Hi

It looks I can not send “mantra -H” command to remote computers (they just don't pick up rendering). I haven't been using this option for a long time, does it work in 9.5? Is there any way I could check if other “render slave” are visible to mantra. I remember in houdini 8 there was an option to check upload time to remote machines (sorry don't remember exact name) is any similar verbose option in the current mantra?
Basically I will be grateful if anyone could share his experience and confirm that this option works with h9.5.241. BTW, has anything change since version 8? (I guess it has a lot )
I am also interested is PBR working in this mode?

I double checked with suggestions from odforce, I'm not using textures (very simple scene), XP

Thanks
kuba

Hey Kuba,
I've almost never used this option so I was impressed and surprised recently when we saw -H command working great on H9.5. Also in PBR rendering.
I made a few tests on PBR and was able to render on 24 cores fluently.

Note that AFAIK writing to any cache files (photons and such) won't succeed in that mode though.


cheers,
symek.

Thanks for info Szymon,

Stupid question, but did you enable some other flags or simply used -H ? Still have problems here….

I love this feature

Just a quick bit of advice - if your scenes are heavy (and so your IFDs get huge) then take care to use the Mantra Delayed Load procedural whereever you can. It speeds up the distribution a lot and can really get the render started faster.

Remember that there's this page to help out with issues:
http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MantraRemoteRendering [odforce.net]

My usual suspect when I see a remote rendering question on the forums is to suspect that you're running Houdini Apprentice, where it is disabled.

As to my experience the main issue here is always network (specially network on Windows). Good, solid network, with static IPs, and full access to disk resources for mantra solves most issues. On Windows though you need XP Professional and sometimes Windows Server which generally in case of Windows based networks makes a difference. (the only worse thing than Windows Server is a bunch of WindowsXP Home edition joined in one network…).

No, we didn't have to do anything more, just -H and bumm…! We have all on Linux though, so it's not your case. Can you close firewall on your system, assign static IPs?

Thanks for feedback. I didn't have time to do more tests. To be honest I've just switched to ubuntu and I am still at the learning / test phase .
When it comes to networking I'm a total beginner and for now I have been only trying setup with two notebooks on crossover cable. That probably is the issue. IPs are static but not sure if this setup can run at all? I assume I have to put ip adress after “-H” because computer names with this configuration are not recognized. Sooner or later I have to get a simple router any way.
I'm on node locked Escape.

Cheers
kuba

You must have non-nodelocked mantra licences in order to run on your other machine then …. unless you have 2 nodelocked Escape licenses …

edward
You must have non-nodelocked mantra licences in order to run on your other machine then …. unless you have 2 nodelocked Escape licenses …

So, it's not possible to install hserver & Mantra on another machine and point it to the node-locked “master” machine for Mantra's -H option?

I always thought floating licenses were for folks who wanted to run the full Houdini application on one of many networked machines.

mantra needs licenses for whichever machine it needs to run on.

Alanw
I always thought floating licenses were for folks who wanted to run the full Houdini application on one of many networked machines.

You run mantra license per core (maybe it has changed). I guess you need to have some of them installed on your workstation anyway(where you have Master node locked license installed). All the rest can be anywhere in your network. Am I right Edward?

Ok maybe I should hit with this straight to support. It looks there are some problems with my network setup. My first question is whether I can run remote rendering on crossover cable? It looks I can see slave computer from workstation I have Escape installed on, but I can not detect that workstation from the slave side. In slaves's license server I can see I am getting “access denied for operation”, which basically disallow to obtain mantra license.
What does it mean exactly?
Can I only use mantra on one machine? I can bet I had floating mantra licenses before working on Escape….
The other completely seperate issue might be sharing restriction I am not aware of. Do I need to grant some execution rights to the license server on my workstation by another users?

Thanks
kuba

Run hkey (aka the License Administrator). If you IP Mask says +.+.+.+, then that particular license is node-locked and can only be used on the same machine as your license server.

kuba
You run mantra license per core (maybe it has changed). I guess you need to have some of them installed on your workstation anyway(where you have Master node locked license installed). All the rest can be anywhere in your network. Am I right Edward?

This is what I thought as well. The fact that I have unlimited Mantra tokens probably helped contribute to my train of thought, but it seems like we were both mistaken.

First of all sorry for confusion my license is placed on Ubuntu and the slave has a XP/Ubuntu installed. So at the moment I'm trying Ubuntu (server)-Ubuntu(slave) set-up.

edward
Run hkey (aka the License Administrator). If you IP Mask says +.+.+.+, then that particular license is node-locked and can only be used on the same machine as your license server.

I checked mantra license and it has following flags set to: +.+.+.*. So I assume it should work fine.
After some changes slave at least receives something form Escape and start rendering. The problem at the moment is that mplay does not pop up when the rendering is finished. Does it mean I'm missing some permissions for the mplay (on server)? Should I chmod 0777 the full houdini folder?
Also I am quite confused with the owners. Hserver is owned by “kuba” owner but sesinetd is owned by “root”… Not sure how about all of the files from $HFS/bin folder. Should they be owned by root or current user?

Thank you.

Hello everybody,

I hope you can bare a few more questions of the network rookie. I am almost there, I have a small network running and rendering fine except textures this time. I'm aware the main problem is the UNC path naming, but I'm curious what should be done with mixed system farm (XP/Vista and linux). On windows side it is clear - UNC paths, on linux - NFS, but…

Do I get thes same path convention with UNC and NFS. (I quess with samba it won't work on linux).

Could you recommend any good starter for setting up NFS shares?

thanks
kuba

Solved. Looks like posting here gives me an IQ kick.
I basically created a 192.168…. folder (on root level) and mount my shares from that point.
Simple workaround but does the job.

greets
kuba

Do I get thes same path convention with UNC and NFS. (I quess with samba it won't work on linux).
Could you recommend any good starter for setting up NFS shares?

I`m use some trick, but in some cases it not work. This simple.

Windows - Linux.
1. For example, you have a shared folder named \\winserver\share You must create smb mountpoint on linux: mount -t cifs //winserver/share /mnt/smb/winserver/share. (must be exist)
2. Next, you must link this point to your “/” filesystem. Another words - make symbolic link
ln -s /mnt/smb/winserver/share /
(of course, you must be root to do this)
3. Now you can use f**k*d Microsoft UNC path`s in linux box. Another words - write UNC path in Linux programms, and in Houdini, of course.
4. This work in Mac OS X also. (may be someone know more simple way?)

Linux - Windows.
1. Make samba share.
2. make this dir (not samba share, of course) “ln -s” to / dir.
3. Use it with “//linuxserver/share” in Houdini (i don`t sure, but must work). Nuke and Maya understand this.

Good luck.