[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.
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What’s New In Deadline 6.0.49761 (Beta 9)
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.
Breaking Change Between Beta 8 and Beta 9
In beta 8 and earlier, the job’s plugin info settings were stored separately from the rest of the job’s properties. Because of the way we commit job properties to the database, this prevented the Monitor from properly committing plugin info settings when changed from the Job Properties dialog. The fix in beta 9 was to store the plugin info settings with the rest of the job properties. However, this is a breaking change, and so jobs submitted with an earlier version of Deadline 6 will not work with beta 9 or later. If you try to render a job from beta 8 or earlier with beta 9, you will get errors because Deadline won’t be able to find any plugin info for the job.
Job Archiving
Job archiving has been added back to Deadline 6, but it is a lot different than it was in Deadline 5. When a job is archived, a JSON snapshot of the job and the task are exported to text files, and they are zipped up along with any auxiliary files that are submitted to disk. This zipped up archive is then stored in the jobsArchived folder in the repository, and the job is removed from the database. These jobs can then be imported from the File menu in the Monitor.
Job archival can still be automatic, either as a per-job setting, or a global setting in the Repository Options. In addition, a job can still be manually archived by right-clicking on it. However, the right-click option has an additional checkbox that asks if you want to remove the job from the database. By not removing it from the database, you basically have a copy of your job that you can import into another Repository, or that you can send to the Deadline support team for debugging purposes. In the past, we would have clients zip up a job’s folder and send it to us for testing, but since this isn’t possible in Deadline 6, you can use the job archiving feature instead.
What Deadline 6 will no longer do is manage archived jobs like Deadline 5 did. You cannot view archived jobs in the Monitor, and you cannot access them from the scripting API. In fact, there is no difference between a deleted job and an archived job from a Deadline perspective. However, once you’ve imported an archived job back into Deadline, it will appear just like any other job would.
Currently, the naming convention for archived jobs guarantees uniqueness, but we would like it to be more flexible. Currently, it just takes the job’s user, plugin, name, and ID to name the archived file. In addition, we will probably want to allow for an alternative location to store archived jobs. Finally, we will probably want to add an auto-archival cleanup feature to delete archives that are older than a configurable setting.
We are definitely open to other ideas you guys may have regarding the new archiving feature, so we’d love to hear your feedback!
Slave Log Pausing/Resuming
In the Slave interface, or in the Remote Slave Log interface, you can now use the new right-click options (or their corresponding shortcuts) to pause and resume the slave log. When paused, new lines will no longer be added to the log, which will allow you to view the log without it jumping around. You can then resume the log when finished.
General Improvements
- New job archiving system has been added.
- In the database, the job’s plugin info settings are now stored with the rest of the job’s properties. This is a breaking change, so jobs submitted with an earlier version of Deadline 6 will not work with beta 9 or later.
- Empty plugin info values for jobs are no longer thrown away during submission.
- Updated QCharts library to version 1.1.
Installer Improvements
- The Windows client installer now adds App Paths registry keys for each of the Deadline applications. This prevents the Launcher from crashing on reboot.
- The path separators for the default installation path are now correct based on the operating system.
Monitor Improvements
- A job’s plugin specific settings are now saved to the database properly when modified from the Job Properties dialog.
- Fixed a bug that caused the Monitor to occasionally display duplicate jobs.
- Increased the default size of new panels a bit.
- Added job right-click menu to archive a job.
- Added File menu to import archived jobs.
- Shortcuts in nested submenus now work properly.
- Added task right-click menus to view/copy the output paths (if there are any).
- Added job right-click menus to explore/copy the output paths (if there are any).
- Added job right-click menus to explore/copy the auxiliary file paths (if there are any).
- The options to change a job’s frame range or resubmit a job now validates the new frame range that is specified.
- Added a bit of extra whitespace in the job’s progress column between the complete % value and the X/Y count (where X is the number of completed tasks, and Y is the total task count).
- Fixed a ‘TraceList’ error when trying to display panels when the user doesn’t have the necessary group access to see those panels.
- The ‘slavelist’ plugin configuration control doesn’t show up for plugins that use them (like Nuke).
- Added tooltips to the current batch of Monitor submission scripts.
- The VNC and RDC scripts have been refactored to clean them up and use newly available API functions.
- The VNC and RDC scripts have been added to the Pulse right-click scripts menu.
- The job right-click script to clean up tiles from a Tile Assembly job has been ported to Deadline 6.
- The slave right-click script to start or stop Windows Services remotely has been ported to Deadline 6.
- Job and task graphs now show the correct color for queued jobs/tasks.
- List columns with date/time values now take milliseconds into account when determing sort order.
- REGRESSION: Removed a reference to System.Windows.Forms.
Launcher Improvements
- REGRESSION: Double-clicking the Launcher now launches the Monitor again.
- On Windows, the Launcher should no longer crash on reboot. The fix was to add App Paths for the Launcher to the Registry.
Slave Improvements
- Fixed a memory leak in the internal slave log.
- Added right-click menu options to slave log to pause and resume the slave log.
- The Slave UI is now a lot more responsive while the renderer is writing a large amount of stdout.
- The Job Information tab is now the default tab.
- Fixed a bug where a slave could potentially dequeue a job before it had finished being submitted.
Scripting Improvements
- Added MonitorUtils functions to get selected jobs, slaves, tasks, etc. Documentation to come later.
- Added functions to Job object to get/set plugin info settings: GetJobPluginInfoKeys(), GetJobPluginInfoKeyValue(string key), SetJobPluginInfoKeyValue(string key, string value)
3dsmax Improvements
- Fixed error in StartJob: “TypeError : No method matches given arguments”
Draft Improvements
- The Draft plugin now points to the dpython executable, instead of looking for the old python executable from Deadline 5.
Maya Improvements
- Fixed a bug where dependent Mental Ray Standalone jobs would have the layer name from the previous job in the job name.
modo Improvements
- deadlinecommand is now launched from within the Deadline bin directory.
- The job name is automatically set to the scene file’s name.
Nuke Improvements
- The interactive licensing option is now available in the Nuke plugin configuration.
Vrimg2Exr Improvements
- The OutputFile plugin info entry is no longer mandatory.