Network User Accounts & Desktop Rendering

[mdmcneff]

Hello,

At our school our students use network user accounts.  All of our computers are Macs.  We'd like to set up our workstations to be part of the render farm, but we need to run our render nodes in Desktop mode to accommodate After Effects on the Mac.

I've read the post about the typical installation for all Macs running in Desktop mode here:
http://www.pipelinefx.com/forum/index.php?topic=1114.0

However, because our user accounts are network accounts, I don't have the ability to only install the Qube! client on a local user account on the workstation.  Our workstations do, however, have a local user account called "Render" where the Qube! worker can be installed.

Basically what we would like to a achieve is the following workflow:
A student finishes working and logs out of their user account.  The student then logs in the "Render" user and the Qube! worker automatically starts.  The student leaves and the Qube! worker runs until the next student logs out the "Render" user (stopping the worker) and logs into their network account.

Is it possible for Qube! to have an "Autostart Worker - On User Login for User "X"" so that we can specify user "X" as "Render"?  That way the desktop worker would only start when our "Render" user logs in and not when one of our students log in?

Or if there is an easier way to accomplish this, please let me know.

-Thanks, Michael

[BrianK]

This question was answered through our support system, but for the googlers:

1. Qube can use any account for "Desktop User" rendering - it can be a local or network account.  The only requirement is that the user has a homedir.

2. When setting Qube to run in "Desktop User" mode, the account used to set the autostart (done through Administration > Autostart Worker > Enable Desktop User) is the only account that will automatically start the desktop worker. Multiple users can be used for desktop rendering, but each needs to be explicitly set to autostart the worker through that admin menu.  This is true for both OSX and Windows.  There is no need to run Qube in user space on Linux, so this option is not available under Linux.