1. Qube
2. Qube! Documentation
3. Start Here
4. Installing Qube!

Installing Qube!

A Qube! farm has 3 main components:

1. The Qube! clients, machines that submit jobs.  Typically these are artists or end-users workstations.
2. The Qube! workers, machines that run jobs.  A client can also be a worker.
3. The Qube! supervisor, which controls what jobs are sent to which workers.

You will install a Supervisor, a Worker and a Client, and then submit a job from the Client to the Supervisor, which will hand it off to the Worker. All three of these roles can be played by the same machine, so if you want to investigate Qube! on a single laptop, you can do that. Or if your goals ambitions are larger, you can do that from here as well. Whatever your final goal, to install and start using Qube!, follow these steps.

Before You Begin

• The installer is designed to be run on a machine with a working internet connection, and we suggest saving the downloaded components to a network drive.
• You must have administration privileges to install the software. 
  • For Windows users, you may want to right-click > "Run as Administrator" or just log in as the Administrator.
  • For Linux users, you must run as root or a sudoer. 
  • OS X users macOS users will be prompted to enter an admin password before installation begins.
• Once components have been downloaded, the installer can be run again on other machines without accessing the internet by pointing it to the download location used by the previous install session.

Linux Prerequisites

On linux, several packages must be present before Qube can be installed, and some pre-configuration is needed.

NOTE: QubeInstaller requires the Qt5Core DSO to be available on the system. Check that you have the "qt5-qtbase" package installed, especially if you are attempting to run it on a "minimal" or "server" OS installation.

Linux Supervisor prerequisites:

• install 
  • python3 (3.6, 3.7, or 3.8)
  • xinetd
  • qt5-qtbase
• disable:
  • firewall
  • SElinux

Linux Worker prerequisites:

• install 
  • python3 (if using any Python-based jobtypes, such as the built-in pyCmdrange and pyCmdline)
  • xinetd
  • qt5-qtbase
• disable 
  • firewall
  • SElinux

Linux Client prerequisites:

• < none >

Install and Go 

Follow these steps:

That's it! After you've got this far, you can submit jobs for hero applications such as Maya, 3dsMax, Nuke, and many others.

Additional Possibilities

Alternatively, you can continue with Qube! administration tasks. The Administrator's Guide explains how to keep building up your Qube! installation, including:

Installing Licenses
Adding Additional Workers
Adding Additional Clients
Tuning Qube! for Optimal Performance

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launch launch

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2. Launch the Install Wizard

Windows

Extract the contents of the installer zip file. Go into the folder created, right mouse click on the installer file, and run as administrator.

OS XmacOS

Double-click on the dmg file that you downloaded. You should see this:

...

$ cd /path/to/downloaded/installer
$ tar xvzf qubeInstaller.CentOS_6.5.x86_64.tgz             # Note: of course the file name may differ depending on your Linux distribution
$ cd qubeInstaller-2.1-2.CentOS_6.5.x86                    # move into the directory that was just created
$ sudo ./qubeInstaller.2.1-2.CentOS_6.5                    # run the installer with sudo or as root

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All OSs

In all cases, you will now see the opening screen, followed by a license agreement, which you should read and accept before continuing.   Note: Depending on your OS, the installer screens may look slightly different, but the content will be exactly the same.

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At this point you are ready to install one of the Qube! components. If this is your first install, keep reading and install a Supervisor. Otherwise, skip that and move to installing a Worker and Client, below

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supervisor supervisor

3. Install the Supervisor

The Supervisor controls and monitors the jobs that the Clients send to the Workers. There should be only one Supervisor on your network. For preliminary evaluation purposes, the Supervisor can be almost any machine, but for production use you should refer to the Supervisor guidelines on the Qube! System Requirements page.

If you have been following the installer steps above, you should now be looking at the Component Selection page, shown below. Click on 'Supervisor' as shown here: 

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The install wizard will look to make sure there isn't already a supervisor Supervisor installed on this network / subnet, and then it will allow you to click through to install the supervisorSupervisor. First it will download the additional components, and then it will install them. You should end up with this screen:

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You can launch the Qube! Wrangler GUI from here if you like, but let's keep going and finish the install. So click through to the end and exit the install wizard. But continue following the instructions on this page. <if If you are installing on Windows, at this point you get will see a desktop icon for Wrangler View> Qube! WranglerView.

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worker worker

4. Install a Worker & Client

What's the difference between a Worker and a Client? A Worker is going to render frames or run simulations or do whatever tasks you want to submit. You want one of those on every machine that you expect to be able to pick up and execute a task.

A Client is a machine or interface that a person submits jobs from. Installing a Client really just means installing the User UI, which is a simpler version of the Wrangler UI. In that sense, it is optional - users can also submit from, and monitor their jobs from, the Wrangler UI.

Users User's desktop machines tend to be both Workers and Clients, so in that case you would install both. In a larger installation, there would be a lot of Workers and relatively fewer Clients.  There is more detail on the Terminology page.

To do the install, we are assuming you already have a supervisor Supervisor installed on the network/subnet. You can install the Worker and Client on a different computer, or if you want to do a quick simple evaluation of Qube!, on the same one you just used for the supervisorSupervisor. If it is a different computer, it can have a different OS from the supervisor Supervisor - but if it does, you will need to go back to Step 1 and download the appropriate installer for the Worker / Client OS.

For the purposes of this Quickstart, we are going to install both Worker and Client at the same time on the same machine. Launch the installer again, and click through to the Component Selection screen. This time, select Worker, and then also click on the checkbox labeled "Qube! ArtistView":

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For now, choose the default, which is Desktop User mode. There is an explanation of what this means, and what mode you might want in various environments, on this page. <need a page to link to>

Again, the installer will download the selected components, and then install them. When this completes, you will see buttons allowing you to submit some test jobs. We'll do that in the next section. So keep reading...

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submit submit

5. Submit Basic Test Jobs

We assume you have a dialogue box on your screen similar to the above. To verify that the Qube! Supervisor is running and sees this that the Worker (and vice versa)and Supervisor can see each other, click on "Submit basic test job". You should see it go change to "Pending" and then "Running" and finally "Success!"

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At this point, exit the installer. Then launch the Qube! Wrangler View. On Windows, it will be the red & green desktop icon. On OS XmacOS, it will be in Applications/pfx/qube. On Linux you type 'qube'. You should see this UI:

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Let's use this to launch a quick commandline job, just to see how this works.  In Submit From the menu bar, choose Submit -> Cmdline Job.

You'll get this UI. Fill in the command with something like the command shown (Linux & OS XmacOS):

For Windows, the commands could be this:

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At this point, your supervisor and worker are up and going. You can install more workers and/or clients by using the installer again, or by using the quickstart kickstart files. You  You can find help with submitting specific kinds of jobs, for example Maya or After Effects, on the I Want To... page.in the Submitting Jobs section.

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Licensing

Right now Qube! is running 2 evaluation licenses (these are Designer licenses - see this page for an explanation of license types). You can use these licenses to evaluate Qube! indefinitely, but if you want to run more Workers you will need to purchase licenses. Instructions for installing additional licenses are on this the License Installation page.