Server Crashing

Lornath · February 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">how ofter is considered normal?</div> I have a 20 player 1.04 server with clanmod running on windows2k. It seems to crash about once a day. Is this normal?

We had this awesome game going with a full server. Marines were in one hive, aliens had two. As a marine, we'd taken out the aliens' second hive a couple of times, but they kept getting it back. After an hour or so of fighting, we finally secured their second hive, and the aliens start quitting as they realize the game is pretty much over. After about five of'em quit, the server crashes!!

Is it normal to have the server die like that? Would something like restarting the hlds server once a day help? The log is of no help - here're the last three lines:

>>>>
L 02/03/2003 - 00:46:22: "DeathRyuu<27><3043177><alien1team>" say "gg"
L 02/03/2003 - 00:46:24: "Angry Penguin }sK{<41><2102151><marine1team>" say "late punk"
L 02/03/2003 - 00:46:25: "DeathRyuu<27><3043177><alien1team>"
<<<<

-Lorn

eaglec · February 2003

I run my server mostly just for the weekend, I run XP Pro and consider 0 crashes normal.

Max1 · February 2003

Mine's on windows too and crashes about once a day. I've set the log detail to the highest setting and there's still nothing unusual in it. Seems pretty random.

cracker_jackmac · February 2003

i run on my linux box and it use to crash 1-2 times a day.

But after changing the plugin order and the plugins i have it was up for 980 minutes w/o a crash before i shut it down to try out AMX mod.

SuicideDog "said" his was up for 5 days. But.....who can really believe him being an AMX lobbiest? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'>

(jk dog)

Eternal_Bliss · February 2003

my linux server crashes probably once a day or so.

Brutus · February 2003

If your server is crashing on a regular basis, then lower your player count until it no longer crashes. I went from 18 to 16 and it rarely crashes now.

Roobubba · February 2003

That's not the problem here Brutus, I run a 16 max (4 reserved slots so usually only 12-14) server on win2k and it also randomly crashes. Take yesterday - 5 people on and it crashed...

Logs again of no use.
I had a fiddle around with my plugin orders in 1.03 and got it very sweet, it was up for well over 5 days without a crash, then 1.04 came out, I installed the bare minimum adminmod and it still crashes like it used to before I sorted 1.03 out - maybe once a day.

True it can stay up with no-one on the server for days as it is, but that's not much good is it? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

PLEASE CAN WE FIND THE ROOT OF THIS PROBLEM!!! <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'> <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'> <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

Brutus · February 2003

I had the random crash with 18 players. With 16 players it will rarely crash, and it is full most of the time. I wish I could offer more help.

Max1 · February 2003

What plugins are you changing the order of? meta mod or adminmod? We run as few plugins as possible and still crash, but order may be the key

[WHO]Them · February 2003

just to add my $0.02 to the discussion. I think that an overworked cpu is definetly at the root of this problem. Just over the past week my linux server got underclocked due to a cold reboot situation and it took me a while to get in contact with the guy to fix it. During that uptime at 1/2 speed the crash rate went through the roof with the same number of players. It was still set at 20 player max while only running at 666MHz which would still cause horrible lag when more than 10 ppl were playing (of course). When I got it set back to the proper clock speed of 1.33GHz the crash rate went back to normal which is a crash about every 20-30 maps.

I've only been around for like 2 crashes on my server (except for the underclocked week) so I never really got a good chance to look at what kind of stuff was going on before the crash.

verbose · February 2003

Does anyone run a bare-bones (no metamod, etc) server? If so, do you have frequent server crashes?

Lornath · February 2003

Processor overload is definitely not an issue in my case - we got a dual 2.4ghz P4 machine <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'> It runs at about 15-25% with a full server.

-Lorn

Lightning_Blue · February 2003

My 16 player linux server with MetaMod, Webmod, Adminmod, and voogrus anti-afk doesn't crash unless too many mines are used or its been a REALLY long game...

Sirus · February 2003

I noticed that the server usually crashes over those drawn out games also. Especially when the marines relocate, kind of a bummer since theres no real conclusion. Any fixes for it?

Epoch · February 2003

Long games and having many structures on the map seem to crash my server. It used to happen every day but after removing Meta Mod it seems to happen less frequent. Coincidence? The machine is a Linux 1.3 GHz Athlon with 1024 MB SD-RAM and 12 players.

eaglec · February 2003

Dont mean to be a pain but I dont think it's related to metamod - I run metamod, adminmod, hlguard1.36b and a couple of pluggins (unstuck and emote) and dont get crashes. My server is a P3-750 with 384mb ram and often runs up to 75% cpu use on maps like hera.

