Deadline install - Python.Runtime.PythonException ?

Deadline
1

Hello,

I’ve recently installed Deadline on 20 of our farm machines. The repository / DB install went off without a hitch, as well as 19 of the slave machine installs. Everything is working great with them. I have one machine that seems to have installed fine but I can’t for the life of me get Deadline to run on it.

After install when i try to launch DeadlineLauncher, the process starts and then promptly exits itself. Nothing shows up in the event viewer and no gui ever pops up. Using CMD I launched it with the ‘deadlinelauncher -console’ command and here is the output -

[code]C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin>deadlinelauncher -console

C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin>Launcher Thread - Launcher thread initia
lizing…
Updating Repository options

  • Remote Administration: enabled
  • Automatic Updates: disabled
    Checking for stalled slaves on this machine
    Launcher Thread - Remote administration is enabled
    Launcher Thread - Launcher thread listening on port 17060
    Exception on Startup: System.Exception: Python Error: ImportError : DLL load fai
    led: %1 is not a valid Win32 application. (Python.Runtime.PythonException)
    Stack Trace:
    [’ File “none”, line 1, in \n’]

at FranticX.Scripting.PythonNetScriptEngine.HandlePythonError(Exception e)
at FranticX.Scripting.PythonNetScriptEngine.ExecuteScript(String scriptName,
String script)
at DeadlineLauncher.DeadlineLauncherApp.Main(String[] args)

Deadline Launcher will now exit.[/code]

Here are some things I’ve tried so far -

  • Checked against installs on the other machines to make sure there were no missing files, initial install showed 2 missing files so I copied all the DLLs from a working machine over to the problem machine, no change.
  • Re-installed runtimes / net frameworks
  • Re-installed Service Pack 2 (This slave runs XP Pro x64)
  • Tried booting into safemode with networking, still wouldn’t launch
  • Ran a full chkdsk, HDD seems fine
  • Installed a multitude of other programs, they all installed / ran fine
  • Uninstalled / reinstalled more times than I care to admit
  • Firewall on / off makes no difference

I have not yet done a full OS reinstall. The machines were all made at the same time and all have the same components. I built them, installed XP Pro x64 and installed the bare minimum to get them running as slaves.

I’m pretty perplexed, if anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them.

Thanks!

2

Which version of Deadline are you using? 6.2?

My gut feeling is that there’s probably some kind of conflict between the Python we’re shipping with Deadline and a copy of Python somewhere else on that machine. If there’s a python26.dll somewhere Windows would find it before the one we ship with Deadline (and it’s the wrong bitness), it could cause issues like this.

I remember seeing another client with a copy of it in his C:\Windows\System32 folder, which would take priority over just about anything else. The easiest way to tell is probably to run Dependency Walker (or something similar) on the Deadline Launcher (or slave/monitor/whatever), and check to see where it’s loading stuff from.

3

Hey jgaudet,

Thanks for the reply. I’m using Deadline 6.2.0.32R

First I checked to see if what you mentioned may be happening. I did a system wide search for python26.dll and the only one that I could find was found at C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin

There’s not a whole lot installed on these machines so I did a direct compare of what was installed on a working machine vs this one. I found that the non-working machine had everything installed as the others except for the C++ 2005 Redistributable x86 & x64. I figured this wasn’t the issue but I installed them anyways to make sure the machines match. That installed fine.

After that I did as you suggested and ran Dependency Walker on both the non-working and working machine. Both came up identical. I did the non-working machine first and it popped up saying it couldn’t open ieshims.dll & wer.dll . Excited that I thought I found the problem, the working machines all popped up with the same message, so that wasn’t it.

So that led me to seeing if any files were missing. After the most recent reinstall I noticed that the lib folder under \Deadline6\bin only had 2,864 files on the non-working machine, and had 2,866 files on the working machine. Just to try it I replaced the lib folder on the non-working machine with a copy of the lib folder from the working machine. That had no effect. The log I get from running the launcher with -console still says there is a Python.Runtime.PythonException

The entire thing is pretty perplexing. Here is a total list of what is installed on the machine, it’s the same as the other 19 working machines.

ButterflyNetRender
Deadline Client
eyeon Render Slave x64 6.4

Update :

So after I did all of the above, I launched Deadline from cmd with deadlinelauncher -console -nogui . This led to deadlinelauncher.exe showing up in processes and not immediately exiting out like it normally does. There was also no error that showed up. Thinking I was getting somewhere, after deadlinelauncher.exe was running, I tried launching deadlineslave -console -nogui as well to see if that would run. It did not and this is what it spit out -

[code]C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin>deadlinelauncher -console -nogui

C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin>Launcher Thread - Launcher thread initia
lizing…
Updating Repository options

  • Remote Administration: enabled
  • Automatic Updates: disabled
    Checking for stalled slaves on this machine
    Launcher Thread - Remote administration is enabled
    Launcher Thread - Launcher thread listening on port 17060
    Updating Repository options
  • Remote Administration: enabled
  • Automatic Updates: disabled
    Checking for stalled slaves on this machine
    deadlineslave -console -nogui

C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline6\bin>Deadline Slave 6.2 [v6.2.0.32 R (2563d5
bc8)]
Checking slave startup lock file: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Applicatio
n Data\Thinkbox\Deadline6\slaves.lock
Slave startup file is unlocked
Exception on Startup: System.BadImageFormatException: An attempt was made to loa
d a program with an incorrect format. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.VersionTracker.ChartVersionTracker.Allocate
Version()
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.VersionTracker…ctor(VersionType versionTyp
e)
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.PluginManager.GetInstance()
at DeadlineSlave.DeadlineSlaveApp.Main(String[] args)

Deadline Slave will now exit.
An unhandled exception occurred: An attempt was made to load a program with an i
ncorrect format. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B) (System.BadImageFormatExce
ption)
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.VersionTracker.ChartVersionTracker.Allocate
Version()
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.PluginManager…ctor()
at DeadlineSlave.DeadlineSlaveApp.Exit(Int32 exitCode, String slaveConfigName
)
at DeadlineSlave.DeadlineSlaveApp.Main(String[] args)

Unhandled Exception: System.BadImageFormatException: An attempt was made to load
a program with an incorrect format. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.VersionTracker.ChartVersionTracker.Allocate
Version()
at Deadline.Configuration.Plugins.PluginManager…ctor()
at DeadlineSlave.DeadlineSlaveApp.Exit(Int32 exitCode, String slaveConfigName
)
at DeadlineSlave.DeadlineSlaveApp.Main(String[] args)[/code]

Can anyone make anything of that?

4

Looks like a corrupted install. I’d just run the installer on that machine again and see if that clears things up.

“The exception that is thrown when the file image of a dynamic link library (DLL) or an executable program is invalid”
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library … n(v=vs.110.aspx

Might have been caused during that copy from another machine?

5

Quick update -

After about a week of Deadline re-installs and service pack re-installs as well as re-installing every .net framework under the sun, I finally gave in and pulled the machine to do a complete format and OS reinstall. 4hrs after that I installed deadline again and it is working fine now. No idea why this one machine caused such trouble as it was identical to 19 others, maybe a power outage or something corrupted a file on this machine but not others. No idea, but at least now it’s working :slight_smile: