Backburner issue

[MikeHampton]

Not a Vray issue... just a max issue that I posted over at "the area", but haven't gotten a response yet. I'm hopping that maybe someone here might have some ideas.

I’m trying to help our IT folks out.

I’ve got 6 new 64bit render nodes. The first node was set up so that we could test everything out with our current 32 bit environment. I will call this computer Render1.

A few road bumps, but I think we’ve got most things ironed out.

Now our IT guys would like to set up the other 5 render nodes by ghosting the first one and copying it over to the other machines.

They tried it with one to see if it would work on another machine, which I will call Render2. Everything seemed to be going fine, except that it appears that the backburner manager sees Render1 and Render2 as the same physical machine. just with different names.. When you start the BB server on one machine it kicks the other off the BB manager.. then when you restart the server on that machine, it logs back onto the monitor but kicks the other off.

It seems that I can only have one of them connected to the BB manager. Each machine has a different IP address, and Render2’s computer name was changed to Render2. In the BB server settings it was also changed to Render2.

When that didn’t work.. they did a search of the entire registry and changed anything that said “Render1” to “Render2”. After a restart.. still had the same problem.

I’ve looked through every setting in BB that I can find and don’t see any reason why this would be happening. No matter what I try, the BB manager replaces Render1 with Render2 when the server on Render2 is started, and then will replace Render2 with Render1 when Render1 is re-started. Or if you just let them sit there.. they keep trying to connnect to the manager.. keep kicking one another off back and forth.

Any thoughts on how to fix this other than doing a re-install of the entire machine? Is there simply a setting somewhere that I’m missing?

Our network doesn't seem to have a problem with either of these machines.. only BB.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Joost Ink]

are you using the bb server services on the render nodes?
if so, it might help to uninstall that service first and run the server manually 1 time and fill in the manager name/IP (I prefer names), so it will find it.
once that worked you can use the server service again, and it will probably work, at least that was how I solved that problem here.

good luck.

[vance3d]

Did you try uninstalling backburner on the render 2 machine and reinstalling it fresh?

V Miller

[MikeHampton]

Did you try uninstalling backburner on the render 2 machine and reinstalling it fresh?

Yes... tried this already, but didn't fix it.

are you using the bb server services on the render nodes?

No.. if I understand what you are asking.. I have BB server running as an app, not a service.

[devin]

Is this Max 2010?

[MikeHampton]

Were still using max 9.

And a slight update... when I start the max server on render 2.. it doesn't actually log onto the manager. What is happening is Render1's name is changed to Render2, but keeps on renderings just fine, while the real Render2 eventually errors out as not recieving anything from the manager. And Render1 will remain being called "Render2" (and keep working fine) until the server is restarted on that machine.. at which point manager will change it's name back to Render1.

I've deleted the severs in the monitor and restarted everything.. but it still does the same thing.

[MikeHampton]

Solved:

In the Backburner.xml file there is a string that looks like this:

<ServerMAC>0019B943B5A1</ServerMAC>

That mac address was cloned to the other machine. The BB manager looks at this number to identify the machine. Changing this MAC address in this .xml file on the cloned machine seems to have fixed the problem.

Thanks everyone.

[dcullipher]

When you ghosted the machines you have to reset the MAC address. There is a simple utility to do this. Then delete the backburner.xml file so it will rebuild properly