102.41 Feature Highlights


  1. Job Checkpointing -- Job servers can be rebooted, and jobs will pick up where they left off
  2. Irush Japanese Support -- Programs that output UTF8 and S-JIS can be viewed in irush
  3. AMD 64 / Linux Support -- Verified 102.41 runs on Fedora Core 1.0 x86_64 on the AMD 64 platform
  4. Submit Maya - Mental Ray Rendering -- New features for rendering with Mental Ray and Maya
  5. New Submit Scripts -- Some new submit scripts available with the new release
  6. Submit Scripts Centralized Code -- Submit scripts are shorter with centralized, distributed ".common.pl"
  7. New Rendering Statistics -- Irush 'Frames Info' and 'rush -lfi' now report some new statistics info

For a complete list of all features and bug fixes in this release, see the 102.41 Release Notes.



Job Checkpointing
Demonstrate Job Checkpointing
Restart Rushd, Jobs Remain

# rush -lj
STATUS   JOBID          TITLE                     OWNER    %DONE %FAIL BUSY    ELAPSED REMARKS
-------- -------------- ------------------------- -------- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --------
Run      ontario.58     FG_TEST                   erco       %10    %0    0   00:07:31
Run      ontario.59     BG_TEST                   erco       %14    %0    0   00:07:31
Run      ontario.60     COMP                      erco        %8    %0    0   00:07:30

# killall rushd                       # Stop the daemon hard
# /etc/init.d/rush start              # Restart the daemon; it will load jobs from last snapshot
rush start: rushd: daemon started as pid=17271

# rush -lj                            # Verify jobs are still running
STATUS   JOBID          TITLE                     OWNER    %DONE %FAIL BUSY    ELAPSED REMARKS
-------- -------------- ------------------------- -------- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --------
Run      ontario.58     FG_TEST                   erco       %10    %0    0   00:08:25
Run      ontario.59     BG_TEST                   erco       %14    %0    0   00:08:25
Run      ontario.60     COMP                      erco        %8    %0    0   00:08:24

# rush -lf on.60 | head              
# Verify frame list still intact
STAT FRAME TRY HOSTNAME       PID     JOBID       START          ELAPSED  NOTES
Done 0001  1   geneva         1272    ontario.60  01/19,14:10:57 00:00:11
Done 0002  1   rotwang        15410   ontario.60  01/19,14:10:58 00:00:11
Done 0003  1   huron          11159   ontario.60  01/19,14:10:59 00:00:11
Done 0004  1   geneva         1388    ontario.60  01/19,14:10:59 00:00:11
Run  0005  0   geneva         1056    ontario.60  01/19,14:11:10 00:08:39
Que  0006  0   -              0       ontario.60  00/00,00:00:00 00:00:00
Que  0007  0   -              0       ontario.60  00/00,00:00:00 00:00:00
Que  0008  0   -              0       ontario.60  00/00,00:00:00 00:00:00
Que  0009  0   -              0       ontario.60  00/00,00:00:00 00:00:00



Irush: Japanese Language Logfiles

Irush has been modified to support viewing UTF8 and S-JIS content. Useful for programs that output error messages in japanese fonts.

Sjis Example

Example showing S-JIS output from After Effects.

This feature can be enabled from the irush 'Edit | Preferences' menu:

Shows S-JIS selected in menu

Example showing the Japanese S-JIS option enabled.
UTF8 is also available.


64 Bit Support for AMD 64 / Linux

Rush 102.41 was verified to run on the AMD 64 running a 64 bit version of linux; Redhat's Fedora Core 1.0 x86_64 linux.

Other x86_64 linux distros will probably work equally well (eg. Suse, Gentoo), but they were not tested at the date of this writing (03/20/04). Use the 'redhat9' release of rush on 64bit machines. You are free to get an eval copy of Rush to see if it runs on your configuration. Use the contact information to request an eval.

Rush 102.41 Verification
AMD 64 / 64 Bit Linux
% head -1 /etc/issue
Fedora Core release 1 (Yarrow)

% uname -a
Linux superior.erco.x 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl #1 Wed Feb 18 14:10:39 EST 2004 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

% rush -ping superior: RUSHD 102.41 PID=24251 Boot=03/20/04,10:58:37 Online, 0 jobs, 0 procs, 0 tasks, dlog=-, nfd=7

% echo 'main() { printf("sizeof(char*)=%d\\n",sizeof(char*)); }' > foo.c ; cc foo.c -o foo ; ./foo
sizeof(char*)=8 ^^^ 8 byte pointers.. Definitely a 64 bit OS!


Update:
Recently tested with SGI's Altix 350 "ia_64" platform running SGI's version of Redhat Linux.
See this Rush
newsgroup message for details.

submit-maya Mental Ray Options

A new feature has been added at the bottom of the submit-maya interface. It is in beta, but enough customers found it useful in production, that it was included in this release.

New 'Which Renderer' prompt

This image is a screenshot of the bottom of the submit-maya form, showing how to choose from one of four methods for rendering;

        1) Maya software renderer (default)
        2) Maya's built in Vector rendering
        3) Mental Ray (Maya built in)
        4) Mental Ray Standalone


New Submit Scripts

Some new submit scripts were added:


Submit Scripts: Centralized Code

Platform
Change Pathname From..
Corrected Pathname..
Mac OSX /Volumes/tahoe/bigdrive/foo //tahoe/bigdrive/foo
Windows Z:\foo //tahoe/bigdrive/foo
Linux /tahoe/bigdrive/foo //tahoe/bigdrive/foo

Customizing FixPath() for a Heterogenous Network

    1) Run 'rushadmin'

    2) Click on ".common.pl" to edit that file

    3) Scroll down to the FixPath() function, and modify it (shown in red) to read:

sub FixPath($)
{
    my ($path) = @_;

    # Convert windows style backslashes to fronts
    $path =~ s%\\%/%g;                
# \path\file -> /path/file

    # Change Windows style Z: paths to UNC equivalent
    $path =~ s%z:%//tahoe/bigdrive%i;  # "Z:\foo" -> "//tahoe/bigdrive/foo"
    $path =~ s%//Tahoe%//tahoe%;       # "//Tahoe" -> "//tahoe"

    # Change Mac style /Volumes paths to UNC equivalent
    $path =~ s%^/Volumes/tahoe/bigdrive%//tahoe/bigdrive%i;

   
# Change Linux/SGI style paths to UNC equivalent
    $path =~ s%^/tahoe%//tahoe%;

    return($path);

}


4) Save the changes, close the editor

5) Hit 'Send' in the Rushadmin interface


Job Rendering Statistics

The Irush 'Frame Info' report (aka. 'rush -lfi') has been improved to show various statstics, including:
  1. How long the job took from start to end.
  2. How many cpu hours were involved total
  3. The start/end time for the job while rendering
Here's a clip of the new report:

New "Frame Info" Report
(rush -lfi)


Average Total
Jobid State Total Perc Elapsed Elapsed Average ETA
------------ ----- ----- ---- ---------- ---------- ------------------------
rotwang.3 Que 2 %4 - - -
rotwang.3 Run 2 %4 - - -
rotwang.3 Done 46 %92 00:00:11 00:08:36 Thu Feb 12 17:47:16 2004
rotwang.3 Fail 0 %0 - - -
rotwang.3 Hold 0 %0 - - -
rotwang.3 ---
rotwang.3 Render Elapsed: 00:02:25
rotwang.3 Render Start: 02/12,17:44:45
rotwang.3 Render End: 02/12,17:47:10


Older Features







rush 102.41 features 03/03/04.