Licence seems to be lost on re-boot

[clay_creative]

Hi,

I'm using vray on a render farm controlled by Deadline.

I've noticed that sometimes whole jobs posted to the farm fail. When I look at the logs in deadline for the failed job, it simply says something to the effect of "failed plugin exception" or something like that. So not very helpful. Then I rebooted all the PC's on the farm, and the job still didn't work. Then I re-visited the licence server pages for vray on each pc and the job worked fine.

So I'm guessing that the PC's are losing their licence on re-boot. I've installed the licence server and am hoping it is running as a service (though not sure what it's name is so can't check). But what could be going wrong here. Any help or suggestions, would be great as I'm worried that every time the PC's re-boot, I'll lose the licence and the jobs will fail again.

Luc

[kostadin.botev]

What is the version of the license server you are using? If it is 5.x.x then yes it works as a service. If its 6.x.x then it's working as a process and if you sign out from the machine the process stops hence the lost of the license. If it is 6.x.x and you lose the license on reboot then make sure that the Chaos License Server Supervisor is enabled in Startup Apps, otherwise the process of the license server will not start automatically on boot. Windows tends to disable that.

[clay_creative]

What is the version of the license server you are using? If it is 5.x.x then yes it works as a service. If its 6.x.x then it's working as a process and if you sign out from the machine the process stops hence the lost of the license. If it is 6.x.x and you lose the license on reboot then make sure that the Chaos License Server Supervisor is enabled in Startup Apps, otherwise the process of the license server will not start automatically on boot. Windows tends to disable that.

many thanks for the reply.

Yes we are using version 6.

Probably a stupid question but how do I enable Chaos License Server Supervisor. I've googled it, but not found any info.

Cheers

Luc

[kostadin.botev]

Click on the Windows Start button type Startup Apps and press enter. There you will see all apps that should start with the Windows boot, the Supervisor will be there.

[clay_creative]

Hi there,

Finally got around to your suggestions, thank you very much.

I noticed that all the nodes had the 'Chaos License Server Supervisor' enabled in the startup app list. but one also had a 'Chaos unified login supervisor'. So I reinstalled the licence server on all the nodes that didn't have the 'Chaos unified login supervisor' and then that showed up in the startup apps too.

So do you mean that I need to have the 'Chaos unified login supervisor' working on startup?

Bit confusing

Many thanks

[kostadin.botev]

Chaos Unified Login is separate application that logs you in automatically in all Chaos products when you log in in one of them. It has no connection to the work of the license server. So you can have it or not, the license server is something completely separate and different.

[clay_creative]

Many thanks for the reply.

So I think the problem here is that the new licence server (6) does not run as a service. So unless we log onto each render node, the licence isn't activated. We run everything else as a service such as deadline because if we have a power cut or windows does a update/restart, everything still runs as a service (on reboot). With the new licence server this won't work, we would need to login to each node, each and every time they get restarted. This seems like an odd and dysfunctional backwards move. Why remove the ability to run the licence server as a service?

Many thanks

[kostadin.botev]

Yes, I already explained all that in a previous post. The option for running it as a service should be re introduced in future release.

[clay_creative]

Yes, I already explained all that in a previous post. The option for running it as a service should be re introduced in future release.

Sorry I missed that. Yeah it should be, seems really weird omission to take away the ability to run it as a service. An essential function IMHO

[kostadin.botev]

For now simply use version 5.5.5 and it will work as a service.