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    Jobs can be submitted from WranglerView using the items under the Submit menu. Selecting one will launch a modal submission dialog with the standard framework and job-specific parameters. Specify the fields and then press the "Submit" button to submit the job to the Qube! Supervisor.

    Buttons

    There is a common set of buttons located at the bottom of the Submission Dialog.

    • Set Defaults: Store as defaults in the User Preferences for that Jobtype, the values listed in the current submission dialog. The interface will use those values the next time the dialog is opened. This allows you to specify common fields like Priority or Executable that should always be the same value.
    • Clear Defaults: Remove any stored defaults for that Jobtype submission dialog
    • Expert Mode: Toggle button to display or hide export and non-default values from the submission dialog to reduce clutter when there are a lot of parameters. The current state of this toggle is stored in the Preferences Dialog.
    • Save [Disk Icon]: Store the current properties of the job from the dialog as a file (by default an XML file). This can be used to submit through the WranglerView at a later time with "Submit->File…" or from the command line with the qbsub command, or via the API.
    • Cancel: Cancel the job submission and close the dialog.
    • Submit: Submit the job with the specified parameters to the Qube! Supervisor.

    Parameters

    Basic Parameters for all Jobs:

    • Name: name used for the job, usually artist specified.
    • Priority: priority of the job. A number between 1 and 9999. Lower numbers mean higher priority.
    • CPUs: The number of processes (or subjobs/instances) to run the job with at the same time. When rendering, this equates to the number of frames being rendered at the same time.

    Render Thread and Job Reservation Controls

    This section is located near the top of the submission UI, and is collapsed when 'Expert Mode' is not selected.  For applications that do not support setting the number of threads, this section is not visible at all.

    Enabling 'Expert Mode' at the bottom of the UI will open this field up

    Icon

    Use Slots=Threads only on farms where the workers are configured to have as many slots as they have cores; they will show 0/8 or 0/16 in the Slots when they're empty, where the 0/N number is the number of free slots. This is the default configuration in Qube!

    The other common configuration is all the worker set to only ever accept 1 job, where they show 0/1 in the Slots column in the UI. Do not use Slots=Threads in this configuration, since none of your workers will have enough free slots to accept the job.

    Thread Control Behavior:

    Checking Use All Cores for applications or renderers that support auto-detection of the number of cores installed on a worker host will set the renderer's appropriate control to enable this feature. In the case of a Maya job, it sets renderThreads=0; for the Mentalray renderer, it sets autoRenderThreads=True.  It will try to "do the right thing" for each application where this control is visible.

    Checking Render on all cores will also sets the job's reservation string to reserve all cores: you will set a "+" at the end of the host.processors=N+ . This means "only start on a worker with N free slots, but reserve them all, so that no other jobs will start on this worker while I'm running on it".  The Min Free Slots value will affect the value of N, so setting it to 4 will say "start only on a worker with 4 free slots".

    Render on all cores also disables the bottom-half of this section, Specific Thread Count and Slots=Threads, whose behavior is explained below.

    Setting Specific Thread Count, on the other hand, does not necessarily reserve all the cores on the worker, it only sets the renderer's particular number of threads control, in Maya's case it's Render Threads:

    But you will notice that the job's reservations have not changed, and is probably still at the default value of host.processors=1.  This is to support workers which are configured for fewer slots than they have cores.

    The Slots=Threads control will link the job reservations to the thread count, so a 4-threaded job will reserve 4 worker slots.  It also disables the Render on all cores and Min Free Slots controls.

    As you change the Specific Thread Count control the reservations value will automatically update.

    Parameters for Cmdline Jobs:

    • Command: The command to run on the Worker. Paths and syntax should be what the Worker's OS expects, not the submitting machine.
    • Shell (Linux/OS X): Specify the shell to use when executing the command line on the Worker. Only visible in Expert Mode.


    Parameters for Cmdrange Jobs:

    • Command: Same as the Cmdline Job, though it will substitute the following strings based on the frame being executed for the given task.
      • QB_FRAME_NUMBER
      • QB_FRAME_START
      • QB_FRAME_END
      • QB_FRAME_STEP
      • QB_FRAME_RANGE
    • Range: The frame range to execute.
    • Execution
      • Individual Frames
      • Chunks with n Frames
      • Split into n Partitions
    • Ordering: Specify whether tasks should be executed in ascending, descending, or binary sort (first, last, middle, split the middle values, …) order.


    Common Parameters for SimpleCmd Jobs:

    • All the fields for either Cmdline or Cmdrange jobs (see above), plus
    • Cmd Template: String used to construct the command line along with the rest of the job parameters. Python string representations are used, e.g. %(val)s to represent the string value from "val". If listed, %(argv)s places all optional arguments at that location instead of at the end. This constructs a command line that is then used by the Cmdline or Cmdrange jobtypes on the Workers. See above for the string replace values for CmdRange.
    • Executable – path to the renderer or executable to run. Unless it is in the path on the Worker's environment, this needs to be set to an absolute path (to where the executable is located on the Worker)


    Detailed Qube Parameters for all Jobs:

    Qube Worker Selection

     Click here for details...

