About nomap

[PRiME 1]

Getting really annoyed with BIS & their nomap lately.

Esp with this whole nomap is needed thing, I know they think they fixed it but well BIS didn't.

Still if addons (total) exceed 300mb or there abouts in TOTAL the game cuts bits out, like player models or islands.. is a fricken nightmare and only way to solve it is run -nomap.

ALso this doesn't appear to be a memory issue, because OFP uses like 200mb total memory on startup nothing near the max.

Question I guess to ask next will using nomap cause a OFP server to perform slow? or does it only affect Hdd loading a little ?

Basicly does it affect CPU performance or HDD performacne because when I use nomap I can only see that it affects some HDD performance in the sence of caching etc..

I have tried splitting addons into mod folders of 200mb tops each yet that has no effect.

Is there anyone out there who knows more about this nomap issue then I do?

PS. I base my knowledge on hands on experience NOT text book info on WHAT nomap SHOULD and SHOULDN't DO.!

[NeMeSiS 11]

because OFP uses like 200mb total memory on startup nothing near the max.

mine doesnt!

[PRiME 1]

well it does increase once certain missions load up, but for default run even with al addons it settles to that.

What im trying to find out is if -nomap causes any major CPU (mostly) strain compared to normal that would cause ofp to perform alot worse then without it.

I need this info for a server, as the main admin is hell bent on blaming -nomap for everything. Nomap has been the only way I have been able to use addons in OFP for soem time now.

[Guest]

nomap is the way I am sure many of us have been running OFP since it was released. It solves a LOT of problems. If it does cause a slight increase in CPU load, it's worth the price.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

...if missions exceed 300mb ...

Lots o' music in that  

Altough as far to my knowledge Marek once said that nomap only acesses addons differently the "old-fashioned" way.

[benu 1]

What do you mean with "missions exceeds 300mb"? One mission with 300mb? Cause my missions folder is a lot bigger than that and i got no problems. And my addons/dta/bin modfolder i load the game with is several gb big. Still no problem.

As you seem to have problems with memory mapping you could tell us at least which os you run, how much ram you got, how much swap, which graphics card with how much graphics ram, etc, pp.

[PRiME 1]

was a typo sorry, ment addons.. LOL 300mb missions that would be quite interesting.

What I want to know is if -nomap is ok to use for a Server? as servers now days are starting to put alot of support behind addon makers.

The server atm has 1gb memory btw.

[benu 1]

I did run my server with -nomap for some time, so yes, it is possible to use this option for servers too.

[killswitch 19]

What im trying to find out is if -nomap causes any major CPU (mostly) strain compared to normal that would cause ofp to perform alot worse then without it.

Nope, -nomap doesn't "add" extra CPU strain in that way. Far from it. Of course, if the server is on a XP Home machine with 256 MB of memory and is riddled with spyware and other crap and has ATA DMA transfers disabled, its another matter Then, the endless swapping will surely peg any CPU all day long.

Quote[/b] ]I need this info for a server, as the main admin is hell bent on blaming -nomap for everything. Nomap has been the only way I have been able to use addons in OFP for soem time now.

Is there a problem with the server or is the admin in question blaming server problems on players using -nomap or not on their client machines? (The latter would be crazy-talk, btw)

I smell a case of PEBKAC here, but please add more info as to what and where the actual problem you're having is...

[PRiME 1]

No this is server side, I have been for a long time telling people to use NOmap as they would constantly come to me with problems like missing objects or addon files or Parts of ingame.

Non the less the main admin is under the impression that -nomap might be causing performance issues, which would cause CTI matches to bog down (server fps drops to 11fps or so and it CAN desync people bad)

The server is a xp2600 with 1gb ddr333. Now since this is just a method for access info I don't see how it would cause any issues with the above specs, esp since it doesn't change anything ingame or causes OFP to work more? cept in the case of file accessing but thats inital loading and very rarely would affect gameplay on the server to the extent of causing LONG durations of desync.

So am I right, is this other admin perhaps a little too paranoid or too quick to blame? ;)

[killswitch 19]

Ah... the age-old problem of CTI missions bogging down all known machines. Well... try with and without -nomap on the server and see if there's a discernable difference. I'm rather sure there won't be.

