IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR MAC OSX USERS:
Starting with beta 13, we are now bundling Mono with the Deadline installers for Mac OSX. This means that you must manually reinstall the Clients again, as opposed to using Deadline’s auto-update feature. After you have upgraded your clients to beta 13, you will be able to use Deadline’s auto-update feature to upgrade from beta 13 to beta 14 and so on.
This only applies to Mac OSX users. Windows and Linux users can use Deadline’s auto-update feature to upgrade from beta 12 to beta 13. See the Upgrading documentation in the CHM or PDF Deadline 6 manuals for more information.
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What’s New In Deadline 6.0.50509 (Beta 13)
This release fixes a bunch of bugs and adds a few more features that were missing.
Here are the highlighted changes.
Breaking Changes Between Beta 12 and Beta 13
We’ve refactored how reports are stored in the database to significantly reduce the space they can take up. This change means that users of beta 13 will not be able to see reports that were generated in beta 12, and vice versa.
Note that this is the only change affecting reports. There were some discussions about capping the maximum number of reports per job, but we have decided to not make any additional changes at this time.
Bundling Mono On Mac OSX
Mono is now bundled with the Mac OSX version of Deadline. Mac users will no longer have to manually install Mono before they install Deadline. A side-benefit to this is that you can now run Deadline 5 and Deadline 6 on the same Mac. Previously, Deadline 5 would only work with a system install of Mono 2.6.7 and Deadline 6 would only work with a system install of Mono 2.10. Now, you can have a system install of 2.6.7 to run Deadline 5, and Deadline 6’s Mono installation will be self contained, allowing you to run both.
This means that you must manually reinstall the Clients again, as opposed to using Deadline’s auto-update feature. After you have upgraded your clients to beta 13, you will be able to use Deadline’s auto-update feature to upgrade from beta 13 to beta 14 and so on. This only applies to Mac OSX users.
New RenderJob Command Line Option
You can run the following command to test rendering a job:
deadlinecommand -RenderJob [job info file] [plugin info file] [auxiliary file 1] ...The order of the job files are the same as if you were submitting the job to Deadline. This command will render the job immediately without submitting it to the farm. This is useful for test rendering particular types of jobs, or testing a custom Deadline plugin.
Note that the RenderJob command requires a Deadline license in order to render the job.
General Improvements
- Fixed a bug that would affect Pulse and the Slaves if there were “half-submitted” jobs in the database. These were jobs that were in the process of being submitted but never finished (due to an error, for example). These jobs will no longer cause Pulse or the Slaves to throw a bunch of errors.
- Added house cleaning operation to clean up “half-submitted” jobs that were in that state for at least 3 days.
- The dbConnect.xml file in the settings folder in the Repository now encrypts the database password.
- All python scripts that ship with Deadline now use spaces instead of tabs for indentation.
- Added some additional indexes to the database to improve performance.
- During house cleaning, auxiliary files are now properly cleaned up for deleted jobs.
- Reduced the maximum task count for a job to 10000, with 5000 being the new default.
- On OSX, the icons in the main menu bar for all Deadline applications are now dark so that they’re visible.
- Updated the wrapper shell scripts on Linux to add the absolute path to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead of the relative one.
Installer Improvements
- Mono is now bundled in the Mac installers.
- Fixed some issues with installing MongoDB on some Linux systems.
- The Linux client installers now accept a --monoexec command line option that you can use to specify the full path to the mono executable. This is useful if mono isn’t in the PATH when you run the installer with elevated privileges.
- The Mac Repository installer now properly detects 64 bit systems and installs the correct version of MongoDB.
- The Mac Repository installer no longer launches MongoDB as admin.
- The Mac Repository installer no longer fails because it’s trying to create an unnecessary log folder.
Monitor Improvements
- Fixed a threading bug that could cause the Monitor to crash after it has been running for about 24 hours.
- Fixed another issue on OSX that could cause the Monitor to crash.
- Fixed a performance issue in the Slave list when selecting a bunch of slaves and opening the right-click menu.
- Fixed a memory leak when processing keyboard shortcuts.
- The Remote Commands panel now only shows the first line of the results in the list, and the timestamp format has been updated to be consistent with how dates are formatted in other lists. The full results can still be seen by clicking on the command in the list.
