benu

There are still OFP servers being set up these days and sometimes this seems to cause problems. I hope most of them can be solved with this document. At first you should go to the Flashnews Board and get the linux server executable. Then you could get the packaging script from Kegetys Site. It creates an archive containg the following files:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">flashpoint.cfg res/bin/resource.bin res/bin/ijl15.dll res/bin/config.bin res/bin/stringtable.csv res/addons/abox.pbo res/addons/apac.pbo res/addons/bmp2.pbo res/addons/brmd.pbo res/addons/flags.pbo res/addons/g36a.pbo res/addons/ch47.pbo res/addons/hunter.pbo res/addons/kolo.pbo res/addons/humr.pbo res/addons/laserguided.pbo res/addons/kozl.pbo res/addons/m2a2.pbo res/addons/mini.pbo res/addons/mm-1.pbo res/addons/noe.pbo res/addons/o.pbo res/addons/o_wp.pbo res/addons/oh58.pbo res/addons/xms.pbo res/addons/su25.pbo res/addons/trab.pbo res/addons/vulcan.pbo res/addons/6g30.pbo res/addons/bizon.pbo res/addons/steyr.pbo res/dta/data3d.pbo res/dta/misc.pbo res/dta/anim.pbo res/dta/anims.pbo worlds/abel.wrp worlds/cain.wrp worlds/eden.wrp worlds/intro.wrp Notice that this package does not contain the res\dta\dta.pbo as Kegetys used a minimal dta.pbo of his own instead. If you don't want to use this you have to pack the dta.pbo too. res\dta\dtaext.pbo (from v1.91+) seems to be missing also. May not be needed though, i am not sure. Transfer both files to your server and unpack the files archiv. Then copy the server file into your ofp server folder (i will be using /home/ofp in my examples) and run it there:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">gunzip server-1.96.shar.gz . server-1.96.shar You may need sharutils and gcc installed for this. What it actually does is unpacking the server executable, unpacking the tolower.c and compiling and then running it. So if you don't have gcc and sharutils installed and can't or do not want to install them you could ask someone to just sent you the server and tolower executalbe (preferrably compiled statically). After that you have to edit the ofpserver script that came with the server files. You have to change at least one entry, possibly more. OFP_DIR should point to the folder where you unpacked your server. PIDFILE and RUNFILE should look like this (as you will most problably have no write access to /var/run):<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">OFP_DIR =/home/ofp PIDFILE=${OFP_DIR}/ofp_server.${PORT}.pid RUNFILE=${OFP_DIR}/ofp_server.${PORT}.run And maybe insert a line for MODS in the script and change the startup line (at the end of the script) accordingly:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">MODS="mod1;mod2" ${SERVER} >>${LOGFILE} 2>&1 -server -config=${CONFIG} -port=${PORT} -pid=${PIDFILE} -nomap -mod=${MODS} Edit the server.cfg file to suit your needs (infos for that are found in the DS-Admin.rtf, found eg in the server folder of the resistance cd. This should be all you need to do, but sadly there are three problems which come up quite often: 1) the server does not start (Segmentation fault) 2) the server does not start and does not generate any output 3) the server starts up but quits at once (Server creation failed : 2302) The first one seems to stem from your distro using some newer lib versions. You need a set of older libs to start the server. Put those into your ofp folder:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">cd /home/ofp tar xf libs.tar and edit the ofpserver script:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/ofp/libs ${SERVER} >>${LOGFILE} 2>&1 -config=${CONFIG} -server -port=${PORT} -pid=${PIDFILE} -nomap -mod=$MODS if [ -f ${OFP_DIR}/${RUNFILE} ]; then echo >>${OFP_DIR}/${LOGFILE} "WATCHDOG ($$): [$(date)] Server died, waiting to restart..." sleep 5s else echo >>${OFP_DIR}/${LOGFILE} "WATCHDOG ($$): [$(date)] Server shutdown intentional, watchdog terminating" fi unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH This has been found out by shortylaforge. The second problem means that most like a needed file is missing. Most probably the flashpoint.cfg. OFP will not start without it. The third problem can be a little bit more tricky. It has something to do with dns problems and the server name. At first you should make sure your servers hostname only contains alphanumerical characters and does not start with a number. This has been found out by DOA. Also, your external and internal hostname should be the same, ie the output of hostname on the server should be the same as getting the hostname of your ip from an external computer. Found out by HitmannFF. Maybe you have to run the nscd service if it is still not working. You can see some discussion about this in this thread. EDIT: added the dta.pbo and flashpoint.cfg problem.

