Dedicated Server Crashes

[zyklone 1]

Is anyone else who's running an Arma dedicated server seeing unusually frequent crashes?

Mine seems to currently crash atleast once per day which is much worse than the OFP dedicated server.

(The arma.exe is crashing, not the server itself.)

[sickboy 13]

Is anyone else who's running an Arma dedicated server seeing unusually frequent crashes?

Mine seems to currently crash atleast once per day which is much worse than the OFP dedicated server.

(The arma.exe is crashing, not the server itself.)

I'm running an ArmA Dedicated Server, for 1 week now... my arma.exe process crashed once, just after starting up... This is under Vista PRE-RTM (build 5840). Have been playing coop with generally 3-5 players, and max 7 for now...

So my best guess is.... check ur CPU & Memory stability

CPU, try prime95 on benchmark mode (torture test)

MEM, try memtest86+, and run it for 12 hours straight to check stability. (Usually test 5+8 are marked as good stability testers)

[zyklone 1]

Is anyone else who's running an Arma dedicated server seeing unusually frequent crashes?

Mine seems to currently crash atleast once per day which is much worse than the OFP dedicated server.

(The arma.exe is crashing, not the server itself.)

I'm running an ArmA Dedicated Server, for 1 week now... my arma.exe process crashed once, just after starting up... This is under Vista PRE-RTM (build 5840). Have been playing coop with generally 3-5 players, and max 7 for now...

So my best guess is.... check ur CPU & Memory stability

CPU, try prime95 on benchmark mode (torture test)

MEM, try memtest86+, and run it for 12 hours straight to check stability. (Usually test 5+8 are marked as good stability testers)

Well, it's unfortunately not the hardware.

I suspect it's because I'm running a public server. Very many connects and disconnects...

[sickboy 13]

Well, it's unfortunately not the hardware.

I suspect it's because I'm running a public server. Very many connects and disconnects...

Got a point there I will post more info when we can run our colocated ArmA servers

[sickboy 13]

I had to exclude arma.exe in the DEP settings of Windows...

We are running with Windows 2003 Server, but the setting is the same for XP aswell

Check this site, it contains info about DEP, and how to exclude processes!

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/howto-25.html

This saved crashes for us at our colocated dedy servers

[Mobious 0]

Are you guys running a dedicated server on the machine you are playing on or a dedicated box?

Has anyone rented a dedicated box from some host with a good connection to run a server yet?

[sickboy 13]

Are you guys running a dedicated server on the machine you are playing on or a dedicated box?

Has anyone rented a dedicated box from some host with a good connection to run a server yet?

I was running a dedicated server at home, without playing the game on the same machine.

Now we are running 2 dedicated servers on 2 colocated servers, but they are privately owned by us and just hosted in The Netherlands at redbus.com and we-dare.com

I don't think there are hosting companies who host ArmA yet due to the need of the dvd in the server for now

But I guess we're going offtopic

[Skunk Monkey 0]

Over at SES we are pretty sure the server crashes have been down to user-made missions. There seems to be some secret we havent yet worked out. The BIS missions are very stable, try running just the original missions and see if you still have a problem.

We have purchased a slimline DVD for our rack-mount backbone sever, should be up in a few days.

[sickboy 13]

Also check firewall configuration, one of our servers could not connect to port 80 (http) to the outside, this server seems to crash way way way more often than the other one ... (Probably with trying to contact the squad url etc...)

[whisper 0]

Also check firewall configuration, one of our servers could not connect to port 80 (http) to the outside, this server seems to crash way way way more often than the other one ... (Probably with trying to contact the squad url etc...)

Awww, OFP linux had issues with HTTP port too, looks very similar

[zyklone 1]

The crashes of my server has magically stopped.

Possible it was some player with a bad xml that was causing it..

[whisper 0]

In which case I suggest you simply prevent your server to open HTTP connections.

Sure, no clan tag, etc....

But, when I had this issue on OFP Linux dedicated, before patch, it made the server stable

[Placebo 29]

Moving to ArmA:MP

[sickboy 13]

In which case I suggest you simply prevent your server to open HTTP connections.

Sure, no clan tag, etc....

