[Phoenix]

Hey guys,

I thought i'd let you know that I have been working with ET (our server provider) pretty closely for the past few days to try and establish the causes of these random crashes that occur on the server.

A few changes have been made that should help to stabalise the server and also ET put the uptime check back (one of my suggestions) this means that if the server does crash it is guaranteed to restart within the hour- obviously if someone is notified then it can be restarted sooner.

We also have a script now running on the server which caches the log files and no longer deletes them when the server is restarted. @Star, you will see a few files titled qconsole.log in the JA+ folder- followed by a date. Just ignore them
This basically means we are now able to easily see what causes the crashes and hopefully prevent them.

So far the server has not crashed once for the past 2 days, so its looking good. I also have another patch that I can apply if nescessary, but obviously I will only do that if the crashes continue.

If you do notice the server crashes as of this post, please message me either on msn, or for those that don't have msn PM me on the forum.

Thanks,

Pho~

[saunby]

Sounds good

im starting to think we should get a new host since escaped turkey is having soo many problems with keeping the server stable, but then again im just mad right now -_-

im starting to think we should get a new host since escaped turkey is having soo many problems with keeping the server stable, but then again im just mad right now -_-

yea im starting to agree, its bad when i get on and expect the server to be down :S

hehe yeah it has its really annoying. if turkey cant keep up with us then i guess we will just get a new host

And.... My original post on that topic (http://www.knights-reborn.org/forum/vie ... php?t=1811)

i think the thing to do is put up with it for a couple more days, once pho is back i will tell him in person to contact them and find out whats going on.

[RaVeN]

Pho is...
*sings*
"Some kind of wonderful...yes he is, hes,
Some kind of wonferful, ya ya ya yaaaaa."

[Zabuza]

crashed today bout 2:50 eastern usa time =\

[Phoenix]

You sure? I don't have any record of it happening.

[saunby]

Maybe it restarted if theres no record of it happening.

[Phoenix]

No the new script caches the log file on restart and there isn't another log file. So providing the script does what it should, it suggests the server hasn't restarted or crashed.

[Phoenix]

Server crashed. Thanks for telling me Kakashi. Got the error, working on a solution. The error incase anyone is wondering is:

ERROR: G_Alloc: failed on allocation of 238 bytes

[Phoenix]

I did just restart the server before anyone says it crashed. I'm trying something If the server crashes from this point on, please drop me an msn message or forum PM.

Thanks.

[Phoenix]

Ok guys sorry for the 4th post in a row, but i'd rather keep you updated. We have found out what the error is, its linked in with memory allocation and is nothing to do with ET we have yet to work out whether it is a fault in JA or a fault in the mod JA+. I will be contacting slider soon to see if he has any solutions.

Basically, each time the server recieves a command it uses memory its allocated. There is only so much memory allocated, so slowly the memory the server can allocate decreases and when it runs out (because there is no memory left to allocate) the server crashes. A temporary solution which we will hopefully be putting into place soon, is to restart the servers map every 2 hours. So it won't change from FFA3 but every two hours it will restart- reason being. When the map restarts the memory that is allocated gets reset, so if we restart the MAP not the SERVER every two hours, it should stop the server running out of memory, thus stopping the crashes. As I said above, we will implant this until I have spoken to Slider about it, because hopefully he can provide us with an alternative solution.

Here is an example to show you what I mean, taken from the server logs:

When the server first starts:

Code: Select all

G_Alloc of 22 bytes (232800 left)
ClientConnect: 0
G_Alloc of 16 bytes (232768 left)
G_Alloc of 16 bytes (232736 left)

Towards the end of the server log:

Code: Select all

G_Alloc of 1 bytes (352 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (320 left)
G_Alloc of 15 bytes (288 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (256 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (224 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (192 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (160 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (128 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (96 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (64 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (32 left)
G_Alloc of 1 bytes (0 left)

At the very end:

Code: Select all

G_Alloc of 1 bytes (-32 left)
*******************
ERROR: G_Alloc: failed on allocation of 1 bytes

********************

Sending heartbeat to masterjk3.ravensoft.com
Sending heartbeat to master0.gamespy.com
Sending heartbeat to master.qtracker.com
Sending heartbeat to clanservers.net
Sending heartbeat to masterjk3.ravensoft.com
Sending heartbeat to masterjk3.ravensoft.com
Sending heartbeat to master0.gamespy.com
Sending heartbeat to master.qtracker.com
Sending heartbeat to clanservers.net
Sending heartbeat to masterjk3.ravensoft.com
ShutdownGame:
------------------------------------------------------------

The command "shutdowngame" kills the server. Thats what we interpret as out 'crashes'.

