The patch broke something. The server runs fine without SM or MM, so I'm slowly working my way up, trying to find the culprit. I've removed everything and I'm adding things back in one by one.
Editing this with progress:
- MetaMod : WORKS
- SourceMod (no plugins) : WORKS
- Batch of Admin plugins : WORKS
- Another batch of plugins : WORKS (getting nervous. What if this error isn't predictable?)
- Batch of plugins #3 : WORKS
- Plugins that have to do with pre-game melee : YAY! Found the problem!
Melee.smx (the plugin for melee only mode during the "Waiting for Players" period) crashes the server. Removed it, server runs fine.
Sorry to MiracleManS, for restarting the server on him after he joined.
EDIT:
Server just crashed. Guess I didn't fix it completely.
The crash I fixed happened at the beginning of a round, when the melee.smx plugin was activated, but there is still a seemingly unpredictable server crash.
I just checked the server and it was on ctf_2fort, hinting that it had crashed and auto-restarted sometime last night. Then I left and came back a half hour or so later to try updating SourceMod to the latest stable snapshot and the server is down and not responding to attempts to restart or stop it.
I'm a big fan of getting a fresh start by reinstalling everything. So that's my suggestion.
Server is down for the time being. Earlier today, it went down and stopped responding to everything (stop, restart, even reinstall). Prime submitted a support ticket asking for a manual restart and reinstall and we're waiting on that. The ticket was submitted over an hour and a half ago and we still haven't gotten a response.
Once the server comes back up, it'll be fresh and I can reinstall SourceMod with the latest stable snapshot.
Server is down for the time being. Earlier today, it went down and stopped responding to everything (stop, restart, even reinstall). Prime submitted a support ticket asking for a manual restart and reinstall and we're waiting on that. The ticket was submitted over an hour and a half ago and we still haven't gotten a response.
Once the server comes back up, it'll be fresh and I can reinstall SourceMod with the latest stable snapshot.
Expect a long wait. This is a widespread problem which is affecting literally tens of thousands of servers, with or without SourceMod. This patch is horrifyingly unstable, and the update delivery was a complete disaster on top of it. Every host is absolutely swamped with tickets requesting manual intervention. A lot of it appears to just be that the server crashes, and that's that. (And a LOT of client crashing after the latest and 'greatest' update, too. Folks on Ponyville were crashing left and right despite never having had problems before.)
@Root, you have some great insight sometimes, and seem to have an incredible depth of knowledge about a variety of tech and other hobbies, but this shit is what keeps you down. Acting like (to my knowledge) one (big) buggy patch is a tornado tearing down the servers of a game that has sold for $20 and is now free, all the while merrily getting updates for years while other companies re-release the same game 4-5 times in a row and charge $60 per (I'm looking at you, every sports game, BFx and MWx ... not denying there are cool graphics changes etc, but what core functionality has changed the game as much as TF2 has over the years). Most of the time, I cringe a little when I see a comment of yours starting because of the 90% rage train that is rolling into the station.
Now, it does suck and it is going to take a while for hosting companies to sort things out and Valve to fix w/e went wrong or hosting companies to get their configs right or w/e. I just refuse to jump on the hate train because of it.
Tushon, this is the kind of apologist crap that aggravates me to no end. "How dare you complain, it's FREE!" Would you like to see my 'Proof of Purchase'? Or the history of poorly executed updates that have brought days upon days of havoc like this, time and time again? This shit doesn't keep me down - it justifiably pisses me off, almost as much as the people who make excuses for it.
If it was ONE update that this happened with, fair enough, shit happens. But it's not. Valve has a well established history of blundering these updates. Then they amplify the stupidity of this one by retroactively changing the rules they just changed on the Mann Company store - twice, no less - after realizing they let through the item duping bug. These are not new issues - they beta tested this. There is no excuse for introducing client instability like this - they haven't made major changes to the engine in ages. And there is absolutely no excuse for the stunt they pulled with the Mann Company store.
For fuck's sake, this is Valve. They make millions and millions of dollars every month off everyone else's crap on Steam. TF2 has been nothing but pure profit for a very, very long time. They can afford to exert the effort to do things right. I'm not at all pissed at the hosting companies - I feel sorry for them, because Valve dumped this in their laps, and now they're having to burn their cash on dealing with Gaben's epic troll. And deal with customers cancelling accounts on top of it. Through no fault of their own.
