FCS 6 Compressor / Qmaster Issue (with QuickCluster)

Question

I currently have a Mac Pro on the bench running OSX 10.5.8 and FCS 6.  All current updates installed.  Qmaster is set up with a QuickCluster, using 8 instances for all 4 cores on both CPUs.  4 GB of RAM.  Using droplet to compress MOV files.
After dropping MOV file into droplet for compression, Qmaster status shows that certain instances are not connecting (by indicating red next to listed instance), followed by the infamous 3x crash service down error message.  Has been an ongoing issue for several weeks.
I have attempted troubleshooting by recreating droplets, reinstalling Qmaster and Compressor, reinstalling FCS 6, and finally reinstalling OSX and starting from scratch.  I'm at a loss on what to do next.
Has anyone else had a similar issue... and how did you manage to get it resolved?  I'm at the point of pulling my hair out... and I don't have much left at this point.  :-P

Answer 1

I pulled the hard drive, and put it in a known working machine, to see if I could recreate the issue.  Qmaster did the exact same thing on the other machine, which now leads me to believe that this is a software issue between Qmaster and Compressor.
I've copied the log from the Batch Monitor on my latest attempt, to see if anyone recognizes anything going wrong:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<services>
   <service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50028" type="requestprocessor:com.apple.qmaster.contentcontroller" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3">
      <logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:08:46.024" pnm="unknown" tms="326819326.024">
         <mrk tms="326819399.127" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.127" pid="237" kind="begin" what="service-request" req-id="493DE98F-3B31-45D8-9A85-EA432234E119:1" msg="Preprocessing job."></mrk>
         <log tms="326819399.283" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.283" pid="237" msg="Source file is local - we will try hard-linking."/>
         <log tms="326819399.284" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.284" pid="237" msg="Hard-linked source file to cluster storage."/>
         <mrk tms="326819399.287" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.287" pid="237" kind="end" what="service-request" req-id="493DE98F-3B31-45D8-9A85-EA432234E119:1" msg="Preprocessing job request end."></mrk>
         <mrk tms="326819399.326" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.326" pid="237" kind="begin" what="service-request" req-id="1FF9A6BE-5F95-49AF-AE68-82B0A576B968:1" msg="Preprocessing."></mrk>
         <mrk tms="326819399.332" tmt="05/11/2011 11:09:59.332" pid="237" kind="end" what="service-request" req-id="1FF9A6BE-5F95-49AF-AE68-82B0A576B968:1" msg="Preprocessing service request end."></mrk>
      </logs>
   </service>
   <service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50942" type="servicecontroller:com.apple.stomp.transcoder" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3 3">
      <logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.731" pnm="unknown" tms="326819424.731">
         <log tms="326819424.731" tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.731" pid="228" kind="mrk" sub="error" what="get-log" avail="false" msg="Service is down."/>
      </logs>
   </service>
   <service address="tcp://172.16.170.101:50973" type="servicecontroller:com.apple.stomp.transcoder" hostName="administrators-mac-pro.local" displayName="NP Edit Bay 3 6">
      <logs tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.734" pnm="unknown" tms="326819424.734">
         <log tms="326819424.734" tmt="05/11/2011 11:10:24.734" pid="228" kind="mrk" sub="error" what="get-log" avail="false" msg="Service is down."/>
      </logs>
   </service>
</services>
Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!