shk file into the Qmaster window with the cluster I've just made chosen and Shake chosen as the command option it will only render on the computer that I'm using, not the other node. The master computer shows that it's working in the Qadministrator and it's green light is lit, the service node shows idle in Qadministrator and the green light is off in it's menu bar icon.
What am I doing wrong?? I followed the setup as per the link and it's working fine for compressor. Is there another setting I should be setting back in Shake when I'm setting up my file out node????
I read something about a command string needing to be added to a startup directory, I have no idea what's being refered to in the text and if it has any relavence to the problem I'm having.
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by keicol on Feb 1, 2007 at 11:44:30 am
I've just noticed the same thing on my system. It's intermittant, I'm thinking it's an intel mac problem, I'm running a Powermac with an Intel Mac and am having all kinds of problems, like none of the other nodes are contributing. When I run Compressor everything works fine, it's only when I run shake scripts dropped onto the Qmaster window and hit submit. I'm working off the G5 and the Intel Mac is a service node. I think it's bad to mix systems, Powermac and Intel Mac.
Re: SHAKE Qmaster Help needed. by Andrew Shanks on Feb 2, 2007 at 7:09:14 pm
yeah, thats weird (usually people have more problems getting compressor to work with Qmaster than shake), ...it could be the mix of machines, ....but then again if they're running the same version of shake, I can't see why there would be an issue. This was a tip from another forum "Submit the job FROM A CLIENT not from the cluster controller". I don't know if that will help. I just have my one core2 duo Intel Mac which i run qmaster on, I use it so I can batch render, but with it going it seems to utilize both cores (as it tends to be working on 2 frames at a time when rendering, ...which results in a bit of a speed increase, ...not twice the speed, but still seems quicker), ...my standard proceedure is simply to drag and drop a shake script from my user script directory into the qmaster window then submit the job, it works fine, but that's because i'm not dealing with any other computers. Hmmmm. Maybe put a post on the official qmaster forum (one of the previous links I put in this thread), as there are some bright networking cookies on there that might be able to answer things (and if you get a solution pop it back up here for our interest).
