Mental Ray / OS X / Satellite Problems

[Catzzzpaws]

... did you find a solution for the problem yet - if so: please let me know.
Kind regards, Marcus.

[bgawboy]

I just tried writing out a file from OS X using TextEdit.
Your output looks like formatting codes from putting out an rtf format file.
You need to create a simple text file for specifying maya.rayhosts.

I think it's cool that you can open a terminal and use emacs and/or more, which is what I used to examine the file put out from TextEdit. Looks like TextEdit doesn't offer simple text output, at least on my Mac. So I don't know which UI driven text editors will put out simple text files. OK, I just tried Pages, and it can export text files.

[Ultrasonic]

Hi Bonedog...

...try the attached maya.rayhosts.txt...just remove TXT extension...this is TEXT-Only...if this works for u,then you should consider buying a XP-machine for Text-Editing ;) *SCNR*

hope it helps...
Oli

[maxx10]

In texedit menu: "Format->Make Plain Text ..." otherwise it'll output in rich text format

[Catzzzpaws]

of course it is not a big deal to get an appropriate maya.rayhost file generated. But for the thread-starter (and myself) this is not the problem.

The maya.rayhosts file IS correctly located in usr/shared/alias/maya/6.5/prefs
The maya.rayhosts file IS processed by mental ray. The error-log reads, as quoted here:

Mac OS X Version 10.3.8 (Build 7U16)
2005-03-03 10:13:49 +0100
mental ray: got 8 satellite CPUs.
mental ray for Maya 6.5
mental ray: version 3.4.1.5, 27 Dec 2004
LIB 0.0 info : mental ray for Maya - startup done
MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (192.168.0.1xx:7103)
MSG 0.0 error 011229: could not connect to host:port 192.168.0.1xx:7103 - Connection refused
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host 192.168.0.1xx:7103

With the slave-machine NOT running, the error-message is different (network timeout) - so I suppose xinetd is just unable to start the mentalray-process on the slave machine.
I tested the connection several times with different routers, a bridge and a direct connection via ethernet-cable. The error remains identical. So no firewall or network problems could be the cause.
The xinetd-process is definitely running on the slave-machine - but it stays idle. All X11 components are installed on the slave machine.

Is there a way to start the mentalray-satelite on the slave-machine manually?

I encountered heavy trouble with maya and multi-user machines. Do you think, there could be help setting up the machine with just one user again - I definitely don't want to do this "just for fun", realizing afterwards it didn't solve the problem...

Greetings from arctic germany,
Marcus

[bonedog]

bgawboy, maxx10, ultrasonic: Thanks for the tips... how stupid of me. However, I still have the same problem as Catzzzpaws. ("connection refused")



Catzzzpaws: Any luck? Do you think it's a problem with the port? Why would the default be something that can't be used?


Any ideas? anyone?


----



Installation and Licensing

http://localhost:4448/Maya6.5/en_US/icons/i_icon_16x17.gif Slave machine port setup

On the slave machine, port number 7103 is set by default. You must edit the services file to change the port number that mental ray satellite uses to a value other than 7103.

To change the port number


Edit the services file with a text editor.


The services file is located at:


(Windows 2000) C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\services
(Windows XP) C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\services
(IRIX, Linux, and Mac OS X) /etc/services


Change number in the following line (here, 7103) to the desired port number:
mi-raysat 7103/tcp

[Catzzzpaws]

although this is a disturbing info about changing the port... who on earth writes these documentations at alias?!! It doesn'n make a difference either.

Changed ports to 7104 and to 50000 - same errors, different ports.

[bgawboy]

Just to be clear. The port is the same in the maya.rayhosts file on the Maya master as the services file on the sat server, right?

If it's looking for 7103, and getting refused, it is probably the service connection.
bonedog: Are your servers also Mac OS X?
Have you restarted the service on the sat server?
I'm not sure how to do that from the Mac UI.
Any Mac OS X officiandos out there know how?

[Catzzzpaws]

yes - the ports in question are identical.

There seems to be no way on Mac OSX to start the server "by hand". xinetd - an os-component - queries incoming jobs and starts the application automatically. (That's at least how I understood it from the documentation). And that seems to be a big part of the problem.

