Hi Friends,

We are running Autodesk Maya 8.5 (64 bit) on opensuse 10 and 10.1 (both 64 bit OS) on 400 servers. These servers comprise of HP proliant blade server and IBM x336 series 1U servers.

These servers are configured as render farms for distributed processing (rendering) of maya scenes. The job distribution and scheduling is carried out by a third party software. Maya scenes are comprised of multiple frames. Each frame is rendered on individual server.

Of late we are facing an issue of maya crashing with multiple errors. But the errors are intermittent and the same frame gets rendered on the same server after resubmission.

Error 1 :


*** glibc detected *** /usr/autodesk/maya8.5-x64/bin/maya.bin: free(): invalid pointer: 0x00002aab18cf9010 ***
257.log:*** glibc detected *** /usr/autodesk/maya8.5-x64/bin/maya.bin: free(): invalid pointer: 0x000000001624faa0 ***
257.log:*** glibc detected *** /usr/autodesk/maya8.5-x64/bin/maya.bin: free(): invalid pointer: 0x00002aab1999f010 ***

Error 2:


maya encountered a fatal error

Signal: 11 (Unknown Signal)
Stack trace:
/lib64/libpthread.so.0 [0x2aef7abd0140]
TdataNurbsCurve::madeIntoNonWriter()
TdataLetter::unreference(TdataRefType)
Tdata::makeHolder()
TdataBlockDG::value(Tattribute const&)
MDataBlock::inputArrayValue(MObject const&, MStatus*)
shaveHairShape::computeOutputMesh(MDataBlock&, bool)
shaveHairShape::compute(MPlug const&, MDataBlock&)
THsurfaceShape::computePlug(Tplug const&, TdataBlock&)
TdependNode::dbEvaluate(TmsgEval&)
TdagObject::dbEvaluate(TmsgEval&)
Tplug::getValue(TdataHandle&, TdataBlock const&, bool, bool, bool) const
TdependNode::getPlugValue(Tplug const&, TdataHandle&, TdgContext const&)
TdependNode::processMessage(Tmsg&)
TdagObject::processMessage(Tmsg&)
Tmsg::send()
TmsgPlugValue::send()
MPlug::getValue(float&, MDGContext&) const
shaveHairShape::getHairNode()
initTexInfoLookup(MObjectArray const&, MString, bool, bool)
shaveRenderer::doShutter(MTime const&, shaveConstant::ShutterState)
shaveMRRenderer::frameStart(shaveGlobals::Globals const&)
shaveRender::frameStart(void*)
shaveRenderCmd::doIt(MArgList const&)
THcommandObject::doIt(TargList&)
TmetaCommand::doCommand(TargList&)
Mel_Command_Dispatch(SphNode*)
node_exec
fc_if
node_exec

Result: /casl-st5/Render/AO_SEQ_CHAR/SQ05_CHAR_FINAL/scenes/AO_SQ005_SC012_101_257_WINSTON_FUR_RIM_V03.ma
Fatal Error. Attempting to save in /usr/tmp/render.20090430.0112.ma
Writing crash report in /usr/tmp/render.20090430.0112.crash
// Maya exited with status 1

What could these error mean and how can I troubleshoot them ? I have added following environment variables in /etc/profile for more details on the error.

export MAYA_DEBUG_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTING=1
export MALLOC_CHECK_=1