Running Softimage without installing it.

[Francois Lord]

Hi.

In my never ending quest to find a way to install Softimage
automatically and simply on all machines, I have yet again hit a road
block.
Last year, after several days of failed attempts, I resorted to
installing it manually on my machine and copying the folder on the other
machines. I had to copy the ProductInformation.pit file from C:\Program
Data and I had to run the runonce.bat file. And then all was well and
dandy. Easily scriptable and no human intervention required.

This year however, things seem different. When I do the same, Softimage
can't find a license. This is where the ProductInformation.pit file was
required last year, but it seems it's not enough now.

I noticed there is a new License.env file in the Application\bin folder.
But it contains the right informations about our license server since I
ran the installer on my machine. I don't know if it has anything to do
with all this.

Any one has bits of info on this?

Thanks.


Francois

[Mirko Jankovic]

Now thinking about it... wouldn't it be good and even needed to have beside install option on installer something like install to render nodes or something to help out mass installation?

Even on 10 more computers is time consuming now add a 0 there or something..

How are you guys handling installation and management on small and medium render farms at all?

Installation, upgrades, addons and upgrades of addons...

Sorry for a bit of a hijack but it is kinda same topic right?

[Simon van de Lagemaat]

There is a network install option so all you have to do is run a batch file once on a machine and it silently installs with all  your licensing options that you set the first time.

[Thomas Volkmann]

For us the silent deployment install is working since a couple of versions. Together with RoyalRender updating the whole farm is easy. 

For plugins you have workgroups, and some applications (e.g. Nuke) can be installed on the network.

 

/Thomas

 

Mirko Jankovic <mirkoj....@gmail.com> hat am 16. Mai 2013 um 20:21 geschrieben:

[Sven Constable]

For installing on rendernodes as well as workstation, this is how I do it:

 

1. All rendernodes are the exact same hardware. Same for the workstations.

2. Install OS and apps on one machine and make workgroups, users, security settings etc. until everything is perfect. A kind of master machine to make an image from, to be later distributed to other machines.

3. I do a windows-sysprep to wipe machine-specific settings (computer name, windows serial, windows-workgroup). Then I make an image via ghost.

4. Distribute ghost image to unlimited machines in one go using multicast.

5. Log in on every machine once, to set  name, workgroup and  windows-serial.

 

I set up 8 machines recently with an earlier created image in about 1-2h. I'm pretty sure this procedure could be even more automated for large farms.

[Francois Lord]

The problem I have with the deployment method is that it fails on several machines (not all) without any form of error message.
The log says something about a problem registering some components. Then the installer reverts everything it has done and the entire Softimage 2014 folder is deleted.
Sooo... I'm looking for something else.

[Thomas Volkmann]

Not 100% sure, but I think on linux you can just copy the folder. ...just to get another flamewar going :)

 

Francois Lord <flord...@gmail.com> hat am 16. Mai 2013 um 22:29 geschrieben:

[Alan Fregtman]

Yup, in Linux you can copy the folder as-is. That's what we do at work here. :p

[Christian Freisleder]

maybe this entry on stephens blog might help.
http://xsisupport.com/2012/07/05/the-case-of-the-sideploy-install-that-silently-fails/

especially this:
Softimage 2013 switched up to Visual C++ 2010, so you need to have those prereqs installed already for SIDeploy to work.

hope it helps.

christian

[Sandy Sutherland]

At Triggerfish my IT guy had setup a kickstart sytem that deployed both
a Linux setup to our render nodes and a windows one to the
workstations. If you like I can find out the procedure to do it. It
did work very well, especially on the Linux side, we could build a
render node complete in about 10 - 15 mins ready to render again.

S.

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Sven

We have a bank of mac minis that we are going to have to boot camp to get Softimage up and running. You don't happen to know if they newer ghosts work with bootcamp.  

Kind regards

Angus

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[Sven Constable]

Sorry, I have no idea.

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[Dan Yargici]

Is that a PXE boot-type solution Sandy?  I looked into the idea a while back, it still seems like an awesome solution for renderfarms.  I'd love to hear more.

DAN

[Sandy Sutherland]

Dan,

I seem to recall so - let me check with my awesome IT guy back home and I will let you know the details.

S.

[Angus Davidson]

After spending some time today looking at it I see that Ghost has actually been phased out ;(  Theres a good solution for copying macs with windows partitions here.

http://gigaom.com/2010/01/12/how-to-image-os-x-and-boot-camp-to-a-new-mac/

[Angus Davidson]

Opps forgot to add theres a more enterprise like solution here as well

http://www.twocanoes.com/support/winclone/using-deploystudio-and-winclone-pro-to-image-a-lab-of-dual-boot-macs

[Dan Yargici]

Just to clarify, what I find attractive is the fact that with the right setup you can literally just plug a machine into a switch on your network and it will boot up as a rendernode with zero intervention needed.  You can get a machine to a usable state with a few minutes of taking it out of the box.

There was a company attempting to market this kind of solution a while back, but I guess they didn't get much demand and stopped

http://web.archive.org/web/20100523212259/http://www.linuxrenderfarm.com/renderfarmer/render-farm-software-overview.html

A more modern generic alternative that could be used as a base would be Razor.

http://puppetlabs.com/blog/introducing-razor-a-next-generation-provisioning-solution/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR1bOg0IU5U

Of course, all these things require some solid sys-admin work to implement.  Seems like the future to me though.

DAN