And yes, I did restart the slave after changing ports, and I did restart Maya after having changed the rayhosts-file.

I am truely a bit puzzled. But thank you for the help bgawboy. With Maya, one is very much a software betatester on Mac OSX.

Cheers.

[bonedog]

bgawboy: Yah. Everything is OS X in my office. And like Catzzzpaws said, everything should be done automatically by xinetd (which is the same with Linux).

Catzzzzpaws: Do you have a silver or platinum membership? It kind of sucks that you have to pay a minimum of $240 a year to get true tech support. I've got the question posted here and on a few other boards so if I find the solution I'll let you know.

Cheers,
Bonedog

[bgawboy]

OK. Do you want to do some checking from the Terminal?
Its in Applications->Utilities and it opens up a command shell.

For the rest of this note, I'll use $ to indicate the command shell prompt.

In it type:
$ services --list

Do you see mi-raysat or something similar?

I believe the installation should have put a file named mi-raysat in /etc/xinetd.d/
[BTW, are you using 10.3 also on your servers? I think from 10.2 to 10.3 they switched from inetd to xinetd.]

To check that, do:

$ cd /etc/xinetd.d

$ ls

You should see service files there. Do:

$ more mi-raysat

That will list the contents and you should see a line that says 'disable = no'

Try:

$ service mi-raysat start

you may have to be root user to do that. Some do it this way if not logged in as root.

$ sudo service mi-raysat start

You'll probably still need the root password.

[Kai01W]

Hi,

I'm not really a Unix pro, but from what I understood watching our admin install it on the OS X boxes here, you should(!) install it to the default destination it is suggesting. There is apparently some bug in the installer that if you chose a custom destination, it will not put the right path into some of the config textfiles (again, I'm not a unix pro)...
Maybe this helps...

-k

[Nathan03]

I'm having the same problem. ... Mac OSX, Maya 6.5, and trying to get the Mental Ray for Maya Satellite to work on a Mac network...

I get the same error messages previously mentioned in the Maya output window and in the console log. (Pasted below)

My maya.rayhosts file is set up properly and is being read, but the connection to the slave machines is always refused. I HAVE successfully pinged the slave stations and am able to use AFP to share files between them, so I know they can talk to each other.

After installing Satellite on the slave machines, I made sure to reboot them.

I listed the services running as suggested by bgawboy and DO NOT see mi-raystat or anything similar. There are no mi-raystat files in my xinetd.d directory.

If anyone figures anything out, it sounds like I'm having the exact same problem as you guys and I would love to hear your solutions.


Console log contains:
mental ray: got 8 satellite CPUs.
mental ray for Maya 6.5
mental ray: version 3.4.1.5, 27 Dec 2004
LIB 0.0 info : mental ray for Maya - startup done
MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (10.1.3.17:7103)
MSG 0.0 error 011229: could not connect to host:port 10.1.3.17:7103 - Connection refused
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host 10.1.3.17:7103
MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (10.1.3.32:7103)
MSG 0.0 error 011229: could not connect to host:port 10.1.3.32:7103 - Connection refused
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host 10.1.3.32:7103

And the Maya render output is:
// Info: (mental ray) : loading startup file: /Applications/Alias/maya6.5/Maya.app/Contents/mentalray/maya.rayrc
// mental ray for Maya: using rayhosts file /Users/Nathan/Library/Preferences/Alias/maya/6.5/prefs//maya.rayhosts
// Info: (mental ray) : adding rayhosts
// Info: (mental ray) : adding host: 10.1.3.17:7103
// Info: (mental ray) : adding host: 10.1.3.32:7103
// Warning: (mental ray) : mental ray startup reported network errors, some render slaves may not be used //

[bgawboy]

OK. Looks like we're closing in on this baby. Without the mi-raysat file it won't know where to go to find the executable.

To confirm, you see the service listed in /etc/services as

mi-raysat 7103/tcp

but no mi-raysat file in /etc/xinetd.d/, right?

[That assumes you're on OS X version 10.3. Apple switched to xinetd from inetd a version or two a go.]

