DEADLINE takes long time to start the job, stuck at certain phase for about 10 min

[Davide]

Hello!

Does this issue still happen with Deadline 10.2? Or it has been addressed in the main code?
Deadline Client Version: 10.2.0.10 Release
FranticX Client Version: 2.4.0.0 Release
Houdini 19.5.368

We are experiencing the slow down at the ‘Begin Path Mapping’ stage.

Thanks for helping!

PS. the higher the number of file cachers or cache importer the longer that stage takes.

[Justin_B]

Somewhat depends - if there are path-mapping rules to apply then that slowdown is on the Houdini side. If you don’t have any path-mapping rules to apply Bobo laid out a fix in this post and I put it into a file attached.

hrender_dl.py (35.2 KB)

The only issue is I did that back in 2022, so it should be okay for 19.5 but there might be some Python quirks. Let us know and we’ll fix it up.

[Davide]

Thanks Justin! I have skipped the Houdini Path Mapping step as instructed and that fixes it for us.
Seems like the hou.fileReferences() function is responsable for the time took, it’s collecting all the references to external files, which can be a lot to process for large scenes.

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/fileReferences.html

[lwq775878]

how did you solve it？

[Davide]

Go to your
…\DeadlineRepository10\custom\plugins\Houdini\hrender_dl.py
around line 343

and comment out from “gather a list…” to "… pathmap_parms(tempdir, parms)

def perform_pathmapping(tempdir):
    """
    Perform pathmapping on all input parameters and other select parameters
    :param tempdir: the temporary location that a text file will be written to to aid pathmapping.
    :return: None
    """
    if not tempdir:
        print("Temporary Directory has not been set. Skipping Pathmapping.")
        return

    print("Begin Path Mapping")

    update_mode = hou.updateModeSetting()
    hou.setUpdateMode(hou.updateMode.Manual)
    

    ####### CUSTOM FIX BEGIN

    # # gather a list of all parameters that need to be pathmapped
    # parms = gather_parms_to_map()
    # if parms:
    #     pathmap_parms(tempdir, parms)


    print("CUSTOM FIX: PARM PATH MAPPING HAS BEEN DISABLED! ")

    ####### CUSTOM FIX END


    envs = gather_envs_to_map()
    if envs:
        pathmap_envs(tempdir, envs)
    hou.setUpdateMode(update_mode)
    print("End Path Mapping")