Installation
Tractor was meant to be installed on a RHEL based Linux distribution like CentOS which is commonly used in VFX studios. But this guide include instructions to install it on a Debian based machine.
Install RPM packages
The package that you get from the download page is a .rpm
package which you can only install on RHEL distros.
However if you plan to install it on a Debian based machine, the setup is a little bit different.
To convert a .rpm
to a .deb
package, use Alien:
$ sudo apt install alien
# Convert to .deb with scripts (-c option)
$ sudo alien -d -c Tractor-2.4_2091325-linuxRHEL6_gcc44icc150.x86_64.rpm
# Installs the generated deb package using low level dpkg
$ sudo dpkg -i tractor_2.42091325-1_amd64.deb
info
Repeat this process for the Pixar License server (License Utilities) to install the license. (for example PixarLicense-LA-24.0_2172149-linuxRHEL7_gcc63icc190.x86_64.rpm
)
License server
To install the license server, do the following (after installing the package):
$ cd /opt/pixar/PixarLicense-LA-24.0
$ sudo ./linux_installService.sh
caution
You must have a pixar.license
file in the /opt/pixar
directory for the install to work.
Setup systemd service files
Now the issue is that the systemd services are not installed and configured. It allows the service to start/restart at boot time. See Pixar's documentation about setting up the services.
The systemd service files are located in /opt/pixar/Tractor-2.4/lib/SystemServices
. Copy those files in the right folder and start the services:
# Copy service file in systemd directory
$ sudo cp /opt/pixar/Tractor-2.4/lib/SystemServices/systemd /etc/systemd/system
$ sudo systemctl start tractor-engine.service
# Checks if it's running
$ sudo systemctl status tractor-engine.service
note
You can change the line Environment="OPTIONS=--debug --log /home/td/tractor/engine.log"
in tractor-engine.service
to add a custom log location.
DNS setup
There must be an entry in the DNS server of tractor
and tractor-engine
pointing to the server. It allows future blades and services to connect to the engine.
To verify if it works, you can use nslookup
:
$ nslookup tractor
Server: 172.16.69.160
Address: 172.16.69.160#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: tractor.artfx.fr
Address: 192.168.2.120
Connect to the dashboard interface
If everything works as expected, you can go to http://tractor
on a browser to inspect the Tractor interface.
Congratulations! Tractor is running fine 🚜🚜