Looking for some help with Accurender nXt Farm

[Brian R. Poppenwimer]

Hi,

Trying to get some help with setting up a farm.  I had setup 2 machines and it was running great under the evaluation, but over the weekend, our architects decided they needed more power so they bought a unlimited node license.

They shut down the running farm and then installed new nodes and added the license keys to them so they no longer said evaluation.  For some reason when they tried to get 15 nodes running it wouldn't allow more than 4 to function.  They would shut down every computer and start one up install the software and try to license as they had done on the other machines, it would blink, but Evaluation would never disappear on any other machine they were trying to add to the farm.  So they basically maxed out at only 4 machines for the farm, no other machine would take the unlimited license.

All the machines are 32 bit windows xp machines.

 

Thanks,

Brian R. Poppenwimer

It Director

Nelson & Pope, Nelson, Pope & Voorhis, Hawkins, Webb & Jaeger

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Try shutting down the entire farm again by making sure that there are no active jobs and closing all running nodes by manually going to each machine and shutting it down.  Use the Monitor app to verify that this is indeed happening-- if you still see machineson the Monitor let me know. 

Run each un-licensed machine and insert the license.  Once a machine is running and no longer says eval, shut it down and move to the next machine.  Once everyone is licensed you should be able to start them up again.  Let me know.

 

 

[Brian R. Poppenwimer]

I have exited the render farm software on the 4 machines, and the monitor is empty of al machines.

I installed the software on my machine now, and tried to license it, but it just blinks and pops back up, never accepting the key. (my machine is windows 7 64bit)

Tried a spare machine, and it worked fine, allowed me to license.

I tried my original 2 node farm, and I can't get them to license.  I tried un installing and re-installing on them, but nothing I do will make them take the license.  So I am up to 5 machines that have accepted the license.  I just tried another machine, windows xp like the rest and it did not accept the key either.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Strange-- I'm in the process right now of creating an applet to make licensing easier. It will require a re-install-- but otherwise should be easier and I should be done today.

In the meantime-- try using Task Manager on a machine which will not license after it's been shut down.  On the process tab look for nXtFarmer64.exe or nXt64.exe.  If you see either of these, you can kill all instances of the process-- kill nXtFarmer64.exe's first, then nXt64.exe.  Let me know if you see either of these processes.

 

[Brian R. Poppenwimer]

Nope none of them are running.  I had checked for that already to make sure it was clearly not running.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Just for grins-- check the version number on the About box of the farm node that won't license.

[Brian R. Poppenwimer]

1.0.239

All the same, had just downloaded the software last week.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Brian-- copy the attached .exe file to the farm program folder-- normally

C:\program files\nXt Render Farm\

and run it.  Try to paste your key in and see what happens.  Shut  the node down on that machine first.

 

Let me know if it works.

 

It's possible that security settings will prevent you from downloading an .exe-- let me know if that is the case.

[Brian R. Poppenwimer]

It pops up invalid Key.  Tried it on two different computers.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Something else is up-- which is good (sort of)-- I'll take this discussion private.