Server one down.

[Maratek]

We understand there have been problems this evening and trust me when I tell you all the admins have worked there magic to no avail, server one was down for an extended period that was completely unplanned and I am sorry for that, as of this time 21:18 server one is back again up and running and quickly filling up.

Again guys we are really sorry this happened gremlins get in fiddle with things and takes of ages to clear the fur balls out.

Any problems feel free to contact me here or on teamspeak.

SI Maratek

 

[Grumpy]

server 1 is......................Down with the sickness!!!

 

[TinyBigJacko]

Always happens on the one night when both Wilco and I are away; Wilco on holiday in Greece, and me at my 9th wedding anniversary dinner!

Luckily Gen. Cardoso was able to raise Wilco via Skype, and he restarted the server from his iPhone in Greece. Now that's dedication!

I've just come back from my dinner and found the midnight restart had also stalled, so I've taken care of that one (I hope). Now that's drunken stupidity; I was on a promise! LOL

Seriously though - apologies for the outages. There is a strange race-condition that sometimes occurs when the ARMA3 server.exes are shutdown by the automated process in BEC, which leaves the app(s) hanging. The overwatch batch-files then still see the game as 'up', even when it is effectively dying in a dark corner of windows without ever fully quitting. I'm working on other more robust restart strategies, but these are the joys of running a dedicated server without the benefit of a hosting-company control panel.

I have to say though, our own response turnaround times so far have been better than the ones at most of the hosting companies we've used (mentioning no names). So that can't be bad, eh?

 

[CopyrightPhilly]

you want me to make a restart application for you guys using c++ rather then bash - it will be able to wait until the process has gone before starting it again. bec should be able to execute it as well

 

[TinyBigJacko]

Thanks Phil, but I *think* I have cracked it myself now.

I believe the failure of the restart was caused by a peculiar set of coinciding factors:

1 - using BEC's #shutdown command to kill the ARMA3 server at the allotted time, PLUS

2 - someone being logged in to the game-session with RPM RCON at the point that #1 triggers.

This puts the ARMASERVER.EXE into a deadlock state, whereupon it doesn't finish quitting properly.

The servermonitor.bat file which watches the tasklist to see if the ARMASERVER is still alive, still sees it as alive, and thus doesn't restart it.

I am now telling BEC to use an external command: a launch of the restartserver.bat. This kills the ARMASERVER.EXE process a bit more forcefully if it hasn't properly 'quit' the first time. It also kills and restarts the servermonitor.bat file once the server (and BEC) is back up.

Hopefully this will resolve the issues we've been having with restarts.

There is one other possible wrinkle that I may have fixed, but this is only to do with Server 2 - we were using ports 28016 and 8866 for Steam, which may be a bit high. I have changed them to 27026 and 8776 (defaults are 27016 and 8766, and are used on Server 1). And I've made new firewall rules for all of them - a couple of ports weren't explicitly defined before. This may work... we shall see!

 

[Reverend]

I have not played in several weeks due to commitments with other games. So I'm sickened that the server was down whilst I was not trying to access it. 

If I turn up to play other games in future whilst the server is down I will not be happy that i can't play when I was not going to play anyway.  

That said, I may hop on soon and if it could be functional, then that would be marvellous.