Compressor 3.5.3 won't run in Lion for me

Question

Compressor 3.5.3 won't run in Lion for me

Longtime Compressor/qmaster user here.

I just upgraded to Lion, and amongst the many problems I have with Lion, the most annoying is that I cannot get qmaster to work. It appears to be working as normal:

Cluster shows up in Compressor Submit options
Cluster shows up in Batch Monitor
Status menu looks the way it should
I can successfully mount the cluster storage

When I send a Compressor job to the cluster, it shows in Batch Monitor, but just hangs after that saying "Processing"

Sending same job to "This Computer" works fine

I have tried

Repaired privileges
Repeatedly restarting/resetting services followed by system restarts
Reinstalling Compressor/qmaster

Here's some Console messages

3/12/12 2:39:56.956 PM Compressor: *** CDOClient::connect2: CException [NSException raised by 'NSPortTimeoutException', reason = 'connection timeout: did not receive reply'], server [tcp://10.0.1.5:51261]

3/12/12 2:39:56.956 PM Compressor: exception caught in -[HistoryController updateStatusOfHistoryItem:]: NSException raised by 'NSPortTimeoutException', reason = 'connection timeout: did not receive reply'

3/12/12 2:40:08.448 PM QmasterStatusMenu: *** CDOClient::connect2: CException [NSException raised by 'NSPortTimeoutException', reason = 'connection timeout: did not receive reply'], server [tcp://10.0.1.5:51261]

3/12/12 2:40:10.885 PM com.apple.qmaster.qmasterd: 2012-03-12 14:40:10.883 qmasterqd[499:7803] *** CDOClient::connect2: CException [NSException raised by 'NSPortTimeoutException', reason = 'Distributed objects message send timed out (timeout: 353281210.880236 at time: 353281210.882563) 1'], server [tcp://[fd0e:6a3:bb54:faef:ea06:88ff:fecc:b010]:61872]

Here's my settings:

Compressor 3.5.3
Mac Pro 8-core (2010) 32 GB RAM, 10.7.3

Thanks in advance

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 8-core, 32 gb ram

Posted on Mar 12, 2012 2:48 PM

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Answer 1

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,555 points

Mar 12, 2012 2:55 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

Recently had the same problem with Compressor/Qmaster following the upgrade to Lion.

What fixed if for me was the combination of doing three things:

Using Compressor Repair from Digital Rebellion -

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/compressorrepair/

Repairing my priviliges.

Booting from a different Start Up disk and running Disk Warrior on the Lion Start Up Disk.

After doing that, Compressor/Qmaster has worked normally since (knock wood).

Don't know if this will help in your case, but thought I would let you know what apparently resolved it for me.

MtD

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Answer 2

Mar 12, 2012 2:57 PM in response to Meg The Dog

I forgot to mention I already did compressor repair. But I will try it all again in the order you prescribe.

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Answer 3

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Mar 12, 2012 3:16 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

Try changing selected services to On.

Russ

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Answer 4

Mar 12, 2012 3:15 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

Hi,

I think,looking at your settings, that younhave too many instances (16) selected, I believe it should be half the number of cores which would be 4. Try that.

DM

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Answer 5

Mar 12, 2012 3:18 PM in response to Russ H

Russ H wrote:

Try changing selected services to On.

Russ

That for rendering, not Compressor. Compressor is on for Sharing, 14 instances

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Answer 6

Mar 12, 2012 3:31 PM in response to David Mclaine

David Mclaine wrote:

Hi,

I think,looking at your settings, that younhave too many instances (16) selected, I believe it should be half the number of cores which would be 4. Try that.

DM

You're looking at the Render instances (Rendering is off anyway). There are 16 virtual cores on this Mac Pro, and 32 GB RAM. The rule of thumb is RAM(GB)/2, not cores/2. In any event, this same setup worked for years under Leopard and Snow Leopard and changing it to 4 instances did not change anything.

Cue Sad Trombone

http://sadtrombone.com/

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Answer 7

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Mar 12, 2012 3:38 PM in response to Russ H

OK. So instead select Compressor, instead of Rendering, is selected sevives ON?

Russ

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Answer 8

Mar 12, 2012 6:10 PM in response to Russ H

To be clear:

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Answer 9

Mar 12, 2012 6:11 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Meg The Dog wrote:

Recently had the same problem with Compressor/Qmaster following the upgrade to Lion.

What fixed if for me was the combination of doing three things:

Using Compressor Repair from Digital Rebellion -

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/compressorrepair/

Repairing my priviliges.

Booting from a different Start Up disk and running Disk Warrior on the Lion Start Up Disk.

After doing that, Compressor/Qmaster has worked normally since (knock wood).

Don't know if this will help in your case, but thought I would let you know what apparently resolved it for me.

MtD

Sadly, this did not work, though it uncovered lots of errors on my startup disk.

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Answer 10

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,555 points

Mar 12, 2012 6:27 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

Too bad, since the symptoms were so very similar.

Jon Chappell, the guy who writes the Digital Rebellion Software, had asked me to look at the console after a Compressor/Qmaster failure and see if there was anything relevant listed. You might see if you can get any guidance there (at Digital Rebellion).

MtD

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Answer 11

Mar 12, 2012 6:29 PM in response to Meg The Dog

I put the relevant Console messages into my original post. Basically, it's looking for a server that's not there and keeps timing out, AFA I can tell.

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Answer 12

Mar 12, 2012 7:09 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

Here are some general troubleshooting steps that may help:

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/compressor_error_unable_to_connect_to _background_process.html

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Answer 13

Mar 13, 2012 9:10 AM in response to Jon Chappell

Jon Chappell wrote:

Here are some general troubleshooting steps that may help:

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/compressor_error_unable_to_connect_to _background_process.html

Thanks Jon, I'll give that a shot later today. I fear a full uninstall/reinstall is in my future this weekend. ACK!!!

I seriously hate Lion.

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Answer 14

Studio X

Level 7

27,229 points

Mar 13, 2012 4:12 PM in response to Shecky Lovejoy

You have an 8 core hyperthreaded machine which shows up as 16 virtual cores. It is never a good idea to turn over all the cores of the machine to rendering. It simply leaves nothing for the rest of the system.

In testing with older non-hyper threaded and the newer hyper threaded machines I've found that setting the render number to 1/2 the non-hyper threaded or 1/2 the hyper threaded number of cores is the sweet spot. This means if you have a 2008 8 core, dedicate 4. If you have a 2010 8 core (16 virtual), dedicate 8. The real crunch is simply the time it takes Qmaster to reassemble all the fragments. There is a trade off. While more cores may crunch faster, the overhead of reassembling the file eventually exceeds the time savings of the increasing number of cores.

Once you get it running again, do some testing. The results may surprise you.

Also, in monitoring RAM usage over a long time I've seen if you have 1 GB per core, you are fine.

x

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Answer 15

Mar 14, 2012 1:06 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Thanks man, using Using Compressor Repair from Digital Rebellion did it for me... 😀

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