Funny no one mentioned it yet: with 2d sites you can't use 3d glasses. Well, you can, but you will really have trouble hitting anything which is not right in front of you. And anyone who has played ofp with 3d glasses knows just how stunning it looks. Having a modern game not complete 3d would really be a big disappointment...

I actually liked the old directplay ingame voicecom very much. Ingame voicecoms beat any 3rd party app by far. The way you could talk to your side, group, vehicle or vicinity only is just not possible with 3rd party tools, as those do not know who is eg in your vehicle at any given time. For tactical teamplay this really is a must have. It was too bad to see it go with socket networking, it just has to be back with ArmA.

Well, i did use them sometimes. First, most of these glasses only work with nvidia cards. I will not start the the "ati makes crappy drivers" debate here, but with ati you don't even have to try. Even with nvidia you have to use driver versions which support 3d. Go to nvidias site and look for customer 3d. They make only 1 or 2 driver versions per year for those glasses. Mind you, i never update my graphics card drivers anyway, as they always optimize for newest hardware only and my graphics card is "old" when i buy it. I am not the guy to get headaches/nausea when i have low refresh rates. But some people do. Others have motion sickness and can't play 3d games at all. For some motion sickness gets triggered by special circumstance like dominance of specific colors in a game. You might try if you can stand using 3df glasses for a longer period of time. There is one other limitation: those glasses need a 3d scenario to render 3d pictures. This isn't as much a problem with newer games, but ofp is not exactly new. The game looks astonishing in 3d, it jumps out of the monitor and is pure beauty. BUT i was never able to hit anything because both the crosshair and the sights are not real 3d graphics and get rendered anywhere else but not where they belong in 3d. Is it worth it? Depends on what you are looking for and there are some used eisa 3d glasses for like $5 on ebay and you can never go wrong with that price. Maybe you get used to the aiming better than i did. And the game looks really fantastic. It IS playable, i played mp games in 3d. But for me not being able to hit as well as i was "in 2d" made it not desirable to use my 3d glasses anymore. At least in ofp. This point is moot with other "real 3d" games. Regarding tft: i don't know how they should work with tft, but well, you never know, maybe they do now. Mine didn't. Maybe it's a driver issue and with newer drivers they would. @reedkiller: monitor refresh in Hz, not in Mhz. And even 120Hz is unusual, at least when you run a higher resolution than 800x600. I play on 1600x1200 and if you find a crt that runs that resolution at 120Hz than tell me how much it costs...

For all the guys with linux servers (like myself): you do NOT have to run the ofpsentry server on the same computer as the ofp server. Just ONE windows server will be enough for a whole league, as the essentially just merges the info collected by the clients and puts them in a webpage. And ofp (client) does not really work with linux, i tried with several versions of wine and winex/cedega, so there is no need for a linux version of the client. For server, see above. Yes, a linux server would be even better, but getting ONE windows server for several squads or leagues shouldn't be that hard. All of the above iirc and afaik. Been some time since i tested ofpsentry. But i am sure sicilian will correct anything i got wrong

This isn't too difficult. Just buy a new chasis with your new mainboard and cpu. You most probably will need new memory too. If you upgrade from a really old computer you might need a new power supply, but from what i have heard the ones dell uses aren't too bad. You can take the rest from your dell computer. Regarding the chasis any should work if you don't buy any "micro" or other specialty, ask for ATX form factor. Barebones might be worth thinking about. If you are new to this then write down EVERYTHING before you tear your old computer apart, so you can put it back together if you don't get the new one up. Better yet, get yourself someone with experiance. Small things can lead to disaster, like not connecting the cpu fan or not putting thermal transfer compound on the cpu...

Ususally this happens because the addon (or another one) has broken class dependencies in its config. Using the search function of this forum will give you more info on this...

If you jut want to try out linux then pop in a knoppix cd. There are tools to install them to harddisk too. I would recommend too, but if you hate the commandline then you will hate gentoo. Besides that only debian seems to be worth a recommendation. All the rpm based distros are crap, even with apt for rpm or similar tools. I haven't used one in a long time, but mandrake was good for beginning users when i last looked at it. Sadly, the problem you will have with those is that they have "versions" and upgrading from one version to another might or might now work, so it's usually less hassle to completely purge one version of the distribution and install the new one than trying to upgrade. Especially as a beginner. Debian and especially Gentoo don't have version in the way the other distributions have, i am on the same gentoo installation for a long time. But gentoo requires command line work, not too much and not too difficult if you are willing to learn, but impossible if you are not. And debian... well, stable is so old that it is unusable and backports can create nice dependency loops and do not work for all situations. This leaves you with testing/unstable. Which is not really unstable at all, but i think something is wrong in a distribution where nobody can use the stable tree anymore. Besides that i find debian awkward after gentoo. But afaik you can do most stuff with graphical frontends (synaptic), so i would give it a try. Knoppix is debian too, as is ubuntu. Maybe try one of those...

