[casey]

This is a completely content-free post.

I just wanted to say that I upgraded the render farm here from 5 P4's to 6 Core 2 Quads, and I wanted to ditch the Windows XP. I was expecting this huge hassle in migrating the machines and the Maxwell Render setup.

But guess what? Ran the Ubuntu install. Untar'd the Maxwell Linux 64 pack. Moved my license. Ran startmxcl.

THAT WAS IT. It was painless. It was so painless, I'm wondering why I've been using Windows at all. It took about 15 minutes to set up an Ubuntu Maxwell machine, compared to an hour or more for an XP machine.

So major two thumbs up on the Linux port, guys. It is wonderful! I am overjoyed!

- Casey

[-Adrian]

If you haven't, could you run benchwell on one of your nodes? There are very few results for Linux in general and i'd like to get an idea how it copes.

[tom]

Depending on my tests, Linux version of Maxwell 1.7.1 is 13.36% faster.
P.S. I've tested on Ubuntu 8.10

[pwrdesign]

I ran ubuntu on all our rendernodes (15 atm) before, it works great and its alot faster!

[-Adrian]

It used to be slower. Whatever they did, i applaud them

[zoppo]

i use a win xp32 pc as workstation. would it be possible to use linux render nodes with it? how did you organize the textures paths?

[pwrdesign]

Just use UNC paths, no problem!

[zoppo]

is there any automatic function for these UNC paths in the material editor and the c4d plugin? or do i have to type them?

[pwrdesign]

When you set the paths to your directory with textures and materials, just make shure that you set them to: \\192.168.xx.xx\xxxxxxxx\xxxxxxx instead of for example b:\xxxx\xxxxx

That worked fine for me...

[arch3990]

One render node with two different OS (Ubuntu Linux / Windows 2003 X64) - two different results in Benchwell:

Ubuntu (X64): 6m08s / 1749.81
Windows 2003 (X64): 7m07s / 1508.25

[numerobis]

...looks like osx and linux get all the love these days

[msantana]

...looks like osx and linux get all the love these days

The OS X 64-bit version has yet to be final, it is not usable yet for production (it seems it has a memory-leak bug) and is definitely slower than win 64-bit on the same hardware, and with what people have been posting on this thread it should be slower than linux 64-bit on the same hardware as well.

I am counting the days until NL releases a final OS X 64-bit version.

But, hey this thread is very good news for linux fans!

Can someone explain where the increase in speed is coming from in the Linux version?

[lebbeus]

i bet the speed increase is due to the OS using less system resources

[-Adrian]

I don't know - Ubuntu shouldn't be easier on the system than XP, and neither are really demanding. An uneducated guess would be that applications go through some kind of OS-to-Hardware layer and Linux derivatives are better designed in that regard (memory handling etc.)

Talking about Ubuntu: I heard Canonical has hired interface/usability professionals for the upcoming releases. I hope they give Gnome a nice tweak. I totally like XP(64), what a great OS. Having played with others' Vista PCs (7 = Vista 2.0) i will stick to XP as long as i possibly can. After that i hope Ubuntu & Co. have become a true Desktop alternative for all fields of work.

[casey]

If you haven't, could you run benchwell on one of your nodes? There are very few results for Linux in general and i'd like to get an idea how it copes.

Sure: SL of 15.00. Benchmark of 559.394. Time: 19m12s

Looks like either the machine is magically better somehow, or 64-bit Ubuntu Server is doing something right, because this machine appears to be faster than all other 2.4gHz machines posted to Benchwell, including those with the exact same model processor. Not sure why. (Newer motherboard? Faster memory? Ubuntu magic? No idea.)

Sidenote: benchwell doesn't seem to work properly on Linux. If you download it, and then run startmxclng, it complains about a missing texture, even though the texture is there. I assume this is because it is looking for the full path?

If you use the Windows file, you get this error:

Code: Select all

File "C:/Program Files/CG Files/hdri/misc/campus_at_sunset.hdr" has not been found. Render cannot continue.

If you use the Mac file, you get this error:

Code: Select all

File "/Users/johani/Desktop/benchwell_scene_07.03.08_mac/campus_at_sunset.hdr" has not been found. Render cannot continue.

No amount of -bitmaps and a path was able to fix this, nor was running the program with the texture's directory as the current working directory.

What's up with this? Surely if there is a missing texture, but the texture file is in the same directory as the mxs, Maxwell should find it by stripping the path and trying that? And why isn't -bitmaps working?

Anyhow, I eventually coaxed it into running by using the Mac version and actually making that exact path with a symbolic link to the texture in it

- Casey