[zoppo]

Another day spent to no good use, trying to intall ... now I remember why I shelfed MW for quite some time.

I have a upgrade license for a floating studio with 10 nodes, all running Win7 or Vista x64.
Locally everything works: MW Render, Manager, Node, Monitor. That is, after I had to copy the lic file manually in the licences folder.
BTW why do you always talk about a "maxwell_license.lic" while I got a "maxwell_suite_floating.lic"?

None of the network nodes works.

The RLM Server works, I restarted all machines and I turned the firewall on the main machine off - no effect.

The error is always the same:


This is what I get when I start MW on the client and choose "Maxwell Render Suite - floating (Connect to the RLM License Server already running)."


And then:



Regarding the portal:
What do all these manual activation links mean? Do I have to activate my 10 included render nodes? Can I do this manually if they can't find the RLM? If so - how?
If i activate the node license manually you explain very clearly how to obtain the MAC adress - and forgot to mention what to do with the lic-file.

So you know why I am so disappointed: Those machines run C4D Teamrender, Vray Standalone and MW 2.7 without a problem.

[zoppo]

Now it works, kind of.
The nodes don't start to render but they are found by the manager.

I don't know why.

Going home now ...

[Mihai]

Did you have a link to this page in the email you got when you purchased the license?
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mx ... +Licensing

It gives you step by step instructions.

The error you are getting is almost certainly due to some firewall blocking access to rlm.exe, or mxnetwork.exe - it's not only the computer running RLM that needs the firewalls turned off. If the computer running a node has something blocking it from reaching the RLM computer and getting a license, of course you will get that error.

[zoppo]

Of course I got the link and of course I read it. I read the links in this link. I read the FAQ. I searched in the forum.
I'm a MW customer since the Beta days. I even lived through the RC5 debacle.

So could you please guide me to the point where your link explains how to install a render node and whether or not to license it? Or what to do about the "Manual License" links on the Portal? Because I can't find it.

I guess I got the License Server running after fiddling with Window's firewall rules, although it didn't work when I stopped the firewall's service completely, so I don't know for sure.
What I know for sure is that I never had to manually change the firewall's rules for any other program (and those are quite a lot besides Team Render, Vray Standalone, MW 2.7) and that in the MW-Monitor the nodes said they were rendering, but really they weren't.

Will be back on Friday afternoon, for better or worse ...

[Mihai]

So could you please guide me to the point where your link explains how to install a render node and whether or not to license it?

You have been using 2.7 for a while then? Because as you then know, there isn't any special install for a "render node", it's just a regular Maxwell install.

There isn't a special "render node" licensing because you license Maxwell itself on that computer, not a "node".

There has NEVER been a special "node" installer versus a full Maxwell installer, so I don't understand why you got so hung up on this step.

There are hundreds of applications which use RLM, for better or for worse this change was needed for many different reasons. The advantages may not be clear if you have a one computer or a small number of them, but become very apparent if you need to manage licensing across many different systems.

I don't care very much for your tone from the start of your thread, and I'm just trying to help you. So you don't have to spend yet another full day solving what seems to be a very simple problem: a firewall is blocking the connection between the computer running the RLM server and your other computers. This firewall can be either in the RLM computer itself, or on the computer trying to connect to the RLM computer.

[Fernando Tella]

Maybe I can help. I got a pretty similar rig but the install and licensing process went nice and smooth. Instead of Win7 64 + Vista 64 I've got Win7 64 + Win8 64. Upgraded with a floating license with 10 nodes too. I'll describe my porcess:

My main machine has win7. I first upgraded that machine with second option (Maxwell Render Suite - Floating (activate the RLM License Server)) and activated the license with the key sent by NL.
Then I upgraded the nodes (win8) with the third option (Maxwell Render Suite - floating (Connect to the RLM License Server already running)) and pointed to the IP of the first machine when asked (with main machine powered, of course). The node gets licensed.

I checked firewall settings and I've got windows firewall deactivated in the main machine for my network and nodes have it active. When starting maxwell node, firewall pops a window asking if it should be allowed (obviously, do allow it). That's all.

I tested cooperative and it worked flawlessly. It even resets the whole maxwell network without problems in all machines, releases nodes, adds nodes,... I'm pretty happy at the moment.

Maybe together we can find what went wrong with your install.

Good luck.

[zoppo]

You have been using 2.7 for a while then? Because as you then know, there isn't any special install for a "render node", it's just a regular Maxwell install.
There isn't a special "render node" licensing because you license Maxwell itself on that computer, not a "node".
There has NEVER been a special "node" installer versus a full Maxwell installer, so I don't understand why you got so hung up on this step.

