Dave Hale’s Work Blog

Today is the last day.

The New Linux Base image is finally installed and functional on the Z600 machines.  It has an updated kernel and updated nvidia drivers.

A few notes.  Houdini 10 is hanging out on the image, Houdini 9.5 is still default.  Maya 2009 is now default on the image.  I’ve left RenderMan Studio 1/2 defaulting to Maya 2008, I never found out from Malcolm which one he wanted to goto.

I’ve set the default theme to Dust Sand, as opposed to Aurora, which is much more natural and pleasing universally across applications (Aurora looked great on some things and horrible on others).  I also thickened up the border on the windows, both of these were hinted from Malcolm.

The Wacom Tablet drivers are still disabled, they are commented out in all of the xorg.conf files.  Whenever there is an update to the drivers, someone could try and see if these are still causing immediate crashes while using the brush tool in maya.  If no one remembers, Maya Brush Tools would ONLY work if someone had a tablet plugged in or if they were using a Cintiq, otherwise every single brush tool would crash while using a mouse.  Some students may prefer this, I chose to just leave it disabled for now.

Oh and I finally fixed the usplash thing, so it should be prettier while booting now (instead of dropping to the terminal halfway through boot).  It was a mismatched UUID from the first file swap (x64base -> xw6600base).

Also don’t forget, once you guys put Windows on the new 90GB partition’s you’ll need to edit the boot.ini to look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
c:\linux.bin=”Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (linux x64)”

Reinstall grub from a livecd, and pull a new linux.bin

Peace.

Resized the partitions on xw6600base to:

/dev/sda1 (Windows) = 90GB

/dev/sda2 (Linux) = 30GB

/dev/sda3 (Swap) = 2GB

/dev/sda4 (TEMP) = Whatever is leftover

Once I had pushed a new image on linux to there it was showing up as 13/15GB’s used just like the old image.  So I had to put everything into a tarball from this guide:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

And, reformat, extract the tarball, recreate the folders, reinstall grub and pull a new linux.bin.  It seems to be working fine.

I need to upgrade to RMS2.0 on there, and get it Houdini 10 ready.  I’ll also be doing some things that Brian Schindler requested such as associating proper file types with programs (i.e. clicking on an ma/mb file and having it open in maya) and assigning icons to those file types.

I’ve also written a short guide on how to append more custom resolutions the monitor setup scripts that I have distributed in Monty.  Here is a copy and pasted version:

————————

Oops, you were probably looking for something to edit the monitor configurations. You’re going to have to go here:

/intranet/staffs/monitorarray.php on the SFDM Intranet

However, you should follow this quick little guide below first before you edit anything!

Example:
We have a new monitor that’s default resolution is 1600×900, and we haven’t imaged any computers yet.

First, we will need to set up all the stuff for the local scripts on the base image.

Linux:
You will need to generate a new xorg.conf file, potentially with custom modelines to support 1600×900, and then save it as something like xorg.conf-widescreen_1600

Then you’ll need to edit /usr/local/sbin/setmonitor.sh and append a new if statement for your configuration file. You will also have to create a new number to relate to this resolution, in your case it’s probably 8 or 9.

That’s it for the Linux side.

Windows:
Windows is actually a little easier. Just goto C:\WINDOWS\system32\scripts\ and edit monitor_setup.vbs, all you need to do is append another Case switch for your new resolution. It’s pretty straightforward.

Now once you have everything in place to set the resolutions locally, simply edit the monitorarray.php script on the intranet site mentioned earlier, and this will allow you to select the new resolution on the monitor inventory, which will then populate down to the scripts locally to set them at boot.

Enjoy,

Dave.

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And there’s a bunch more to do.   Only about 2.9 weeks left.

Starting to investigate RenderMan Studio 2.0 / RenderMan for Maya 3.0 in 2009.  Waiting for Tom to get the new licenses up and I’ll goto town.

For the Z600, I accidentally overwrote the Windows Bootloader with GRUB somehow.  By default this sets it to hidden mode, which means that it doesn’t give you an option to choose between OS’s.  It also gives it a timeout of 0.  So to fix this, I booted with the handy Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Live CD, I mounted the linux partition which is as simple as going to Places -> 16.6GB Drive, and then I `gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst` to get to the bootloader options for GRUB.  Once in there you just need to look for a “hidden” option and a timeout option.  I commented the hidden attribute, and changed timeout to 30.  Now it lets you choose to get to Windows.  I still have to go in and restore the Windows bootloader as the default bootloader.

Been pretty busy with a lot of things.

Started setting up the space for the 8 Second Club stuff to be taken care of, installed WordPress and BBPress and was working on getting it to work with the LDAP.  Then realized it all seemed pretty pointless to put as much time and effort into something that’s just replicating something else and keeping it internal.  So for now we’re going to try and incorporate it into SFDM Forum, with a few extensions to ReelSFDM.

In the process of that I started cleaning up some of the things with SFDM forum that have been annoying me, and making it more functional, and apparent that registration is not needed.

I’m going to continue with the 8 Second club amongst other things (more intranet, web log system, and problem report system tweaks).  Try and make everything as pretty, functional, and maintainable before I leave.

I have about 5-6 Weeks left now.

