From: "Abraham Schneider" <aschneider@(email surpressed)>
Subject: adding windows hosts to my mac/linux nuke farm
   Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:15:48 -0500

Hi there!

I have a mixed Mac and Linux farm here which renders Shake and
especially Nuke. On some other machines we are running Windows with
3DS Max. These machines aren't rendering all the time. So my idea was
to install Rush and Nuke on them and add them to my Nuke farm.

I tried it on one machine, installed Rush, Nuke, Perl, etc. Nuke and
Rush are working fine. And I already added the Filepath fix to Nuke
(as mentioned in the Nuke user guide), so I can directly open existing
scripts from my Linux/Macs workstations and they will work out of the
box without searching and replacing the file path to change something
like /mnt/server1/project/... to X:\\project\...

So Nuke seems to work fine. Problem is: how/where do I tell the rush
daemon/submit script on my windows machine to also change the file
path, so it can save the log files etc. at the right location? At the
moment, the windows machine tries to save the logs to /mnt/server1/
project/etc. instead of using X\:\... What's the correct way of doing
that?

Thanks for any help,

Abraham


Abraham Schneider
Senior VFX Compositor


ARRI Film & TV Services GmbH
Tuerkenstr. 89
D-80799 Muenchen / Germany

Phone (Tel# suppressed) 

EMail aschneider@(email surpressed)
www.arri.de/filmtv
________________________________


ARRI Film & TV Services GmbH
Sitz: München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München
Handelsregisternummer: HRB 69396
Geschäftsführer: Franz Kraus; Dr. Martin Prillmann; Thomas Till

Abraham Schneider wrote:
> how/where do I tell the rush
> daemon/submit script on my windows machine to also change the file
> path, so it can save the log files etc. at the right location? At the
> moment, the windows machine tries to save the logs to /mnt/server1/
> project/etc. instead of using X\:\... What's the correct way of doing
> that?

	I would instead strongly suggest standardizing on UNC paths
	so that you can get single pathnames that work on both platforms.

	For instance, instead of /mnt/server1/foo and X:/foo,
	use instead //server1/project/foo which would work on both.

	OK, here we go:

UNC PATHS
---------

	To implement UNC paths: let's assume on windows you have X: mapped
	to //server1/project. This means that to access X:/foo you could
	just as easily access it with the UNC path //server1/project/foo.
	In fact, that's better (see links below)

	So to make that work on unix, you'd setup your mounts as /server1/project,
	so that the following would work:

		ls -la //server1/project

	..unix will ignore the extra leading slash, and treat it as one.

	Have a look at these two links for details:

		Under Windows, why are UNC paths better than drive letters?
		http://www.seriss.com/rush-current/rush/rush-td-faq.html#TDFAQ-UNC

		How do I make UNC paths work the same on Windows and Unix?
		http://www.seriss.com/rush-current/rush/rush-td-faq.html#TDFAQ-UNC2

	Also: the .common.pl script (that is in the same directory
	as all your submit scripts) has a useful function called FixPath()
	that can help enforce proper filename conventions across the platforms.
	So if a user happens to use X:/foo/bar.nk for a nuke pathname, when they
	submit their job, the FixPath() function can be used to convert that path
	into the UNC equivalent //server1/project/foo/bar.nk.

	Have a look at the function, and if you have questions, let me know.
	In general, you can use perl regex to make the conversions, eg:

		$path =~ s%^x:%//server1/project%i;	# x:/foo -> //server1/project/foo

	Similarly, paths like "/mnt/server1" could be converted into "//server1/project", eg:

		$path =~ s%^/mnt/server1%//server1/project%i;	# /mnt/server1/foo -> //server1/project/foo


WINDOWS SYMBOLIC LINKS
	With the advent of Windows Vista and Windows 7, there's a new option
	where you can make windows machines match unix using windows symbolic links.

	So let's say you want to keep your unix pathnames /mnt/server1, and want
	windows to be able to resolve that as //server1/project. To do this, you
	can use the DOS "mklink" command (Vista and Win7 *only*!)

C:\> mkdir \mnt
C:\> mklink /d \mnt\project1 \\server1\project

	With that, you should be able to do:

C:\> dir \mnt\project1

	..and be able to see the contents of \\server1\project..!

	For more info on windows symbolic links, see 'mklink /?', and
	these Rush newsgroup articles where I explored the command:
	http://seriss.com/cgi-bin/rush/newsgroup-threaded.cgi?-viewthread+1553+1554+1555+1556+1557+1566

IMBALANCED PATHNAMES ACROSS PLATFORMS

	If you /really/ need to have pathnames different across platforms,
	you can do it (but I think you'll run into all kinds of trouble
	with your other software I think).

	If you are running Rush 102.42a9 (and up), then in the rush.conf file
	you can use the currently undocumented command 'logdir_convert' to
	tell rush to convert log directory pathnames. So for instance if
	you want windows machines to convert logdir pathnames from "/mnt/server1"
	to "x:/", you can use:

os=windows logdir_convert "/mnt/server1" "x:/"
os=linux   logdir_convert "x:/"          "/mnt/server1"

	With a combo of this, and in the FixPath() function doing a similar
	platform-specific reflexive conversion, you can get rush to flip the
	pathnames back and forth. eg:

		if ( -d "x:/" ) { $path =~ s%^/mnt/server1/%x:/%i; }		# WINDOWS? /mnt/server1 -> x:/
		if ( -d "/mnt" ) { $path =~ s%^x/:/%/mnt/server1/%i; }		# UNIX? x:/ -> /mnt/server1

	Thing is, any scene files you have with hardcoded pathnames in
	them rush won't see or be able to fix.. so you'll have to look
	to similar functions in your software for this kind of conversion.

	Maya has the 'dirmap' mel command which is the equivalent of the
	above conversions.. more on that here:

	Using 'dirmap' in Maya:
	http://seriss.com/cgi-bin/rush/newsgroup-threaded.cgi?-view+1312+1312

	Also, I believe nuke has something for this as well.. see this thread:
	http://seriss.com/cgi-bin/rush/newsgroup-threaded.cgi?-viewthread+1943+1946+1947+1948

IN CLOSING..

	I /really/ think you'll have better overall luck by standardizing
	on one pathname style that works across all platforms; either making
	everything look like windows UNC paths, or if you have Visa or Win7,
	then you have the option of making everything look like unix paths
	by using windows symbolic links.

	Then you don't have to go around hacking maya and nuke, and all your
	other software to try to do pathname conversions.