distributed rendering

[Andreas Zehender]

Hi!

On Sunday, 21. September 2003 16:51, Christoph Fabianek wrote:
> That is definitly much, but I can't do much about this. What happens is
> that nspovray builds a .ini file which contains all options and a tar file
> that includes all necessary files (*.pov, *.inc ...). These two files are
> sent to each server and when it is finished the TGA is sent pack. I don't
> know about the internal protocol of NetSolve.

No, I was not complaining about the traffic, just some background information 
that nspovray actually transfers data but doesn't show an image.

> > Sending Input of Task 6595 to Server anakin02.sinrg.cs.utk.edu
>
> If you don't get any output like
> Downloading output from anakin04.sinrg.cs.utk.edu
> this is probably because of a firewall. You can either try to open the
> ports mentioned above or use the SSH transport. To test this create a file
> e.g. "ssh_hosts" with the following line
> localhost user /usr/bin/povray /usr/share/povray/include/
> or something like that. This should also be much faster than using the
> NetSolve grid (but you need to have a login at the machines and auto-login
> via ssh)
>
> Btw, you may also try nspovray at the command line - let me know what
> output you get there:
> $ export NETSOLVE_AGENT=netsolve.cs.utk.edu
> $ ./nspovray +iicl.pov

No difference.
Hmm, that's a problem. I have a standard SuSE firewall with no special rules, 
that protects the computer from the outside only. Outgoing ports are all open 
AFAIK. And that kind of firewall configuration is quite common.

Will have to search for a log of dropped packages...

Do the mentioned ports have to be open as server ports or just as outgoing 
ports?

> > 2) What I don't like is that you put all nspovray options in the render
> > modes. Global nspovray options should be in a separate settings page in
> > the settings dialog. Only options like number of instances and tile width
> > should be in the render modes.
>
> Ok, this is a general discussion. I also thought about splitting the
> options to different dialogs (and the first implementation was actually
> splitted) - here my reasons why I have collected them in a single tab in
> the Render Modes dialog:
>
> - I like to have options of a logical entity at a single place - even if
> that means to enter them for each scene (the only option that make sense to
> move outside would be "nspovray Path" - and you have the file selector to
> do this quickly. So, no big deal in my opinion.)

It doesn't only mean to enter it for each scene but for each render mode you 
want to use nspovray. These kind of settings have to be permanent.
Adding a new configure page is no big deal either.

> > The feature freeze has been delayed.
>
> What are the consequences for kpovmodeler - do you also plan to shift back
> the feature freeze? Especially, will the distributed rendering go into KDE
> 3.2?

If my points and questions are solved, then I will add it to KPovModeler 1.1. 
At the moment there are too many open points and problems.

Greetings, Andreas

-- 
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 Andreas Zehender
 Master of Computer Science, Dipl. Ing. (BA)
 http://www.azweb.de
 az at azweb.de | zehender at kde.org      
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