Well, we could add this manually, but I seem to recall the syntax of the file on Mac OS X is a bit different from the Linux version. Maybe look at a file for another service. On Linux, this is what mi-raysat looks like:
-------------
# description: mental ray for Maya network rendering
service mi-raysat
{
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
user = nobody
wait = no
server = /usr/aw/mentalraysat34/bin/raysatd
log_on_failure += USERID
}
-------------
And the installation would be in a different location on the Mac. According to the Maya doc, it would be in:
/Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34

BTW, could you list all the bin files you have there? Maybe there's a second installation step to install the server correctly, by running an executable there. There is in the Windows setup, anyway.

[Kai01W]

Did you run the netsetup?

-k

[bgawboy]

And, there is an equivalent in Linux, too. But I can't remember if I did this manually or it was part of the installation. Anyway it is called netsetup_satellite on Linux.

It creates a small script named raysatd which calls the executable raysat within an environment setting up variables such as MI_ROOT and SPM_HOST.

Anyway, this is what is named to be called by the service file.

In the Mac satellite installation, did it ask you the name of the machine to look for the license, or the master Maya?

[Catzzzpaws]

I was one of those without a proper mi-raysat.dat file. But now I've got one installed (sent from Toronto with love...) But that's only half of the solution, 'cos my service still doesn't work. To sum up:

There was in fact no mi-raysat.dat located in /etc/xinetd.d. But there was one up the hierarchy in /etc/. I put another copy of the file into the xinetd.d folder as advised and started the mi-raysat service as a superuser.

I even restarted IP services on the slave machine (sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/IPServices/IPServices restart)

This had no effect while rendering. The slavemachine is still not recognised as a maya slave. The output-log reads "connection refused".

I did a portscan - but could not detect 7103 open. (Although it IS set up like this in the service document in /etc/)

I fixed read/write permissions on the slave-system just to be sure.

What next? Again change the ports? Reinstall OSX (I'd hate to have to... it is a multi-user machine which is a pest to backup...)

Any suggestions?

And no - as a student with a student license I do not participate from any official Alias-Support. My reseller passes on my mails and helps me in this way with my correspondence with Alias.

[Kai01W]

In the "bin" folder there is the netsetup which has to be run by root.

-k

[bgawboy]

Kai01/W, do you have a working Mac OS X satellite?

Just to have the info...

On the Mac, does netsetup create a script file like raysatd, and then does it create the mi-raysat service file?

[Catzzzpaws]

kai, would you be so kind to give me the syntax to run netsetup - unfortunately I am more of an artist than of a programmer...

[Kai01W]

Kai01/W, do you have a working Mac OS X satellite?

Just to have the info...

On the Mac, does netsetup create a script file like raysatd, and then does it create the mi-raysat service file?


Yes, Mac OS X satellite is working here in this moment (plus WIN and Linux satellites ;-)

!Make sure you use the default install path!
Run netsetup as root.
Give it the license servers ip.
killall -HUP xinetd

Not a unix expert but if I remember right that's all what the admin did... I will ask him tomorrow if there were any other traps other than the install directory.

-k

[Nathan03]

This is what happens when I run netsetup using sudo... My input is shown as Bold/Italic.

graphicsrender2:/Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin nathan$ sudo ./netsetup

netsetup will inspect and update your system to enable
network rendering with mental ray
This machine will be set up as a mental ray render server ("slave")
and will receive instructions from client machines ("master")
Do you want to continue [yes/no] ? [n] yes

saving configuration files to /tmp/mr-setup-backup
updating mi-raysat services entry...
looking for services daemon...
I can't see a running inetd or xinetd.
/etc/init.d does not appear to exist
Where does this system store its bootscripts? : [/etc/init.d] /etc/xinetd.d

!!! mental ray for Maya network rendering cannot be configured at this time.
!!! Please configure either inetd or xinetd and run modsvc again.
!!! Setup encountered an error installing the mental ray
!!! network rendering service.
graphicsrender2:/Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin nathan$

[Nathan03]

I don't believe it, but I think I've got it running now!!

So, here's what I did. As stated in my previous post, the netsetup command was not working so I started messing with things...

