Issues with 3dsmax and AfterEffects incorrectly or never exiting

[foobar]

Seems the honeymoon is over.

I have a pretty simply setup over here: all WinXP64 boxes running ONE job type (vanilla commandline job). It seems that with almost every job at least one node will THINK it's still running. I come in in the morning and all the frames are there. Most nodes took 8-10 hours to complete their tasks, but then there will be one or two nodes that just sit there claiming they are rendering. They aren't. But they are in a "running" state and can't be allocated for another job.

What's the deal? I could MAYBE understand if I had 1000+ nodes, but I only have 15!! Losing one or two nodes for several hours has a big impact on a little farm.

Is there a way to diagnose the problem, or is this just a silly little problem that Qube has?!

[shinya]

Hi-

We're sorry that you're experiencing issues with Qube.

We'll need to know what kind of jobs you're running, and also take
a look at some logs.  For starters, could you send us the log folder
for a sample job that has exhibited this problem, following the
instructions below?  Please send the zipped log file to
support@pipelinefx.com, and do refer to this forum thread
in the email.

Thank you.

----
In order to address your problem more completely, please send us the job log directory for the job in question.

You can locate the directory by logging into your Supervisor, and looking for the job log folder in the following location (depending upon your Supervisor platform):

Windows
\Program Files\pfx\qube\logs\job

Linux, OS X
/var/spool/qube/job

In that folder, you will find a numbered directory that corresponds to the number of thousands in the job ID. (ID < 1000 = 0) Search in one of these folders for the one that corresponds to the correct job ID.

Zip up the entire job ID folder and reply to this email message with the zipped file.

If the zipped job ID folder turns out to be larger than 2MB, don't send it, but let us know and we will help you address the problem in an alternative fashion.

[josh]

We have had this issue since day one, seems more common with AFX jobs than Maya (only two types we run).

Currently I've been restarting the entire farm nightly with a "shutdown /r /t 0 /m *machinename* batch file.

I'll try to keep my eye on the workers and if I can snag a few logs for you guys to take a look at I'll post them.

Josh

[Ari]

I've noticed a similar issue while getting our AE rendering pipeline setup. After testing some *very* simple AE jobs ( where the frames render by the time all of the sub jobs are distributed )...

for some reason Qube is not seeing that the jobs are finished... my guess is that somewhere in the connection to the aerender.exe output and what Qube worker is listening to, it is missing some of the output and hence never sees that the job is finished... 

killing the job seems to kill the processes.

the comp is 300 frames and Qube seems to stop reporting frames rendered ( or skipped ) at frame ~238...

seems a little odd, but hopefully there's something simple being overlooked...

Dont loose hope!

cheers,
ari

[Scot Brew]

Thank you Ari for your support. 

We will be posting information soon on our FAQ about how to handle applications that use a Job Object (Windows only) like After Effects.  That may address what you are seeing for any custom job submissions.

Best regards,
Scot

[Ari]

Very cool - looking forward to it!

[anthony]

Hey asz,

The FAQ entry for this is here:

http://support.pipelinefx.com/wiki/index.php/Qube_Knowledge_Base#Renders_submitted_through_the_command_line_fail_or_lock_up

Reply to this post if you have any other questions.

Note: I've renamed the topic to describe the topic this discussion addresses.