Did some shuffling around and added some new features to ReelSFDM today… Set it up so a professor can have students upload to a new category called “8 Seconds” which will be a monthly competition for animation students.  Also fixed the rating system so it’s impossible to vote for yourself more than once under one name.  Added a comment system for them as well.  Now I just need to add the setup for them to upload the audio file that gets downloaded every month.

DreamWorks interview tonight.

Not quite sure how it happened but somehow our /opt/pixar/devkit directory was completely empty on all the nodes.  Malcolm put in a PR about this.  I pushed the most recent version for this out (although it’s a devkit for 13.5.4, not sure how well that’ll interact with 14.2, but is the only option.

Fixed Jeremy Moorshead’s laptop setup in his office.  Had to re-enable his local ethernet connection, remove his old dock and give him a new one for his new laptop.  Installed some drivers for his custom hardware but he should be good to go now.

Kirt Witte wants ReelSFDM to be public over the internet.

I updated Kirt Witte’s laptop today so  that Vue utilizes the proper node locked license.  It was quite a pain.  I first tried disconnecting the network so it would prompt me to update the license information.  This half worked as it prompted me to update the license SERVER information, but would not give me access to update anything about the registration of the product anywhere.  So I had to completely uninstall Vue, then reinstall, enter in the new serial number, get a new installation number, log into the e-on software support page with our bbridges@scad.edu account, request a new authorization code, and then enter in that information.  Then I had to finally go about re-installing all the updates/plugins.

There should really be a way to just… re-license a node, however this is not the case.

Relatively uneventful day, LucasFilm is in town.  Sarah Plitzer is still having issues (non-degree seeking student), forwarded some auth logs to Tom.  Everything else seems golden.  Still trying to decide what the most necessary thing to document is…

I updated the theme for Montysystems today.

http://twitter.com/Montysystems

Made a post informing everyone about the LucasArts deadline TOMORROW since no one seemed to know about it (since it wasn’t ever officially posted by someone anywhere).

Made some minor tweaks to the SFDM Story theme, and added Montytwitter to the staff page.

This is an application that frequently gets updated, and has some customizations in order for certain things to work properly on the farm.  I’ll try to go through the process here.

While parts of this guide may seem aimed at novices, there are a few details that are necessary, so try not to skim too much.

These instructions have been specifically written for an install on the base image, to be pushed out by imaging.

1.) Get new version

Speak with Tom Davis, Ron Bernard and Dan Hernandez to decide what version is appropriate, and so that Tom knows what version to roll out to his dedicated nodes.

While logged into SideFX, goto Support -> Downloads.  The first entry should have a list of distributions, look for the one with Debian/Ubuntu and 64bit.  Download this tar.gz

2.) Unpack and Install

Locate the package you’ve downloaded and make sure you’re logged in as a local admin, do

tar xvzf houdini.x.x.xxx-linux_x86_64_gcc4.1.tar.gz

This will create a directory that is the same name as the archive, with some stuff in it.  Go into that directory.

sudo ./houdini.install

[enter your password]

Hit the spacebar about 3 times, then type yes and enter, then type y and enter.

Now you shuold be at a HOUDINI 9.x.xxx INSTALLATION screen.  Type 4 (or whatever is the License Server), and then enter, to disable installation of a local license server.  Now just type F and enter.

Now we need to tell it where to install it, we have a structure setup already in /usr.  In /usr there is a symlink called hfs9.5 that points to whatever version is the default.  So we don’t have to keep updating version numbers in /etc/profile everytime, and so we can still have multiple versions easily.

So for this simply enter /usr/hfs9.x.xxx with the x’s obviously corresponding to the current version.  For example /usr/hfs9.5.379, press enter and then Y and enter two more times.

3.) Link it up and retain previous versions

Now that we have it installed, we need to link it up, and probably write a short script to allow us to access the older version.  So let’s do it!

cd /usr

sudo rm hfs9.5

sudo ln -s hfs9.5.xxx hfs9.5

Okay!  Now you should be able to just type houdini and it should load the newer version.  This is fine for now.

Next we need to make sure students can easily access the older versions, as houdini has been known to make significant changes from version to version.

cd /usr/local/bin

This is just one of the local directories that bash will attempt to locate/launch a program/script when a name is typed in the terminal, for example if you had a script in here called davelovesyou, and you typed davelovesyou, it would launch whatever script you had in here, regardless of your current working directory.

There should already be at least one script in here you can use as reference (houdini91), but we’ll build one real quick.

So first create your file you will be working with, I’ll just use 95303 as an example.

sudo touch houdini95303 (or whatever the version is, without decimals)

This will create an empty file

sudo chmod +x houdini95303 (this makes the script executable)

Now let’s go into nano, and enter in the following:

#!/bin/bash
cd /usr/hfs9.5.303
source houdini_setup_bash
/usr/hfs9.5.303/bin/houdini
cd -

Now just press CTRL+X type Y and then press Enter to save this script.

Try typing houdini95303 from anywhere and if it launches you’re good to go!

3.) Get it ready for Render Farm

Tom will probably take care of this.  But if he doesn’t, hrender needs a few modifications, this script typically doesn’t change, and all of the things we fix, may be fixed by SideFX in the future.  Either way, there is a copy of the modified hrender script in \\sfdm-home\proj\apps\linux\houdini.  Simply copy this to replace the hrender in /usr/hfs9.5/bin/hrender.

Now all you have to do is create all the icons for it, but I’ll save that for the user profile modification how-to.