- I ran "inetd" from the command line (even though I'm using OSX 10.3 and it uses xinetd) and tried running netsetup again. Suprisingly, something happened this time though it didn't get all the way through the command and ended in an error. I DID get prompted to enter the IP address of the host computer.

At this point, the service was not listed in my xinetd.d folder, because the installer had detected that I was running inetd instead of xinetd, probably because I ran inetd before trying to install.

- I then re-booted my computer.

- I went back to a command line, changed to the mentalraysat34 bin directory, re-ran netsetup, and I couldn't believe my eyes, but it worked!!

I then tried a Mental Ray render on my host machine and sure enough, I saw my CPU spike up on the slave machine and the render chugged along.

The only way I seem to be able to get this to work is to run inetd first, run netsetup, reboot, then run netsetup again.

=============================================
So, catzzzpaws, try these specific steps. They have worked for me on multiple machines:

-- After installing Mental Ray Satellite from the installation CD (to the default install directory) on your slave machine, start a terminal window (in the Finder under Applications > Utilities > Terminal) .

-- type inetd and press return ... you shouldn't see anything other than a new prompt.

-- type cd /Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin

-- type sudo ./netsetup (enter the root password when prompted)

-- at the "Do you want to continue?" prompt, type yes and press return

-- the script will go through some things. When prompted "From which network host should mental ray request licenses?", enter the IP address of the master machine with Maya installed (if you don't know it, it can be found under System Preferences > Network > Built-in Ethernet > IP Address).

-- at this point, re-boot your slave mac

-- after re-booting, start another Terminal window.

-- type cd /Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin
-- type sudo ./netsetup (again, enter the root password when prompted)

-- at the "Do you want to continue?" prompt, type yes and press return

-- The script should now say "You appear to be runnin xinetd" and a bunch of other stuff... You will be asked again "From which network host should mental ray request licenses?" ... it SHOULD remember the IP address you entered last time and display it. If it does, just press return.

-- After all this, the install script should say "netsetup has successfully updated mental ray for Maya network rendering"

-- reboot your slave machine again and, assuming you have a properly setup maya.rayhosts file on the master machine, try a mental ray render!
==============================================

I don't know why this works, but it is working for me! I hope it helps others.

Overall, Alias should have MUCH better documentation on how to do this. It was a confusing process through which I could have saved hours of my time if the help files better described installation on OSX.

Good luck, and let me know if this helps,
- Nathan

[scotthik]

I've been follwing this with the same problem. Worked for me!

Nathan,
May many green beers come your way today! Cheeers!

[bgawboy]

So I think the key to all this, is that the Mac satellite installation expects your services to be running. I think that this is possibly the case for the default Mac OS X Server, but not the default Mac OS X installation. At least, it doesn't seem to be the case on my home Mac, on which I recently installed 10.3 from the installation disk. Can some Mac knowledgeable person confirm this?

In other words, if xinetd is not running, then restarting wth:
$ sudo killall -HUP xinetd

will not do anything.

So, it would be nice to get all this to work using xinetd.

[bgawboy]

I'd like to reduce the steps in Nathan03's workaround. Though, at least, there is something that works for many of you. Thanks, Nathan.

I think the netstup has to be run twice with a reboot inbetween because xinetd is not running initially.

Maybe, if xinetd were running even before the sat installation is run, we simplify this greatly.

[Catzzzpaws]

First - it works. A big, big thank you to Nathan. Let me share with you some observations I made while testing.

1. If there was an earlier version of Maya (in my case 6.01) installed on the slave machine, the mentalraysat-installer does not create a folder /mentalraysat34/ ! It just throws all its stuff into the pre-existing Alias-folder. Which is :banghead:

2. After de-installing the earlier version, a collegue of mine used with his floating full license, (there were now license-conflicts with my new 6.5 educational anyway) and re-installing mentalraysat, I've got the proper directories set up.

3. This now "virgin" mentalraysat worked 1 out of three renders WITHOUT Nathans workflow described. 2 out of three renders the master machine crashed. Which is :banghead:

4. Now running netsetup as described - everything seems to be fine.

But (as stated elsewhere by others) I'm not overly impressed. My test scene, approx. 1.5k resolution, production quality with FG rendered 5:10 minutes on my little rendergarden of two G5 1.8 single CPU Powermacs. Compared to about 5:20 minutes on only one machine.

