Hellek

Is it possible to use mod-folders on dedicated servers? If yes, is it good to do so? How can you do it? The ofpserver-shell-script seems not to pass any arguments on to the server executable. Is there any site that lists all the possible command-line options, server.cfg-entries, etc.?

I don't have any problems, must be the combination of RTS + some other addon that causes that (that's my guess)

well, it already is the case that each artillery unit can only have one commander. the commander can also release command so that somebody else can use it. that is far more dynamic than making a single radio available. I think that it might be a cool thing if the commander could actually "hand out" radios to other players so that the commander can decide who will be able to use the artillery (when he himself is not using it)

I think who has the possibility to use the UA radio can do it. You can: A: Set that Tank commanders have it (they don't have it by default) B: Place radios that can be picked up C: Execute a script on a player to activate the radio for him So you would just have to execute the script on the commander at startup and at respawn I guess. If you won't make it commander-only: I don't know if you can "assign" artillery to a player meaning that only he can command it.

Are you going to add UA (Unified Artillery) stuff to RTS? Preferably requiring research of course and maybe even making the area round the HQs a no-shoot zone (which AFAIK should be no prob to do with UA) so that they are not too powerful.

What do you think? Do you think BI should make OFP2 support ipv6? IMHO it would be a good thing because there are more adresses and therefore you could for example host behind a Router which does NAT or ICS without having to forward ports as there are so many adressess that you don't need to NAT for ipv6. Also I've heard that its routing is better meaning that the packets maybe would be transfered faster (=less lag) Another pro is that it should not be hard to make ipv6 support. A big con is that not many use ipv6 yet and it is hard to predict how long it will take until most people have it.

Thanks, it works now. Sorry that I did not find the thread myself.

Unfortunately I can't downgrade to RH8, have to keep RH9. So I have to stick with the slower server which has RH8 installed PS: Tried 1.92 Beta, also did not work (not really a surprise)

yeah, I am using 1.91c, the topic name is missleading because I did not create this topic. I already checked /etc/hosts, hostname, ifconfig, etc., all seem to be right: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 141.201.7.198 image.mat.sbg.ac.at image [david@image ~/ofp]$ hostname image.mat.sbg.ac.at ifconfig of course also showed me 141.201.7.198 with subnetmask 255.255.255.0 on interface eth0 with "UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1" all the nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf are of course working, everything is alright. Concerning the glibc: The system where it is working is RH8 (which means glibc 2.2), the system where it is not working is RH9 (glibc 2.3). Did you manage to make the server run with glibc 2.3?

Hehe, I think that BI has learned and won't use DirectPlay in OFP2. They did a good job on their own multiplayer code and I am quite sure that they will do again. I also just had a look at ipv6-patches for some Unix programs and it really seems that you do not have to change much (I guess that doing ipv6 for windows software is not harder than for unix)

no, did not find anything special in those files, and they are of course all -rw-r--r-- as usual hostname also worked as supposed.

and no errors when starting up? and not behind a NAT? and ports not blocked? if you checked all that and everything is okay I can't help - sorry.

You just have to make sure that the port is not blocked by any firewalls. So if you use 2302 you have to make sure that also 2303 is available and not blocked (and if you are behind a NAT, make sure that it is forwared too)

some differences which I now found with strace: on system image (not working) connect(92, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, path="/var/run/.nscd_socket"}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 92 on system cipher (working) connect(92, {sin_family=AF_UNIX, path="/var/run/.nscd_socket"}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i686/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 92 also: image: munmap(0x5d27a000, 127526) = 0 munmap(0x5d38d000, 47068) = 0 munmap(0x5d399000, 1261416) = 0 munmap(0x5d4cd000, 90100) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 92 cipher: munmap(0x5d27a000, 110992) = 0 open("/etc/host.conf", O_RDONLY) = 92 fstat64(92, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=17, ...}) = 0 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x5d27a000 read(92, "order hosts,bind\n", 4096) = 17 read(92, "", 4096) = 0 close(92) = 0 munmap(0x5d27a000, 4096) = 0 brk(0) = 0xa139000 brk(0xa13a000) = 0xa13a000 brk(0) = 0xa13a000 open("/etc/hosts", O_RDONLY) = 92 fcntl64(92, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(92, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 fstat64(92, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=147, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x5d27a000 read(92, "# Do not remove the following li"..., 4096) = 147 read(92, "", 4096) = 0 close(92) = 0 munmap(0x5d27a000, 4096) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 92 so it somehow left out opening /etc/host.conf Also on cipher there are entries like net_addr("<ip adress of the host edited out>")}}, 16) = 92 which are not on image So it is really very, very weird, all other programs work without any problems and also resolving works without probs Also on both systems I have lines like uname({sys="Linux", node="image.domain.edited.out", ...}) = 0 uname({sys="Linux", node="cipher.domain.edited.out", ...}) = 0 so it at least manages to find out the actual hostname on both systems. PS: Another thing which I don't understand is that already the first line is different: Cipher: execve("./server", ["./server", "-config=server.cfg"], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0 Image: execve("./server", ["./server", "-config=server.cfg"], [/* 30 vars */]) = 0

now it does not work any more at all and i did not change anything. it is so weird :-(

Hmm, resolving works on both, also route and ifconfig did not show anything special and other programs which use networking do not have any problems on the system. I just looked through the forums and found out that adding reportingIP=""; to the flashpoint.cfg might help and it indeed does. Now I only have to figure out why ... PS: FYI: It prevents OFP from reporting to gamespy so the drawback is that nobody will find the server