Well, if the mission works on the client that has EXACTLY THE SAME addons installed, that is he does not have any "unused" additional addons installed, and not on the server then that screams broken addon. But finding out which and what is broken might be difficult. You might check the addons section of the mission.sqs for entries which look strange, ie addons you are sure you did not use in the mission. But this will only give you a clue and not solve the problem, as most probably the name you find there will not help you much. Some of the broken addons will work when put into the addons folder, although that is not a real solution imho. You could also check for texture aspect ratio warnings in the log. If both fail you have some hard work to do, you could do trial and error, putting addon after addon onto the server until you find the one that breaks it or you will have to go through each addons config and try to find the error there. I have done both and they are both not too much fun...

I am not sure if i can add anything, i think it has all been said in this thread already. Also, i don't understand what you (gunterlund) mean with "setting stuff in clients init". The client config (in users/player/userinfo.cfg) is for singleplayer only, as has been said before. The setting on the server seems to be fixed to 900m, regardless of what you set in it's config. Additionally, only some percentage of the set viewdistance is really visible, might be the mentioned 66%. We tested that a long time ago and iirc terrain features were visible for the whole distance and units appeared when entering the smaller distance from the player. Maybe it was even so that inside that 66% the terrain was visible and units appeared when even nearer (hey, we did test that a long time ago). This can lead to unpleasant things like enemies shooting from out of (the players) view distance i guess, although it did not happen in our test. Maybe the used tanks were hindered by engagement ranges in their configs. Maybe i don't remember correctly ;) So afaik viewdistance has to be set on a per mission case. We used joltans script a lot, but it can be fooled, as it is totally dependent on the 3D_Performance value set in the flashpoint.cfg. Some players used that to "enforce" certain viewdistances. "Hardcoding" viewdistances into the mission (in each missions init.sqs), or at least into the slot selection screen, or letting each player set his own viewdistance might be the best solutions.

The links did work for me. Maybe try again?

I played with beta and final and neither needed the cd in the drive. Both have the same md5 checksum even iirc.

I still think it may have something to do with "virtual memory" or something. Try setting the pagefile larger. Even if it is not used. Windows has some weird habits regarding paging and memory.

I got those once when i made a test mission for terrain detail and viewdistance. When setting both to insane values i got those rainbow colors. Maybe i have a screenshot of that somewhere... Open your Users\Username\UserInfo.cfg (its a textfile so notepad should do for opening it) and change the following two values: viewDistance=900.000000; terrainGrid=25.000000;

The server does not use a serial and you can download it for free. I think i remember this having been answered from official sources too that you do not need another copy.

The server does not use a serial and you can download it for free. I think i remember this having been answered from official sources too that you do not need another copy.

You can use them, but some will not work correctly anymore. This is especially true for the more "advanced" missions, as many scripting commands/values have been changed/added/removed from 1.00 to 1.96. Also, when using the same addons in the same versions it should probably work, although addons nowadays (1.85 and later) require to have some more class infos in them (requiredaddons[]). If you replace some older addons with newer versions of the same addon they might or might not work, depending on how much the author changed the newer version and if he had compatibility with the older version in mind.

You can use them, but some will not work correctly anymore. This is especially true for the more "advanced" missions, as many scripting commands/values have been changed/added/removed from 1.00 to 1.96. Also, when using the same addons in the same versions it should probably work, although addons nowadays (1.85 and later) require to have some more class infos in them (requiredaddons[]). If you replace some older addons with newer versions of the same addon they might or might not work, depending on how much the author changed the newer version and if he had compatibility with the older version in mind.

Do you have an nvidia or an ati based card?

Can't you run task manager in background and check the memory consumption over time? And how is the swap space set up? Do you have enough of it? Our server seldom/never uses more than 400mb of memory for the ofp processes, even when running the same mission for a long time or using lots of addons.

Well, OFP Watch lets you decide the order of mod folders and you can even use -nomap with it (afaik the ofp launcher can't do that either). So use OFP Watch

According to the log there are errors in config.bin. So i guess you have either a corrupt installation or are using some broken mod.

Or go to http://www.blackviper.com/ and see which services can be disabled permanently or create a gaming profile.

And if you had used modfolder there would be no question at all: everything in the res\addons folder is original and everything in the modfolders can be deleted... See also this Res Addons list.

And try to run flashpointpreferences again and see if that helps.