Random Server Crashes
tlarmon
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8701Members
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8701Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I'm going insane</div> My server is fairly popular, and pings are low regardless whatever the playerlimit is, whether it be 16 or 24. Pings when it's a 16 playerlimit are generally ~30ms lower than if I run 24 maxplayers, but that's understandable. However, I do have one main problem that has completely baffled me - my server crashes randomly - completely randomly.
The server is a 3 month old Dell 2.4GHz P4, WinXP Pro w/ SP1, 512MB DDR, on a fast Internet connection. The machine doesn't have any hardware stability problems with any other programs that are ran on it, so I'm baffled.
Things I've tried:
1) Uninstalling absolutely all unnecessary software and services on the machine, so that it's bare bones. I am running NAV2002 on the server, but that's really anything out of the ordinary.
2) Completey uninstalling Half-Life and NS, as well as their directories, reboot, reinstall both with updates to latest versions, and running barebones without ClanMod/MetaMod.
3) Lowering the playerlimit down to 16 players. Obviously, I don't think it's a server load problem. It's more of a problem with the server process just dying after a while, and all clients get the infamous "Warning: Connection Problem".
Right now I have ClanMod installed, and a program that reboots the server automatically when it dies. That works good since it dies every once and a while. Sometimes, a map will be played for 4 hours straight and nobody wins, and the server will die at the end of the map, and other times, the server will have loaded 25 different times (different maps) and in the middle of the map it will die. As I said, completely random. I used to think it was when there were too many ONOS, but I've played with 5 on at a time and it was completely fine.
Any help from other Win32 admins would be greatly appreciated. My 18 player CS server runs no problems at all on my Linux box upstairs at work, but this one seems to have serious issues.
The server is a 3 month old Dell 2.4GHz P4, WinXP Pro w/ SP1, 512MB DDR, on a fast Internet connection. The machine doesn't have any hardware stability problems with any other programs that are ran on it, so I'm baffled.
Things I've tried:
1) Uninstalling absolutely all unnecessary software and services on the machine, so that it's bare bones. I am running NAV2002 on the server, but that's really anything out of the ordinary.
2) Completey uninstalling Half-Life and NS, as well as their directories, reboot, reinstall both with updates to latest versions, and running barebones without ClanMod/MetaMod.
3) Lowering the playerlimit down to 16 players. Obviously, I don't think it's a server load problem. It's more of a problem with the server process just dying after a while, and all clients get the infamous "Warning: Connection Problem".
Right now I have ClanMod installed, and a program that reboots the server automatically when it dies. That works good since it dies every once and a while. Sometimes, a map will be played for 4 hours straight and nobody wins, and the server will die at the end of the map, and other times, the server will have loaded 25 different times (different maps) and in the middle of the map it will die. As I said, completely random. I used to think it was when there were too many ONOS, but I've played with 5 on at a time and it was completely fine.
Any help from other Win32 admins would be greatly appreciated. My 18 player CS server runs no problems at all on my Linux box upstairs at work, but this one seems to have serious issues.
Comments
Except mine comes in bursts, about once a week it'll pick a day and just crash like 2 or 3 times during the day.
No obvious pattern at all. It'll crash once, wait a few hours, crash again, and then be fine for a week.
I've been running 4-6 servers at a time for over a year now and every one of them crashes. No errors, no info in the logs...
Try serverdoc <a href='http://winsoft.net.au/~stephen/serverdoc/' target='_blank'>http://winsoft.net.au/~stephen/serverdoc/</a> to restart hlds after it dies.
Are all of you guys experiencing the server crashes running Win32 though, or are some of you Linux as well? That's important!
Unfortunately for me I cannot install Linux on this machine, it's a workstation at work (my workstation), thus it has to run Windows to run certain Microsoft Office applications (Publisher namely). I might be able to work out a dual boot, though. Hrm.
I noticed that all Linux servers seem to have a higher ping than Win32 servers as well, which is weird. This could just be that the Win32 servers I joined were just more powerful, though.
Anybody have a *good* link to how to dual boot Windows XP Pro and RH 8? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I don't want any LILO boot problems! The last time we had to reload LILO every damn week because it kept messing up.
I've been running 4-6 servers at a time for over a year now and every one of them crashes. No errors, no info in the logs...
Try serverdoc <a href='http://winsoft.net.au/~stephen/serverdoc/' target='_blank'>http://winsoft.net.au/~stephen/serverdoc/</a> to restart hlds after it dies.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I run linux and i still have the strange crashes, lucky for me the package hlds_l with an auto restart script now <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Oh my server:
P3 1gz
384MB
on 1.5Mb cable line
As far as the linux/windows thing. (lets not start a distro war please!) My NS server runs absolutly fine at 16 players. And if running windows would give me a 20-40 ms ping differance. Then everyone would have a 5-10 ping. I would think thats more of an issue of not knowing how to tweak your os, then any differance between the OS's. It also depends on how well compiled the libs are, between linux and win32. But from what I've seen, they're is no preformance differances between the 2. Other then the failure of the 1.2 patch to address the linux cpu useage issue.(helped win32 alott from what I hear. Didn't really do much for the linux side.)
[Ht]'s Condomless Brothel.
16 player NS. (actually 17, with one reserve slot.)
Halfd + AdminMod.
RH 8.0
Dual 2100+ AMD MP's
1 gig DDR266 registered
10MB pipe.
-debug works great if you use hlds_run script. I've got a huge debug.log (stuck in a crashing loop over night...)
I use firedaemon pro www.firedaemon.com to run NS as a service and auto-restart when it dies. This also allows me to bind it to a specific CPU since it's not a multi-threaded software package.
- Rad!
No. It can happen at any time, it seems, be there tons of action or none at all. It usually happens later in a game for me. Perhaps the server can't handle the number of entities present? I know this: I used to have mp_timelimit 60 and it happened every 48 - 72 hours, but since I've changed to mp_timelimit 30, it has only happened once.
How very odd.
cs server stays up all day, no crashes.
<!--QuoteBegin--Mellonpopr+Nov 26 2002, 07:30 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Mellonpopr @ Nov 26 2002, 07:30 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->do you have a console when you run it as a service using firedaemon ?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I also use Firedaemon (great product) to run my NS server as a service. It's nice that you don't have to setup your system to auto-login. Firedaemon can show or hide the console depending on how you set it up, but only on the local login. Unfortunately for me, I use Terminal Services to admin the server, so I can't monitor the console in a terminal session.
For the most part, it doesn't bother me, but it would be nice if someone wrote a program to echo the HLDS console to a remote location. Anyone know of a program that will do this?