There must be more! I observed, the slave did in fact only about 5% of the work on the shared job (see renderlog). During FG calculation it took less than 0.5% of the job, never running on more than 20% CPU activity (see applications, activity-utility). During rendering, the workload on the slave rised. But seldom over 70% and never over 90% activity - with longer periods (5 seconds here, 5 seconds there )of just idling around.

Any suggestions on how to get the little lazymachine to actually WORK?

What are your experiences with performance gain?

Ah - and by the way. It safes alone about 30 seconds of rendertime, to reduce the verbosity messages from "progress messages" to "errors" only. But I guess, you all knew this. Didn't you?

Cheers,
Marcus

[bgawboy]

OK, I think I've tracked down part of the services issue.
It appears that by default services are not on in vanilla OS X 10.3.

And I couldn't figure out why the shell command IPServices start would not turn them on for me, whether I rebooted or not afterward. Even typing in xinetd directly didn't work. (I used sudo for both.)

So I checked with a friend who's Mac did have xinetd running and we looked for differences.
There it was, I did not have Sharing enabled for any services.

You can do this from the GUI!

Look in System Preferences -> Sharing -> Services
Check the box for FTP Access.
At this point unfortunately, I did have to reboot in order to see xinetd running.

Now, try running the Maya 6.5 Satellite install.

[bgawboy]

I tried the install on the machine with xinetd enabled (via FTP Access sharing),
used the default installation directory,
and everything seemed to be in place,
except for the location of the SPM_HOST in my new raysatd file.

The raysatd is in the bin directory, eg, /Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin
The SPM_HOST variable should point to your master Maya workstation.
That's where it looks for the license.

Now, since I tried it on my standalone home Mac, I couldn't verify the final sat test.
And that may have also prevented me from getting SPM_HOST in raysatd correct. I should have seen a question about it presented to me interactively.

In other words, I think it tried to run netsetup within the installation, and that is part of netsetup. If you run netsetup manually, you need to be connected to your master Maya workstation.

Finally, I can't test whether or not I need to make that final restart after the installation to make it work.

If anyone out there tries this, let us know if this simplifies getting it to work.

[Nathan03]

Great info bgawboy! Thanks for the research... I guess I stil don't completely understand why my work-around is working, though. Does running inetd from the command line start xinetd on a re-boot? If so, would the first netsetup step be superflous? I didn't try it any other way once I had found a way that worked.

Thanks again,
- Nathan

[bgawboy]

I think its the first time that you run netsetup in combo with inetd that gets the services up and running. The second time gets the mi-raysat going.

I'm curious as to how your Sharing services are enabled. Were they on before running inetd.

Also, in a Terminal window, type
$ ps aux | grep inet

and see which service is running xinetd or inetd.

[bonedog]

I followed Nathan03's steps but it didn't work until I repeated it after turning on ftp (services). My render dropped from 9 minutes to 4:33. Now hopefully it will stay working :)

Thanks bgawboy and Nathan03 and catzzzpawz and everyone else!

-Bonedog

[bonedog]

catzzzpaws: have you tried unchecking "render on this machine" (under bath render options)? Sometimes when I'm working I'll render exclusively on my slave machine while I continue to work on my machine and it works beautifully. Perhaps that will boost the slave performance.

-Bonedog

[nicelife]

Hi,

If a slave is shut down while Maya is rendering it stops and gives following error all the time:

PAR 0.n error 021083: no message from slave #1 for three minutes

Can I somewhere add a timeout to continue the rendering? And skip the slave which is not available anymore?

[CoolDuck]

Hi, I'm on a Windows Xp. And also having problems with MR satellite. The maya.rayhosts file is in the right place.
Raysatserver is running on the slave. But I keep getting this error in the output window:

MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (popopc:7103)
MSG 0.0 warn 012213: assuming connection to host 1 DEAD
MSG 0.0 error 011213: cannot receive welcome message from host 1 (active)
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host popopc:7103


Anyone know how to fix this?

