Monitoring nodes

[arobbert]

Does anyone know of a way to monitor your nodes from the host machine. Maby a plugin or something? Before I could look at the DR settings box and see if they were working or not. Now it seems the only way is to try and count buckets or read ip numbers in the buckets. Even a green light indicating that a server is sending buckets back would be nice.

[thablanch]

We are using "Remote desktop connection"

Quite usefull, you are seeing whatever node you want to see, becomes your desktop, and can control the other node as if it was your computer..
Been using it for a while, and no bugs, seemless

[joconnell]

Try vnc - its an open source free remote desktop program. you need a vnc server running on the render nodes and a vnc viewer running on the machine you want to control from - we use it here on our render farm and its great.

Tight vnc is a recompiled version of vnc optimised for speed of update.

http://www.tightvnc.com/

[arobbert]

Thanks for the replies. I'll give it a try. These look like good solutions but it still a pain to have to go through each one to check it. At least DR doesn't crash as much as it used to. If they would even give you a running tally of the total number of buckets it would be helpful.

[arobbert]

Man, this is great!

http://www.tightvnc.com/

Thank you very much! It's very easy to setup and works right from the start.

I figured out an interesting way to use it so you can have all your nodes open at once. Use the web version with Netscape and use a tab for each node. Then you can have multiple nodes open simultaneously all in one window. You can switch nodes by selecting a tab. You can bookmark a group of tabs which will open all the nodes at once, very fast.

This is going to be a very useful tool, but I won't get as much exercise running around to different nodes.

[arobbert]

This works great for starting and stopping nodes but it's hard to tell if a node has dropped out or not. You sometimes get a message in the log text but not always. I've paid dearly for these nodes and want to make sure they're rendering at all times.

[mike.edel]

another way would be kvm switches - they tend to be expensive tho' (at least for more than 4 computers)
example: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSecti...tion_Id=201714
the major advantage is you have less delay and you can work at full screen resolution + its no matter what OS the machines use

i used to work on 3 machines simultaneously with one of these and there was no difference to sitting in front of each

im also quite sure there are switches that let you display the connected machine's outputs on one monitor (something like 10 screens redirected to one large monitor)
would save you switching browser tabs

cu mike

ps: just checked another way:
download pstools from www.sysinternals.com
open a console for each DR client you want to monitor
pslist -s -r 5 -e \\REMOTE_MACHINE_NAME -u REMOTE_USER_NAME -p REMOTE_USER_PWP vrayspawner60

-s means it will stay open
-r 5 is the update interval in seconds
-e mans it will only look for exact matches to the process name
the console will display the process id of the process, the cpu time it uses, number of threads and even the memory usage (for mem usage you need to add -m to the options)

if the process doesn't run any more, the console will change the display a bit (the uppermost line will go away) - unfortunately this doesnt trigger a return value that could be caught by a calling script/program (would make it possible to pop up a message or so)
btw: you could put all the pslist calls inside a batch file for added comfort

DRmonitor.bat

start cmd /c ""d:\tools\pstools\pslist.exe"" -x -s -r 5 -e \\Computer1 -u login1 -p password1 vrayspawner60
start cmd /c ""d:\tools\pstools\pslist.exe"" -x -s -r 5 -e \\Computer2 -u login2 -p password2 vrayspawner60

process running:

12:20:52 18.01.2006 Process and thread information for Computer1:

Name                Pid CPU Thd  Hnd   Priv        CPU Time    Elapsed Time
vrayspawner60       280   0   1   54    844     0:00:00.030     0:12:38.821
                      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults NonP Page
                   30208    2992     844     844      824    2   31
 Tid Pri    Cswtch            State     User Time   Kernel Time   Elapsed Time
2228  10       500     Wait:UserReq  0:00:00.010   0:00:00.010    0:12:38.821

process not running:

12:20:52 18.01.2006 Process and thread information for Computer2:


vrayspawner60       280   0   1   54    844     0:00:00.030     0:14:37.601
                      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults NonP Page
                   30208    2992     844     844      824    2   31
 Tid Pri    Cswtch            State     User Time   Kernel Time   Elapsed Time
2228  10       569     Wait:UserReq  0:00:00.010   0:00:00.010    0:14:37.601

whoa, guess i overdid

[joconnell]

Abolutely - we have one of those physically tied to the render farm - I'd tend to keep render nodes away from me down to noise and heat reasons.

Another thing to note is that vnc can often take a lot of cpu power so you'll slow your renders down by aybe 15 - 40% depending on which version of vnc - bottom line keep the viewers closed.

[mike.edel]

ok, made a mistake
if you run pslist in normal mode (without the -s -r) it will return 0 if the process is running and 1 if not

now someone has to write a script or program to run pslist on a set list of computers and logins at a given interval and pop up a message if the queried process is missing

[mike.edel]

http://home.arcor.de/mike.edel/DRmonitor.zip
i couldnt resist to try if my concept works
unzip to a directory of your choice, adjust the .ini file
(location of pslist, process to look for, computer count, names, logins, passwords)
run the script from inside max

it will only run once (i didnt write an interval timer to have it look repeatedly)
it will print the results in the max listener

you could even send automatic "net send" messages to another machine by edting the script

cu mike

[Dynedain]

See this thread for a nifty utility for running a bunch of the common Vray/3DSMax scripts... including turning DR on/off, Stopping/starting processes, rebooting, and launching VNC:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...etrender+tools[/url]

[arobbert]

See this thread for a nifty utility for running a bunch of the common Vray/3DSMax scripts... including turning DR on/off, Stopping/starting processes, rebooting, and launching VNC:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...etrender+tools[/url]

I tried that first but couldn't get it to work.

[dbuchhofer]

true.. that wouldn't work nowadays since i'd hard coded in the 3dsmax7 directory at the time oops!