Screamernet tutorials

BeeVee

BeeVee

Well-known member
Hi all,

Here's a thread dedicated to all those tutorials out there that teach people how to configure Screamernet. If I've missed any, please reply to this post with new links and I'll edit...

PC:
Matt Gorner's world-renowned PDF tutorial:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/community/lightwave/gorner/3.html (bottom of the page)

Matt's video tutorial:
http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24065

Fabio's:
http://www.firedragon.com/~fabio/screamer/screamer.htm

Ours:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/support/download.html

Kevin Phillips':
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/13419.html

Mac:
Worms of Art:
http://www.the-worms-of-art.com/tutorials/lightwavetutes_221.html#

Mike Scaramozzino's:
http://dreamlight.com/insights/10/welcome.html

Non-planar's:
http://homepage.mac.com/nonplanar/ (click on the Scream! link)

Ours:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/support/download.html


For Linux?
In my opinion, it's not worth using the Linux Screamernet. It will only work with the small number of plug-in that exist in the package. I think it's better to set up WINE and use the Windows render node under Linux. That way you have access to all the plug-ins that exist for Windows. In addition, I have received reports that it still doesn't lose the speed advantage given by the low overhead of Linux. I'm not sure how that can be the case since it is running Windows under emulation, but there you go...

Third party controllers
Amleto: (Win)
http://www.nodalideas.com/amleto/index.html

ButterflyNetRender: (Win)
http://www.butterflynetrender.com/

Mule: (win)
[urlhttp://www.epicsoft.net/products/mule/[/url]

LightNet: (Win)
http://www.joejustice.org/lightwave/lightnet/

Renderfarm Commander: (Mac OSX)
http://www.brucerayne.com

ScreamerNet Controller: (Mac OSX)
http://www.catalystproductions.cc/screamernet/

Spider: (Win)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SXSpider/

TequilaScream: (Win)
http://www.digitaltoons.tv/shop/

Misc
A really good optimiser for rendering, whether through a single machine, or in preparation for distributed rendering, is Kevin Phillips' LCSM (Lean Clean Scene Machine), available for PC and Mac from the NewTek Europe website in our interview with him:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/community/lightwave/phillips/1.html


Phew, think that's all. Let me know if I've missed any! :)

B
 
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Added to the list! :)

B
PS. It was really good to meet you at Siggraph (even if it was for a short time) - how did that lady go away? Was she impressed?
 
Cool! Yeh, was a good 30 second 'Hello', eh! :)

I've sent you an email response to the second half of your question, since I figured wouldn't block up the forum here with chit-chat! :D

PS. I just noted - there's TWO L's in Phillips - They also mispelt that in the 8 Reference Manual as well I noticed! :rolleyes:
 
Matt Gorner's world-renowned PDF tutorial

Hi, I have successfully used Matt Gorner's world-renowned PDF tutorial to setup Screameret II for Lightwave 8.2, using 20 nodes, and it is working very well, including usage with image maps, sequential image maps, and plug-ins. Thanks for the excellent tutorial.
-qb
 
I'm not sure how that can be the case since it is running Windows under emulation, but there you go...
Click to expand...

According to the Winehq page:
..as the name says, Wine Is Not a (CPU) Emulator. Wine just provides the Windows API. This means that you will need an x86-compatible processor to run an x86 Windows application, for instance from Intel or AMD. The advantage is that, unlike solutions that rely on CPU emulation, Wine runs applications at full speed. Sometimes a program run under Wine will be slower than when run on a copy of Microsoft Windows, but this is more due to the fact that Microsoft has heavily optimized parts of their code, whereas mostly Wine is not well optimized (yet). Occasionally, an app may run faster under Wine than on Windows. Most apps run at roughly the same speed.​

So there y'go. I'm currently building a dual boot linux / windows render farm.. wel render garden, I'll do some tests with LWSN under linux, windows and wine and post the results, just as soon as I can get the **&@%^#$ LWSN network going. <tears more hair out>

Hey does anyone know of any Linux LWSN documentation apart from the 7.5c release readme?
I can't even find the executable file once I installed it, let alone set up all the configs. I've set up a cross platform network using OSX and windows machines before but the current install OSX and Linux is doing my head in.
 
