HOT on the farm

[Ole]

Hi,

I'm having some problems with being able to have a centralized repository for plugins which the entire farm can reference to. Is it at all possible? So far, I've only got binding handles errors and some strange JPEG errors which I believe is related to loading the Ocean SOP icon.

While on the same topic: Is it possible to have a "fall back" home folder set up? If I make a system on a server where each node has its $HOME/houdini11.0/ folder and the server goes down, Houdini will revert to the local $HOME folder? Point being of all of this is to avoid having to manually go through each and every node when Houdini/HOT needs an update. 

I would also be grateful for any tips or ideas considering this issue

- O.

[colt]

This is not Houdini specific, but I would strongly advise against directly loading the plugins etc. from one location. This way you get write locks on some files and can't update/change them until all open tools are closed.

In my opinion it's best to store everything in one location in your network, but copy it locally when starting the app. If you only check for updates and not copy everything it shouldn't slow down startup too much. This has multiple advantages. First you can modify the files on the network while everyone is working. And even if the server is down, the last versions are available on the workstation.

For farm machines it may be sufficient to only update with a reboot, or send a special job with your rendermanager.