My question, for now, is, how to go about setting up deadline so that it could take a particular file/folder and place it automatically on all selected slave machines DeadLine is installed on?
The idea is to spread custom scripts/tools and plugins that will get loaded on all the slaves during rendertime so that the slaves can proceed without hassle?
Also, it’d be nice if DeadLine could take care of the distribution of custom scripts for the artists to use daily.
I believe Frantic (Prime Focus) has done something like that in-house and use this system.
When you mention automatically placing scripts on machines, when are you looking to have these copied over/executed? Deadline currently has functionality to run pre and post job/task scripts that run before/after a job/task. These can be set up in the Job Properties dialog, or via custom submission scripts.
(see software.primefocusworld.com/sof … cripts.php for details)
We are also currently working on implementing functionality that will allow you to write a pre-load script for specific plugins, which will be run before a Job is started with that particular plugin.
As for the “distribution of custom scripts”, you might want to take a look at the scripting functionality we currently have in the Deadline Monitor: software.primefocusworld.com/sof … ipting.php
Hopefully this can achieve the functionality you’re looking for
So basically DeadLine doesn’t have a dedicated function for spreading plugins/scripts on slave machines, right?
In that case I’ll have to setup a script that’ll source these files from the repository and copy them over to the slaves which will be initiated via the DeadLine Monitor. Am I right?
The thing is, we’ll be using various plugin.ini copies, each for a set of plugins etc… including beta software that changes quite often and thus we’ll need to spread the new builds quite frequently on the farm and workstations, so I was thinking of using DeadLine to do just that for me.
Not yet, but the preload plugin script that Jon mentioned will be able to accomplish this in Deadline 4.0. The script will be executed before the application is launched, so any synchronization/distribution can be done in this script to setup the render environment. We’re adding this feature for our internal synchronization needs, so we’re sure you will be able to benefit from the feature as well.
