Compressor 4 “Render Farm” :: What is Required?

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

TO check firewall

Apple->System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Firewall

My primary question with AFP is when you are connecting -what account are you using to login to the remote server – the local admin?

In the old compressor it was quite evident how to reset the services. In the new one I have no clue. You can try the command line: qmasterprefs -reset

I have no way of testing this as I do not have a system with only Compressor 4 installed.

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

To expand on my last post – in compressor:

Compressor->Reset background processes

Also, you may want to look at this:

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/compressor_error_unable_to_connect_to_background_process.html

Repair disk permissions, etc as well.

[Doug Daulton]

Checked all machines … Firewall not on.

[Doug Daulton]

Resetting background processes let me build the cluster without error. Test render in process, but still appears to be hanging.

This process would be much easier if Apple incorporated more meaningful/useful error messages. 😀

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

We’re getting somewhere. Look at the console before, during, and after you submit the batch. Grab the error logs from there.

[Doug Daulton]

We have success! I can submit to the cluster and it is tearing up the test file. Thanks for all of your help Ian.

Oddly, trying to submit to the local machine seems to hang. The local machine is part of the cluster and required to be part of managed services. So, maybe that is the issue? You would think Apple would put in an error message like “This machine is part of XWZ cluster and cannot process jobs independently”.

Incidentally, I went back and my storage mounts after seeing 0 machines mounted in sharing. I had just connected to machines over Bonjour, which should work. In any case, I specifically mounted the drive on all nodes via AFP://. I also created a specific cluster user and connected to the drive using that user, and saved the login creds to the keychain on each machine.

I am not sure that is a factor though, as I forgot to do it on one of the machines and the cluster is still using it. Weird huh?

So, one final quirk … one of my nodes (Green Leader) is not being seen by the cluster controller (Red Leader). GL sees RL and the rest of the nodes, but RL does not see it. So, it is not in the cluster. Again, weird.

Any ideas?

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

You could try adding it manually via the IP address.

[Doug Daulton]

I added the box by IP both in Compressor a Qadmin Preferences. Both se te box as online, but it does not appear in the Qadminstrator queue to be added to the cluster.

Did I do it right?

[Doug Daulton]

Ian,

I now have the entire cluster online. Woot!

Essentially, I went node by node by node, beginning with the Cluster Controller and did the following:

1) Compressor: Reset Background Processing

2) Ran “Compressor Fix” from Digital Rebellion, to blow away caches etc. Note to the concerned, this did not blow away my compressor configurations.

3) Shut down C4 & Qa4. NOTE: I did not power cycle the boxes. I just closed the app.

4) I brought up C4/Qa4 on the nodes FIRST and the Cluster Controller last.

5) I rebuilt the cluster with all 4 nodes and the CC in the mix.

I offer a little more detail in the screencast linked below.

Thanks to Ian and Bob for their help.

Doug

https://screencast.com/t/217vGrGC

[Doug Daulton]

A little follow-up. The managed cluster seems … fragile. It seems to break … a lot.