Windows 10.18362
Houdini Indie 17.5.327

Hello all,

I've setup HQueue on my Windows machines several times over the past ~5 years, and somehow manage to get it working - though I often run into snags, like this one:

One client runs fine, but another gets stuck at this point in the Output log:
Accessing “C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.5.327\bin\hython” …

And it will stay there for hours if you let the job stay active; It's the same machine that HQueue server is hosted on.

What I've tried:

- Uninstalled & reinstalled .327 (including HQueue Server/Client, reconfiguring both .ini files afterwards)
- Gone into the services panel & adjusted the “Log On As” parameter
- Tried both Hqueue Render & Hqueue Sim - each get same result
- Ensured the Target HFS parameter is a direct link to the location on the drive rather than using $HQROOT:
"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.5.327\
- Am using a Target HIP with a direct link to the Project file
- No IFDs
- It works fine on another machine (my primary workstation), but not on this one, the slave.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Luke

Luke Letellier
Windows 10.18362
Houdini Indie 17.5.327

Hello all,

I've setup HQueue on my Windows machines several times over the past ~5 years, and somehow manage to get it working - though I often run into snags, like this one:

One client runs fine, but another gets stuck at this point in the Output log:
Accessing “C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.5.327\bin\hython” …

And it will stay there for hours if you let the job stay active; It's the same machine that HQueue server is hosted on.

What I've tried:

- Uninstalled & reinstalled .327 (including HQueue Server/Client, reconfiguring both .ini files afterwards)
- Gone into the services panel & adjusted the “Log On As” parameter
- Tried both Hqueue Render & Hqueue Sim - each get same result
- Ensured the Target HFS parameter is a direct link to the location on the drive rather than using $HQROOT:
"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.5.327\
- Am using a Target HIP with a direct link to the Project file
- No IFDs
- It works fine on another machine (my primary workstation), but not on this one, the slave.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Luke

Funny you posted this. I've had HQueue running before, with days of painful setup, but in the end I had it up and running.
Same as this time but it would seem now everything around HQueue is extremely slow, especially the actual renderjob preparation.
It would seem that the Hython execution is extremely slow. But so is everything else in particular when something is done by a network client. (a client that is not on the same machine as the server). It took a local machine about an hour to create 10 renderjobs, which means this machine can not actually render for one full hour.

I am not getting error messages. Hython CPU usage during processing the renderjobs is 0.1% max, and so is Houdini's during job submission, during which Houdini even freezes for a few seconds on the local machine or for even a few minutes when I submit from the network machine.

I've done all the things recommended anywhere to set up the farm.

Hi Luke, please, did you resolve this issue?

I think it might be GPU (or driver, or Redshift) related. I have three similar Clients. Two have Nvidia GPU and work fine. The third Slave has only an Intel onboard GPU and I got the same error as you did. Redshift has a workaround for this, quote:

“Redshift can work on systems without GPUs to export proxy scenes, but you need to copy to the Redshift/bin directory the NVIDIA driver files. These files are all the nv*.dll files located at the C:\Windows\System32 in a system with NVIDIA drivers.”

https://www.redshift3d.com/forums/viewthread/25190/#157840 [www.redshift3d.com]

I did not solve the issue - just moved on to other things. This looks really promising though, as I do have Redshift on my primary workstation and slave, but do not have any GPUs on the slave (was just using it for DOPs/SOPs processing rather than rendering). Will definitely give this a shot when I can & report back here afterwards.

Hi Luke. In my case it is probably related to RS / Nvidia / onboard Intel. I tried to do what Juanjo said and partially it resolved the error. HQueue succesfuly moved to the next part, started RS and tried to render. Well, I tried OpenGL render which did not succeed, but I am definitely closer to a solution. I unfortunately don't have time now … we may ask Juanjo what to do. Btw cheapest NVidia card may be the simplest solution. I have GT710 in one of my Slaves and it works fine.

Btw you may try to HQueue a distributed sim and have no RS nodes in your scene. That should work. At least it works on my “no nvidia / onboard intel” slave.

ikoon
Btw you may try to HQueue a distributed sim and have no RS nodes in your scene. That should work. At least it works on my “no nvidia / onboard intel” slave.

Ok, good to know. Trying to avoid getting a cheap GPU at the moment, because I might be upgrading that machine with full size GPUs in the near future (which would solve the issue as well).

The thread will be handy though, as my studio has been exploring the RS rendering on the cloud, and that RS file generation process is apparently quite annoying.

Didn't work.

Part of the issue might be that when I use Window's Remote Desktop Connection, the “Microsoft Basic Display Adapter” is what's shown as ‘in use’ by the device manager. It'd really stink if I had to buy a GPU just so Houdini can process data on a headless node.

Installed a GTX 760 into my slave system, updated drivers, still stuck on ‘Accessing Hython’.

I resolved this particular issue.

On my slave machine, I went in to C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.5.360\bin\" and double clicked on hython.exe. An error message popped up regarding a plugin (Vray for Houdini) that had some pathing issues. Went in to my .env file, remedied those, resaved the file, restarted the service, ran the job again, and the slave was able to access hython.

But now I have another bug to solve.

Its now having issues accessing the project file on my networked drive. I can copy the file path directly from the error message & paste it into the Windows explorer on my slave, and it automatically launches Houdini… so it can access the file. Which is bizarre…

Got that working too. For those following at home - a Google search led me to my very own forum post from 2014 (doh!) answering this question, which led me to the documentation (link below). It's a permissions issue with Windows that (sometimes) can be solved by going into the services panel & ensuring that your own user account is properly registered there. The second option (which did work for me) is to manually stop the HQueue service and start up hqclientd.bat from the Hclient folder.

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hqueue14.0/help/faqs#my-job-fails-with-an- [www.sidefx.com]'access-is-denied'-error-when-run-on-a-windows-client-machine.-how-can-i-fix-this

I'm actually simulating now!

Hi Luke, thank you for the insights. Good tips!

As regards setting the service Log On, I do it like this:
https://forums.odforce.net/topic/42270-hqueue-cannot-find-file-but-manually-hython-finds-it/?do=findComment&comment=203626 [forums.odforce.net]

Here is another picture of it:




Btw for me, it is much faster to have IP numbers everywhere, instead of computer names (strings).

And btw … sometimes windows “forget” the remote drive credentials. It helps to include the machine IP slash user name, like this:

^That's how I've always done it in the past, but for some reason it didn't work this time around.

ikoon
Hi Luke, thank you for the insights. Good tips!

As regards setting the service Log On, I do it like this:
https://forums.odforce.net/topic/42270-hqueue-cannot-find-file-but-manually-hython-finds-it/?do=findComment&comment=203626 [forums.odforce.net]

Here is another picture of it:

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Btw for me, it is much faster to have IP numbers everywhere, instead of computer names (strings).

And btw ... sometimes windows "forget" the remote drive credentials. It helps to include the machine IP slash user name, like this:

Image Not Found

Hi how where you able to use an account from your server machine on the client?