After taking a few years break, I came back to play again with my friend. I remember we had a very short period of pretty much unplayable lag that was fixed after a while, but it was nothing even close to how infuriating this is right now.
It's absolutely impossible to accomplish anything atm. We had a DM earlier announce that something was being done that was going to "lag bomb" the server, and we were given no more than 20 seconds warning before this was done, so when the server inevitably died again, we had another huge rollback and so 20 minutes of effort was lost.
After that it continued to disconnect reliably every 5 minutes or so, nullifying any efforts made. Is it a hardware issue? Would opening the server to donations help? Or is it an issue with this specific update?
Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Location: Georgia, United States.
If Donations are required I'lll do it! But I think it's a scripting issue. There's a X Script that keeps doing it. But if I recall correctly it's on the bottom of the Demand order. DMs want to finish everyone's custom script request before hacking at the WHOLE server for the issue. It's really minor. Irritating, yes. But..
If Donations are required I'lll do it! But I think it's a scripting issue. There's a X Script that keeps doing it. But if I recall correctly it's on the bottom of the Demand order. DMs want to finish everyone's custom script request before hacking at the WHOLE server for the issue. It's really minor. Irritating, yes. But..
Err. I think you have that backwards. Fixing the crash issue is at the very top of the demand order.
_________________ Remember when I knew a boxer, baby
I have donated and know that the devs are doing all they can to fix this issue. I'm just grateful that a game as old as NWN is still able to be played, and that there are players, DMs and Devs still out there willing to keep it going.
Joined: 22 Jul 2015 Location: Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Last night was frustrating. I think after the first few times i was okay with it but it got to a point were i stopped caring about the rp, and i think it showed! Sorry about that. Sure the team are pulling their hair out on this one trying to fix it.
_________________ When it rains, look for rainbows. When it's dark, look for stars.
Last edited by walnutboy on Sun, Sep 20 2015, 18:02 PM, edited 1 time in total.
Hopefully its resolved sooner or later, the every half hour crashes certainly made most of the group i was in quit for the night after the fourth crash.
Last night was frustrating. I think after the first few times i was okay with it but it got to a point were i stopped caring about the rp, and i think it showed! Sorry about that. Sure the team are pulling their hair out on this one trying to fix it.
Last time it was fixed by reverting an entire patch, so I'm hoping for this at this point.
It's been bad all day, just about. Anytime a DM wants to do something, it seems.
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Login: The Copper Queen Cromlech - The Best Copper This Side of Ruathym Zelly Cys'dina - The Wounded Soul, Also Merchant Aelynthi Nor'alei - The Bubbly Winged Elf
Joined: 22 Jul 2015 Location: Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
It was funny, i had finally found a group to run with and probably all die horrible deaths... only for the server to crash and as i waited for it to come back, i fell alseep!! Noooooo!
_________________ When it rains, look for rainbows. When it's dark, look for stars.
Working on it. I'm investigating a heap corruption that has been in nwn since the dawn of time, its just more noticeable on Amia A because it has more traffic and now we're also being more clever with area which appears to be stimulating this even more.
_________________ Fear is not evil… It tells you what your weakness is. And once you know your weakness, you can become stronger as well as kinder. - Gildarts Clive, Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima.
Joined: 22 Jul 2015 Location: Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Terra_777 wrote:
Working on it. I'm investigating a heap corruption that has been in nwn since the dawn of time, its just more noticeable on Amia A because it has more traffic and now we're also being more clever with area which appears to be stimulating this even more.
I'm amazed the game has kept going this long!
_________________ When it rains, look for rainbows. When it's dark, look for stars.
I suggested it first as a joke, but I'm kind of starting to take it seriously. I think we'd be better off rolling up duplicates of our characters on Sinfar or something and trying to conduct our Amia RP there. We're up to what now, five crashes in two hours?
_________________ Winner of Amia's "Most Ethical Time Traveler" award 2026 Character Portraits!
Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Location: Georgia, United States.
