Christoph Hormann wrote:
> David Bucciarelli wrote:
> 
>> I have written a tool for POVRay rendering on clusters. The name of 
>> the tool is JCGrid. Thanks to JCGrid, you can use as many 
>> Workstations/PCs/Macs as you like for the rendering of a single POVRay 
>> image.
>>
>> It doesn't require a any patch for POVRay and it works running POVRay 
>> like an external command. Any file required for the rendering is 
>> transferred between the nodes of the grid by JCGrid.
>> [...]
> 
> 
> Very well but you miss the most important information: *how* are the 
> files transferred between the nodes?

A working directory and a session name is defined each time you run a 
JCGrid client. The client sends the list of files/subdirectories in the 
working directory with MD5 checksum and size to the server.

The server checks the cache and if the file/subdirectory doesn't exists 
or if the MD5 checksum doesn't match, it requires to the client to send 
the entire file.

There is exactly the same kind of interaction between the server and all 
the workers. The client and all the workers are connected to the server 
by using sockets.

Only required files will be transfered and only modified files will be 
transferred between different runs with the same session name.

It works very well with POVRay: you can put all the files of a scene in 
a directory, use that directory like the JCGrid client working directory 
and run the rendering. You can modify some file and rerun the rendering 
(and only modified files will be transferred).

I hope this has answered to your question.

David Bucciarelli
Pisa
Italy

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