Automating LucidLink Mounts for AWS Deadline Cloud Renders
By Braincuber Team
Published on February 12, 2026
In the world of Visual Effects (VFX), "cloud bursting" is the holy grail. You want to render locally when it's cheap, and burst to thousands of cloud nodes when deadlines loom. But there's a catch: Data Gravity.
Moving terabytes of assets to the cloud takes time. LucidLink solves this by streaming files on demand, making S3 storage look like a local drive.
In this tutorial, we will assist a fictional VFX studio, PixelForge, in setting up AWS Deadline Cloud Service-Managed Fleets. We'll automate the installation of LucidLink so that every render node can instantly access the studio's global asset library securely.
The Goal: Zero-Touch Configuration
- Security: No hardcoded passwords in scripts. We use AWS Secrets Manager.
- Efficiency: Mount the filesystem only when a job starts, and unmount immediately after.
- Scalability: The setup works whether you launch 10 nodes or 10,000.
Step 1: Secure Credentials
PixelForge needs to store their LucidLink bot user credentials securely. We'll use AWS Secrets Manager.
Create a new secret named lucidlink-credentials with the following JSON structure:
{
"username": "PixelForgeBot",
"password": "super-secure-password-123",
"filespace": "pixelforge.projects"
}Step 2: The Fleet Initialization Script
When configuring your Service-Managed Fleet in Deadline Cloud, you can provide a "Worker Configuration Script". This runs once when the EC2 instance boots.
This script installs the LucidLink client and ensures the daemon is running. Note: It does not mount the filesystem yet.
#!/bin/bash
set -ex
# 1. Download & Install LucidLink
echo "Installing LucidLink client..."
wget -q https://www.lucidlink.com/download/new-ll-latest/linux-rpm/stable/ -O lucidinstaller.rpm
yum install -y lucidinstaller.rpm
# 2. Configure Systemd Service
echo "Creating systemd service..."
cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/lucidlink.service
[Unit]
Description=LucidLink Daemon
After=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/lucid3 daemon
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/lucid3 exit
Restart=on-failure
User=root
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
# 3. Start Service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable lucidlink
systemctl start lucidlink
# 4. Create Mount Point
mkdir -p /mnt/lucid
chmod 777 /mnt/lucid
echo "LucidLink installed successfully."Step 3: The Job Environment
Deadline Cloud uses Open Job Description (OpenJD). We define a "Queue Environment" that runs before (onEnter) and after (onExit) the job. This ensures the filesystem is mounted securely using the credentials fetched from Secrets Manager.
specificationVersion: 'environment-2023-09'
parameterDefinitions:
- name: LucidSecretName
type: STRING
default: lucidlink-credentials
- name: LucidFilespace
type: STRING
default: pixelforge.projects
environment:
name: LucidLinkMount
script:
actions:
onEnter:
command: "{{Env.File.MountLucidLink}}"
onExit:
command: "{{Env.File.UnmountLucidLink}}"
embeddedFiles:
- name: MountLucidLink
type: TEXT
runnable: true
data: |
#!/bin/bash
set -e
# Fetch Secret
SECRET=$(aws secretsmanager get-secret-value --secret-id "{{Param.LucidSecretName}}" --query 'SecretString' --output text)
USER=$(echo "$SECRET" | jq -r '.username')
PASS=$(echo "$SECRET" | jq -r '.password')
# Mount
echo "$PASS" | lucid3 link --fs "{{Param.LucidFilespace}}" --user "$USER" --mount-point "/mnt/lucid" --fuse-allow-other
- name: UnmountLucidLink
type: TEXT
runnable: true
data: |
#!/bin/bash
lucid3 unlink --fs "{{Param.LucidFilespace}}" || true
Conclusion
By decoupling the installation (Fleet Script) from the authentication (Job Environment), PixelForge has created a secure, scalable rendering pipeline. They can now spin up 500 nodes for a weekend render, and every node automatically streams the necessary assets from LucidLink without manual configuration.
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