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Let's share our pain...

Hello,

I'm trying to setup a linux/windows renderfarm too.
Shall we share our experience ?

So far, I've been able to setup a windows render farm with 20+ nodes.
I'm using Lightnet (joe justice) as controler, on a Win2K server hosting the scenes, renders and applications files

I've installed linux as dual boot on my workstation.
I've setup samba, and mounted the network drives
I've installed the 7.5d RPM, and it runs fine, but...

1 - Lightnet does not sees it.
2 - The embeded LW Screamer controler sees it, and then freezes.

I'll be happy to have some help past that point.
Thanks
/bernard/
 
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a pain shared is a pain doubled..

Silly me. I thought that between OSX and linux all I'd have to do was plug the ethernet cable in and get to work. HA! To get the Apple box to see the linux box I've spent about three days crawling round the basement of my linux install trying to plug the right wires into the right sockets.

I am so over linux. It was a good idea at the time when I was selling it to the suits: "Linux is so cool, it's really stable and there's lots of support and it's secure and best of all it's free!" forgot to mention that to do something like share a volume on the network you have to learn how to edit .conf files with a terminal based text editor, and manually start all the daemons (what planet are those linux geeks on "daemons"?! purleese) and the file servers and punch a hole in the firewall to let the connection get through.

But now I can mount the volume on my mac desktop using flaky flaky afp. NFS? that would be nice but no can do. Even SMB doesn't want to work.

So after learning more about linux networking than I really ever wanted to know I go to run the LWSN node.
error while loading shared libraries: lwtools.8.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory​

Ok that's why everyone doesn't use linux right there. It's a great operating system, but it doesn't work. Nothing ever just.. works. You ALWAYS end up reconfiguring some obscure config file using some instructions written in Old Icelandic with a text editor that came from the days when computers had valves.

I'm giving up. I've ordered a copy of windoze for all my render nodes, the cost doesn't come close to the cost of me messing around with this confounded geekery for days on end. I feel defeated, and bad about myself for having to share the same room as a bunch of windows boxxen, but there you go. At least I'll know how to set up the network.
 
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Don't give up

Hi,
I understand you pain, for I've been in the same sheeeeet
You can see OSes like swimming techniques.
Win is like a LifeRing. Everibodycan float with that, but you can't move fast. and yes, there's a rope holding you to the MS-boat.
MacOs is a surf board. It's cute, elegant, fast. But you never have a chance to see what's under the see.

And linux is real swiming. not floating device is helping you.
On the other hand, that's th real way to deal with OS : obscursive text files telling in pseudo-laguage what to do. Everything else is visual illusion, or floating devices.

Pretending Linux is dummies-ready is non-sense. It's throwing in the water people who does not know how to swim. 5% will learn, 95% will suit you if they survive.

BTW, the answer to your question, if you still want to swim like a grown-up sysadmin is there (from rehat knowledge base)

Issue:
I have an application (Trendmicro), that refuses to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It produces following error in logs: 'symbol errno, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference' which should be fixed with 'export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1', which in turn I put into /etc/profile. How can I fix that on my system?

Resolution:
This error is due to the third party application not conforming to standard library call practices. You may be able to work around this by using export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5; this is however simply a workaround, and the proper solution is for the third party application to be rewritten to conform to standard library call practices.

I did add it ro my .bashrc and it's fine.
I think the best is to add it in the .lwsnrc file.

Now, you can go to the next bug i was mentioning in the previous post...

Maybe we should open a "linux install" thread.

/bernard/
 
You see I don't want to learn to swim. I want a boat to get to the other side of the river where I can get some work done.

