Colored server names

[Lewin]

It looks like a few servers have crashed and not recovered properly, for example "[PL] knights.sztab.com" has been stuck at 70 players for the past 24 hours. I am able to establish a TCP connection to it (that's why it doesn't show with an error on the website) but it won't respond to any game commands. I've emailed the admin and asked him to send me the log file and restart the server. It could be another bug in the Linux server or something...

The client will terminate the connection when querying after 5 seconds if the server doesn't respond to the query request, so maybe that's what you saw. Try connecting to one of the servers that isn't showing up. It should immediately start sending you data and keep sending every second or so (it sends pings regularly). You'll probably find the missing servers don't send you anything at all.

[Nissarin]

It looks like a few servers have crashed and not recovered properly, for example "[PL] knights.sztab.com" has been stuck at 70 players for the past 24 hours. I am able to establish a TCP connection to it (that's why it doesn't show with an error on the website) but it won't respond to any game commands. I've emailed the admin and asked him to send me the log file and restart the server. It could be another bug in the Linux server or something...

It's different issue, had the same on my server.. there were probably around 5-10 players in 2 games, another 5-10 in 3 lobbies and CPU usage reached 100%, log was spammed with meaningless messages and it was totally unplayable (pings in seconds), in other words a complete deadlock. The only way to "fix" this is to restart the server. BTW: I've seen this before on (if I remember correctly) Sys'd servers, so it's not a separate case.

The client will terminate the connection when querying after 5 seconds if the server doesn't respond to the query request, so maybe that's what you saw. Try connecting to one of the servers that isn't showing up. It should immediately start sending you data and keep sending every second or so (it sends pings regularly). You'll probably find the missing servers don't send you anything at all.

It's a little strange that I can't see my server... which is 5-10ms "away" from me and like I said it's not some timeout, connection is broken it handshake phase - client sends SYN, gets SYN, ACK but then immediately resets the connection, that's not normal behavior. BTW: I does happen on refresh, i.e. when I start KaM and go to network game I can see everything, things get awry when I click refresh.

[Freddy]

The port you use shouldn't matter at all. Which list do you not see your server on? The http://www.kamremake.com list or the in-game one? If it's the http://www.kamremake.com list then that means your server is failing to register itself with our master server for some reason. If it's the in-game list that could be something else, for example you often can't connect to your own external IP address (at least I can't) which means if you are testing it from the same connection that you host the server on you won't see your own server (it depends how your router is set up). Let me know if it keeps happening.

Some (most) LNet errors are normal, for example when a client forcefully disconnects it triggers an error (which can be safely ignored). If you see "stacktrace" anywhere in the log then a serious error has occured. I should probably make forceful disconnections not show up as "error" because it's a bit confusing... That's just how LNet reports them to us.

I meant the in-game one (I see the server on the website one all the time) and it seems that the problem is the one Nissarin is talking about. It doesn't seem to actually kill any functionality, but is quite annoying to have to refresh as much as 5 times to see the server in the list. And I don't think it could be the private/public IP problem since it sometimes shows up and sometimes not.

[Lewin]

It's different issue, had the same on my server.. there were probably around 5-10 players in 2 games, another 5-10 in 3 lobbies and CPU usage reached 100%, log was spammed with meaningless messages and it was totally unplayable (pings in seconds), in other words a complete deadlock. The only way to "fix" this is to restart the server. BTW: I've seen this before on (if I remember correctly) Sys'd servers, so it's not a separate case.

Thanks for the information. I have been sent some log files from servers which entered this state so I'll take a look at it when I'm in the mood for tracking down annoying network library related bugs

It's a little strange that I can't see my server... which is 5-10ms "away" from me and like I said it's not some timeout, connection is broken it handshake phase - client sends SYN, gets SYN, ACK but then immediately resets the connection, that's not normal behavior. BTW: I does happen on refresh, i.e. when I start KaM and go to network game I can see everything, things get awry when I click refresh.

I meant the in-game one (I see the server on the website one all the time) and it seems that the problem is the one Nissarin is talking about. It doesn't seem to actually kill any functionality, but is quite annoying to have to refresh as much as 5 times to see the server in the list. And I don't think it could be the private/public IP problem since it sometimes shows up and sometimes not.

Thanks for the information Freddy and Nissarin. I checked through the code and found a bug that will only allow the game to query 16 servers, any further servers will not be queried correctly (16 is the maximum number it will query concurrently, and the game wasn't reusing the connections properly for subsequent servers). I think this is the first time we've had more than 16 servers running regularly so it wasn't noticed until now. I don't think this bug is important enough to warrant a patch specifically to fix it. An easier solution is for some server operators to close some of their duplicate servers until the next patch to keep the list down below 16 (there's really no need to host 6 servers each anyway since each server can handle multiple rooms at once)

[Freddy]

Thanks for the information Freddy and Nissarin. I checked through the code and found a bug that will only allow the game to query 16 servers, any further servers will not be queried correctly (16 is the maximum number it will query concurrently, and the game wasn't reusing the connections properly for subsequent servers). I think this is the first time we've had more than 16 servers running regularly so it wasn't noticed until now. I don't think this bug is important enough to warrant a patch specifically to fix it. An easier solution is for some server operators to close some of their duplicate servers until the next patch to keep the list down below 16 (there's really no need to host 6 servers each anyway since each server can handle multiple rooms at once)

Hey, great to know there is a known reason behind the behavior. And I very much agree that multiple servers is pointless as rooms serve the same purpose.

It's different issue, had the same on my server.. there were probably around 5-10 players in 2 games, another 5-10 in 3 lobbies and CPU usage reached 100%, log was spammed with meaningless messages and it was totally unplayable (pings in seconds), in other words a complete deadlock. The only way to "fix" this is to restart the server. BTW: I've seen this before on (if I remember correctly) Sys'd servers, so it's not a separate case.

I encountered the same thing Nissarin is talking about here. Log spammed with "Client timed out" messages, CPU on 99% and the server wasn't showing up on the site or in-game. I restarted and everything is "better", but I still see more "Client timed out" messages than what I consider to be normal. If I was to guess, some kind of error repeatadly stacks until the server is overloaded and unusable.

@Lewin: I will send you the log for you to look at.

[pawel95]

Hew is it possible to add tiny objects(like the flags) before the colored servername?
This would be cool, for example that the player will know really fast, which server is now a battle map/coop or building.

What do you think about?