Issues/Bugs with Dedicated Server V 1.16beta

[mr.g-c 6]

Hi, this topic is dedicated to list Bugs/Issues with Dedicated-Server 1.16b.

Please post all your Bugs/Issues with the newest beta Dedicated Server here so Suma and other Programmers can take care of it for the final build and even Arma2 (if those bugs are not yet known).

Bugs i noticed compared to 1.14:

1. Client Computer Crashes, Chat is spammed with "username uses modified exe-file ???"

Description:

When a client computer crashes or hangs, whole chate is spammed with a message like "xxxx is using modified exe-file" over and over again, until a Admin logs-in and kicks the player so he can rejoin or something.

2. Raised possibility for crashes with "Too much virtual memory blocks requested".

Description:

Server crashes with a windows error message(link!) after some time, but clients get no chain/no messages and can normal continue playing, but when they see another client, this client is not moving for them. VON is still working when this happens.

Happens in missions/Mods with much server-side sqf scripting and server-side saving into memeory (player-arrays etc.).

Happens random but is dependent on player-count after my observation.

Clearer Description what happens on crash:

On Client Side, people get a short "Lag" of a second, sometimes a yellow chain appears, sometimes not.

On Server Side, when watching the task-manager, suddenly memory allocation (working set) sky-rokets within seconds until it reaches a limit of like ~"1,267,000Kb".

A few seconds before the crashes, Ram allocation was all perfectly low, like between 180-300MB.

See this picture at the end of the "skyrocket-run" when the server then crashed finally:

Notice the "Peak-working Set entry" and the quick fall of the normal working Set from down to a lower level.

Possible Solution:

Raise maximum allocatable memory blocks to more than 1024mb like suggested by Suma some year ago, or fix bug why suddenly the ram skyrockets within 1,2 seconds until it crashes.

3. Random Lags with Yellow Chain

Description:

Sometimes in-game a yellow chain appears for all players, even though neither shooting, nor scriptwise any action was done and relatively high desync rates are shown in player-overview (P).

However when in middle of this shorter lag-spike, people are still moving around and there is simply no visible lag, only some people are beaming a tiny little bit more.

Sometime it appears that a client might have caused this, because on long observations i have done, desync starts at one person and spreads then over to all clients.

This was definitely not in Version 1.14, so its was either introduced with 1.15b where i saw similar lag-spikes during game or with 1.16b.

Edited May 11, 2009 by mr.g-c
added link to sumas suggestion with virtual memory.

[cross 1]

We never noticed some of those reports you posted here running Arma server on a dedi server with no affinity set.

Would you mind posting your server setup & working environment such as

- OS

- Virtual machines info

- Running background services

- CPU affinity & prioritization

- RAM allocation

and such....

I think these would be helpful to compare apples with apples.

cheers

[mr.g-c 6]

Of course you can't notice the problems with the Crashes at least, since we play Sahrani-Life:Reloaded, which is maybe one the most script-intensive missions around. This together with higher player-counts.....

At least for Problem 3 i know one other Person (Xeno) who noticed them too and i noticed them already sometimes on Tacticalgamer-Server with 1.15b.

Problem 1 is also known by other admins.

Our Machine:

Intel Core2Duo E8400 @4GHZ, 4GB DDR2-1066 Ram.

Hardware-Virtualized with KVM-Intel modul in latest Linux Kernel and self-compiled KVM-85 with integrated QEMU.

Virtual Machine got 1 CPU-Core and 2GB of Host Ram.

Virtual Machines was 48Hrs Stress-Tested with with Prime95 and couple of hours with memtest86 in bitfade extreme-test -> All passed without any Problems.

And as i said "Ordinary Coops" or other script-less missions it runs fine without crashes, but the sudden memory-raise within 2-3 seconds during gameplay is a bug, there might something wrong on the server with handling/storing of larger variables/arrays or anything else related.

[suma 8]

2. Raised possibility for crashes with "Too much virtual memory blocks requested".

On Server Side, when watching the task-manager, suddenly memory allocation (working set) sky-rokets within seconds until it reaches a limit of like ~"1,267,000Kb".

A few seconds before the crashes, Ram allocation was all perfectly low, like between 180-300MB.

See this picture at the end of the "skyrocket-run" when the server then crashed finally:

Possible Solution:

Raise maximum allocatable memory blocks to more than 1024mb like suggested by Suma some year ago, or fix bug why suddenly the ram skyrockets within 1,2 seconds until it crashes.

If you see skyrocketing memory like this, it is unlikely increasing the limit would help, as it would be only a few more seconds before the memory is exhausted again. The problem needs to be fixed instead. Would someone be able to get a reliable repro of this?

[mr.g-c 6]

If you see skyrocketing memory like this, it is unlikely increasing the limit would help, as it would be only a few more seconds before the memory is exhausted again. The problem needs to be fixed instead. Would someone be able to get a reliable repro of this?

Hi suma, finally you hear us on about this issue, two communities have fight against since one year.

I can only tell you that i tired nearly everything to get a clear repro of this, but i have had no Luck since one year.... besides:

One thing is for sure - Those crashes started with 1.14 (we used the beta patches after 1.08 before) so the update introduced them.

I've spend days with the forums search in our, our competitors and this Forums and it was clearly the release of 1.14 when it started (basically crashes starting to happen on day 1 of 1.14 release), even though we changed nothing at our addons nor the mission as we updated.

Read this old post one year ago, where britXR reported it on the first day he switched to 1.14: http://www.arma-rpg.com/gameserverboard/xr-server-update-to-114-t984.0.html;msg9417#msg9417

Personally our devs suspect that its the publicvariables, especially when you send whole huge arrays and stuff, but our RPG mission is heavy relying on Public Variables so it was not possible for us to strip it off, beacause the mission would be then useless and we could shut-down our community.

What would help us for a better repro (and i was asking you this some long time before), is when you could give us a modified dedicated-Server exe, which has extended debug-options/output, so we can see what is bloating the ram suddenly within seconds at random times.

I'm looking forward to your reply!

[Deadfast 43]

To give you at least something to work with I extracted the server crashes from the event viewer.

You can download it here (plain text version).

I hope it helps...:(

Edited May 24, 2009 by Deadfast

[jasono 0]

With constant tweaking, we still get this error. Is there any possible solution or certain cause to the issue? It's causing a huge disapointment after a 2 hour game.

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

With constant tweaking, we still get this error. Is there any possible solution or certain cause to the issue? It's causing a huge disapointment after a 2 hour game.

It's gotta be larger MP games.

I've only had 2 or 3 server crashes within 2 years.

Server has a pw, as few as 2-6 players.

Missions such as:

Domination,

WarFare (several versions),

Evo,

Rare, but, Quarantine,

and others.

Some may run persistent for 2 weeks.

Edited June 8, 2009 by SWAT_BigBear