I'm not hung up on this, I'm wondering why this isn't mentioned in the installation manual.

What exactly does it say that there NEVER has been a special node installer or node licensing?
Nothing - there NEVER has been a License Manager either. How was I to know NL did not change that?

The node showed me a licensing error so I wondered whether I had to license it in any way. But the node installation manual doesn't cover this question, neither does the FAQ. And then there's the "Manual Node Licensing" on the portal for which I still have no good explanation.

There are hundreds of applications which use RLM, for better or for worse this change was needed for many different reasons. The advantages may not be clear if you have a one computer or a small number of them, but become very apparent if you need to manage licensing across many different systems.

I have nothing against using RLM, I just wished it set its firewall rules according to its need. Like mxnetwork did. Somewhere there the installation process failed, a failure I never encountered with any other software and that did cost me a lot of time and nerves.

I don't care very much for your tone from the start of your thread, and I'm just trying to help you. So you don't have to spend yet another full day solving what seems to be a very simple problem: a firewall is blocking the connection between the computer running the RLM server and your other computers. This firewall can be either in the RLM computer itself, or on the computer trying to connect to the RLM computer.

I was frustrated after some hours getting nowhere and after a less than helpful reading in the manual, the FAQ and the "Trouble Shooting" section.
There is only one FW running on the main workstation and as I said every other program including mxnetwork was able to set its rules accordingly. Only RLM failed to do so. And as I mentioned before I even shut down the FW service as a test but still got the same error message. So I don't know what happened.

@Fernando

Thanks for the explanation, that is about what I did.
Two differences: I first uninstalled MW2 and made a clean install and I have a FW running only on the main machine as this is the only one connected to the internet.

After getting the nodes running I tried a cooperative render:

Cooperative with "send dependencies" crashed all nodes instantly.
Cooperative without "send dependencies" had them set their status to "rendering" while doing nothing, although the node window said "New job received".

I will be in my office on Friday then I will test further. I also have some more nodes to install.
Maybe by then coop is also suddenly working, who knows?

[zoppo]

*Sigh* ... again ...

When I started the work station MW had forgotten all its licensing informations ...
It had worked when I had shut down Windows on Wednesday, when I started it again today MW asked me to be activated again although the files werde there in the Program Data directory.

So I downloaded the *.lic file again from the Customer Portal and it works now.

Kind of ...

I had four more nodes to install, three of them aren't working, plus one that did work on Wednesday stopped to do so.

Node ("Keine Rückmeldung" = not responding)


Another one shows its CMD Window - .223 is where the RLM is running.


Render Manager:


Render Monitor:

[zoppo]

I F*******G FOUND IT!

I can't believe it - in the network adapter's enhanced settings IP6 has to be disabled.
As soon as I disabled it the node responded again and connected to the manager.

[zoppo]

No comment.

[Mihai]

It looks like it crashed right after voxelisation. If that happens, my guess is it will happen with rendering in Maxwell itself, so then it's not a fault of network rendering in this case. Try rendering on that node the scene with Maxwell directly and see what happens.

[choo-chee]

I don't have v3 but I can tell you 2 things:
first I don't see any need for a firewall. any antivirus today will be enough, firewall always causes problems.
second I've had a similar problem with network adapter that after a few hours with tech support, I discovered myself that AVAST! planted a property in the adapter settings and blocked half of my traffic... removing it fixed everything.

[zoppo]

You are right, it happens just after voxelisation.

And it doesn't matter how I try to render the scene:
All the nodes crash, MW Render crashes, even Fire in C4D crashes and takes C4D down with it.

It is an older scene from MW2 where it worked fine.
I will test it more when I'm in the office.

choo-chee - I use the firewall not only for protection but also to control which program is dialing out. It is the built-in Windows FW and it never caused me any troubles up to now.
And as I wrote that problem got sorted out ... for now at least.

Although I have no clue why disabling IPv6 in the nodes was the solution ...?

[Mihai]

I'm wondering if it's not a case that you have a displacement material in your C4D scene, which was set to On the Fly. We discovered a problem in the plugin that they somehow get sent to Maxwell as pretesselated, so then it's a big chance you run out of RAM....not entirely sure though. But you can check this very quickly by disabling displacement from the Render Options, no need to disable it on individual materials.

[zoppo]

I have found the reason for the crashes - "Auto-generate Instances" in the C4D plugin. As soon as this is enabled everything crashes.

The next thing is that only the local machine is rendering the coop but not the nodes. The nodes stay at "New job order received".
The mxs is on a NAS and "Dependencies check" showed no problems.



EDIT: I need to send the dependencies even though they are on the NAS where every node has full access.

EDIT 2: I did not see your comment, I will check that in a moment.