- Added the Wasted Time column back to the Report panels.
- Fixed some more text cutoff issues on Mac OSX.
- Updated the icon in the Search boxes so that it is different than the Close icon for the panel. The icon will also be highlighted when the mouse is over it.
- Set some better defaults for the initial sorting of the lists.
- Fixed some minimum/maximum value issues in job settings, repository options, etc.
- Changed the Job Candidate Filter icon in the slave list to avoid confusing it with the Quick Filter feature in the job list.
- Fixed a bug that caused menu items to appear for scripts that were no longer in the Repository.
- Added an all-in-one House Cleaning option to the Tools menu, which replaces the individual options for checking for stalled slaves and orphaned limit stubs, while adding additional checks.
- The configure plugins dialog can now be resized vertically.
- Fixed a bug in how pools/groups were displayed in the slave list.
- Multiple slaves can now be disabled at the same time.
- Added a Console panel. Note that when this panel is opened, the CTRL+A and CTRL+C shortcuts for all the lists will be broken, and won’t work until the Console panel is closed again. This is logged as a bug.
- In the User Settings in the Monitor Options, the web service password confirmation field now defaults to the value stored in the main password field.
- Added an option in the Monitor Options to start the Monitor in Super User mode.
- Fixed typo “premanently” when deleting slaves.
- Fixed typo “Add Idle Shutodwn Override” in power management dialog.
- Slave Settings dialog title is now set properly.
- Fixed an error message when changing repositories.
- The Resubmit Job dialog title is now set properly, and the maximum frames per task is no longer 99.
- The slave list Status column now factors the render time into account when sorting.
- Added option to the drop down menu for the lists to disable dynamic sorting.
Slave Improvements
- Fixed some bugs that could cause the Slave to become unstable when it is unable to connect to the Database.
- The slave should no longer lose track of its task if it is in the middle of rendering and it loses its connection to the Database.
- Job scripts (pre-task, post-task, pre-job, and post-job) will now be canceled if their corresponding task is canceled or the job is deleted. Previously, the slave could get stuck on a job script waiting for it to complete. If it never finished, the slave would never move on.
- The slave now clears its job info when it shuts down. Before, an offline slave could still show job information in the slave list.
- Fixed a CountdownMessageBox error.
- Added an option to the File menu to set the license server.
- Fixed a bug where the slave would always reload the plugin for the second task of the same job, even when nothing needed to be re-synchronized.
Pulse Improvements
- Pulse no longer is affected by “half-submitted” jobs in the database.
- Added some extra debugging output to the Job Repository Scan.
Command Improvements
- The RenderNow command from Deadline 5 has been renamed to RenderJob, and is now working again.
- Added new command line functions to update specific settings for a job’s machine limit.
- Fixed a bug in the -SelectDependencies command.
Scripting Improvements
- Added new RepositoryUtils functions to update specific settings for a job’s machine limit.
- Added RepositoryUtils functions to change the state of a job or task.
3ds Command Improvements
- Added support for 3ds Max 2014.
- Fixed a bug when submitting from the Monitor that messed up the output path.
3ds Max Improvements
- Added support for 3ds Max 2014.
- Fixed a bug when exporting a Maxwell setting that caused the final MXI file to be missing lighting.
Cinema 4D Improvements
- Fixed a bug that could cause Deadline to pass the multipass output path to Cinema 4D, even though it was disabled when the job was submitted.
- Added additional stdout handlers to catch errors.
Composite Improvements
- Added support for Composite 2014.
Draft Improvements
- The Draft submission script is now installed with the Repository.
Maya Improvements
- Added support for Maya 2014.
- Fixed some tile rendering issues for Renderman jobs.
- The Monitor submitter now defaults the MayaBatch option to be on.
- Added a function so that script jobs in the MayaBatch plugin can access the job’s ExtraInfo properties.
Modo Improvements
- Added better progress reporting for modo 6 and later.
Rhino Improvements
- Integrated submission scripts are now included for Rhino 4 and 5.
Vrimg2Exr Improvements
- The “Buffer Size” label no longer says “Gamma” when configuring the Vrimg2Exr properties from the Job Properties dialog.