Please join the testing community for GRC 0.01.03.00!!!!

The link to access latest source is
http://www.grf.hr/~mtodorov/grc-latest.tar.gz

The toolkit is in pre-alpha testing stage and GPL-ed.

Some characteristics:

- it is written in C++, although few C++ - specific features are used.
  it shouldn't be hard to backport it to plain C

- synchronous multiplexing is used to switch tasks between servers. This
  should not be problem on fast (100 Mbit) networks. If it is, tell me
  where you see the bottleneck and I will try to isolate it

- it is FAULT-TOLERANT: if some servers or even most of them go down
  in the midst of POV-Ray animation rendering, the GRC toolkit will
  simply reassign animation frame to other render server

- it compiles and runs on Intel, G4, G5 under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
  under Cygwin (tested)

- it runs on Windows, Linux and Mac render servers simultaneously (tested).
  up to 16 render servers are supported.

- on Windows, Cygwin development platform is required (www.cygwin.com),
  which is free and Open Source

- on Mac OS X, development Xcode toolkit is required, which offers gcc
  compiler.
  Any other gcc-compatible compiler should do - please inform me if it
  doesn't, so I could fix the source

- POV-Ray CLI version for UNIX will have to be compiled and/or installed
  on every render server.

Please inform me on every problem you face using GRC toolkit. (Suggestions
for a better name are accepted of course :-) ...) You will be credited.

Best regards,
Marvin

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Marvin <mto### [at] grfhr> wrote:
>   up to 16 render servers are supported.

  Just out of curiosity: Why such a limit?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Marvin <mto### [at] grfhr> wrote:
> >   up to 16 render servers are supported.
>
>   Just out of curiosity: Why such a limit?

Unfortunately, there are some static structures in grc-client.cc

It is easily changeable in config.h, just change MAXSERV settings.

The work is on the way to make attaching/detaching of render
servers dynamic, sort of "hotplugged" w/o need to restart the
rendering task to assign new hardware, but I've been assigned
other work also.

Please note that there's a lot of debugging output in client
and server part of the program, which will go away as parts
of application are debugged.

I know MPI is a trend nowadays, so there are consideration to
implement this too.

Be warned that code does not look pretty due to tight schedule
in which it had to start working to get the project assigned,
but a major rewrite is planned to remove several
spotted bottlenecks.

Marvin

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Does it use a shared network folder? because that would limit it to 10 on
windows xp, unless you sell out to a server license of windows.
I wrote a very simple distributed render system using batch files generated
by the file write functions of povray. (it's in povray.text.scene-files)
and it took me a while to figure out this limit (there was no limit in
win98). I later found that the limit is not just for shared folders, it
also seems to be true for shared printers.

Post a reply to this message

"Jaap" <jws### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Does it use a shared network folder? because that would limit it to 10 on
> windows xp, unless you sell out to a server license of windows.
> I wrote a very simple distributed render system using batch files generated
> by the file write functions of povray. (it's in povray.text.scene-files)
> and it took me a while to figure out this limit (there was no limit in
> win98). I later found that the limit is not just for shared folders, it
> also seems to be true for shared printers.

It does not use shared network folder, it uses cheap exchange of files
and images over TCP sockets with low overhead. If a render server in farm is
lost, it will recover the frame it had and assign it to one of surviving
servers, until there is at least one not crashed (tested).

At present moment and being in alpha stage, it is still missing
authentication
of clients on render servers. Also, the ability to split rendering of single
frame on many computers is missing at present moment. Imagemagick will be
used to reassemble the rendering, because implementing all the libraries
for all the POV-Ray supported image types would be something I can't afford
in my time schedule.

Unfortunatelly, I am not skilled with Win32 API, so you will have to install
Cygwin UNIX emulator if you want to render under Windows. You will have to
compile both povray and grc toolkit with GCC under Cygwin emulation.

I have tested it and it works. It might be considerable initial time
investment to install on every machine, but you can install from internet
and compile in parallel, and most of that time will come back when you
render faster on many more machines.

Project management would like to see a native Win32 version. Is there a
command line version of povray under XP (I will have to see)?

Mirsad

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Marvin wrote:

> 
> Project management would like to see a native Win32 version. Is there a
> command line version of povray under XP (I will have to see)?
> 

http://povray.tirnalong.com/ow.asp?CompilingPovray

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