Previous Features: 102.41 Feature List

Job Checkpointing -- Job servers can be rebooted, and jobs will pick up where they left off
Irush Japanese Support -- Programs that output UTF8 and S-JIS can be viewed in irush
AMD 64 / Linux Support -- Verified 102.41 runs on Fedora Core 1.0 x86_64 on the AMD 64 platform
Submit Maya - Mental Ray Rendering -- New features for rendering with Mental Ray and Maya
New Submit Scripts -- Some new submit scripts available with the new release
Submit Scripts Centralized Code -- Submit scripts are shorter with centralized, distributed ".common.pl"
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

Big feature many have been waiting for.

You can now reboot a job server, and all the jobs will remain intact.

Rushd now regularly writes out a snapshot of the jobs to disk at 10 minute intervals (default), so when a machine is uncleanly shut down or rebooted, on reboot Rush will take the last snapshot, and bring the jobs back up to a running state.

The time between snapshots is configurable with the new

"checkpoint.secs"

command in the

rush.conf

file. The default snapshot time is every 600 seconds (10 minutes).

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.

Example showing S-JIS output from After Effects.

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

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:

Nuke ^TM
Renderman ^TM

Submit Scripts: Centralized Code

Functions like FixPath() have been moved to a central script called $RUSH_DIR/rush/etc/.common.pl, so that all the submit scripts don't need to have the same functions replicated in each script. This makes the scripts shorter, and makes it easier to make a one-change-fixes-all modification, as is often the case with functions like FixPath().

For instance, in a mixed Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux environment, the sysadmin might want to pathnames submitted through any Rush submit scripts first get converted into proper network pathnames. eg:

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

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:

How long the job took from start to end.
How many cpu hours were involved total
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

rush 102.41 features 03/03/04.