Pho~

[Kioshi]

sliders an asshat. his solution to everything is to ''upgrade to the newest version'' and thats IF you can get ahold of him. alot of people in jka right now are pissed at him because he is not answering the calls of his community.

[Akimoto]

sliders an asshat. his solution to everything is to ''upgrade to the newest version'' and thats IF you can get ahold of him. alot of people in jka right now are pissed at him because he is not answering the calls of his community.

I don't see why people think that.
Try contacting him when he is not busy with work. He probably got his own problems he is working on. Like real life.

I don't see any problem getting and using the newest version in the server.

[saunby]

We dont like the newest version

[Akimoto]

We dont like the newest version

I've never meet We before, who is that? Is he admin? If he is, i'd think he doesn't like it because it restricts admin from abusing and having fun on other people's expenses. =(^__^)=

[saunby]

We meaning most of the clan, and since I dont have high enough admin to use /ampunish so why would that be my reason?

[Seive]

Who is Akimoto?

[Raziel]

Ex-KR member

[saunby]

Indeed

[Kioshi]

We dont like the newest version

I've never meet We before, who is that? Is he admin? If he is, i'd think he doesn't like it because it restricts admin from abusing and having fun on other people's expenses. =(^__^)=

nah aki, there are alot of glitches involving hit boxes, saber deflects and damages in the newer mods. which is why most people dont like it. 2.2 is the best japlus mod. 2.3beta 1 isn't that bad either, all the others suck imo. as far as the punish and slay goes. only admin commands needed are sleep/silence/kick/ban (and there counterparts) also MAYBE tele to make travel to certain areas easier and to add fun. the rest can gtfo lol.

[Phoenix]

We dont like the newest version

I've never meet We before, who is that? Is he admin? If he is, i'd think he doesn't like it because it restricts admin from abusing and having fun on other people's expenses. =(^__^)=

nah aki, there are alot of glitches involving hit boxes, saber deflects and damages in the newer mods. which is why most people dont like it. 2.2 is the best japlus mod. 2.3beta 1 isn't that bad either, all the others suck imo. as far as the punish and slay goes. only admin commands needed are sleep/silence/kick/ban (and there counterparts) also MAYBE tele to make travel to certain areas easier and to add fun. the rest can gtfo lol.

I agree completely with this for all the reasons mentioned. This is also the reason why neither slay or punish is mentioned in our admin procedures. Although punish can be useful as its theoretically silence and sleep in one.

Aki, i'd appreciate it if you don't come on our forums and assume that we have admin abusers in our clan- which is what your post suggests. Saunby was refering to "we" as a clan, which is normally what is implied. Also if I remember correctly you weren't exactly an angel when it came to admin usage during your time in KR.

Back on topic: We have in the past ran various polls asking whether people want to switch to the latest version and the general gist is most people don't want to upgrade (what can I say? people don't like change ). Also if I remember correctly when Sparky was running the server, he did indeed upgrade to the latest JA+, then after all the complaints he reverted back to the version we are running now (v2.2). Also as far as i'm aware the latest version of JA+ does not correct the issue with G_Alloc- because KR SafeHaven (our second server) runs the latest version of JA+ and it has crashed before, for the very same reason.

Pho~

[RaVeN]

server just crash again 10:50ish my time (NYC)

--to all those wondering, yes i have restarted it so hold on

[Grimm]

wheres the memory being allocated too? stars RAM? or is the memory of the company that runs our server?

[saunby]

Thats actually a pretty good question, I'd like to know that as well if you know Pho (or anyone else who knows)

[Phoenix]

wheres the memory being allocated too? stars RAM? or is the memory of the company that runs our server?

To be honest I don't really know, and i'm not even going to pretend I understand. Although i'd make a guess that its neither. From what I understand (whether i'm right or wrong) this allocation of memory is purely within the Q3 engine, so I don't think it has anything to do with the servers physical memory.

When LucasArts wrote the game, the servers they used were not nearly as powerful as they are now, for obvious reasons therefore this is why I believe this feature was implanted. Also, normally on JA servers its expected that a timelimit exists so the map is either restarted or rotated after a period of time (normally < 60 mins). What I do know is when the map is restarted or changed the memory allocation used by the (G_Alloc) command is reset therefore the issue with the server running out of memory to allocate doesn't exist. But as on KR1 we don't allow the maps to change at all, its simply putting to much stress on the server and is causing it to crash when G_Alloc runs out of memory to allocate- which is shown in the log files above.

That my understanding anyway, I haven't studied the JA code, so as I mentioned above, i'm not going to pretend I know what i'm talking about because what I've said above could be completely inaccurate.

Pho~

[Grimm]

sounds like u pretty much solved it tho, so i think it shouldnt be much of a problem now.