    Hosts

    Explicit list of Worker hostnames that will be allowed to run the job (comma-separated).

    Groups

    Explicit list of Worker groups that will be allowed to run the job (comma-separated). Groups identify machines through some attribute they have, eg, a GPU, an amount of memory, a license to run a particular application, etc. Jobs cannot migrate from one group to another. See worker_groups.

    Omit Hosts

    Explicit list of Worker hostnames that are not allowed run the job (comma-separated).

    Omit Groups

    Explicit list of Worker groups that are not allowed to run the job (comma-separated).

    Priority Cluster

    Clusters are non-overlapping sets of machines. Your job will run at the given priority in the given cluster. If that cluster is full, the job can run in a different cluster, but at lower priority. Clustering

    Example:

    • A job submitted to /showB/lighting will run with its given priority in /showB/lighting cluster.

    • If /showB/lighting is full, that job can run in /showB/FX, but at a lower priority.

    • If both /showB/lighting and /showB/FX are full, the job can run in /showA/* at an even lower priority.

     

    Host Order

    Order to select Workers for running the job (comma-separated) [+ means ascending, - means descending].

    Host Order is a way of telling the job how to select/order workers

      • "+host.processors.avail" means prefer workers which have more slots available

      • "+host.memory.avail" means prefer workers which have more memory available

      • "+host.memory.total" means prefer workers which have more total memory

      • "+host.processor_speed" means prefer workers with higher cpu speeds

      • "+host.cpus" means prefer workers with higher total cpu slots

     

    Requirements

    Worker properties needed to be met for job to run on that Worker (comma-separated, expression-based). Click 'Browse' to choose from a list of Host Order Options.

    Requirements is a way to tell the workers that this job needs specific properties to be present in order to run. The drop-down menu allows a choice of OS:

    • "winnt" will fill the field with "host.os=winnt" which means only run on Windows based workers

    • "linux" will fill the field with "host.os=linux" which means only run on Linux based workers

    • "osx" will fill the field with "host.os=osx" which means only run on OSX based workers

    You can also add any other Worker properties via plain text. Some examples: 

    • "host.processors.avail.=4" means only run this job on workers that have 4 or more slots available

    • "host.processors.used=0" means only run this job on workers with 0 slots in use

    • "host.memory.avail=400" means only run this job on workers that have 400 memory available

    With integer values, you can use any numerical relationships, e.g. =, <, >, <=, >=. This won't work for string values or floating point values. Multiple requirements can also be combined with AND and OR (the symbols && and || will also work).

    The 'Only 1 of a "kind" of job' checkbox will restrict a Worker to running only one instance with a matching "kind" field (see below). The prime example is After Effects, which will only allow a single instance of AE on a machine. Using this checkbox and the "Kind" field, you can restrict a Worker to only one running copy of After Effects, while still leaving the Worker's other slots available for other "kinds" of jobs.

     

    Reservations

    Worker resources to reserve when running job (comma-separated, expression-based).  

    Reservations is a way to tell the workers that this job will reserve the specific resources for this job.

    Menu items:

    • "host.processors" this will fill the field with "host.processors=X" which means reserve X slots on the worker while running this job

    • "host.memory" this will fill the field with "host.memory=X" which means only reserve X memory on the worker while running this job

    Other options:

    • "host.license.nuke=1" when a Global Resources entry has been made you can reserve any arbitrary named item. New in 6.6: Once you create a global resource, it will show up in this menu (eg global.vray above).

    • See also Job Reservations

     

    Restrictions

    Restrict job to run only on specified clusters ("||"-separated) [+ means all below, * means at that level]. Click 'Browse' to choose from a list of Restrictions Options.

    Restrictions is a way to tell the workers that this job can only run on specific clusters. You can choose more than one cluster in the list.

    Examples:

    • Choosing /showA would restrict the job to machines that are only in the /showA cluster, and no other cluster, not even those below /showA.

    • Choosing /showA/* would restrict the job to the cluster(s) below /showA, but not including /showA

    • Choosing /showA/+ would restrict the job to /showA and all the clusters below it.

