DaddyOfThree

I would tend to disagree with you here... these server issues have been going on a very VERY VERY long time!

I don't share the same enthusiasm that you do MasterEditorInChief. I feel it's quite a shame that it took TG so long to actually step up and address the issue. I know that numerous PMs were sent asking for help with the server situation but they all apparently fell on deaf ears. There were numerous server crash logs for months before any real action was taken.

While the problem obviously now sits with EA/Dice, why did it take so long to get any response to the issue from TG forget about the GSPs or even EA/Dice. If TG didn't/doesn't care why should the GSPs or even EA/Dice. I might add that I wouldn't necessarily fault the game admins in this case because they generally seemed as frustrated as everyone else. I would tend to think the folks above the game admins really let us down and continue to-do so.

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Shurikane

Server fixes can only go as quickly as the master developers go. On their side, they have to know just what in the world causes those server crashes and how they can get around that.

On the server admin's side, he can't just E-Mail DICE and say "The server keeps crashing!" That doesn't help anybody. The admin has to compile some logs for when the crashes happened and under what sort of conditions. That alone can take up to a few weeks for said admin to accumulate sufficient data to consider he's got an adequate supply to send to DICE. Aferwards, it's up to DICE to figure out any correlations.

That sort of problem is not limited to TG. Many, many, many servers crash, most often for absolutely no apparent reason. Those admins who try to help try to do it as much as they can, but it remains that their power is limited, and to the question "when will the crashes stop happening", the only thing they can say is: Soon™.

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rage4order

As of right now we still have some crashing going on. We stripped the server and still had the same crashes as we do with all our scripts and supporting membership stuff running. Please continue to let us know of problems and we will do the best we can to help.

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|TG-8th|RAGE

Pfeil22

I appreciate the update, Crux.

sc1ence

We have some new info that may lead to a solution.

Our understanding is that the crashes happen when a person disconnects after death, but just before the autobalance script was going to move them to the other team. It is a small window of time and low frequency, but given the traffic our server gets and people getting moved frequently we feel this is resulting in an unusual amount of crashing for us.

In an attempt to isolate the problem we are turning off autobalance for the remainder of the week.

While autobalance is off, it is up to the players and admins to keep the teams even. If team balance becomes more of an issue than frequent crashing, we will put autobalance back on and try to approach the problem from another angle.

Here are some suggestions for keeping the teams even while this test is underway:

1. Do not team stack. Go to the underpowered team if you just joined the server.
2. Do not frequently switch teams. Some minor imbalance is going to happen on occasion. If people are constantly switching because of small imbalance issues, the teams will become unstable.
3. Switching to the winning team for round end points at the end of a round will result in administrative action. We will not tolerate stat padding.
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DaBrit

Clearly the server is upset at our constant war and weeps for the fallen. This is a sign that we should just make peace on the battlefield. If we didn't die, we wouldn't crash!

Also: If this is what's going on, then great job figuring it out!

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TG-9th - By Any Means

Specterr

Wow, nice working figuring that one out, for what it's worth I've played the last two nights for a couples hours and had no crashes.

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sc1ence

Getting crash reports is super critical right now. If we crash, we need to know. We are keeping a close eye on things from game monitor, but input from the community is helpful as well.

Another note, please keep an eye on team balance when you re-spawn. Often it is the case that people will leave in groups, If you notice one team dropping lots of players all at once, consider switching.

If this turns out to be a fix for the crashing issue, we will need to come up with a way to keep teams balanced.

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Zoticus

There was a server crash last night (Mar. 2), I'm not sure what time. It would have been between 8 and 10, after Specterr had left (fun rounds while you were there though, good SL'ing as usual). It was the 2nd round of Camp Gibby. The pubbies in the squad were moaning about the crash and it took most of the round for Tunis to fill up to any degree.

I'll cross post in the server crash thread.

-Zot

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|TG-Irr| - Zoticus77

Pfeil22

This is great news! It may take some time to adjust to not having autobalance running on the server, but that is something that can be monitored and controlled to some extent. A much more promising solution than waiting for DICE to release a patch to fix the problem.

sc1ence

We need to make sure that the problem is the autobalance disconnect issue. If we are sure, we can then proceed to come up with our own autobalance script via rcon and punkbuster. for the time being, we will need to police ourselves a bit.

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sc1ence

Well, the test is over. We have come to a solution. We were able to reduce the crashing frequency significantly. We are now averaging less than 1 crash a day. We crashing nearly 4 times a day before we turned off autobalance.

the issue is not with autobalance itself. The issue is when a person disconnects from the server while the server is trying to move them in order to balance teams. By turning off autobalance we have solved the issue. We now crash about as often as any other bf2142 server.

The new problem is of course how to keep teams balanced without a script. so far it seems that this has been working well. In some cases, we have reports that being able to move freely from one team to the other allows our players to distribute themselves a bit more evenly to keep team skill balanced as well as numbers.

Please let us know if balance becomes a big issue. For the time being, consider this issue solved.

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Lorax74

Doh, you didn't know on wood...

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TG-9th Lorax74

Reaperassault

I didn't know on wood for a while but its seems good, thanks for all the aid in finding a solution guys

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Zhohar

The server has been more stable since Autobalance was turned off. It still crashes, but it is far less frequent. On that note, I'm actually (pleasantly) surprised that the teams are not stacked or imbalanced.

Thanks again for your hard work, sc1ence, Apophis, and the hordes behinds the scenes.

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