installing iLife through Apple Remote Desktop Task Server

So, I need to install iLife '09 through ARD Task Server on 17 machines. When install the iLife '09.mpkg file from my machine straight to one machine it works fine. If I give it the option to use the task server it comes up with:
Completed but failed on 1 package ""

In console on that machine I found this line:

17/12/2013 16:03:26.476 com.apple.RemoteDesktop.agent: iLife09.mpkg/Contents/Installers/iPhoto.mpkg/Contents/Installers/iPhotoContent.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz: (Empty error message)

I tried renaming the mpkg file so as not to have the '09 but did not effect it.

I'm now trying it from the command line. The plan is to just send some commands to the machine to mount the server share, and run the installer:

mkdir /Volumes/YourTMPFolder

mount -t afp afp://admin:yourPassword@your.server.here/YourShare /Volumes/YourTMPFolder

installer -package /Volumes//Volumes/YourTMPFolder/iLife09.mpkg -target /
umount /Volumes/YourTMPFolder

Works perfectly!

Apple Mac bootcamp reimaging with Windows 7 Blue Screen

We've been testing out a new re-imaging process for our Apple macs specifically to re-image them with Windows 7. It means that the imaging process is the same for all Windows 7 machines.

The trouble we are having is that after about 10 mins or less, the windows 7 machine, both iMacs and Mac Pro's, blue screen.

Unfortunately, the blue screen itself does not provide any answers. I haven't had a good look at the dmp files.

I did a google search and found this and this. Both of these forums are looking at an AppleMNT.sys problem, associated with mounting HFS volumes. I shall give this a go.

Rendering with Maya Terminal command line

So, want to start a render farm, which essentially sends command line commands to computers. You can do this yourself really.

I thought I'd document the command line stuff so that I can come back to it some other time.

So, to open the Maya Terminal, you can open up Terminal and type:
. /Applications/Autodesk/maya2012/Maya.app/Contents/bin/MayaENV.sh

Now you'll have access to Maya terminal commands.

Here's a simple line to render a file:
render /Users/me/test.mb

Simply renders the file with the settings that are set inside that file (in the render settings).

You can use flags with this command to set all kinds of things. Found a good help page here. The ones I'm interested in are:

• -r mr
• uses mental ray for renderer
• -rd /Users/Shared
• uses the specified directory for rendering to
• -s 1
• sets the start frame of sequence to render
• -e 100
• sets the end frame of sequence to render
• -reg 0 250 0 250

• sets the render region to render 
• (left right bottom top)
• it's key to note that co-ordinates 0, 0 are at the bottom left of the image, so 0 250 0 250 renders a 250px square at the bottom left as pictured
• it creates a file of the proper resolution, and fills in the part which was rendered
• to combine, make sure each render 'region' has a different file name, peice it back together in photoshop
• -im mylovelyfile
• saves the render with this name
• -x 250
• renders this amount of pixels width-ways
• -y 250
• renders this amount of pixels height-ways
• -cam persp1
• the name of the camera you want to render from
• -proj /Users/Shared/
• uses this folder to load file
• -n 0
• use all available processors

If you're using mentalray, you can also use:

• -art
• mentalray measures how many cores you have and adjusts to maximise performance
• -v 5
• for render percentage

For a render farm, each node will need access to the .mb file and all the textures. It's also good to have them render to the same folder so you don't have to collect it all. I'd have the files on the server and run this command:

(first make a directory to mount the shared folder onto)

mkdir /Volumes/renderfarm

(then mount it)

mount -t afp afp://admin:password@my.server.dns.name/MySharedFolder /Volumes/renderfarm

I'd also be tempted to load the file up from this mounted directory and make sure the project path corresponds to this, so it can find all the sub-directories for textures and such.

On each computer you simply type the range of files to be rendered, so:

render -r mr -s 1 -e 10 -rd /Volumes/renderfarm/rendered/ -v 5 -art /Volumes/renderfarm/file1.mb

render -r mr -s 11 -e 20 -rd /Volumes/renderfarm/rendered/ -v 5 -art /Volumes/renderfarm/file1.mb
render -r mr -s 21 -e 30 -rd /Volumes/renderfarm/rendered/ -v 5 -art /Volumes/renderfarm/file1.mb

render -r mr -s 31 -e 40 -rd /Volumes/renderfarm/rendered/ -v 5 -art /Volumes/renderfarm/file1.mb

render -r mr -s 41 -e 50 -rd /Volumes/renderfarm/rendered/ -v 5 -art /Volumes/renderfarm/file1.mb