[david@image ~/ofp]$ strace -o strace.log ./server -config=server.cfg 23:21:17 Dedicated server created, memory used: 8308 KB Server creation failed : 2302 My strace.log is 8.3 megabytes big so it is not helpful as I don't know what to look for. The fact that it says "Server createn failed : 2302" is a bit interesting as the error message includes the port it should run on. But I can open this port, I tried that and netstat -al also does not list the port as already open. What does "unset LANG or UTF-8 mean"? Is it deleting environment variables? $LANG is set to en_US.UTF-8 on both systems (on the RH8 one where OFP is working and on the RH9 one where it is not working)

Yeah, no problem and I must admit that there are things which I don't know either. First: A normal ipv4 adress has 32bits and looks like this: 62.46.150.168 An ipv6 adress has 128bits and looks like this: 3ffe:b80:a20:1::1 theoretically like this but the above is a short form which you can use 3ffe:0b80:a20:0001:0000:0000:0000:0001 So with ipv4 we have 4294967296 which seems like a lot but in fact 4 billion IP adresses is not enough and the world is running out of them so ipv6 was created with 3,4028236692093846346337460743177e+38 adresses which is quite a lot. For example I myself have 79228162514264337593543950336 ipv6 ip adresses available for my personal use. Because there are so many there is no need for nat and for example in my home network every linux or winxp comp has his own global ipv6 adress but only private 192.168.* local adresses with only a single global adress on the router. Now, secondly the part where I don't know so much yet: ipv6 also has some other improvements over ipv4 concerning the routing but I have forgotten what I read about this and anyway it is not important as long as you don't have native ipv6. At the moment 90% of all ipv6 connections are established through ipv6-over-ipv4 tunnels which makes them perform much worse than ipv4.

I have seen a 3rd party tool for the old game "total annihilation" which AFAIK first simulates a game client for recording and then for playback simulates a server and sends you all the stuff it recorded before. To make this work with OFP2, BI would of course have to define something like a special recording client which does not receive just what is happening around him but instead everything. So I think it should not be to difficult to make something for recording, would be cool if BI would do it.

I agree with deathguy, BI really did a great job, even now that the game is really old they are still patching which is quite unusual, other devs would not do that. I think they really should do a bit more testing now but as deathguy said, longlasting support is worth more than a flawless first release.

Well, it would also be a possibility to (optionally) automatically download the addons like for example UT does. Another thing which I want to mention are Linux-things like rpm and apt-get which pretty much have to care about something very similar: Dependencies of packages and installing them. For the end-user something similar would be perfect but I don't know how difficult it would be for addon-makers.

Well, the first step before making a cluster of machines is making a cluster of processors on one machine. And both clusters and big multi-processor machines are too expensive for game servers. Of course it would be cool to run OFP2 on "real" servers (meaning not "cheap" 2-CPU sytems with Intel or AMD CPUs but instead stuff like 16 processor Alphas with 32gigs of ram or as adammo said, clusters) but it is not realistical to expect anybody to host on such machines. Is there anybody who could afford a system costing 100k+ $$$ just for hosting a big OFP2-server? And if there even was somebody rich and crazy enough to do that there would be lots of technical difficulties. To execute a program on many different CPUs (or even different comps) it needs to be designed specifically for that. So it would definately be a huge load of work for BI. PS: You could of course make a cluster of cheap comps but you have to know that a cluster of 16 AMD 1400 comps is far away from performing like for example 8 AMD 2800 comps would and worlds away from the performance of a single comp with 16 processors. So if you think something like "I have 7 fps with a single comp so 3 comps of the same speed would be enough as 21 fps are sufficient", I have to tell you that with a cluster of 3 comps you would never come close to 21 fps, I doubt that a cluster of 4 would reach them. PPS: My father is working at a Univercity and therefore I have some experience with fast servers and workstations (but never logged in on a cluster yet) and I can tell you that those things are damn expensive. Of course it would be cool if BIS would release a ded. server for (in my case) Alphas (I have one which they don't need any more) but I guess that except me, only a handfull of other people would use it. PPPS: Anyway, it would be good if BIS would make at least a ded. server for the AMD 64 bit processors (Opteron/Hammer) because they probably get many users and as they are 64bit you can use them for big systems (32bit comps can only access 4gbyte ram which is not much for servers, 64bit comps can access, hmm, well, a lot (2^64 I think but I am too lazy to calculate now)). PPPPS: Sorry if my post sounds a bit confusing, I am so tired now and probably should delete the post and rewrite it tomorrow but I already is so much text, don't want to rewrite it ...

I think they should compile at least the Linux ded. Server for 64bit AMDs. What I am wondering is how much the code needs to be changed to convert it from 32 to 64 bit. If no changes were necessary and just a recompile would be needed it should be no question if there is a 64bit release or not but I think it won't be that easy. (I am using 64bit systems for years (DEC (now HP) Alphas) and many programs had bugs which did not exist in their 32bit versions. Of course they were fixed in no time but it shows that most probably more than a recompile is needed for 64bit)

I think a linux server is a must. The game itself ported to linux would be nice and cool but is not as important as a linux server. PS: If there will be a Linux Server for OFP2, it would be nice if you could compile it for Alpha CPUs. I know that it won't be worth the effort if I am the only one who needs this so please anybody who is planning to run a dedicated server on an Alpha post that here.

Yep, I also think that a bit more info would be cool, I am currently running a dedicated server (of course the latest release, not 1.90f) on RedHat8, no problems. Now I got access to a faster machine which is Running with RedHat9 and it does not work. I saw that RH8 uses glibc2.2 and RH9 uses glibc2.3, maybe this causes the problem? (Assuming that I am right and this is the reason why it does not work on my RH9 comp): It would be really nice if you wou would compile it both for glibc2.2 and 2.3. PS: Is anybody running the Linux Ded. Server on RH9 without problems? (then I would know that it is not the glibc)