After Effects error: finding file/dir info - file not found (-43)

[cobhimself]

Problem:

I am having trouble rendering an After Effects project utilizing QUBE on multiple machines.

First let me describe to you the computer and network setup that we have. The computer I am working on is a Mac with OS X (Version 10.5. with 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 6 GB (1066 MHz) DDR3 memory. There are three other computer that are on the same network in the office that have these same specs. All three computers connect to a windows NAS through Samba and are able to see and access files within successfully.

For reference within this post, the CONTENT drive will reference a partition on the windows NAS and the RENDERS drive will reference another partition on the windows NAS. The after effects files, plus any source footage that we use within, are stored on the CONTENT drive and all renders are stored on the RENDERS drive.

Our "render farm", at this point, is basically the three Macs in the office that are setup to utilize background rendering (all of which have access to the CONTENT and RENDERS drive).

This is my current workflow:

• I setup the render queue within After Effects to include the composition that I want rendered. This particular render is setup to render an image sequence to a folder on the RENDERS drive.
• I utilize the Qube_Submit JavaScript file to submit the file to QUBE.
• QUBE then sends the submitted project to the three Mac computers within the office and tells them to work on it.
• Each of the Mac computers then begin the process of opening the After Effects projects to render the submitted job.
• From my experience, when more than one Mac box tries to load a certain asset (video, PSD, audio file, etc.) that is required by the composition that it needs to render, both boxes spit out this error:

• aerender Error: After Effects error: finding file/dir info for file *THE NAME OF THE FILE BOTH ARE TRYING TO LOAD* file not found (-43).

• This error is only spit out when more than one Mac box is accessing the file at the same time. If one of the Mac boxes loads an asset into memory before another Mac box gets to the point where it needs to load it into memory, neither of them bark at me about not being able to find the file.
• If only one Mac box is working on the QUBE Job, there are no errors.

My thoughts:

I understand this probably isn't a QUBE issue; I am however interested to see if anyone else has come across this problem. I don't know if, when the Mac connects to the windows NAS through SMB, it closes off access to that file until it's done reading it or if that's just the nature of working with a windows NAS by a Mac. Is it a permissions error? Please someone help me! 

[jburk]

If a host can access the file if it's the first entity to read the file, then it's probably not a permissions error.

But it sound like you're getting hit by a windows behavior where a read on a file puts a lock on that file. 

What kind of NAS are you running, and can it support anything other than SMB? 

NFS is the preferred method.  AFP is user-specifc; the permissions on the mount points for AFP mounts are non-readable for anyone other than the user who mounted the remote volume.

[cobhimself]

I appreciate the reply!

I am not in charge of the windows server and unfortunately don't know an extreme amount about them. Will changing to NFS modify the "lock on read" behavior?

[cobhimself]

Bumping for help!

[jburk]

NFS will not exhibit the 'lock on read' behavior you're experiencing with Samba.

[cobhimself]

Wonderful, thanks for the help! If/when this problem is solved, I'll make sure to post my findings. Thanks again!

[fufunks]

Did you get anywhere with this issue?
We have similar problem with mac clients writing to a SAN over nfs so not related to Qube at all although qube is the queue manager.
Whats really odd is that the error comes up intermittently. AE is set to write 5 iterations of an auto-save file. sometimes it writes them all fine and then starts overwriting them correctly. Other times it creates the first one fine and then starts erroring with something similar to 'After effects error: getting directory info for file #2 in ''some directory'' file not found (-43).
the #2 seems to be mean the second iteration of the autosave file in directory which hasn't been created yet so wouldn't be found. However we get the same error with systems that have already created all 5 versions of files and should then be overwriting but instead appear to be trying to access/create another iteration. then again other macs work fine and have no problem at all overwriting again and again

[cobhimself]

At this point We haven't had a chance to actually trust the NFS extensively but I don't know if that is truly the cause for our errors.

There are a couple of theories thatbare floating around the office:

1) The switch that is between our office and the network is dying. We need to get it replaced. Some say it could be that packets are being dropped and therefore it could be that files are being only halfway read OR the connection is so iffy that the file truly cannot be found.

I'm not convinced this is the actual reason because renders work fine if they are worked on by one box at a time.

2) Some believe that, because we are using CS3, it's possible things have changed within OS X since CS3 came out, and therefore something could have been changed in an update to OS X that isn't accounted for since CS3 isn't supported with updates.

I know of no way to test this without upgrading.

So, as you can see, we are still at square one. The problem we have is, because we don't know what type of software/hardware would fix the issue, it is hard to ask for money when it may or may not fix the problem.

All that to say... We haven't really gotten anywhere.