[Radiance-general] Mac OS X and nfs

[John S. An]

Hi all,

I'm at my wits end trying to get my machines to play nicely when 
parallel processing.  I have a 4 computer setup which I am trying to 
farm together via nfs for some renderings, and I've come to an impass.

Set-up:
2 linux boxes running Mandrake 9.1
2 Macintoshes running Panther (10.3.2)

One of the linux box is set as the nfs server.  I set the /etc/exports 
to give read write access and sync to all machines in my private 
network (192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0).  The server and the other linux 
box have no problems communicating and parallel processing.

On the Macintoshes, I used the shareware program NFSManager to set up 
the mount for the exported folder.  In the Finder, I am able to access, 
read, and copy files from the Macintosh to the server, and to erase 
files that are on the server.  I can also use X11 to run single 
processor renderings on files that are located on the nfs server.  
However, when I try to run the parallel renderings from the Macintosh, 
the process just freezes.  Using the top command, I see that rpict is 
there, but 0% of the computers resources is devoted to the process, and 
it remains in that state indefinitely (5 days).

I doubled checked the UID and GID on all for machines to make sure that 
they all match.

Just to test what was going on, I tried setting up one of my 
Macintoshes as the nfs server.  In this instance, the linux box can 
mount the file system, but the process freezes when it starts the 
rendering, whether it be a single rpict command or an rpiece command.  
The other Macintosh is capable of running and completing the parallel 
rendering process, but only about 10% of the computers resources is 
devoted to the process (this is something that I'll just have to look 
into).

Could somebody please help me figure out what is going on?

Thanks.