If I wanted to be a sysadmin I'd have gone to sysadmin school and bought a pocket protector, some horn-rimmed specs and a lab coat. I'm an animator, that's how I make money to pay the bills and feed the kids. Learning what the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file does appeals to my inner l337 h4xx0r, but it's not part of my job description. Time is money. If I were to add the time I've spent tinkering with these linux boxes to the bill at the rate I charge my clients I could have bought a rack full of G5s.

Anyway thanks for the help, I'll give it a go, just because I'm grimly determined to get this mongrel to work.
 
What happens to PC plugins like FPrime when using Linux as Render nodes?
Does it still work? I have heard you need a Windows PC to these plugins with a render node. True?
Bob :rolleyes:
 
PC (or Mac) plugins won't work with linux render nodes. Which Is why I gave up on my linux render farm. It wasn't worth the effort, because I do very few scenes without plugins o some sort.

It's a pity, a linux version of LW would rock like a wobbly thing.
 
Lets not forget MULE, he's been my network rendering solution for over a year now. They also announced at their NAB booth, that 2.0 is coming out in Aug... theres some 2.0 info and screen shots on the site also...

Check it out@
www.epicsoft.net/products/mule

you should add their setup videos to the screamernet section also...One is by Don Balance from Toasterdudeds and the other by Ryan Moore from epicsoft...

just giving a shoutout to my pipline peeps :)
 
Linux render nodes can be done and I only have one issue left to solve before I know how to solve the rest of it. Currently I am getting .flx files as output from my linux render nodes. Does anyone know how to get linux to output something other than .flx files? If I can get this working I would be more than willing to put together a tutorial on how to create a linux render cluster with a windows master node.

Just in case anyone is wondering I am using wine to run my lwsn.exe and samba to mount a common network drive to a wine drive.
 
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Andruil said:
Linux render nodes can be done and I only have one issue left to solve before I know how to solve the rest of it. Currently I am getting .flx files as output from my linux render nodes. Does anyone know how to get linux to output something other than .flx files? If I can get this working I would be more than willing to put together a tutorial on how to create a linux render cluster with a windows master node.

Just in case anyone is wondering I am using wine to run my lwsn.exe and samba to mount a common network drive to a wine drive.
Click to expand...


If I remember well, I read somewhere that the .flx problems was due that the nodes wouldnt find the file format plugins.

Best regards,
David
 
Thanks that has helped me out greatly. I just found a thread that talked about that issue and when I get a moment to revisit my cluster i'm going to try and get my paths straightened out.

Sigh.... I hate finals.... I have no life during finals....
 
Andruil said:
Thanks that has helped me out greatly. I just found a thread that talked about that issue and when I get a moment to revisit my cluster i'm going to try and get my paths straightened out.

Sigh.... I hate finals.... I have no life during finals....
Click to expand...


I am glad it helpes.

I would like to see that tutorial about mount the renderfarm with Linux, maybe I would do that on my renderfarm at the office too, but it would help me a lot have instructions on how to do that, cause in Linux I am totally nerd! :)

Best regards,
David
 
lol sounds good. It may be a few weeks though as I am wrapping up finals and well..... sigh.

Anyhow it actually has proven to be a lot easier than I originally thought it was going to be and would be fairly simple for anyone. Only catch is you must have admin access on all the linux machines to install stuff. Everything else will be pretty straight forward and I can practically give you the commands.
 
Andruil said:
lol sounds good. It may be a few weeks though as I am wrapping up finals and well..... sigh.

Anyhow it actually has proven to be a lot easier than I originally thought it was going to be and would be fairly simple for anyone. Only catch is you must have admin access on all the linux machines to install stuff. Everything else will be pretty straight forward and I can practically give you the commands.
Click to expand...


Ok thanks, I will wait for you tutorial I do not need to do it inmediatly! :)

Best regards,
David
 
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