OS X Maya 2012 and Backburner

So, I'm getting up and running with Maya and I want to eventually use as many machines as possible to render from (I have about 100 machines, 4 of which are super-duper!). So where to start. Well, just found the Maya documentation and found the specific Backburner very small section on Page 175.

One interesting bit is about where to say which machine is the "Manager". This is in the folder:
/usr/discreet/backburner/cfg


Looking here you find most of Backburner including a link to the Documentation:
http://download.autodesk.com/us/systemdocs/pdf/backburner2011_user_guide.pdf


note: can't find backburner 2012 documentation!


So, reading backburner 2011 user guide pg.77 to start, stop and restart backburner in terminal type:

sudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner stop
sudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner startsudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner restart

I initially had a problem. Whenever I ran backburner it would come up with:


/usr/discreet/backburner/backburner: line 64: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Couldn't find any mention of it on Google. I had a look at the file and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Seems to just contain a list of 'if' statements. On line 64 it is concerned with 'stop'ping the service:

if [ "$1" == "stop" ]; then

   ${DL_BACKBURNERDIR}/backburner_server stop

   ${DL_BACKBURNERDIR}/backburner_manager stop

fi

I simply swapped these to lines and saved and it didn't come up with the error any more? There must have been an incorrect carriage return.

Anyway, carrying on, you need to stop the manager in order to edit the configuration. Configuration file is:
/usr/discreet/backburner/Network/backburner.xml

Details on what some of it means is in backburner2011 user guide page.81.

It looks quite good anyway, only two things I'm concerned about:

1. the subnet mask to use
1. unfortunately, my machine is on one subnet, and the rest of the macs are on another!
2. what to name the manager
1. currently is set to 'localhost'
2. shall I rename it?

Now for the webserver.

Default username and password are:

backburner

backburner

pg.78 and 79 describe how to manage users.

to check the server and manager are running type the following and you should get some results:

n250-04524:Network leachs$ ps -ef | grep backburner

    0  1573     1   0   0:00.05 ??         0:00.08 /usr/discreet/backburner/backburnerManager

    0  1590     1   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner_server run

    0  1602 1590 0 0:00.02 ?? 0:00.03 /usr/discreet/backburner/backburnerServer -m localhost

Next, you need to make sure that the manager name is in the:
/usr/discreet/backburner/cfg/manager.host

It is currently 'localhost'.

Well, took about 5 mins but finally found where to get to backburner webpage!:

http://localhost/backburner/

Not documented ANYWHERE!!!

Well, it's a good start. I shall set the machine next to me as a server node.

Well, been quite unsuccessful at the moment. Can't seem to get:

1. the web monitor to register the name of the manager
2. any servers to connect to the manager

just found this update for backburner. Found on this page