[edit] 16player server, runs to 75% cpu on hera when full, peaks at just over 90% with those games so its a bit tight, but it doesnt crash [/edit]

Lornath · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (eaglec @ Feb 4 2003, 12:25 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Dont mean to be a pain but I dont think it's related to metamod - I run metamod, adminmod, hlguard1.36b and a couple of pluggins (unstuck and emote) and dont get crashes. My server is a P3-750 with 384mb ram and often runs up to 75% cpu use on maps like hera.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
With how many players?

playerhater · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (eaglec @ Feb 4 2003, 03:25 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Dont mean to be a pain but I dont think it's related to metamod - I run metamod, adminmod, hlguard1.36b and a couple of pluggins (unstuck and emote) and dont get crashes. My server is a P3-750 with 384mb ram and often runs up to 75% cpu use on maps like hera.

[edit] 16player server, runs to 75% cpu on hera when full, peaks at just over 90% with those games so its a bit tight, but it doesnt crash [/edit]  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
Mine is very similar to yours except that it has dual p3 750's with Redhat. I also run a 20 player counter strike server on this box too, and no crashing. Except for the time I accidently "ci'd" the clanmod.cfg instead of "vi". That was bad, it seg faulted every other game. But that has been fixed. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'>

Brutus · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Lornath @ Feb 3 2003, 05:35 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Processor overload is definitely not an issue in my case - we got a dual 2.4ghz P4 machine <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'> It runs at about 15-25% with a full server.

-Lorn  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
I throw the BS flag. What OS are you using?

verbose · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (eaglec @ Feb 4 2003, 02:25 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Dont mean to be a pain but I dont think it's related to metamod - I run metamod, adminmod, hlguard1.36b and a couple of pluggins (unstuck and emote) and dont get crashes. My server is a P3-750 with 384mb ram and often runs up to 75% cpu use on maps like hera.

[edit] 16player server, runs to 75% cpu on hera when full, peaks at just over 90% with those games so its a bit tight, but it doesnt crash [/edit]  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
I don't think I've experienced a single crash under 1.04. This didn't occur to me until now. Are the crashing problems other people are having current issues?

carbon_ice · February 2003

After I started thinking about this, it does seem crashes happen more or less on long maps. I have to wonder if some entities or structures aren't being released properly in the game core itself. It seems when my server does crash it's because of a mem writing error. ie not able to access the location.

Lornath · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Brutus @ Feb 4 2003, 07:34 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Lornath @ Feb 3 2003, 05:35 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Processor overload is definitely not an issue in my case - we got a dual 2.4ghz P4 machine <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'> It runs at about 15-25% with a full server.

-Lorn </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I throw the BS flag. What OS are you using?</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

No BS. This is on w2k server. Note the combined bandwidth is avg ~133/s, which is a full 20 person server load (ignore graph scale for bw usage). Processor utilization is under 20% the entire time except for 2 spikes:

<img src='http://www.gamesplace.net/decibel_perf.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>

-Lorn

Brutus · February 2003

Is this what most people with 2.4ghz and Windows servers are seeing? I don't think the dual part is helping, considering HL doesn't utilize it (or so I have heard). On a 2.4ghz on Linux with 18 players I got up to 90% on most maps.

The_Gunslinger · February 2003

The only thing that crashes my server is mass mines. The laser trips do something to the server, lags it up, then it'll just crash D:

Aolphobia · February 2003

Mine will not crash until people start playing in it. 1.1 ghz linux server. max players is 12. When lots of people playing, it will crash. I've had it crash twice in the same day. This is all with v1.04 also. Just throwing out my crashing server.

Roobubba · February 2003

Mine SEEMS to be more stable now, here's my adminmod plugin.ini and in metamod plugin.ini I've got unstuck_mm.dll and admin_MM.dll, that's all.

