AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

Slave Scheduling Not work

Hi !

I may be a mistake but my slave scheduling not work i have parameter this but it’s did nothing.

i try to

start slave A at 21:00 and stop at 8:30
Start slave B at 8:30 and stop at 21:00

I’m working on windows all luncher as service

Thanks !

Brice

Just a thought but did you edit the scheduled group to ‘enabled’?

I’ve definitely been bitten by that. :slight_smile:

Actually, I tried this on my end to see if I could get this to work (hadnt been using it before) and it does not work for me at all.

Using 10.0.9.4 on Windows Machines. Launcher and slave running as services. Is this function also tied to the slave and launcher running as interactive desktop applications instead of services?

Is there a way to make the Launcher run interactively on login but as a service while logged off? Maybe a login/logoff script through Active Directory?

To reference the above tip, I have enabled the group. Doesn’t work at all. Slaves remain disabled when the schedule says it should turn on. What else am I missing?

Judging from the other thread,I’m assuming that scheduling is using the same mechanism as idle detection, which does not work on Windows when you run the launcher as a service, right?

Makes renderfarming in a school so much harder. :frowning:

Yup - tried it one machine and bingo! Scheduling works when the launcher is run as a desktop app.

Looking into if the scheduling also requires the GUI to be active on top of the launcher needing to be run as a desktop app.

I tried running the desktop app with “nogui” as an option in the .ini file… I didn’t seem to get any response from the scheduler. When I killed the running launcher via Task Manager, edited the .ini to use a GUI, re-ran the launcher… all the features sprang to life.

Well, the idle detection fails because the OS limits our ability to query that info.

The current clock time is less of a problem. If I’m honest, I’m trying to get some info on a Launcher lockup problem that likely affects idle detection, scheduling and remote commands. It also stops the Launcher from logging anything.

Could you try enabling remote administration and throwing some commands at this troublesome render nodes? I’m still looking for the trigger that’s stopping the Launcher from doing its thing.

Hey ! Have find workaround for this, just little script for workstation run deadline has service when not loged on Like render farme and desktop app when user log on workstation.
As if no one is on the machine it behaves like a Renderfram, and if someone is logged on it respects the Schudeling and Idle detection

Juste put batch script in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

taskkill /f /im deadlinelauncherservice.exe cd "C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline10\bin" start deadlinelauncher.exe

Awesome! I’ll try the script to see what happens.

Remote Admin is enabled for all the machines; what kinds of commands should I run to help you test?

I tried the Remote Control > Connect with Remote Desktop and it worked fine.

I ran a CMD using the remote control to launch Notepad and it looks like it worked fine as well (notepad ran under the slave process without a GUI appearing).

I’m still trying to experiment with the scheduling in service mode anyway to see if I’m doing anything wrong. Aside from setting the group to “enabled” what else should I be looking for?

The launching of Notepad I think should have been a great test. I’d also check the Launcher log to see if it said anything about it. It’s supposed to log it all, so I’m hoping that’s another good test.

For the script, you can also do logon/logoff scripts:

REM   Run this at logon
%DEADLINE_PATH%\deadlineslave.exe -s            REM This will send a remote command to all Slaves to stop it
REM   Run this at logoff
%DEADLINE_PATH%\deadlinelauncher.exe -slave     REM This will send a remote command to the Launcher to start it

Can it be confirmed that scheduling does not work with running the launcher / slaves as a service in Windows?

I keep trying and it absolutely does not work for me. My findings are based on what I observe and read about from other people, but it would be helpful to have a definitive answer from Thinkbox as to whether it is actually supposed to work or not when running as a service in Windows 10 v1709.

If it supposed to work, then I’d like to know what it is I’m doing wrong.

Seems my last answer wasn’t overly definitive:

Starting the Slave on a time schedule does work as a service. I’m about to test it here on Windows just to make sure there isn’t a regression in 10.0.10.4.

Idle detection does not work when running as a service.

Okay, after testing (and remembering today’s a Tuesday) things are working as expected. The Slave seems to pick up when checking through at its regular settings update interval. For example, I set mine to start at 12:00pm today. Here’s what we have:

2018-02-06 11:57:26:  BEGIN - MyMachine\amsler
... hardware stuff ...
2018-02-06 11:57:26:  Deadline Launcher Service 10.0 [v10.0.10.4 Release (ffe5d2721)]
2018-02-06 11:57:26:  Launcher Thread - Launcher thread initializing...
2018-02-06 11:57:26:  creating listening socket on port: 60042
2018-02-06 11:57:26:  writing listening socket to launcher file: 60042
2018-02-06 11:57:26:  Launcher Thread - Launcher thread listening on port 17000
2018-02-06 11:57:28:  Auto Configuration: Picking configuration based on: MyMachine / 192.x.x.x
2018-02-06 11:57:28:  Auto Configuration: No auto configuration could be detected, using local configuration
2018-02-06 11:57:28:  Launcher Thread - Remote Administration is now disabled
2018-02-06 11:57:28:  Launcher Thread - Automatic Updates is now disabled
2018-02-06 12:00:29:  Launcher Scheduling - Launching slave MyMachine because it has been scheduled to start and the schedule must be enforced (scheduling group "Test")
2018-02-06 12:00:29:  Launching Slave: MyMachine

Here’s my config:

Excellent! so now… I have to figure out what’s going on over here. What sort of info can I give you?

That’s a good question. We’re still waiting on a feature to be implemented to get more helpful logging out of the Launcher. I’m going to go push on that now since I’m fighting two different issues where that’d help.

This is especially odd because the Launcher should at the very least support starting the Slave. Stopping could be a firewall problem.

I guess the next steps are evidence that it at least tried to start the Slave. That would be a launcher log as well as checking to see if there are any Slave logs in “C:\ProgramData\Thinkbox\Deadline10\Logs”. The Launcher is pretty pushy when it’s running as a desktop app, so I assume it would retry regularly.

Also, because the check only triggers every 7 minutes, when you make changes not only restart the Launcher service (in case there’s a bug loading settings changes) and wait at least 15 minutes between changes to be sure it’s picked up.

Because it’s working outside of the service context, I’m going to assume the configuration is right. I’d still double check as I did make a silly mistake myself yesterday with my configuration…

If all that fails and there are no Slave logs, do you know if you have a user-based firewall there? I doubt it’s being blocked, but if the Launcher can’t hit the Database and Repository it won’t be able to load it’s idle settings.

I’ll take a look for those logs and post them here. I’m only running as a service as I cannot run as a desktop app in my environment.

Firewalls are forced to be disabled on every client via Active Directory GPO. So that shouldn’t be a problem.

Now, here’s an interesting observation - I came in this morning and many computers WERE offlined which leads me to believe that at least SOME of my clients are listening to the scheduler. Now to try to see why ALL of them aren’t listening to the scheduler.

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