MapTool 1.3 Development Build 61

[Darinth]

But wasn't that boot code put in for good reason? I'd hate to see it go entirely.

well, sort of. it had good intentions, but turned out to not solve the problem. I had put in code to "reap" dead links faster, but that seems to be causing deadlocks. I don't have the time to investigate, and don't want to delay 1.3, so since it doesn't affect anything not already broken, I'll just pull it.

Hopefully we'll see it go back in at some point for 1.4?

[Natha]

We played with b61 tonight and had a strange thing : at one point (90 minutes of play), one player has been disconnected, but the others weren't. He could'nt reconnect. But shortly after, the other players could not move or see what I (the server) was typing in the chat.
The disconnected player was still in the connexion list, so I tried booting him but it had no effect.
I closed MT, restarted MT and a server, but only half the players could connect.
I ended rebooting my PC (Windows XP) and my modem/router and everything went back to normal.

[nortonweb]

Hi

Any idea when we might have a b62. Seem a bit of a critical error with b60 and b61

Not that I have a game on Sunday and I just got everyone to upgrade and would dread getting them to step it back.. oh no .. its not a selfish question .. I'm err asking for the community

Pete

[Natha]

I don't think it would be wise to go back to pre 61 versions.
b61 seems to have problems with lost connections ... but no more than the previous ones.
And the rest is good or better than previous versions (image handling for example).

[Rumble]

I don't think it would be wise to go back to pre 61 versions.
b61 seems to have problems with lost connections ... but no more than the previous ones.
And the rest is good or better than previous versions (image handling for example).

I think Trevor's just saying he's going to reverse the specific changes to the connection-booting code, since the previous connection issues were problematic but at least did not cause connection loss for everyone when one player dropped.

So it will be the b61 code base minus those particular changes.

[Amaril]

...since the previous connection issues were problematic...

I'm out of the loop. What were the previous connection issues?

[Hawke]

I'm out of the loop. What were the previous connection issues?

I think sometimes people would timeout and the server wouldn't automatically boot them, nor would the boot command work. It never happened to me personally, and I think either it would eventually boot them or allow either duplicates or they just changed their name.

I don't think it was a "new" connection issue - something that could've happened for a long time - it was just brought up and I think trevor tried to fix it.

[Amaril]

I'm out of the loop. What were the previous connection issues?

I think sometimes people would timeout and the server wouldn't automatically boot them, nor would the boot command work. It never happened to me personally, and I think either it would eventually boot them or allow either duplicates or they just changed their name.

I don't think it was a "new" connection issue - something that could've happened for a long time - it was just brought up and I think trevor tried to fix it.

I think I experienced that and I thought it was just lag or something. Good to know about it.

[Rumble]

I'm out of the loop. What were the previous connection issues?

I think sometimes people would timeout and the server wouldn't automatically boot them, nor would the boot command work. It never happened to me personally, and I think either it would eventually boot them or allow either duplicates or they just changed their name.

I don't think it was a "new" connection issue - something that could've happened for a long time - it was just brought up and I think trevor tried to fix it.

I think I experienced that and I thought it was just lag or something. Good to know about it.

Yeah, that was what I was referring to - the boot code was there to help clear out old connections faster, but Trevor suspects it may have caused the new problem where one player dropping interferes with other connections.

[Paradox]

We played with b61 tonight and had a strange thing : at one point (90 minutes of play), one player has been disconnected, but the others weren't. He could'nt reconnect. But shortly after, the other players could not move or see what I (the server) was typing in the chat.
The disconnected player was still in the connexion list, so I tried booting him but it had no effect.
I closed MT, restarted MT and a server, but only half the players could connect.
I ended rebooting my PC (Windows XP) and my modem/router and everything went back to normal.

CONFIRMED!

The exact same thing happened to me on November 2, 2009. I was using b60 at the time. I didn't realize that using the Boot Command was actually reponsible for this until the 2nd or 3rd time it happened. We're on a vent server, so when you're talking verbally it doesn't register immediately that you should be seeing something in the chat window and you're not. Eventually I started watching very closely when it happened again and isolated it to exactly what Natha describes above.

I never had a chance to report it, because I went on vacation for a week afterwards and had no internet connection. I *think* b61 came out while I was gone and I'm just catching back up.

To reply to some of the posts that came afterwards, yes, this was a change that happened after b59 and started in b60. It was a feature request/bug error that I submitted.

The original problem was that a player gets disconnected and MT doesn't register it- so it prevents them from logging back in until MT finally notices that they're gone. The original Boot Command did nothing. Trevor addressed it by making the Boot Command a server function, and having it "reap" disconnections more frequently.

Unfortunately, the "cure" actually is worse than the original problem, as MT frags up for everybody. It's probably okay so long as you do not use the Boot Command, and let disconnected players be identified by MT in their own good time.

It still sucks hard for the disconnected player however.

I think something still needs to be done, but this didn't work as intended.

[LaserWolf]

Unfortunately, the "cure" actually is worse than the original problem, as MT frags up for everybody. It's probably okay so long as you do not use the Boot Command, and let disconnected players be identified by MT in their own good time.

I've had server lockup without attempting a Boot. I can't say whether or not it's an indefinite lockup, but it's at least several minutes. The cause actually seems to be the unanticipated disconnection of a player. Fortunately it sounds like Trevor's on the case.

[Mrugnak]

We've had people disconnect every week for the past bazillion months. We've been kicking the D/C'd characters liberally as well. We're still on b60. No issues with the server locking up.

This sounds more like wahtever killed the first player eventually took down the entire server, not something to do with booting.

[Azhrei]

I've had server lockup without attempting a Boot. I can't say whether or not it's an indefinite lockup, but it's at least several minutes. The cause actually seems to be the unanticipated disconnection of a player. Fortunately it sounds like Trevor's on the case.

I've noticed an extreme CPU load when it happens. But when I try to use strace on it (on a Linux box) or ktrace (on OSX) I don't get anything useful. I will try using ltrace on the Linux machine instead next time I see it, but I usually run the server on my MacBook.

[lmarkus001]

I have been noticing some serious performance hits when running macros that are using a library token. Sometimes there are no issues. But other times, when a player runs a macro, the host machine can nearly lock up it is so busy. This behavior is new to b60/61. If I can get a reliable test case I will post a bug, but to date it has been elusive.

[nortonweb]

We played for about 4 hrs last night. No issues.
The user who had the locking issues before was fine. I got him to delete all traces of MT from his box and reinstall with a stack of 8. He said it was running smoother than he had ever seen it.