The spawner: Maya 2013 and 2014

[mdfisher272]

I'm trying to run VrayMayaSpawner for 2014 alongside 2013's spawner. If I give a "port" argument to the command, the spawner opens and closes vray.exe in an infinite loop until I kill the spawner.

When i kill the spawner, vray server remains open and serving requests on the desired port.

The command line issued for the spawner is:

vraymayaspawner2014.exe -port=20209

The vray.exe command line that starts up is:

vray.exe -server -portNumber=20209

This failure also occurs without port arguments if I set the env var VRAY_FOR_MAYA2014_DRPORT=20209

I can't install and start this service with a different port number than the default: 20207. If I use that default port, then vray.exe for 2014 can't receive any requests because the 2013 version is on that port.

Other items of note: our Vray install for 2014 is located in one location on the network. Our 2013 install is per-node on every machine that uses it. I managed to get a couple of machines to work properly with 2013 and 2014 side-by-side install of the spawner but I can't replicate the steps to get it working.

Also, I've checked the custom ports with tcpview.exe and I know they aren't occupied by any other process.

I'd rather not write my own spawner daemon for vray.exe so any assistance in this matter would be gratefully appreciated.

[mdfisher272]

On a related note: could you provide some documentation on VrayMayaSpawner.ini and the command in general. I can't find anything and I've scoured the internet and this forum. I found the "-port" arg by trial and error but trial-and-error is kind of dangerous

[ivaylo.ivanov]

I reproduced the issue here. About the command line, another helpful switch is -cmdparams which can be used to pass arguments to vray.exe. The others are NUMA stuff. The ini file can have 2 sections:
* Directories - keys TempDir, AppName, AppParams
* DR - keys port, node, numa

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Do you reproduce this issue every time? Now it works for me, and maybe I forgot previously a vray instance running somewhere on the same port. We should really try to improve the logging. Now all spawners use the same log file and it's difficult to see what is going on.

[mdfisher272]

On some machines, it suddenly works and I don't know the steps that made it work. When it starts working on a machine, I move over to another node on our render farm and the error appears again.

One note: the startup might appear to work if you left the port at the default (20207). This is a false positive. You should also make sure to kill the vray.exe processes that were left behind when the spawner died when testing new runs of the spawner.

My guess is that the spawner is trying to listen on the same port as vray.exe.

I agree that the logging should write to different files for different versions of the spawner AND for Vray.exe. Those interleaved log files are hard to decipher.

Thanks for the command args, those are very helpful.

[mdfisher272]

I've uninstalled the Vray DR for Maya 2013 and the 2014 still has the service startup issues.

BTW, I install the service remotely onto all our farm machines using the command line. This is the identical method to the 2013 version of DR that was installed.

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

Are you trying to start vraymayaspawner2014.exe as service or manually on every render node?

Would it be possible to try the following approach:
*) start Menu\Programs\Chaos Group\V-Ray for Maya 2013 for x64\ V-Ray standalone command prompt
*) type > vray.exe -server -portnumber=20207
*) start Menu\Programs\Chaos Group\V-Ray for Maya 2014 for x64\ V-Ray standalone command prompt
*) type > vray.exe -server -portnumber=20209

Then check in the task manager Vray.exe process to confirm that both are running and set correct.

[mdfisher272]

I tried to install service remotely(Using the Windows "psexec" and "sc" commands). The service never started -- neither by sending the remote command, nor by manually starting it locally on the host machine. It installed as a service, but on startup, the spawner would startup and kill vray.exe in a continuous loop until the service manager killed the spawner. This left the vray.exe still running -- it worked to serve licenses but a non-spawner-watched vray.exe is too volatile to be usefull: if the render hangs, or if vray.exe dies, there's no spawner to restart vray.exe.

I see the proper entry in the Services portion of the Windows management console for the service but it won't start manually or automatically at reboot.

As a workaround, I now remotely start the spawner in non-service mode which, in turn, starts up vray.exe with the proper args. The spawner and vray server are both running and working at that point, but not as a service -- a machine restart kills the spawner and server until I remotely restart the spawner again.

I've already checked the "run as" user for the installed service so that's not the issue. My remote command to start the spawner runs the spawner as that same user.

Also, we installed 2013 DR with this exact method and it worked like a charm as a service.

[mdfisher272]

The standalone command prompt cannot use a UNC path with cmd.exe. Our Vray install is located on a network path.

The only way this method works is with Power Shell but I don't know how standardized Power Shell is. I know it's on all of our Windows 7 x64 boxes.

I've changed the shortcut to use Power Shell. Once I did that, and performed the steps that you outlined above, Vray started in server mode and is listening on the proper ports.

I've never had a problem with vray.exe, I have the problem with the Spawner.

[mdfisher272]

I can replicate the problem:

If I attempt to start the spawner twice, the spawner opens and closes Vray.exe in an infinite loop. This is just what happens when I try to start the spawner as a service even if there is no currently running spawner.

[vlado]

Yes, I get this here too, need to look into it.

Best regards,
Vlado