Purge Pools not functioning

Deadline
1

Hi,



I’d created a new pool for a group of machines to render a particular 3DSMax scene but when I removed the pool from the Manage Pools panel, I forgot to tick the ‘Purge obsolete pools on close’ box. The pool had disappeared from the list but the slaves still had it assigned. I clicked on the ‘purge obsolete pools on close’ button and closed the panel but nothing happened. The panel still says that there’s one obsolete pool but won’t get rid of it. I’ve tried restarting both the slaves and the monitor but the slaves are still assigned. Any ideas?



Cheers,



Jon

2

Hi Jon,



Actually, all Purge Obsolete Pools does is remove any pools that have

been removed that are NOT assigned to any slaves or jobs. If either a

single job or slave is still assigned that pool, it won’t be removed

(doing so could cause some unexpected results).



If you’re running Deadline 2.6, there is a new script option when

right-clicking on the slaves in super user mode that allows you to

simply remove a particular pool from the slaves selected.



Cheers,

3

Cheers Ryan,



I’ve run the script and the pool as been removed from all the relevant slaves. However, the manage pools panel is still telling me that there’s 1 obsolete pool and purging again doesn’t remove it. Could you add some information about purging pools and this script to the online manual as neither are mentioned? Perhaps a reminder about the script in the manage pools panel itself would be handy.



Another bug I’ve just found is that sometimes if I select two slaves and modify pools, the list of already-assigned pools is empty, even if the slaves both belong to the same single pool (in this particular case, 3DSMax). If I drag and drop a new pool and click okay, the 3DSMax one is removed and the new one replaces it (can’t seem to reproduce and find a common cause). However, the same always happens if two slaves with different pools are selected and therefore it makes it very difficult to quickly assign a group of slaves to a new pool without completely resetting them.



Last thing (!) is that sometimes there’s a pool name repeated in [square brackets] after the rest of the pool names which, after a while, disappears. Is there a reason for this?



Thanks,



Jon

4

Hi Jon,



Are there any jobs that are still assigned to that particular pool

you’re trying to purge? Also, is that pool in any of the slaves assigned

OR unassigned lists? If not, then we’ll try to reproduce the problem on

our end. I think that it would be a good idea to have Purge Obsolete

Pools actually go through all the slaves and jobs and unassign that pool

before finally removing it from the repository. In the case of the jobs,

it would just assign them to a different pool since jobs must have a

pool specified (you could probably configure ahead of time which pool

you want the jobs to switch over to).



When modifying pools, the assigned list will be empty if there are any

inconsistencies between any of the selected slaves’ assigned lists (same

goes for the excluded lists). This is to make it clear that you will be

overriding the current pool lists. That’s why we added the add/remove

pool script so that you can easily assign/unassign individual pools

without overriding the current lists. We hope to eventually combine all

these into a single “Manage Pools” dialog.



As for that bug you’re running into, we can’t seem to reproduce it here.

Which version of Deadline are you currently running?



Finally, when you see pools in square brackets, it means that the pools

in the slave’s settings has been updated, but that the slave itself

hasn’t recognized the change yet. The slave only checks its settings

every 5 minutes, so when it eventually does, the square brackets are

removed.



Cheers,

5

Hi Ryan,



I made sure the job list was empty before purging the pools. Also, I removed the pool from the slaves using the script so the Purge Pools option is running on an empty system.



We’ve got the latest build, 2.6 running here - Deadline launcher lists v2.6.24669. I can’t seem to reproduce the bug at the moment but if I see it again, I’ll let you know. I thought it might be appearing the first time you enter the Monitor, but that’s not the case. It may me that my memory is playing tricks on me!



I can imagine it’s difficult to have a modify pools dialog that has to accommodate all the special cases that selecting multiple slaves must create. Perhaps rather than a modify pools panel, you could have an Ajax-like drag and drop system on the main screen? Don’t know, just thinking aloud.



Jon