Hello hosters.

As there was a master server crash yesterday (a usually rare event but it has happened 4 times in the past couple of months) I was investigating how that could have happened.

Anyway, I still don't really know how it can crash, though I have cleaned up a certain function to make it safer and we have added debugging in order to catch the crash if it does happen again.

But what this post is really about is that while updating the master I did discover and fix one issue that did affect any hosts which had more than 24 users connected, if the master was restarted for any reason (manually for an update or automatically after a crash). There was a statistics packet sent to the master and this exceeded the maximum allowed packet size, causing the master to close the connection to that host.

The result of this error was that if the master was ever restarted (or crashed) then any host with more than 24 users would be unable to connect to the master, until later on when enough users disconnected. This bug has been there ever since LFS was upgraded to allow 48 connections.

That is fixed now but I heard that this affected some league races recently and I want to say sorry for that because it was quite a silly bug, to have created a large packet several versions ago, without checking that the packet receive function could handle it. Anyway it is now fixed on the master which can now handle any incoming packets safely.

I think this thread should solve the problem:
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=57252

It seems like it was the spamming (from SOME people) had caused the servers with 24+ people to blow up. The weird thing the 2 times it had crashed on that day, the same guy was spamming.

We don't think the person who was spamming caused the master server crash. If he can do it again (once) and let us know, that would be helpful because we'd then get a good idea of how the crash is caused. Until then we have to assume it was a coincidence.

The hosts with number of users above 24 were only affected in one way - the master server did not allow then to reconnect after the master restarted,

So are we going for another bug-test-in-game-chat record?

Well, it would make sense to check whether Scawen's measures are effectively working to prevent future issues of that kind...

If I read about it again I'll probably be watching again... I had quite some fun watching yesterdays activities... And still that gmt time scheduling went totally wrong...

Quote from Scawen :

If he can do it again (once) and let us know

You are asking for aroX to spam again?

EDIT: Please take the question lightly. No offense intended.

Quote from only.one.RydeR :

You are asking for aroX to spam again?

EDIT: Please take the question lightly. No offense intended.

LoL! Maybe this time he should spam something that isn't offensive.

i know how to did it.. aroX telled me BUT I DONT SPAM on meeting room...
I can post PM helps but no for SPAMMERS!!!

Quote from Mikko1 :

i know how to did it.. aroX telled me BUT I DONT SPAM on meeting room...
I can post PM helps but no for SPAMMERS!!!

Well duh!

All you have to do i use one of the 'F' keys that usually have things like 'good race' binded to them and just hold the button down.

Hardly rocket science is it?

So how about we do it again? Meet up and have someone spam, see if it crashes again. Just make sure no leagues are running I see this might help Scawen.

Btw, really nice to see Scawen posting up and informing of changes even as little as these.

Quote from DevilDare :

we

So you spammed aswell eh?

Meh, just kidding.

Well, if I have to say, I did not try to make record for Master Server crashing...And I am sorry too if I have caused this in any form.

EDIT: and we should test this when no leagues or anything special is running, to be sure that it will not happen again.

Quote from UnknownMaster21 :

and we should test this when no leagues or anything special is running, to be sure that it will not happen again.

Yep, i understand why the GTAL guys got angry

Quote from aroX123 :

Yep, i understand why the GTAL guys got angry

Yeah. It is not need to make master ban for you because this was not supposed to make this happen. Of Course, I would be angry too but that's it. It Was like "NO CAN DO" and you felt sorry about this case already. So Let's forget this and let's think like "it was an unexpected error"

Quote from danthebangerboy :

Well duh!

All you have to do i use one of the 'F' keys that usually have things like 'good race' binded to them and just hold the button down.

Hardly rocket science is it?

Nope it's a easy with one program =s

Quote from UnknownMaster21 :

So Let's forget this and let's think like "it was an unexpected error"

I would call it an "expected error" looking at who did it.

I could help with chatroom spamming too hehe