Gah as soon as I wrote that and went to find my adminmod plugin file I find the damn server has "generated errors and will be shut down"... <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>
<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>
<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

Here it is anyway:
Plugin.ini (adminmod)

addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_antiflood.amx
addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_base.amx
addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_chat.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_cheat.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_CS.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_TFC.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_hldsld_mapvote.amx
addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_message.amx
addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_retribution.amx
addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_fun.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_spawn.amx
# addons/adminmod/scripts/plugin_consgreet.amx

11 people on server at this point

Last stuff in logfile:
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:38: "Hatchet<23><370393><none>" say "amusingly I FOLLOW ORDERS doesn't"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:38: "[UESC] Dr. Ratmaster<35><307802><none>" say "hello"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:39: "Shelter<36><2792820><>" connected, address "***********"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:39: Server cvar "public_slots_free" = "1.000000"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:40: "Worf<30><1650963><marine1team>" say_team "or rt"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:40: "shanks<27><387155><marine1team>" triggered "research_start" (type "research_advturretfactory")
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:42: "Sam<28><1273903><marine1team>" say_team "sentrys here"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:43: "Lord Maz<33><884526><none>" say_team "lo"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:46: "shanks<27><387155><marine1team>" triggered "structure_built" (type "turret")
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:50: "I FOLLOW ORDERS!<26><2789168><marine1team>" killed "NSPlayer<34><3192132><alien1team>" with "machinegun"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:51: "ces<25><3440652><none>" say_team "or else one mor e resign"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:53:55: "Worf<30><1650963><marine1team>" say_team "medpack and tf here"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:04: "shanks<27><387155><marine1team>" triggered "structure_built" (type "item_health")
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:05: "Worf<30><1650963><marine1team>" say_team "phase and tf com"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:09: "NSPlayer<34><3192132><alien1team>" changed role to "skulk"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:16: "Sam<28><1273903><marine1team>" say_team "sentys ?"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:18: "[UESC] Dr. Ratmaster<35><307802><alien1team>" changed role to "skulk"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:19: "Shelter<36><2792820><none>" entered the game
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:21: "shanks<27><387155><marine1team>" triggered "structure_built" (type "turret")
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:24: "Lord Maz<33><884526><none>" say_team "bah im joining, have fun you two <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:29: "Hatchet<23><370393><none>" say_team "right"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:31: "Worf<30><1650963><marine1team>" say_team "but its better to stop them from ever getting their in the frist place"
L 02/05/2003 - 16:54:31: "shanks<27><387155><marin

Oh so useful :/

Athlon 1.4; 512MB "PC2100"; G4yg4ybyte GA7VTX
More than adequate cooling.

It does crash more under med-high load than not, but I've had 2 hour games with 16 players and not a crash, so it's certainly not consistent. Occasionally also crashes with 5 or 6 players only.

cracker_jackmac · February 2003

Mine crashes because it's rebelling agianst me. I gave it a cheap ECS mobo instead of server board with 66Mhz PCI slots and dual proc support. Also calling me names before it crashes too

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:21: "ol|Archangel<149><2560106><soldier>" say "nan i'm tired i'm going to bed"
L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:21: "Tiax<179><853867><alien1team>" changed role to "Gestate"
L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:23: "[SCARY]ARS0N1ST<169><3322069><alien2>" say_team "are you near last hive"
L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:24: "Tiax<179><853867><gestate>" say "look at the teams"
L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:27: "[SCARY]ARS0N1ST<169><332
L 01/07/2004 - 22:00:30: "Give me cheap hardware will you! You shall pay for your penny-pinching ways! Muhahahaha!"
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

*sigh* i just dont' know what to do anymore

ADMINS: search you logs carefully if you don't get a core dump!!

(to be serious on linux, use gdb <i>corefile</i> to read the dump)

[WHO]Them · February 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>L 01/07/2003 - 22:00:27: "[SCARY]ARS0N1ST<169><332
L 01/07/2004 - 22:00:30: "Give me cheap hardware will you! You shall pay for your penny-pinching ways! Muhahahaha!"
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

did anyone else notice that a whole year passed between those log entries ?

Narfwak · February 2003

Heh, I noticed that, too.

I've noticed that my server crashes every 1-2 days, even if no one is in it. I run under win2kpro with 512 DDR RAM and 2Ghz P4. However, I have also noticed my server crash more when under lots of stress; i.e., a massive 5-hour game will crash the server.

cracker_jackmac · February 2003

just when i thought i was cool....ggrrr...oh well.....i tried.

[WHO]Them · February 2003

don't worry, you were born leet <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'> it even sez so on your sign.

I have something new to add to this discussion. I recently changed some of the settings in my liblist.gam and have had a sudden spike in uptime, I played a game earlier today where the server # was something like 53 with an mp_timelimit set to 60, so as you can imagine thats like upwards of 3 days of uptime with the way most maps go past the time limit.

I'm not claiming that this couldn't be a coincidence, but I thought I'd mention it anyways, I changed secure to 0 and svonly to 1 in my liblist.gam and ever since I havent had any crashes. Not a single one.

Server Crashing

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