Virtual Planet Builder

How to continue a canceled or failed vpbmaster rendering

Details: Category: Virtual Planet Builder; Published: 14 February 2013; Written by Torben Dannhauer; Hits: 11983

Rendering large databases (0,7 TB raw data and more) often causes the operating system or any part of it to crash. While using 64 OS, the limit is pushed away, it is not solved.

Virtual rendering setup

Let us assume a virtual renderering setup:

You are using Kubuntu 9.10 64bit
You are using OSG 2.9.5 and VPB 0.9.11
Your working directory:
```
/myWorkingDirectory
```
Your output diretory is:
```
/myWorkingDirectory/output
```

Your sourcedata (dem and texture) resides in:

/myWorkingDirectory/source/dem/
/myWorkingDirectory/source/orthophoto/

Your machinepool.txt is stored in your working directory and contains:
```
Machine {
        hostname localhost
        processes 8
}
```

Your compilescript "compile.sh" is stored in your working directory and contains:

#!/bin/sh

vpbmaster --machines machinepool.txt\
 --notify-level ALWAYS\
 --geocentric\
 --terrain\
 --compressed\
 -d source/dem \
 -t source/orthophoto \
 -o output/terrain.ive

Compile a dataset

Now, to compile your dataset using this script, type:

cd /myWorkingDirectory
./compile.sh

The vpbmaster now runs as usual, and creates the following folder an files:

logs - this directory contains the logfiles for each submitted task - a good place to search for the reasons why your tasks failed :).
tasks - This directory contains all taskfiles with there status (pending or completed).
build_master.source -This file contains all information you passed to vpbmaster via the commandline options.
build_master.tasks - This file contains a list of all taskfiles in this compile project.

If your run is canceled, or due to OS reasons your tasks fail, you can restart your build process in three alternative ways:

Just restart your compile.sh script - THIS WILL OVERWRITE ALL ALREADY COMPILED DATA! Or...
Just restart vpbmaster with the created build_master.source via vpbmaster -s build_master.source. - THIS WILL OVERWRITE ALL ALREADY COMPILED DATA TOO! Therefore....
Resume your Build...

Resuming a build process

To resume a build process, just go to your working directory and call vpbmaster with your specified task file list:

cd /myWorkingDirectory
vpbmaster --tasks build_master.tasks

Now vpbmaster does NOT build up a new tasklist and new taskfiles, but he just uses existing taskfiles and skips all tasks which are already finished.