You know what the problem is? The problem is that people just keep shrugging and going "oh well" and eating the shit they're fed from developers with a grin. Unplayably buggy release? "Sokay, they'll patch it!" "Sokay, it's free!" "It's just a game!" To say nothing of people falsely blaming players and hosts for issues that are in fact, entirely Valve's fault, like the ongoing "No Steam Login" disconnects. If people stopped rewarding game companies for releasing garbage by buying it and making excuses for them, I guarantee you that you'd see a dramatic increase in the code quality in nothing flat.
My name is Dan and I have 193 actual played hours of TF2 under my belt from Valve/Steam .. and in fact I played it before Steam started logging hours. Of course some of you have way more hours ... but anyhoot ...
I've never had ONE single problem with Valve's incredibly awesome stream of free updates. I didn't expect to get them when I bought the game way back, so to me they are free.
But hey, everyone has a different experience. Now Tushon and Root you both shake hands and tongue kiss, or if not team up and yell at me but whatever you do no fighting.
And so it goes. I can hear the keyboard a tap-tap-tapping away. I'm not apologizing for Valve and can hardly give two-fucks what they do or don't do. Have a good night, everyone!
0
KwitkoSheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuffIcrontian
edited October 2011
Holy flurking schnitt, people, it's just a game. Cool the fuck out.
I apologize for the difficulty you were having. I suspect the cause of your issues was a hard disk failure on the old machine that hosted your server. The server that previously hosted you did suffer a hard disk failure today. We had to move you and everyone else hosted on that machine to another in the same location.
We were able to migrate both, your server IP and the files that were added. I suggest you give the server another test run before you issue another re-installation. The migration may have corrected the issue for you.
I wiped the server anyway, since I had everything ready to update SourceMod and it can get kinda finicky about being updated over an existing version.
Everything is back up and more or less to the way it was.
There's a couple changes, hopefully temporarily. The pre-game melee mode is currently disabled. The melee mode plugin was causing server crashes, so I'll look for a workaround or fix.
The bigger problem is the pre-game friendly fire. I got a few requests to update the server so it works with the "quickplay" feature (where the browser determines the best server for you and auto-joins it). Having this enabled will help get the server started and keep the server full longer. However, there are a few flags that automatically remove the server from the pool of quickplay servers, such as having a respawn value of anything other than 10.0 or no crits. Friendly fire is one of them. I think that the server is removed from the quickplay pool until the next map change, in which case we were never really in the quickplay pool. I'm emailing Valve to get clarification on whether you're instantly back in the pool after it is disabled or if it waits for a map change.
I wiped the server anyway, since I had everything ready to update SourceMod and it can get kinda finicky about being updated over an existing version...
Yet AGAIN, Scratch...I personally thank you for your effort and expertise. Next EPIC 2012, I got your beers/cold beverages for a night. I haven't played much TF2 due to the frustrating gaming crack that is LoL, but I'm getting that urge to start making more TF2 booty calls like last night.
The server just filled up on its own. It doesn't do that, ever. This pretty much confirms my suspicion that having pre-game and humiliation round friendly fire is keeping our server off the quickplay pool.
So as far as I see it, we have three options:
1) Keep friendly fire disabled, have more players.
2) Enable the old friendly fire conditions, have less players.
3) Attempt to use a plugin to overwrite sv_tags (Valve probably wouldn't approve).
I'm more partial to having the server full than keeping the friendly fire enabled. FF is not a game changer, just a silly diversion. The community benefit of having more full server more often outweighs the 30 second goofiness.
0
colapart legend, part devil... all manBalls deepIcrontian
Comments
Editing this with progress:
- MetaMod : WORKS
- SourceMod (no plugins) : WORKS
- Batch of Admin plugins : WORKS
- Another batch of plugins : WORKS (getting nervous. What if this error isn't predictable?)
- Batch of plugins #3 : WORKS
- Plugins that have to do with pre-game melee : YAY! Found the problem!
Melee.smx (the plugin for melee only mode during the "Waiting for Players" period) crashes the server. Removed it, server runs fine.
Sorry to MiracleManS, for restarting the server on him after he joined.
EDIT:
Server just crashed. Guess I didn't fix it completely.
Working server is better than a broken one!
Speaking of working and broken, how bout we work the server this weekend while I break open a bottle of bourbon?!
WHO'S WITH ME, ICRONTIANS!?