That said...CTI suffer from one thing: there is no such thing as a fast enough computer for OFP and CTI today. Another way of putting it is "OFP scales real well with CPU and mem bandwidth".

Try overclocking the server - hike the memory up from 333 MHz to 400 and see if the CPU can follow. Should help somewhat.

PS. Hmm... what network card does the server have? One of those on-board Realtek POS variants? If so, that's where your CPU cycles are going. No, really, they are utter shite. Get a real server NIC to do the job. Intel or Broadcom chipset-based. That's where the good stuff is.

[PRiME 1]

Well considering this is a server far from our hands I don't think overclocking is a practical solution, we were going to consider putting a 3000+ in the server to see if that helps.

But yes I was going to try with and without nomap in CTI tomorrow to see how the server responds.

ATM the main admin is saying if the addons don't work without nomap then there MUST be something very wrong with the addons, I tried telling him that it was simply a OFP flaw and -nomap is hardly a unbarable price to pay to fix it.

I will report back on the tests tomorrow.

[benu 1]

I just checked: i run my server with -nomap too, i have 800mb addon at minimum, sometimes twice as much (depends on modfolders loaded). I will try to test this in the next days too.

[WarWolf 0]

It's my guess that the -nomap command disables some usage of the Windows operating system-level API functions for memory mapping files. Basically what these APIs do is allow a developer to load a partial section of file only at a time and map that section into memory directly so that it can be worked upon and read as if it was part of the RAM, and swap different parts of the file in and out of memory at will, rather than the 'old way' of creating a file pointer then using 'seek' functions to fast forward to the part of the file that you need to read, reading it, and then storing that info somewhere if you need it again later.

The best uses of the file-mapping APIs are for inter-process communication, and for jobs that need repetitive access to the same parts of the file many times, the benefits in a read-once or few scenario are limited indeed due to the extra layers of code required to run those API calls. If the code exists and is reasonably well implemented that can avoid use of these APIs for simple file-reading and data cacheing then in many cases it can be preferable to use a custom-coded solution, especially in a high-performance program like OFP certainly is. Custom-written-cacheing of already read information from a file can be much more efficient than the API, but a helluva load more work to do for the programmer. Kudos to the OFP devs for having the foresight and patience to experiment with both methods to find the optimum rather than just taking the easy route (mapping only). The filemapping API can also use up your valuable memory faster, and windoze memory-handling has NEVER been the best around, which I suspect may be some of the reason for these strange glitches in addon behaviour without the nomap command.

Personally until recently I didn't know of the nomap command - and after reading this thread, and reflecting for a while, I am gonna try this out and compare performance myself, as I bet BIS code is tighter than MS's

So thanks to all for all the comments and threads. Keep em coming

WarWolf.

[Mister Frag 0]

<Snip>

Personally until recently I didn't know of the nomap command - and after reading this thread, and reflecting for a while,  I am gonna try this out and compare performance myself, as I bet BIS code is tighter than MS's

</Snip>

I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I doubt that the BIS code to access missions data and other objects is any faster or more reliable than the VMM in the Windows Kernel.

The VMM is an integral part of the OS that is exercised by hundreds of millions of PCs on a daily basis. If this crucial component didn't work reliably, nothing in Windows would work. The chief architect of NT (the technology on which Windows 2000 and XP are based) was David Cutler, who also designed Digital's VMS operating system for their VAX before joining Microsoft. Memory-mapped files are also found in most other modern operating systems, and the design principles for VMMs are well-understood.

[WarWolf 0]

lol, Well you're very probably entirely correct about this critical system, but somehow I can never forget all the blue-screens I've seen (or black at worse and earlier times) over the years...

Yes, mainly due to bad drivers or misbehaving apps, but there's times when the maze of documentation and code contain some flamin weird contradictions in less critical bits. The new OSs seem a load more stable, but regular reboots are still necessary to maintain performance and get a fresh memory space.

WarWolf

[benu 1]

If that is the case then i guess i should reboot my server too:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">(~) $ uptime

00:15:38 up 155 days

[PRiME 1]

We managed to get the server running without the nomap now (somehow, it just worked LOL) anyway performance wise I didn't see any real difference as monitor was reporting the same as with nomap enabled.