Only 1 Worker Working (AfterEffects)

[editworks]

Still a NuB at this, but I am having a problem that I can not solve. I have a farm of 5 workers set up for the qube evaluation. They all respond just fine when I submit a job and designate a single host. However, when I submit a job and designate 5 CPU's I only get 1 Worker responding 5 times. Any ideas why?

Don J.

[anthony]

Hey Don,

    Let's start with the list of stuff which "could" be wrong from off the top of our list.  I'll also ask a few questions which are systems related, if you're uncomfortable with answering those on the forum (due to security concerns, please email support@pipelinefx.com)

    First, it could be the lack of qube! licenses.  If your licenses arn't installed, qube! defaults to 2 licenses for testing purposes.  If you do the following:

    Start->Run
       type: cmd

    In the command prompt type:
       qbping

The command will return back the number of active licenses.  If this reads 2, please contact sales and they will help you with the license situation.

The second thing which could be causing your problem is the job types have only been installed on one machine.  You will need to install all job types across all machines you plan to render with.  Qube! uses the job types to signal to itself which machines are elidgeable or not.

As far as questions, it's always useful to know if you're using a Windows environment/unix, etc...

If you have a domain server, nis, etc...

Also if you're using a file server as well.

Thanks,
    Anthony

[editworks]

Thanks Anthony,
  I am working on a Mac OSX platform and using a shared directory to submit and output files. The Supervisor and Workers all sit on the same domain with fixed IPs.

I have loaded Jobtpes to all workers and we are just in the eval phase so I only hae an eval license, but it has been installed on all workers and is said to support up to 7 workers.

Strangely enough, if I designate a particular host, it will render to that host just fine. So all of them are commnicating and working well.  It just seems that when I submit a job for all hosts, only one takes on the workload rather than distributing it amongst the whole farm.

[eric]

When you look at the history of the job, do all 5 subjobs run in sequence on the same host?
Do any frames get rendered? If not, it could be because the job is failing so quickly, the Supervisor doesn't have a enough time to spread the subjobs around to other available hosts.

What do the output and error logs show?

[editworks]

Yes, each of the processes run on the same worker. If I submit a simple command line job for 5 CPU's, the same job will run 5 times on one worker.
No errors, the job actually completes fine.  When I submit an AE job it renders frames fine, but only by using a single worker for all frames.

Sorry about the delay with responses, I have been out of town for a few days. I am back in the plant today and would love to get this problem solved.

Thanks,
Don

[anthony]

Hey Don,

     With AfterEffects, there are limitations to how Qube! is allowed to render the AE scene.  Are you rendering to a video file? or individual frame files... *.tiff files? 

     In the situation where you are rendering to a video file, AfterEffects limits you to rendering only with a single CPU.  This is because the file format is linear, and there is no way to have multiple CPU's export to the format.  For renders which export individual frame files.  Ex.  *.tiff files, then you are able to render using multiple cpus. 

      Thanks,
           Anthony

[editworks]

Tried running a "Multi-machine" render of an AE job and got the same result.

Actually, I just noticed that while the job is requesting workers, my status is reading "Qube license limit reached".

That may be the issue.

[anthony]

Hey Don,

    Ah ok, if you're getting a license limit, then it's probably that the license was either not installed, or could be corrupt.

    When you received the license data, how did you install it? also, by running the following: /Applications/pfx/qube/bin/qbping  You'll get the license count.
       
        Thanks,
            Anthony

[editworks]

after running qbping, iget "0/2 licenses". I don't imagine that could be good.

It has been a couple of weeks since the install, but I just believe that I copy/pasted the license text from the e-mail I received and placed it into etc directory and named qb.lic

[eric]

It looks like your license is incorrectly installed. Paste the contents into a file named qb.lic on your Desktop, then open a Terminal window and run this command:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/qb.lic /etc/qb.lic

[anthony]

Hey Don,

    Ah ok, that makes sense.  There is a problem with OSX machines in the way they save text files.  Qube!'s license parser only understand Unix and DOS text formats.  The easiest thing to do since I'm certain your familar with the command line, is to do the following:

Open Command Prompt:

vi +":se ff=unix" +"wq!" /etc/qb.lic

The vi command will convert your license file into a unix text file.

Thanks,
        Anthony

[editworks]

Have done the terminal command on all workers and still receive the following string after running qbping.

supervisor - active - tag: 192.168.0.107 5.1-4 bid-5-1-2007-06-01-0 osx - subjob - 0/2 licenses