[New User Questions] Communication between Repository Server and Renderfarm Client

Deadline
1

I’m trying to set up Deadline for our Animation courses to use. The students use Maya 2023 and Arnold on Windows 10 workstations, and the renderfarm is all Rocky 9 Linux.

I have the Database and Repository set up on one host - buzz.
The repository folder is exported as /projects/instr/deadline/DeadlineRepository10 - that’s the folder containing the api, backup, balancer, bin, events, jobs… folders.

On the first of the renderfarm clients - wheezy - I’ve run the ClientInstaller, with “direct connection” and installing the launcher as a daemon.

When the service starts, there are a lot of messages, but this one seems important:

2024-01-16 15:16:45: Worker - An error occurred while updating the Worker’s info: An error occurred while trying to connect to the Database buzz.:27100. It is possible that the Mongo Database server is incorrectly configured, currently offline, blocked by a firewall, or experiencing network issues.
2024-01-16 15:16:45: Full error: An exception occurred while sending a message to the server. (FranticX.Database.DatabaseConnectionException)

I have this in /etc/services on both buzz and wheezy:

mongodb 27100/tcp # MongoDB Daemon/Router

On the repository / database server - buzz - in the “mongod.conf” file, I do have this:

net:
port: 27100
bindIp: 0.0.0.0

It’s clear to me that (a) the renderfarm client and the Deadline server aren’t speaking with each other, and (b) I’m not sure what I need to change to fix this.

(Yes, I’d started another thread last month, but in getting back to this issue, it’s clear that I have TWO issues: (a) making sure the renderfarm clients and the Deadline server are talking, so that jobs can be dispatches to them, and (b) making sure the animator workstations can communicate with the Deadline server.)

Help? Thank you.

2

I spoke with a colleague - not someone who knows Deadline, but knows networking and process communication - and he pointed out that the “mongod” logfiles have plenty of errors in them, indicating that the issue may lie with how the server is configured. I’ve attached a zipped “mongod.log” for reference.

mongodlog.zip (15.0 KB)

3

I’m not used to the new (to us at least :smile: ) MongoDB logs, but I’m pretty sure this line here:

{"t":{"$date":"2024-01-17T10:24:28.703-08:00"},"s":"I",  "c":"CONTROL",  "id":23403,   "ctx":"initandlisten","msg":"Build Info","attr":{"buildInfo":{"version":"7.0.4","gitVersion":"38f3e37057a43d2e9f41a39142681a76062d582e","openSSLVersion":"OpenSSL 3.0.7 1 Nov 2022","modules":[],"allocator":"tcmalloc","environment":{"distmod":"rhel90","distarch":"x86_64","target_arch":"x86_64"}}}}

says this is a MongoDB 7.0.4 server, which Deadline doesn’t support. The latest we can do is MongoDB 5.

That’s likely why the clients are failing to connect, our database middleware is talking a language two versions behind.

However it’s clear clients are hitting the database, so from a networking perspective you’re all good. Just downgrade MongoDB and you should be in good shape.

4

Justin, thanks for the reply. I will look into downgrading MongoDB.

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5

MongoDB 5 will EOL this coming October; is there any action being taken to support a newer version?

6

We’re not able to share any details about the roadmap due to Amazon policy, sorry!

7

No worries (just hope).

I managed to downgrade the MongoDB version from 7.0.4 to 5.0.23 - hooray for “compat-openssl11” - and now I’m seeing connections between one of the renderfarm clients (wheezy) and the database/repository server (buzz).

Thank you for your help - much appreciated.

8

For clarity, MongoDB does not offer a Rocky 9 version of 5.0.23, only an EL 8 version.

Downloading and attempting to install the RPM yielded unmet dependencies, which I was able to resolve by ALSO installing the compat-opensl11 RPM and then installing the MongoDB RPM.

9

Just an update… there’s a few things that I still need to figure out, but I am able to dispatch jobs to the renderfarm clients from a workstation (running Maya 2023) and see the jobs’ progress in the Monitor application.

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