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FreeForAll goes offline

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FreeForAll goes offline

Posted by Nasenbaer on 2012-11-29 12:14:03
Development

Hello Community,

did you use the dedicated server "FreeForAll" in the last months? Or did you at least notice it?

No? Well okay, in that case never mind and ignore this post, if you like.

Anyways, FreeForAll was my dedicated server running on a small local server over here in my (old) home. It was supposed to ease playing multiplayer games over the internet for those players that don't want or don't know how to set up their network connection for opening their own servers.

And indeed the server was used quite regulary. In average about two games were played each day and during these games the server helped to track down some nasty bugs in Widelands and it's network code. Most of those bugs were unknown before and as noone of the participating players reported them, they would still be unknown without the dedicated server... face-smile.png

Anyways as I move some hundred kilometers to a new flat in a new town with a new job, the dedicated server will be offline for a yet unknown time period. If you used FreeForAll as solution to play online, I hope you find a good way to continue playing online (maybe the InternetGaming Wiki page can help you). If not, stay tuned, I hope to get the server online again as soon as possible.

For all the other brave ones out there: If you want to do some gamers a favor: Maybe you are willing to open your dedicated server for them? If yes, take a look at the DedicatedServer page in the wiki. And if you've got problems, I would be glad to even provide some personal e-Mail Support face-smile.png.

Btw.: Widelands development is a bit slow at the moment, but I hope to increase it's speed in the near future again. face-smile.png

Stay tuned...

11 comments Tags: Multiplayer , server

Comments on this Post:

SirVer said:

Thanks for providing this service to the community for so long, Peter. And about the development: I am actually working quite a lot on Widelands currently, will be a while before I have something to show though :-)

Nasenbaer said:

Nothing to thank for - sounds kind of nerdy, but checking the log output of the dedicated server was kind of fun for me ;-) :-D. And of course nice to hear that you are currentky active working on Widelands. I am looking forward to hear, read or see more of it in the future. :-)

Nasenbaer said:

I got my raspberry pi yesterday. It runs my local music playing daemon and I just tested to run a dedicated Widelands server separately. Seems to work fine so far, so maybe FreeForAll will be back online in the next few days. :)

Nasenbaer said:

and there it is... pure Ipv6. I am unable to open a Widelands server and so to open a dedicated server... :-/

abtools said:

I think I can help here.

I've just started a new Widelands server (newest build) running on a server with only very little load, but good connectivity and performance.

So if somebody wants to start a game, you can use the "AB-Tools.com Free Widelands Server".

If there should be problems or questions, please write to: a-breitschopp@ab-tools.com

abtools said:

While giving the Widelands server a try yesterday, I determined that it allocates already 2.4 GB of RAM on a medium map (Atoll) with 4 players.

Even worse after the game ended and all players closed the game, the RAM usage of the Widelands server did not drop.

What's the reason for that?

Nasenbaer said:

First of all, thank you for providing your server abtools :)!

Your RAM problem is very strange! Atoll was the default map I selected for my dedicated server as well and my local machine had only 2GB of RAM in total. There are known issues with memory leaks, which lead to a high RAM usage after a longer play time. Those leaks lead to a crash of my server after some days of uptime, however:

  • I used a build17 version with some tweaks from current development version, but most of the memory leak fixes that are included in current development version were missing, so the problems concerning those memory leaks should at least be a bit smaller at your server.
  • I playtested a game locally with current development version a few minutes ago (Atoll, 1 human, 3 computer players) and played for about 10 minutes and the RAM load of the dedicated server was around 18MB at the end, dropping back to 11MB after I stopped the game. Following those numbers 2,4GB sound like a damn long game.

Nasenbaer said:

I will take a short look at the dedicated server today, maybe I find another leak to fix. ... cross your fingers ;)

abtools said:

Hello Peter,

first thanks for your comment and Merry Christmas!

Maybe you have another idea on that: also in my test the server consumes only very less memory in the first minutes of the game, but it went higher and higher all the time. The 2.4 GB were reached I think about after playing 2-3 hours. And I did not restart the Widelands server yet for testing and there is definitely nobody connected to it right now, but that's still the current RAM usage: VIRT: 2.532.708 bytes RES: 2.402.132 bytes

If that's interesting for you: I compiled it in release mode on a DEBIAN squeeze 64 Bit system.

Beside that problem I would have a small other suggestion: could you make the server append the logs at the end of the files instead of creating new ones each server start? This would be better if you want to restart the server from time to time.

Best regards Andreas

abtools said:

Hello Peter,

one more info: since yesterday afternoon the RAM usage increased again by around 25 KB. That's not much, but it indicates that there is also a memory leak in the idle mode of the dedicated server as there was nobody online in the last 24 hours.

Best regards Andreas

Nasenbaer said:

Hi abtools,

thanks for your further information and (although it's almost over) Merry Christmas to you as well :)!

Unfortunally the typical "Christmas stress" has kept me from fixing more than one (yes I fixed already one small bug, but haven't committed it to bzr yet ;)) small bug. Hope remains... ;)

Best regards, Peter



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