General connection, up- and download problems

If the RebusDrop cannot connect to our servers, uploads or downloads are too slow or fail repeatedly, there are a few things you can try:

Restart the RebusDrop and your internet connection

The first thing to try sounds simple but helps much more often than you think. Just restart the RebusDrop.

Reconnecting or restarting your router/modem can occasionally help with connection problems as well.

Check your RebusDrop Settings

If those simple solutions don't help, please right-click the RebusDrop icon in the system tray (Windows) or status menu (OSX).

Open the 'Preferences'.

Navigate to the 'Settings' tab and make sure the 'Upload mode' and 'Download mode' boxes are set to 'SFTP (port 22)', which is the default.

Switch to the 'Bandwidth' tab, enable the 'Advanced Settings' and change the send/receive buffer sizes to 16384.

Save the changes, restart the RebusDrop and restart/resume your upload afterwards as well.

Change the up- and download modes

If it is still not working properly, you can also try the different up-/download modes in the RebusDrop. Go to 'Preferences' again and choose the 'Settings' tab.

Any of the 4 modes available may work better or worse with your connection, so you might want to try them all out. When you do, please keep in mind that 'FTP (unencrypted)' does not provide encryption and while it's a solid choice that often works where others fail, it may be insecure and is not recommended for sensitive data.

Save the changes, restart the RebusDrop and restart/resume your upload afterwards as well.

Firewall

If none of the above options works for you, chances are  the connection is being blocked by something. Typically that would be either a personal firewall on your workstation or a hardware firewall in your network. If you are unsure if that could be the problem, please either turn the firewall off for a minute, just to see if your transfers start working, or add an exception for the RebusDrop application to it.

Depending on the type of firewall used, you may need to allow specific connections. In order to work, RebusFarm needs to connect to 62.96.213.34 , 62.96.213.38 and 89.1.66.78 on ports 21, 22, 80 and 443. Please make sure to allow those outbound connections.

Specific upload errors

An upload error might look something like this:

File not correctly uploaded: path(cfg): /.../texture.png, size(cfg): 283888 - size(real):284222

The interesting parts are of course the file name and the size(cfg) and size(real) numbers. In this example, the size(real) is bigger than the size(cfg), meaning that the file we ended up with after the upload is bigger than it should be. This can only ever happen if we already have a file by that name in your user folder, and you are uploading a different one. We cannot have two different files with the same name in your user folder. Please either remove any render job using a file by that name from the farm or rename and relink the new version before starting the upload.

File not correctly uploaded: path(cfg): /.../texture.png, size(cfg): 283888 - size(real):0

Here the size(real) is 0 bytes, meaning that we have the file, but it's empty. Usually this indicates a connection loss. Please refer to the 'General up-/download problems' section above.

File not correctly uploaded: path(cfg): /.../texture.png, size(cfg): 283888 - size(real):-2

'-2' means that the file does not even exist. This could of course also be connection problem, in which case the same troubleshooting procedure applies. It could however also be an export problem. Please check if the missing file has actually been exported. You should be able to find it in your user files \RebusDrop\Projects\<your rebus user name>\tex\. If it's not there, please cancel the upload, rename and relink the texture in your scene and upload it again.