Distributed Rendering - Why is it bad to select "Register V-Ray spawner service"

[BKE]

After many hours of troubleshooting DR, I found that when I "Removed V-Ray spawner service" (see attached screenshot), all my problems went away on all 3 Render Slaves. (Black squares, missing materials) The same was true with the corresponding RT command. I want to avoid repeating this mistake in the future... and I would like to help someone else avoid the hassle, too... so, does anyone know why this command would cause problems? My attached Vray render slave log jpeg shows that the command was preventing access to the .ini file.
Thanks for your help!

[vlado]

When you register the spawner as a service, you must make sure that the service runs with proper rights to access the texture maps if they are based on a network resource. You can do this from the Services applet in the Control panel, where you must specify an actual user account for the service, rather than the default System account.

Best regards,
Vlado

[BKE]

Thanks, Vlado, for that explanation. I see where that capability would benefit some situations. Maybe when a person selects it a dialog box should pop up to remind you to properly register the service... or provide a shortcut so that you do register the service. That would keep people like me from turning gray prematurely. Thanks again for your explanation.

[vlado]

That's a good suggestion; will think about it

Best regards,
Vlado

[trixian]

I have recently stopped using it as a service and gone over to running it as a program as I have experienced some missing maps\stuff even with the services registered correctly. Could this have to do with nodes accessing maps\stuff simultaneously? (even though this should affect the spawner program as well, but doesn't seem to). Would it be possible to force slaves to load external resources in a random or staggered fashion to minimize these issues? I'd love to go back to running the spawner as a service, as it's much more convenient and generally feels more "correct" ?

[vlado]

Would it be possible to force slaves to load external resources in a random or staggered fashion to minimize these issues?

We can do that - it's somewhere on the "to do" list, I believe. We are also working on a way for the slaves to request missing assets from the client machine directly, which should minimize a lot of these headaches.

Best regards,
Vlado