Liz wrote:
I suggested it first as a joke, but I'm kind of starting to take it seriously. I think we'd be better off rolling up duplicates of our characters on Sinfar or something and trying to conduct our Amia RP there. We're up to what now, five crashes in two hours?
I don't think that's much of a good idea. I keep hearing things about Sinfar that don't make it too positive. That's aside from the Srp. Which this server is highly strict on and I concur.
But if Amia goes away, I have two options, aside from quiting NwN. That would be Arelith or Sinfar.
But recently I've been seeing the server slowly dieing. Scripts keep going out, multiple crashes which make rp speed up / impossible, or my favorite players quitting over none sense.
Well, I think recreating chars on a foreign PW is a bit drastic. We logged into B and continued our RP there, with a bit of make-belief about our current location. That would have been annoying if someone ran into us, but we were lucky in that regard.
But yeah, I pray to the scripting pantheon for a solution. I wouldn't mind shutting down regular (crashy) play on A for some debugging either: when it's particular unstable have all players (not) do certain things in concert. Or let them act one area at a time. Or something.
We've been throwing around some ideas that we might try to discern what's happening. Some of them are a bit intrusive and might require taking the server down for some time.
Probably the most lengthy idea is to back everything up and revert A-mia to a module version around two years old (before we had stability issues; we used to run a solid booked A and 10-30 on B without crashing). That would mean everyone's characters would get backed up and some things would be lost/not work for, say, a couple days to a week but we could at least see if there's a difference. Of course, after we'd revert everything back so nothing is lost except time (yes, anything you gain during that time would be lost; but it's a small price to pay for making things work again). Then we could look at the changes between that stable module and today and see what we can narrow down.
No idea if we will do that (we have pitched the idea in chat but no one with the ability to approve this idea has said anything). A lot of it comes down to needing the people with access to approve things.
_________________ Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play: Salema Nefahri::A penny for your thots Zrae'a'stra'fryn::That which nightmares are made of Khasir::From the East a storm is coming
Thing is nwserver was never really stable on windows to begin with, an example of this is before Amia was split it was about as bad as it is now. Moving over to Linux also isnt feasible at the moment because it'd require a lot of work.
We've reverted some stuff so it should be more stable. Meanwhile I'm looking to fix a crash related to a heap corruption. The bug that causes the corruption doesnt cause the crash, the crash happens when the memory that was corrupted is called upon again which can happen between now and never. Its also a just a theory. Its just that I'm not really finding a pattern other then that it happens more often when the server is more active which also means more memory is on the move.
I'm working quite hard on fixing nwserver for windows. But don't get your hopes up, its harder then it looks.
_________________ Fear is not evil… It tells you what your weakness is. And once you know your weakness, you can become stronger as well as kinder. - Gildarts Clive, Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima.
_________________ Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play: Salema Nefahri::A penny for your thots Zrae'a'stra'fryn::That which nightmares are made of Khasir::From the East a storm is coming
I'm kind of amazed that I understood what Terra meant in a pretty flow picture sort of way. Thanks, Terra and Naiv! It's wonderful to be kept up to date on what's happening. I recommended a thread like that awhile back. Maybe we could put up a list of ideas for the community to see what's going on and which checks have been done? I know it seems silly, but it really does help one feel better about the community supporting itself. Anyone with access to the Dev stuff/trials could do upkeep it, not necessarily Terra (since you're already doing so much work).
I think a poll about how the players would feel if we took the server down for that other idea would be good, too, if it's eventually necessary to do so. I think most people would support it if it had a chance at fixing the issue. A lot of people would rather fix them than continue at the current rate of them.
Without seeing the code, posting it here for people to say "did you check this?" is not really that helpful, unfortunately.
If anyone who has these skills wants to join the development team, by all means, please apply!
