Some computers in group work while others don't?

Question

Level 1

13 points

Some computers in group work while others don't?

- Using Compressor 4.1.1 on a Mac Pro running latest mavericks

- Same version of Compressor running on 4 different macs (iMac, 2 minis, and a MBPro) all running latest mavericks as well

- All on local ethernet

After successfuly running the previous (qmaster) cluster solution for multiple years (shocking - knowing how buggy and unstable that was...) on earlier versions of Compressor, I have yet to succeed in getting all available machines cranking under the new "Groups" scheme in Compressor 4.1.1. After days of troubleshooting I am finally "humbling" myself to the community in the hopes of someone finding something obvious that I am missing...

I am able to set up a Group (cluster) with no problem. The "host" sees every remote machine, and to confirm good communication, I can turn on and off the "sharing" setting in any remote and it will instantly change status on host to unavailable and back on in the Shared Computers pane from Compressor Prefs.

Currently when I submit to the group (I have named the group Office Cluster, but am tempted to change it to Office Cluster F@%k 😁) from the host it will send segments to 2 of the 4 otheres in the group and is working correctly. However, the other 2 always trigger this error message when it tries to use them in the group:

Failed: 3x HOST [name_of_mac_it_is_trying_to_send_to] Source subexport mount failed: host = HE-Studio.local, path = /Volumes/...full_path_to_file_being_processed.../.qmsubexp

There will be one of those error messages for each mac it fails to successfully use in the group. Compressor will then (correctly) throw that segment back in the "waiting" hopper and will eventually dole it out to the macs that are working. Of course, I am missing the time savings of 50% of my processors not getting put to work...

Attempted solutions so far:

I have checked to make sure that all settings are the same on the machines that are working and on those that are not.
I have done the Apple recommended troubleshooting of trashing Compressor and Qmaster Folders in Application Support, re-starting, etc. on every machine
I checked if changing the "Use Network Interface" from All Interfaces, to Ethernet did anything. It did not...
I searched for that error message hoping Apple might have some explanation, but came up empty

So I am now out of ideas and needing to reach out to those of you smarter than I.

Any ideas...

thx,

SH

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Feb 27, 2014 2:08 PM

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Answer 1

Studio X

Level 7

27,229 points

Feb 27, 2014 4:46 PM in response to Piano Guy

Try turning OFF "enable automatic file sharing" in the Shared Computer Tab and mount all the relevant computer shares directly.

x

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Answer 2

Feb 28, 2014 12:58 AM in response to Piano Guy

On the problem machines, check /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Compressor. Verify you have read and write premissions on that folder, and all the sub folders. They are probably having a problem mounting to that location. Older versions of Adobe CS would sometimes make the permissions too restrictive on /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support.

The way it works is the machine you start the batch from will create the .qmsubexp folder where your souce directory is, and export it via nfs. The machines in the group will mount it at /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Compressor/Storage/<ID>/shared, and then all the machines will access files to be encoded, and the encoded files, at that mount point. If it is having problems mounting on some machines and not others, the problem probably has something to do with the mount point.

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Answer 3

Piano Guy Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 28, 2014 12:38 PM in response to AnonimaKontonWTF

Thanks - that was exactly it... Changed permissions and I'm good to go.

The two machines that were not working both had too restrictive permissions all the way back to the Library folder. Because of that the Compressor file inside did not even exist. I also found an old qmaster folder in both that obviously used to do the same thing which I pitched.

And finally - as you expected - there was an Adobe folder inside there from older versions of CS which are no longer on those two particular machines. The two Macs that DID work from the get go both have current versions of Adobe CS on them, so more recent Adobe installs obviously fixed those permissions on those two.

Very well sniffed out AnonimaKontonWTF... nice work. Thanks much...

Release the (transcoding) hounds!

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