     

    See Also


    Qube Advanced Job Control
    • Flags: List of submission flag strings (comma separated). See reference for full list of available flags and their meanings.
    • Dependency: Have job run after the completion or status change of another job or jobs. Can be set for per-job or per-frame for the dependencies. See Job Dependency Graph Panel for displaying dependencies. Valid Formats:
      • <jobid>
      • complete-job-<jobid>
      • link-<state>-<type>-<jobid>
      • info-<state>-{",[]}
        • special chars:
        • '*' means each frame
        • " (blank) means entire job
      Examples:
      • link-complete-job-529,  link-complete-work-430, info-complete-{'1':['540:3'], '':['600:'], '':['700']} , link-complete-job-300, 900, complete-job-123
      • info-<state>-{'':['123','456'], '':['345:'], '10':['346:2', 346:4']}
    • Email: Email the specified user on job completion.
    • Blocked: Submit the job, but do not put it in the Queue to execute.
    • Stderr->Stdout: Redirect and consolidate the job stderr stream to the stdout stream.
    • Job Label: Representative label used to help identify jobs within a specified Job Process Group
    • Job Kind:
    • Process Group: Explicitly set the Job Process Group for the job so it can be logically grouped with other jobs. By default the Process Group will be the same as the JobID.
    • Retry Frame Instance: Number of times to retry a failed subjob process.
    • Retry Work Delay: Time in seconds to wait before retrying a failed job. The default is 0, which is probably not useful - a delay of a few seconds may help with jobs that fail for transient reasons (eg, network slowness)
    • Subjob Timeout: Kill the subjob process if running for the specified time (in seconds). Value of -1 means disabled.
    • Frame Timeout: Kill the agenda/frame if running for the specified time (in seconds). Value of -1 means disabled.
    Qube Job Environment
    • Cwd: (Current Working Directory) Explicitly specify the current working directory where the Worker should start the process
    • Env vars: (Environment Variables) Explicitly set specific environment variables that should be used when running a job process on the Worker.
    • Impersonate User: Submit job as specified user. Default is current user. Format: <optionaldomain>\<username> (advanced – requires Impersonate user permission)
    Qube Output Parsing and Validation
    • regex_highlights: Regular expression for highlighting information messages from stdout/stderr
    • regex_errors: Regular expression for identifying fatal errors from stdout/stderr
    • regex_outputPaths: Regular expression for identifying outputPaths of images from stdout/stderr
    • regex_maxLines: Maximum number of lines to store for regex matched patterns for stdout/stderr
    • validate_fileMinSize: Minimum size for identified outputPaths (in bytes). [0 disables test]
    Qube Actions
    • generateMovie: add linked job to generate movie from output images. It will launch a second submission dialog to convert the images to a movie. This addresses the common action chain of rendering images and then converting those images into a Quicktime or similar movie. Note: This function will only work on jobtypes that retrieve the output image filenames into Qube (Maya, 3dsMax, Softimage, AfterEffects, etc).
    Shotgun Submission
    • Login: login username for Shotgun
    • Task: Shotgun task
    • Project: Shotgun project
    • Shot/Asset: Shotgun shot/asset
    • Version Name: Shotgun version template. Performs variable substitution using python format %(key)s to get the value. The dict keys are prefixed with "job.", "package.", and "shotgun." respectively.
    • Description: Shotgun description. Performs variable substitution using python format %(key)s to get the value. The dict keys are prefixed with "job.", "package.", and "shotgun." respectively.
    Qube Notes

    Job Flags

    Flag

    Value

    Description

    auto_mount

    8

    Require automatic drive mounts on worker.

    auto_wrangling

    16384

    Enable auto-wrangling for this job.

    convert_path131072Automatically convert paths on worker at runtime.

    disable_auto_complete

    8192

    Normally instances are automatically completed by the system when a job runs out of available agenda items. Setting this flag disables that.

    disable_cpu_limit

    4096

    Normally, if a job is submitted with the number of instances greater than there are agenda items, Qube! automatically shrinks the number of instances to be equal to the number of agenda items. Setting this flag disables that.

    disable_windows_job_object

    2048

    (Deprecated in Qube6.5) Disable Windows' process management mechanism (called the "Job Object") that Qube! normally uses to manage job processes. Some applications already use it internally, and job objects don't nest well within other job objects, causing jobs to crash unexpectedly.

    elite

    512

    Submit job as an elite job, which will be started immediately regardless of how busy the farm is. Elite jobs are also protected from preemption. Must be admin.

    export_environment

    16

    Use environment variables set in the submission environment, when running the job on the workers.

    expand

    32

    (Deprecated in Qube6.5) Automatically expand job to use as many instances as there are agenda items (limited by the total job slots in the farm).

    grid

    4

    Wait for all instances to start before beginning work (useful for implementation of parallel jobs, such as satellite renders).

    host_list

    256

    Run job on all candidate hosts, as filtered by other options (such as "hosts" or "groups").

    mail

    1024

    Send e-mail when job is done.

    migrate_on_frame_retry

    65536

    When an agenda item (frame) fails but is retried automatically because the retrywork option is set, setting this flag causes the instances to be migrated to another worker host, preventing the frame from running on the same host.

    no_defaults524288Prevent supervisor from applying supervisor_job_flags

    p_agenda

    32768

    Enable p-agenda for this job, so that some frames are processed at a higher priority.

    uninterruptible

    1

    Prevent job from being preempted.

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