[Kai01W]

Hi,

If a slave is shut down while Maya is rendering it stops and gives following error all the time:

PAR 0.n error 021083: no message from slave #1 for three minutes

Can I somewhere add a timeout to continue the rendering? And skip the slave which is not available anymore?

Hi, have the same problem. And in 90% percent of the cases it makes the job crash after a while (especially in batch mode).
Plus I realized, sometimes its enough that a user simply logs out(!) at one of the slave machines and it makes the job crash.
Honestly, I think satellite needs a lot of improvements...

-k

[GaryHaus]

Has anyone got satellite or stand alone running on G5 Xserves? Alias says some people have it working and others don't but won't support it. I have 4 G5 Xserves(specifically purchased last year for MR) and I still can't get parallel rendering working.... :sad:

Thanks for your time,

Gary Haus

[vectormodeling]

has anybody got satellites running under Tiger? i think that xinetd might be implented differently now.

[toddtreece]

has anybody got satellites running under Tiger? i think that xinetd might be implented differently now.

Okay here are the steps that I got from Avto one of Alias' tech suppport staff members to get the mental ray satellite working under Tiger. You must enable the root user by using NetInfo manager in the Utilities folder before starting this.

1.) Open Terminal and Login as root user by typing in su
2.) Change directory by typing cd /etc/xinetd.d
3.) Type vi mi-raysat
4.) You should get a long list of vertical "~"
5.) Type i
6.) At the bottom of the terminal "-INSERT-" should show up
7.) Paste this script into the terminal

service mi-raysat
{
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
user = nobody
wait = no
server = /Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin/raysatd
log_on_failure += USERID
}

8.) Hit escape and "-INSERT-" should dissapear
9.) Type :wq and it should bring you back to a command prompt
10.) Type ls -l and it should give you something like this

fcp2s-power-mac-g5:/etc/xinetd.d root# ls -l
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 175 Jun 7 11:02 mi-raysat

11.) Type cd --
12.) Type xinetd and it should just give you a new command prompt
13.) Type cd /Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin
14.) Type ./netsetup
15.) netsetup should now work under TIGER!
16.) Type yes to the first question it asks.
17.) Type in the IP of the machine with the full maya licence when it asks.
18.) Make sure your maya.rayhosts file on the master computer points to all of the satellite machines.
19.) Try a render!

Thanks to Avto from Alias for the help

-Todd Treece

[vectormodeling]

thanks. i'm testing right now.

[lineplot]

Tiger has replaced xinetd with launchd, which is actually a great leap forward. They made it compatible with xinetd jobs, which is why the above entries work. However, the simpler way is to use launchd directly.

To do this, first make sure that the mi-raysat entry has been made into /etc/services , by using their existing install program.

Then create the file: /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.alias.mentalraysat.plist . You will have to do this as root (sudo pico or sudo emacs or whatever editor you want - know how to use it first...).

Enter the content at the end of this message and save the file - just the xml part. Finally, reboot (or restart launchd if you know how).

You can verify that launchd is listening on port 7103 by the command: "netstat -nat | grep 7103" . If you see lines that say LISTEN, then it's listening for a session. If you see lines that say ESTABLISHED, then it's in use! Finally, be sure your firewall isn't blocking 7103 or allowing it to the wrong people.

That's it. I have four xserves running it now with OS X Server 10.4 . Good luck.


/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.alias.mentalraysat.plist file content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.alias.mentalraysat</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin/raysatd</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/Alias/mentalraysat34/bin/raysatd</string>
</array>
<key>Sockets</key>
<dict>
<key>Listeners</key>
<dict>
<key>SockPassive</key>
<true/>
<key>SockServiceName</key>
<string>mi-raysat</string>
<key>SockType</key>
<string>SOCK_STREAM</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<key>inetdCompatibility</key>
<dict>
<key>Wait</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>

[alexentremont]

Lineplot,

I just tried to setup MR Satellite the way you described and it works just fine.
Actually it is cleaner than the other method because it doesn't use xinetd at all.

Thank you!

