DR servers not starting

[powerandrubber]

Hi, I have DR running with viz4 and vray 1.09. It works great except that all but 1 of my servers do not start rendering without me physically shutting down and restarting vrayspawner on each machine every time I submit a new job. It doesn't matter if I configure it to run as an application or service I still have to manually restart vrayspawner even on the machine I'm rendering from. Any ideas?

Thanks

[powerandrubber]

This is the error from the network log file. I don't get the "Obsolete data format found : Please re-save file" problem, this file was created in viz4 from scratch and has always been saved in viz4.

2004/10/27 17:03:22 ERR: Server is not responding
2004/10/27 17:05:01 DBG: Starting network
2004/10/27 17:05:01 INF: Loaded R: emp$0_SRV_MAXSCENE.MAX
2004/10/27 17:05:05 WRN: Obsolete data format found : Please re-save file
2004/10/27 17:05:05 INF: Job: R: emp$0_SRV_MAXSCENE.MAX

Anyone?
Anyone?

[egz]

There's a max file that comes with VRay that needs to be loaded by the spawned max when it starts, before the scene is sent. I can't remember exactly what it is called in the previous version, but with the latest beta it's called vraydummy60.max, look for something similarly named in your viz root folder. Load the file and save it, then copy it to all your slaves. This should update the file to the correct version.

[powerandrubber]

Thanks for the reply. I tried that and it got rid of the "obsolete data error" now it's giving me this one

2004/10/28 16:56:15 ERR: Server is not responding
2004/10/28 17:00:14 DBG: Starting network
2004/10/28 17:00:14 INF: Loaded R: emp$0_SRV_MAXSCENE.MAX
2004/10/28 17:00:47 INF: Job: R: emp$0_SRV_MAXSCENE.MAX

The problem is the same although I figured out I can disable and re enable each server from the distributed rendering settings dialog and get them to work insead of physically restarting vrayspawner at each server. It seems like the buckets are all being sent at once and only one server is taking and the rest abort and have to be disabled/enabled to take. Any other ideas?

[dbuchhofer]

i personaly found the old implementation of DR to be about the same as you are... not very useful without a lot of babysitting.. Others have more luck then we do

Anyway, theres a few ways to ease the pain. Easiest of which is to install the vrayspawner as a service

here is some command line tools for administering processes or services.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/fr.../pstools.shtml

i made a batchfile of all the servers, and can restart them easily either all at once, or seperately..

rem ---------  restarts the service..
psservice \MachineName -u Login -p Password restart "VraySpawner 50"


rem --------- starts the service..
psservice \MachineName -u Login -p Password start "VraySpawner 50"


rem ---------  stops the service..
psservice \MachineName -u Login -p Password stop "VraySpawner 50"

the psexec works if you can't use services, with a little help.. if you're on a domain you may need to have the user in the DomainLogin format.. one thing that the goofy helpfile doesn't say.

Edit: Double slashes are sucky.