help, installed in service mode, can't open monitor

Deadline
1

i just don’t understand how the service mode works, from my speculation the service installed is just a communication mechanism, it’s not slave itself. right? i found no clue on this on your online doc, i hope you guys would put some practical network setup examples in real world in the doc.

currently i installed the client in service mode on my computer, and the service log on as a domain user credential. but isn’t it supposed to show up in the deadline monitor? so i can start the slave manually? currently it doesn’t show in monitor. i checked the shortcut command line , it says

"C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin\deadlinelauncher.exe" -monitor

but if i go to C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin, and double click the deadlinemonitor.exe, and the monitor just magically opened, what happened?? is this the normal and expected behavior of deadline ? i tried a clean install on another machine, and the problem can be reproduced.

and another question, if the client is installed in service mode on a dedicated rendernode machine, how does slave start automatically, because the service is not slave itself, and the command line of the service sort of indicates this

"C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin\deadlinelauncherservice.exe" -noslave

what the heck is -noslave flag?

you guys suggested setting the screensave to deadline.scr, so that the slave can start automatically, but isn’t that what i should do when a user is logged on , so the screensave can work? if nobody is logged on to the computer, say dedicated render nodes, how does the slave start ?

2

i later found out that you can use the following registry key to set the screensave even no user is currently logged on

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]

"SCRNSAVE.EXE"="deadline.scr"
"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="60"

we are in a domain environment, and the screensaver timeout is enforced to be 15min, but by doing this, i could tell the user to reboot their pc before they leave, and when windows starts up, after 1 min, deadline.scr will be running, and hence the slave runs, am i missing something ?

but the problem is that still i could never see an “idle” slave in deadline monitor, they are all offline, when i double click the deadline slave shortcut in start menu, it flashes and goes away quickly , and the other shortcuts are the same, they just won’t open, if i go to C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin and found the deadlineslave.exe and directly run it, boom, it opens and shows up in deadlinemonitor ( of course i have no way of openning this monitor either, i have to directly run deadlinemonitor.exe from the installaion path)

i’m totally confused, what is the whole point of this service mode, if the slave has to be opened manually, just like the old 2.0 version ?

3

The slave as a service feature was a new feature added to 3.0, and you’re right, our documentation for this feature is practically non-existent. We will be updating our documentation for the 3.1 release, and we will make a note to properly document this feature for that release. We apologize for the inconvenience.

When the client is installed as a service, the Deadline Launcher application (the purple icon in the system tray when installing Deadline normally) is the service that is installed, and the Slave and Pulse applications are run through this service. You won’t see the Slave appear in the Monitor unless it is running alongside the Launcher service. You can still control the Slaves through the Slave list in the Monitor while in Super User Mode, and if you are running the Monitor on the same machine that the service is running on, you can control that individual Slave through the Monitor without being in Super User Mode. We removed the system tray icons for the Launcher, Slave, and Pulse while running in service mode due to some issues with Vista compatibility, but we might revisit this for Deadline 3.1 to make the system more easily and obvious to control when running service mode.

The Monitor should still launch as normal if you run it from the Start Menu. Is this not the case? I was a little confused because the shortcut command you posted is using the -monitor argument, but you’re talking about the slave not showing in the Monitor. If you launch the slave from the Start Menu when Deadline is installed as a service, deadlineslave.exe should appear in the Task Manager process list. If it’s not there, or if it is and it’s not showing up in the Monitor, then there may be problems with the slave when it’s trying to run as a service. Check the slave logs for error messages and feel free to post one to the board for us to take a look. The logs can be found in the shared user application data folder. On XP, this folder would be something like this:

c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\frantic films\deadline\logs

By default, the slave is set to launch automatically when the launcher starts. This setting is found in the deadline.ini file for the user account that is running the Deadline applications. On XP, this file would be found here:

c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\local settings\application data\frantic films\deadline\deadline.ini

You can use Deadline Configuration to check if the launcher service is running on your machines and if it is configured to launch the slave at startup. If you launch the Configuration application, and machines are shown as online but the Launcher isn’t responding, make sure that Remote Administration is enabled under the Launcher Settings in the Repository Options, which can be accessed from the Tools menu in the Monitor while in super user mode.

If the slave is configured to start up, the slave logs (as explained above) might contain information to explain why the slave doesn’t run at startup.

The -noslave option is always passed to the launcher when it is being started up by the system or from the start menu. Without this option, the slave will automatically start when the launcher starts. Instead, the launcher relies on the deadline.ini file to determine if it should launch the slave.

The screen saver option is really only for artists workstations, so that the slave will startup automatically if the artist is away from their machine. It’s not intended for render nodes. If you are not using the Deadline service mode, and you want to start the slaves automatically, you need to add a registry entry to auto-login the machine at startup. With the launcher and slave configured to launch at startup, this will allow your render nodes to automatically start the slave on boot up. This is what we do here at Frantic. Information for configuration your render nodes to auto-login can be found here:
franticfilms.com/software/su … ksetup.php

My gut reaction is that something is preventing the slave from running in service mode, and that is the root of all your problems. It could be a permissions issue, or something else, and hopefully the slave logs will provide some helpful information.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
4

yes rrussell, you are right , slave is not running in service mode.

we have a domain account domain\renderfarmcgi added to local admin group, and deadlinelauncherservice is started with this credential, when i logon to the machine with a different artist user account, the service started automatically, the logs are

deadlinelauncherservice(Sha-wks-aa074)-2009-01-09-0000.log
( i have enabled the remote administration in the repository settings )

2009-01-09 11:11:25:  BEGIN - SHA-WKS-AA074\renderfarmcgi
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Start-up
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  2009-01-09 11:11:25
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Deadline Launcher 3.0 [v3.0.33353 R]
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Launcher Thread - Launcher thread initializing...
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Launcher Thread - Remote administration is disabled
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Launcher Thread - Launcher thread listing on port 5042

deadlineslave(Sha-wks-aa074)-2009-01-09-0000.log

2009-01-09 11:11:25:  BEGIN - SHA-WKS-AA074\renderfarmcgi
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Start-up
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  2009-01-09 11:11:25
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Deadline Slave 3.0 [v3.0.33353 R]
2009-01-09 11:11:25:  Deadline Slave Configuration Error: Given repository path, "R:\ubiSoft_RnD\DeadlineRepository", does not exist or is not accessible from this computer.

There may be a network issue, or a valid repository has not been installed at this location.  If one has not yet setup a repository
it is possible to do so using the repository installer included in the installation files.
Deadline Slave will now exit.

but ifi log on to the machine with renderfarmcgi account, slave starts successfully without complaining about the mapped R: drive. and deadlline launcher service log shows the remote administration is enabled too. but still the slave doesn’t show in the monitor of another machine.

:edit btw does the repository path support mapped path ? currently the repository path is R:\support\deadlinerepository, and R: is mapped to our server, R: = \file-server\A VERY LONG PATH … \ , because we put our project files also under \file-server\A VERY LONG PATH … \Projects, one may has a concern about the 256 character limitation of windows xp, so we mapped the long path to R:, but deadline seems doesn’t like the R: , i have already mapped the R: for user renderfarmcgi.

5

Deadline supports mapped paths for repositories, but because you’re running the system as a service, those paths need to be “remapped” for that account. This would explain why it can connect fine when you log in as the same user that the service runs under, but not when you log in as a different user.

When you log in as renderfarmcgi and the slave starts fine, can you check the slave log to see if it is reporting any errors that might explain why it’s not showing up in the Monitor? Again, feel free to post it here for us to take a look at.

Cheers,

  • Ryan