Qmaster Preferences Crash My Cluster...

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Qmaster Preferences Crash My Cluster...

After some troubleshooting, it seems IMPOSSIBLE to change the Cluster Storage area in the Advanced Tab of Qmaster. I was told that this would help when using FCS on a machine that serves media files to clients because it would decrease the load put on Qmaster while FCS or Compressor encoded new assets/exports. This made sense; why have Qmaster write to the system drive while the system is already serving files and doing FCS stuff? But:

After checking volume permissions, ignoring ownership, etc. It seems that you HAVE TO point Qmaster to the /private/var/spool/qmaster directory. Every time I point to another place--like our RAID or an another internal volume--the my QuickCluster I've set up in System Preferences goes away from both Compressor and Quadministrator/Qmaster options. I don't get why you even get the option if it crashes your clusters???

I have the latest ProApps Update so Compressor and Qmaster are at 3.0.4.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to point this cache file somewhere else? Or is it just a bad idea / bad advice?

Shawn Larkin

Mac Pro 2.66 4 Core, 16GB, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 2 CalDigit HDPros, EdgeCore Switch, Serving Clients via AFP cause it's cheap and works without XSAN!

Posted on Nov 15, 2008 4:20 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 16, 2008 1:33 AM in response to jetboyfilms

Go to /Applications/Utilities/Terminal. Type the following:

qmasterprefs -cluster off storagepath "[enter the new path here]"
qmasterprefs -cluster on

Then type:
qmasterprefs -list

and you should see the new path in the storagepath section.

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Answer 2

jetboyfilms Author

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Nov 16, 2008 10:38 AM in response to Jon Chappell

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, this Shell command is not working. I mean, yes--It does show me the right directory path once I execute the command. And I made sure to try it with the UI pointing to the right place and without the UI pointing to the right place. But regardless, when I submit a Batch in Compressor, I do not get the QuickCluster I created; I only get This Computer as an option.

However, if I keep the Qmaster Preference pointed to the original/default location, I do get my QuickCluster option.

What is more strange is that the machine does in fact create the temp files in the new location, but it doesn't use the multiple cores (instances) I selected and even selecting those cores is a multiple log in/out process because the UI doesn't respond after I start Sharing. It's all pretty weird.

It seems like Qmaster is hardwired to create its reference files insides of var/spool/qmaster.

Any other ideas?

Shawn Larkin

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Answer 3

dredcomm

Level 2

360 points

Nov 17, 2008 9:41 AM in response to jetboyfilms

Your custom file path should not have any spaces in it. I've found this will keep the shared storage from properly sharing.

~D

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Answer 4

jetboyfilms Author

Level 1

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Nov 18, 2008 12:11 PM in response to dredcomm

Thanks for the recommendation; this finally did it. I had to futz with turning it on an off, but ultimately, you can only have a directory with no spaces in the Qmaster Preferences.

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