I just checked the server and it was on ctf_2fort, hinting that it had crashed and auto-restarted sometime last night. Then I left and came back a half hour or so later to try updating SourceMod to the latest stable snapshot and the server is down and not responding to attempts to restart or stop it.
I'm a big fan of getting a fresh start by reinstalling everything. So that's my suggestion.
Once the server comes back up, it'll be fresh and I can reinstall SourceMod with the latest stable snapshot.
Expect a long wait. This is a widespread problem which is affecting literally tens of thousands of servers, with or without SourceMod. This patch is horrifyingly unstable, and the update delivery was a complete disaster on top of it. Every host is absolutely swamped with tickets requesting manual intervention. A lot of it appears to just be that the server crashes, and that's that. (And a LOT of client crashing after the latest and 'greatest' update, too. Folks on Ponyville were crashing left and right despite never having had problems before.)
Thanks, Valve. Thanks a lot.
Now, it does suck and it is going to take a while for hosting companies to sort things out and Valve to fix w/e went wrong or hosting companies to get their configs right or w/e. I just refuse to jump on the hate train because of it.
If it was ONE update that this happened with, fair enough, shit happens. But it's not. Valve has a well established history of blundering these updates. Then they amplify the stupidity of this one by retroactively changing the rules they just changed on the Mann Company store - twice, no less - after realizing they let through the item duping bug. These are not new issues - they beta tested this. There is no excuse for introducing client instability like this - they haven't made major changes to the engine in ages. And there is absolutely no excuse for the stunt they pulled with the Mann Company store.
For fuck's sake, this is Valve. They make millions and millions of dollars every month off everyone else's crap on Steam. TF2 has been nothing but pure profit for a very, very long time. They can afford to exert the effort to do things right. I'm not at all pissed at the hosting companies - I feel sorry for them, because Valve dumped this in their laps, and now they're having to burn their cash on dealing with Gaben's epic troll. And deal with customers cancelling accounts on top of it. Through no fault of their own.
You know what the problem is? The problem is that people just keep shrugging and going "oh well" and eating the shit they're fed from developers with a grin. Unplayably buggy release? "Sokay, they'll patch it!" "Sokay, it's free!" "It's just a game!" To say nothing of people falsely blaming players and hosts for issues that are in fact, entirely Valve's fault, like the ongoing "No Steam Login" disconnects. If people stopped rewarding game companies for releasing garbage by buying it and making excuses for them, I guarantee you that you'd see a dramatic increase in the code quality in nothing flat.
I've never had ONE single problem with Valve's incredibly awesome stream of free updates. I didn't expect to get them when I bought the game way back, so to me they are free.
But hey, everyone has a different experience. Now Tushon and Root you both shake hands and tongue kiss, or if not team up and yell at me but whatever you do no fighting.
And so it goes. I can hear the keyboard a tap-tap-tapping away. I'm not apologizing for Valve and can hardly give two-fucks what they do or don't do. Have a good night, everyone!
Everything is back up and more or less to the way it was.
There's a couple changes, hopefully temporarily. The pre-game melee mode is currently disabled. The melee mode plugin was causing server crashes, so I'll look for a workaround or fix.
The bigger problem is the pre-game friendly fire. I got a few requests to update the server so it works with the "quickplay" feature (where the browser determines the best server for you and auto-joins it). Having this enabled will help get the server started and keep the server full longer. However, there are a few flags that automatically remove the server from the pool of quickplay servers, such as having a respawn value of anything other than 10.0 or no crits. Friendly fire is one of them. I think that the server is removed from the quickplay pool until the next map change, in which case we were never really in the quickplay pool. I'm emailing Valve to get clarification on whether you're instantly back in the pool after it is disabled or if it waits for a map change.
Yet AGAIN, Scratch...I personally thank you for your effort and expertise. Next EPIC 2012, I got your beers/cold beverages for a night. I haven't played much TF2 due to the frustrating gaming crack that is LoL, but I'm getting that urge to start making more TF2 booty calls like last night.
Seriously! Tush and Root, HUG each other NOW, apologize, and cleanse the hate from your soul....
On second thought, BLAME WINFREY! Start the movement now...OCCUPY WINFREY STREET! DOWN WITH HIS CORRUPTION AND GREED FOR VALVE!
So as far as I see it, we have three options:
1) Keep friendly fire disabled, have more players.
2) Enable the old friendly fire conditions, have less players.
3) Attempt to use a plugin to overwrite sv_tags (Valve probably wouldn't approve).
Score one for knowing all the facts.