[b]Important[/b]
Due to ongoing changes in the installers and the way we do auto-upgrades of Deadline, you must reinstall the Repository and Clients again. You DO NOT need to reinstall the MongoDB database.
If you have installed beta 6 or earlier, you MUST uninstall it first to remove the Deadline 6 bin folder from your PATH environment variable. After uninstalling, you should also manually remove the system deadline.ini file if it still exists. These are the locations of this file:
- Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Thinkbox\Deadline6\deadline.ini
- Linux: /var/lib/Thinkbox/Deadline6/deadline.ini
- Mac OSX: /Users/Shared/Thinkbox/Deadline6/deadline.ini
The need to uninstall the client first is necessary in this case because of changes we’ve made to allow different major versions of Deadline to run at the same time. This process should not be required again once you are running beta 7 or later.
Downloads
What’s New In Deadline 6.0.49608 (Beta 8)
This release primarily fixes a bunch of bugs and adds a few more features that were missing. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to add any new plugin support for this release.
Here are the highlighted changes.
Statistics
Deadline Statistics can now be stored in the Mongo database, similar to how they could be stored in the Repository in version 5. Statistics can be enabled in the Repository Options.
Note that the postgres database option to store statistics is no longer available. Going forward, if studios what to pull and store their own statistics from Deadline, they can do so using an Event Plugin, or they can execute scripts from the command line. We plan on adding API calls so that data for a job (average task time, average output file size, etc) can easily be obtained. This gives studios more flexibility because they can store the stats they want in the database solution they are comfortable with.
Monitor List Color Changes
We’ve changed some colors in an attempt to improve consistency between lists. The biggest change was to the job list:
- Queued: Green -> White (white being the idle/unused color in other lists)
- Completed: White -> Light Blue (needed a new color for completed jobs)
- Active: these will remain Green.
We’ve also removed the bolding of text, since we found this to be a bit jarring now that the Monitor auto-upates the data.
The Completed color is not set in stone, so we’d love to get your feedback on it.
General Improvements
- Deadline Statistics can now be stored again in the database.
- When the Deadline applications can’t connect to the database on startup, they now provide a cleaner error message, and the option to change repositories.
- When a slave is deleted, its reports are now deleted too.
- When deleting a job or slave, the reports are deleted first. This way, if there is an error deleting the reports, the job is still around so another attempt can be made.
- When one Deadline app launches another, it does so using the other’s directory as the working directory. This is important for the Launcher during an autoupdate to prevent it from potentially referencing the wrong Qt libraries.
Installer Improvements
- The Repository installer will now show a big warning describing the MongoDB limitations if you try to install it on a 32-bit system.
- The Repository installer will not let you install MongoDB to a Windows XP 32-bit system, since Mongo doesn’t support it anymore.
- The deadlinelauncherservice now writes to a version specific log and pid file.
Monitor Improvements
- Added option to resubmit a job to the job right-click menu.
- Added option to resubmit tasks as a new job to the task right-click menu.
- Splitter positions are now properly maintained between sessions, and when saving/loading layouts.
- Deleting slaves from the slave list now removes them from the slave list.
- Adding machines to the Power Management group now properly updates the dialog.
- Fixed the problem where a slave could disappear from the slave list briefly.
- Time spans now round up to the nearest second, instead of showing shorter times in milliseconds.
- The shortcut to view reports is now Ctrl+I instead of Ctrl+V.
- The Last Update timer no longer resets when disconnected from the database.
- Right-click menus no longer hang for a little while when disconnected from the database.
- Changed some list colors and removed the bolding of text.
Launcher Improvements
- The right-click menu no longer becomes unresponsive after the Launcher has run for a bit.
- Fixed a regression that caused the Launcher to crash when it can’t connect to the database.
- The right-click menu no longer hangs for a little while when disconnected from the database.
- The License Server menu item works again.
Slave Improvements
- Error messages raised by the plugin system are now cleaner.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the new plugin sync system from recognizing if a plugin file changed in the repository.
Command Improvements
- The -SelectDependencies option is now hooked up.
- The -SetJobMachineLimit command now just updates the job’s properties in the database, instead of overwriting the entire job object.
Scripting Improvements
- Re-added the missing JobId property for the Job class.
- The RepositoryUtils.SaveJob() function now just updates the job’s properties in the database, instead of overwriting the entire job object.
- The job dependency control in the ScriptDialog is now hooked up.
- Added a SlaveCurrentTaskIds property to the SlaveInfo class to get a tuple of the task Ids that the slave is currently working on.
- Added a new AbortRender(string, level) function to the ManagedProcess class to control what happens to the task when the render is stopped. The first parameter is the message, and the second ie one of the following:
- ManagedProcess.AbortLevel.Minor - requeues the task without an error being generated
- ManagedProcess.AbortLevel.Major - requeues the task with an error (like the current FailRender function)
- ManagedProcess.AbortLevel.Fatal - fails the task with an error
- ManagedProcess.AbortLevel.Success - completes the task
- Added a new SetEnvironmentVariable(string, string) function to the ManagedProcess class to set extra variables for that process only.
- Added a new ClearEnvironmentVariables() function to the ManagedProcess class to clear the extra variables. Note that this also clears extra variables set by the DeadlinePlugin’s SetProcessEnvironmentVariable(string,string) function.
- Sticky settings for checkbox controls in the ScriptDialog class now works again.
3dsmax Improvements
- Concurrent tasks now work with 3dsmax 2013.
- Fixed a SMTD warning when specifying the Sequential job flag.
After Effects Improvements
- Dependencies for the “dependent comp” option are now set properly.
Arnold Improvements
- The default verbosity is now 4. It’s the lowest verbosity that still shows progress.
CommandScript Improvements
- The missing CommandScript.param file is now installed.
Maya Improvements
- Dependencies for the Export Job types (Mental Ray, VRay, Arnold, Prman) are now set properly.
- When rendering a Mental Ray Export Job, the dependent Mental Ray standalone jobs now contain the layer name in the job name.
- Fixed the “LogInfo” error when submitting a script job to the MayaBatch plugin.
- The Arnold verbosity option is now available when submitting Arnold for Maya jobs.