[DEDI SERVER WIN] Crash and all progress lost

[MegaChill]

Hey all,

 

after several hours of gameplay today the server goes leaky and eventually then crashes. The log got deleted so could not post any more information. We have around 12 players and after the crash has happened all of their progress / money etc is gone.. Even with making backups of files etc. and then replacing them.

 

This has happened twice today... Understandibly players are angry and do not want to continue to rebuild.

 

After some further testing on my end it seems to have to do with the index file in the server folder and it looks like the player_xx.dat files seem to get regenerated... Could this please be fixed, this is a massively annoying bug to deal with right now. And then why are all player files are reset?

 

Thanks

 

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Wir haben einen Dedizierten server stehen der Avorion laufen hat. Dies ist ein Windows 2008 Server welcher letztere Updates etc faehrt. Der Server laeuft fuer eine Weile stabil, jedoch nach ein paar Stunden merken die Spieler wie es anfaengt zu laggen, danach im Normalfall crashed die Applikation mit wilden Server Error Logs.

 

Wenn wir den Server danach nun wieder neustarten, sind alle Spieler Progression weg. Also komplett geloescht und resettet so wie es scheint? Es sieht ausserdem so aus als wenn fuer jeden Spieler dann auf einmal neue player_xx.dat Dateien generiert werden. Obwohl die alten Dateien ja noch vorhanden sind.

 

Wir reden hier nicht von simplem Ship weg sonder kompletter Progress verloren und alle Spieler muessen von vorne anfangen.

 

Hier ein paar Fakten:

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Server: Win 2012 R2 Standard

CPU: i7-5820K @ 3.5GHz + 64 GB DDR4 RAM

Harddisk: SSD

Spieler: 6-12

 

server wird per standard bat gestartet die folgendermassen aussieht:

 

bin\AvorionServer.exe --galaxy-name avorion_galaxy --datapath "D:\avorion_server" --admin STEAMID

 

 

Vielen Dank im Vorraus :) (meine Spieler danken es euch!)

[koonschi]

Your progress isn't lost, the server just thinks it is. If the server creates new files for the players you can move the old files into the places of the new ones usually. You can also use the /give command to at least restore your player's resources.

For the future, if you suspect a server crash, I suggest to /stop the server, it will save all progress before shutting down.

 

Another way around this is regular restarts after a few hours. I highly suggest to use the linux server version atm, since the windows command line interface isn't finished yet.

 

The server isn't leaking by the way, it's just using up too much memory and I'm working on that. The test server is currently running at constant 12 GB RAM. Which is too much, absolutely, but it peaked at that number and it's been stable for at least 12 hours.

[MegaChill]

Your progress isn't lost, the server just thinks it is. If the server creates new files for the players you can move the old files into the places of the new ones usually. You can also use the /give command to at least restore your player's resources.

For the future, if you suspect a server crash, I suggest to /stop the server, it will save all progress before shutting down.

 

Thanks koonschi :) I appreciate the work you've been putting into this project and I also know how long proper programming takes (C++ / C / PhP dev myself) so I understand if there are delays etc and no problem. What you have suggested I have tried after analysing what the game is doing, when and where it writes files etc, which it keeps open etc etc. Now after that I had tried moving the files back in, the result was rather frustrating as the files would still get generated new but this time with new _xx index numbers for the players meaning their old stuff was probably still there but under a different id?

 

I am only assuming here but it would make sense for you to have written it this way so I understand. On the matter of "suspecting" a crash, well that is rather hard to say. Since I myself do not actively play all the time but the other people are. They usually are very vocal if something is odd. We had the case of "oh oh" today and literally the second later the server was gone. What is happening here, does the index get corrupted?

 

Here I would like to suggest a "restart" feature which could restart the server. Also are you planning on writing proper server side launchers, for Windows Hosts i mean? I cant currently run this on the linux rack as these are off limits for now so the only choice for game server i have right now is a windows server.

 

Another way around this is regular restarts after a few hours. I highly suggest to use the linux server version atm, since the windows command line interface isn't finished yet.

 

The server isn't leaking by the way, it's just using up too much memory and I'm working on that. The test server is currently running at constant 12 GB RAM. Which is too much, absolutely, but it peaked at that number and it's been stable for at least 12 hours.

 

Sorry I wasn't saying it was leaking just the amount of RAM it was using was a bit "off" the charts. I mean I honestly do not mind the server has 64GB and no issues running this and several other servers for games. I was just astounded by the fact, is all :)

 

So I am guessing a simple python (+winlib) script with every 3h restarts should solve the issues for now? Also do you have RCON in place at all? I mean can I hook into the game from the server side right now, e.g. send commands? Because on the command line for the server I cannot.

 

Thanks again and absolutely amazing work you have done!

[koonschi]

Restarts every few hours seem reasonable, sadly the windows interface is still lacking and there's no RCON in place yet. I can't say for sure what gets corrupted since this issue has not yet happened here and I'd have to investigate the files.

[MegaChill]

Do you want me to zip the galaxy folder and upload when it happens again? I can do that so you have something to work with.

[koonschi]

Please do so and include a link to this thread so I know what is what.

[MegaChill]

Just to give a quick update. I have updated ther server to the BETA branch and have implemented restarts / backups every couple of hours. (every 6 or so). At the moment this process is all manual, as I had not yet the time to write up some small tool.

 

The clients are all still running stable branch and everything seems to work quite well. With the exception of certain things.

 

• [bUG] Some players mentioned that they would stop doing damage to enemies and once they relogged it would seem to fix that issue (desync?) We get the feeling this seems to happen when a new player enters a sector where another player is already active. Not always but random
  
• [bUG] Client side? Sometimes when deleting a block in build mode from bigger ships it still shows the block even tho it's gone
  
• [Quality of Life] Build Mode, the items you drag to your quick slot bar get reset when reopening build mode later on. Could we get a way so this gets saved?
  
• [Quality of Life]Build Mode, the ability to define the pivot point of the block you want to build.
  
• [Quality of Life]Build Mode, a sort of heat map to show structural integrity. Example the boys built a ship yesterday which should have (according to them ;) ) held itself together quite well, however after testing we found out it had 1 weak section which then made it get cut in half
  
• [Quality of Life] Build Mode, the ability to freely move the camera around the ship (instead of select block and F), maybe something along the lines of SHIFT + Right mouse etc or a control scheme you could find in editors like 3ds max that would be good, make use of the ALT key
  
• Round corner blocks please? :)
  

 

I'll add more if you'd like. Most of these are quality of life improvements making the game experience much better.