ADRT_SLAVE(1)

📦 version 7.44.0, in nixpkgs unstable

✨ ADRT_SLAVE(1) ✨ — the BRL-CAD glow-up edition 🎀

okay so picture this: you open the manual for adrt_slave(1), right? and it's giving distributed ray-tracing rendering worker energy. that's the whole vibe. it's part of the BRL-CAD fam, and yes bestie, it's lowkey iconic 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

adrt_slave — the ADRT distributed ray-tracing rendering worker. that's it, that's the girl 🫶

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

adrt_slave [-v] [-h] [-p port] [-t threads] [host]

like, that's the whole summoning ritual. so clean ✨

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so adrt_slave is a rendering worker for the Advanced Distributed Ray Tracer (ADRT). ngl that's a whole mouthful but basically: it receives geometry and per-tile work units over a network socket, ray-traces them with the librender TIE engine, and then sends the rendered pixels back to the dispatcher — or, if you're doing a different kind of run, the shotline, component, and bounding-box results. yes, all three. she does it all 😭🔥

and here's the slay part: multiple slaves cooperating with a single dispatcher let a single image be rendered in parallel across many machines. it's literally main character energy for your cluster. one image, so many machines, no cap 👑

so, the fork in the road:

  • if you give a host argument — adrt_slave connects to the ADRT dispatcher running on that host (default port 1980). she's the one reaching out 💌
  • if you give no host — the slave runs as a daemon and listens for an incoming connection (default port 1981). now she's waiting by the phone 🙈

either way, the geometry to render is supplied by the dispatcher, adrt_master(1), and the network rendering session is driven by isst(1). those two are the ones running the show, we're just here to render bestie 🧚

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

  • -p port — use the given TCP port instead of the protocol default. and the default is context-dependent, so pay attention: 1980 when connecting to a host, 1981 when running as a daemon. two different defaults, one flag, we love a versatile queen 🌈
  • -t threads — launch threads rendering threads per slave. yes the manpage really says "threads rendering threads," we're keeping it exactly as it is 💀. the value is clamped to the range 0-32, and 0 lets the engine choose based on the available cores. so don't try to be cute with 64, she will clamp you.
  • -v — print the ADRT version and exit. quick little vibe check, then she's gone ✌️
  • -h — print a usage summary and exit. the classic "help me help you" move 🫶

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Example 1. Run a slave as a daemon awaiting work 🌸

adrt_slave -t 8 -p 1981

start a worker that listens on port 1981 using eight rendering threads. then a dispatcher (for example, one launched from isst(1)) can connect to this host and hand it tiles to render. she's just sitting there, ready, waiting for the work to arrive. patient icon behavior tbh 🎀

Example 2. Connect a slave to a running dispatcher 🦋

adrt_slave -t 16 dispatcher.example.com

connect to the ADRT dispatcher on the host dispatcher.example.com (port 1980) and contribute sixteen rendering threads to the rendering pool. and here's the move: launching this command on several machines pointed at the same dispatcher spreads the work of a single frame across the cluster. that's the group chat coming together to get one thing done. teamwork fr fr 💜

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

brlcad(1), adrt_master(1), isst(1), rt(1)

go read those too, bestie, they're literally the supporting cast 🫶

💅 AUTHOR 💅

BRL-CAD Team — the collective. the whole squad. respect ✨

This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

(that's a lot of years of copyright and honestly? iconic longevity 💀👑)

🧚 BUG REPORTS 🧚

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org

ngl if you find a bug, tell them!! they literally want to know!! don't just sit there suffering in silence, that's not the vibe 😭📧

and that's the page!! mwah 💖 stay rendering, stay parallel, and remember — this beauty came to you from BRL-CAD, so go forth and distribute that ray tracing bestie 🌈⭐🎀

📦 where this page comes from