[Madpear]

Hi,
I'm alose trying to make that fu#@*^ satellite work on 3 XP worksation, but without success.
Here's the message i get while rendering:

Info: (mental ray) : adding rayhosts
Info: (mental ray) : adding host: 192.168.200.21:7103
MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (192.168.200.21:7103)
Info: (mental ray) : adding host: 192.168.200.248:7103
MSG 0.0 error 011229: could not connect to host:port 192.168.200.21:7103 -
A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host
has failed to respond.
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host 192.168.200.21:7103
MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (192.168.200.248:7103)
MSG 0.0 error 011229: could not connect to host:port 192.168.200.248:7103 -
A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host
has failed to respond.Warning:
MSG 0.0 error 011706: cannot add host 192.168.200.248:7103(mental ray) :
mental ray startup reported network errors, some render slaves may not be used

I've tried on several port, but still don't work
Anyone has an idea? :sad:
I really need to make it works

[TomD]

madpear,
can you ping to and from the 2 machines? Does windows firewall allow incoming network traffic through the used port?

[Madpear]

Sorry i didn't pay attention to the complete title of this tread.
I opened a new one here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=262002

[three5]

ok, so ive gone through the config setps back on page 2.. and i have a feeling that i am terribly close to actually having satellite work, but i am getting the following error:

MSG 0.0 info : adding new host 1 (3.23.34.63:7103)
MSG 0.0 error 011330: mi-ray/tcp: not a service (check /etc/services)
MSG 0.0 warn 012219: using fallback inet service 7003
JWOaBr n i0n.g0: in(fmoe n:t aslt arratye)d :t hmreenatdasl 0r,a1y osnt a3r.t2u3p. 3r4e.p6o3r tneodw nkentowwonr ka se rhroosrts ,1 so
me render slaves may not be used

any ideas on how to fix this?

[three5]

ok, so things are working: but only sort of.

when i hit the preview tab in maya, all of my satellite machines (4) will kick in and help with the preview render, and it really speeds things up. but when i go to batch render, or render from the command line, i can see all of the processors wind up to batch process, but then the entire render stalls out. no errors mentioned, and nothing crashes or stops. it just stalls.

so i know that it works, but any ideas on why it stalls?

[cgbeige]

I've got a similar problem. I've got the satellite machine working but only for renders from within Maya itself, not from the command line. somehow it's tripping on shaders from an old install that i can't find anywhere:

LINK 1.n error 191029: failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
Error: (mental ray) : failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
Warning: (Mayatomr.Nodes) : mentalrayIblShape1: IBL ignored. File texture not found, or constant black input color.
Warning: (Mayatomr.Nodes) : mentalrayIblShape1: IBL ignored. File texture not found, or constant black input color.
Warning: (Mayatomr.Nodes) : mentalrayIblShape1: IBL ignored. File texture not found, or constant black input color.
LINK 1.n error 191014: tc_curvature.so: load failed,
Error: (mental ray) : tc_curvature.so: load failed,
LINK 1.n error 191029: failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
Error: (mental ray) : failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
LINK 1.n error 191014: tc_p_zDepth.so: load failed,
Error: (mental ray) : tc_p_zDepth.so: load failed,
LINK 1.n error 191029: failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
Error: (mental ray) : failed to link library on host LILPOW.local
Error: (Mayatomr) : mental ray has stopped with errors, see the log
Error: Scene /Users/beige/Documents/maya/projects/BIRTHDAY_SILO/scenes/roomandburlapman2.mb failed to render.

// Maya exited with status 210


somehow it doesn't crap out like this from within Maya. it just works.
any idea where it's getting these old shaders from? It's not in my host machine's install - I've checked teh app bundle and spotlight doesn't turn up anything.


ok - i trashed everything off of the slave machine for Maya and reinstalled mr sat and it fixed that one shaders problem but i still get exited with status 210 errors.

[cgbeige]

i get the same problem – network render now works within maya (thanks for the launchd tip) but when I drop to the command line, it craps out:

Error: Scene /Users/beige/Documents/maya/projects/default/scenes/caustictest4.mb failed to render.

// Maya exited with status 210


there's nothing special about that scene.

edit - sorry, forum hiccup and i thought it ate my last post.

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