As far as going "back in time" if we were to do that, I'd just invest into putting amia on Linux instead. Like Terra said, it's an insane amount of work. I can't count the amount of stuff that just simply won't work anymore, but it might be worth it anyways, if we can't get this figured out. A lot of the custom systems that amia uses were built were compiled for Windows and don't even exist in Linux plugins. At best, the functions are existing in a different plugin, but have different constructors and returns, so it would need to be reevaluated anyways. But the light at the end of the tunnels is that Ubuntu 32 bit linux (12.04 or likewise) through a container is pretty stable, according to the nwnx forums.
As more and more things keep changing hopefully the stability will be getting better. But like Terra said, it was never quite stable to begin with, it's only just "worse" than it was, so more noticeable.
Terra- checking over RunScript function and deallocating: In progress. Naivatkal- running polls to assess possible server shutdown and reload: Poll established. Faded- looking into Linux switch. Going over hours and work needed to manage. Is it possible?: Hours calculated, work needed tallied up, etc.
That, I think, would be a VERY helpful list. Both for you all to keep each other in the loop/responsible for different attempts and to keep the playerbase aware of what is being done/needs to be done- and in the know for what they could volunteer to help with! (For example, I could help someone with polls and making sure people are happy with potential server shutdown backlash if there's a Dev using it to assess the possible options.)
Not all of them have to be seen all the way through, but if you work on all three options at once, you really get an idea for whether one will work- and how they compare. I recommend it.
Personally, I think it's too early to do this. Another set of reverted code might put us back to where we were before, potentially. Crashing-- but not unmanageably so. If that doesn't help at the very least, then it's time to consider other options.
It sucks when you sink hundreds of hours into making a system to relieve the server of over 50~% of its resource usage, that then ultimately doesn't work because nwserver and windows.
It does suck. And I'm sure it's hardest for those of you who have put the most work into managing the back stability of the server. So thank you for being willing and creative in answers! I think the list is helpful at any stage, early or middle or late, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that (like so much)! It's not really my place to make one and update it, unless all you leaders and Dev-ers want to keep me informed, but I am willing to help shoulder the "early" stage with you all if you want! I think it's escalating quickly, and that maximum frustration level on all sides will only fill quicker if not assisted with mindset efforts like this.
It's really for the sake of having something to point to, as this topic will recur again in a month or so if the crashes continue at the same rate. Like I said, I think it'd even help you all if you'd let it. There's already been about three separate topics in three months. Instead it could be an official-like single topic to track all the conversations and rising frustration levels on crashes and possible fixes. Like the one for Tech Issues but specific to the crash-rising epidemic. It'd help to warn new players, too. Still, I know I'm biased towards promoting greater transparency, communication and group effort in all levels of the server and not everyone agrees with that.
Making progress. Gonna deploy what I got now, it might slow down the server since I'm tracking memory but if it works, oh man will it be sweet.
_________________ Fear is not evil… It tells you what your weakness is. And once you know your weakness, you can become stronger as well as kinder. - Gildarts Clive, Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima.
_________________ Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play: Salema Nefahri::A penny for your thots Zrae'a'stra'fryn::That which nightmares are made of Khasir::From the East a storm is coming
I've concluded that there is definitely a double free going on when players join or leave. And right now I'm preventing them, it remains to see if the crashes goes away or atleast improves.
Also those are my icons and I think the portrait is in the pack, maybe.
_________________ Fear is not evil… It tells you what your weakness is. And once you know your weakness, you can become stronger as well as kinder. - Gildarts Clive, Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima.
_________________ Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play: Salema Nefahri::A penny for your thots Zrae'a'stra'fryn::That which nightmares are made of Khasir::From the East a storm is coming
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And I'm sure it's hardest for those of you who have put the most work into managing the back stability of the server. So thank you for being willing and creative in answers! I think the list is helpful at any stage, early or middle or late, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that (like so much)! It's not really my place to make one and update it, unless all you leaders and Dev-ers want to keep me informed, but I am willing to help shoulder the "early" stage with you all if you want! I think it's escalating quickly, and that maximum frustration level on all sides will only fill quicker if not assisted with mindset efforts like this.
Absolute genius!