But, when I had this issue on OFP Linux dedicated, before patch, it made the server stable

That's what I was saying, our firewall Blocked/Prevented outgoing port 80 connections, and that server was actually the most crashing ones

I will disable the squad url at the players that have it, but dont know a server setting to completely disable it

[MachoMan 0]

In case you can't disable it you may be able be able to remap port 80 to a local machine, running a http server. Next you create some squad XML file on the server, which you will feed to your OFP server. If you're running Apache, you can use .htaccess files to map any url to a specific file. That way you'll be sure the XML file is working okay.

[sickboy 13]

In case you can't disable it you may be able be able to remap port 80 to a local machine, running a http server. Next you create some squad XML file on the server, which you will feed to your OFP server. If you're running Apache, you can use .htaccess files to map any url to a specific file. That way you'll be sure the XML file is working okay.

Great idea! Thanks m8! Let's see what patch v1.01 brings us though

[whisper 0]

In which case I suggest you simply prevent your server to open HTTP connections.

Sure, no clan tag, etc....

But, when I had this issue on OFP Linux dedicated, before patch, it made the server stable

That's what I was saying, our firewall Blocked/Prevented outgoing port 80 connections, and that server was actually the most crashing ones

I will disable the squad url at the players that have it, but dont know a server setting to completely disable it

Ooops, sry I completely misunderstood then

[sickboy 13]

That's what I was saying, our firewall Blocked/Prevented outgoing port 80 connections, and that server was actually the most crashing ones

I will disable the squad url at the players that have it, but dont know a server setting to completely disable it

Ooops, sry I completely misunderstood then

No Biggy

Both our Colocated dedicated servers have many crashes all over the place, happening at random moments...

Our first server, the one that can not do outgoing http connections crashes every few minutes when players are on.

Our 2nd server, the one that CAN make outgoing http connections crashes less, but still frequent and usually 10-20 minutes or so... even with original missions

Is there anyone else that is experiencing all these crashes constantly? Are there servers that run 24/7 stable or near-stable?

How is the server running of the topic maker at the moment?

[whisper 0]

You can't find any common factor present during each crash?

- last person to log in

- last mission played

Things like that...

Also maybe verifying memory free is still enough.

[sickboy 13]

You can't find any common factor present during each crash?

- last person to log in

- last mission played

Things like that...

Also maybe verifying memory free is still enough.

It happens with any group of players playing on our servers, so not every time the same persons are in, but the crashes are there, even when ur with only 2 players.

Last Mission Played is totally random, server crashes... server gets started again, we pick another mission usually, few minutes later... bam, crash.  Sometimes the server crashes while going towards the briefing, sometimes just somewhen in the mission, also pretty random.

Memory is free on both servers, got 3GB and usually there is about 500mb free on the servers, also verified while we were playing.

I was hoping v1.01 would fix it all, but not the case :|

Both Servers are running Windows 2003 SP1, ISA 2007 Firewall and some other stuff. The hardware is a Dual AMD Opteron and a Quad AMD Opteron.

The funny thing is... when I was hosting a server @ home on an older Vista Installation of build 5840... that server was rock solid, crashed like 1 time in a week...

Server hardware it can't be... The servers run 24/7 high cpu and memory usage, multiple game servers, everything runs just fine but not ArmA (Which is merely a substitute for the OFP servers we were running before, stable)

[whisper 0]

Did you set specific affinity for the ArmA processes?

[zyklone 1]

1.01 seems to be crashing more than before.

There doesn't seem to be any useful debug output from the crashes either. Hope BI will be able to figure it out anyway.

[sickboy 13]

Did you set specific affinity for the ArmA processes?

On the quad I set the affinity to 2 cpu's, on the dual I left the affinity to 2 (both) cpu's. (I usually don't assign the game processes a definate cpu as there are not always players on the different servers, so the servers can pick any cpu where the most is free )

I will put them on 1 cpu to see if that changes anything, stupid that I didn't think about that yet :S

On both servers there are proper drivers/patches installed for dual-core/cpu systems.

[whisper 0]

1.01 seems to be crashing more than before.

There doesn't seem to be any useful debug output from the crashes either. Hope BI will be able to figure it out anyway.

Yes, message log and debug from OFP dedicated has never been really helpfull, it says very little, when it even says something

[sickboy 13]

Guys I might have an idea where the problem is coming from, I thought I post it even while we are still evaluating it ourselves, maybe so others can see it too if the crashes go away or to a bare minimum:

The problem seems to relate to the ingame voice system. When we didn't use this and explicitly told everyone NOT to use it, we were playing for 20 minutes, switched mission to another mission without any problems etc. etc.

Please let me know what you guys findings are!