02 Nov 2008
To shutdown one or more render servers in your renderfarm add special kind of job to render queue by entering this command in command line:
"c:\Program Files\Autodesk\Backburner\cmdjob.exe" -jobname "shutdown"
-jobNameAdjust -manager 192.168.1.2 shutdown.exe -s -m 192.168.1.2 -t 60
You can create .bat file with this command and put it on the desktop to quickly add "shutdown" job to render queue.
Parameters:
"shutdown" - name of the job you see in the backburner's monitor
"192.168.1.2" - IP of the backburner manager/
shutdown.exe -s -m 192.168.1.2 -t 60 - this is the windows command which actually shuts down the computer.
In this case computer will shut down after 60 seconds after last rendering job. One thing to consider: user, who add this command to backburner queue should have enougth permission to turn off the render server(s).
In place of the shutdown.exe you can place virtually any command that is accessible in your network environment. To run one command job on every computer in the render network add -perServer option to cmdjob.exe. Without it command will run only one time on first server which finishes rendering.
Update for Vista 64:
Under Vista 64-bit this shutdown technique doesn't work for me. Now I'm using empty scene with post-render script containing one string:
DOSCommand "shutdown.exe -s -m computername -t 60"
I submitted this scene with low priority and reset it in backburner monitor everytime I want to shutdown computer after rendering.