LlamaServer: status and bug reports

[Aezeal]

Ow one thing,

I've not been playing on your server for a while but I got some message about the Jotunland game (I guess I started that once, can't even remember though). Not that I mind (it was just one message) but players that are out shouldn't get messages. (not a thing for now I guess since it seems you have more problems on you hand, but maybe when things cool down this little bug could be attacked and killed.)

[lch]

I got an email a while ago about a game that finished where I've only subbed one turn in, I think, too.

[BDOC]

Is there a thread for new OPEN games on llama?

I want to join one.

Bdoc

[lch]

"Games waiting for pretenders" on the llamaserver.net index page, maybe.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Aaaagh! This is getting ridiculous! It actually knows when I go out!

I sat in the house for about 5 hours this morning, and everything was fine. I went out for about an hour and a half, and about four games crashed.

Now I am stumped. First I thought it was lack of disk space, then I thought it was running as the wrong user. But it seems it's neither. The error is:

Något gick fel!
LoadBattleMap: can't open file
Något gick fel!
LoadBattleMap: can't open file

I'm pretty sure the battle maps are all fine, but more strangely it always works fine when I rehost the games myself. Any ideas are welcome.

Anyway, I'm going out to the fireworks, so I am going to have to turn hosting off again. Also, apologies to those whose games have crashed/disappeared. Hopefully I can sort this out finally tomorrow.

I think the errors can come from one of two reasons, insufficient permissions or different environment settings. I don't know on which OS the server is running but in Unix terms I'd say you either rule out possible permissions problem or .bashrc/.profile etc that cause some shell variable to have an undesired value.
Key questions:
1. What map file can't be loaded?
2. What is path to map file?
3. Who/What is running the process of hosting?
4. What does dom -ddd have to say about all this?- i.e. in what path does it search for the file?- Why can't it open it?
5. Can you run diagnostic commands the same you way you run the hosting?- For example, observe whether commands such as

 $ cat  [path_to_map_file]

succeed.

Or give full permissions to files and check if it make a difference.

$chmod 777 [path_to_map_file]

HTH,
WL

Oh and not to forget, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR EFFORT!

[WraithLord]

I'm sorry to be the bringer of even more bad news

This time its qwerty. I've received two concerning emails from the server.
The first, "Qwerty: Turn 65 received for C'tis" I have received although I have most definitely not sent any turn file.
The second, "Warning: The LlamaServer can only process one 2h file per e-mail" is inexplicable to me.

[llamabeast]

Hmmm, I don't understand that at all. For the moment I'll ignore it, in the hope that it was a one-off glitch.

Thanks for your post above, WraithLord, that was handy to give my thoughts some structure. I think I may possibly have fixed it by changing the working directory of the cron job. However, that makes no sense at all, so if it fails again I will have to think further, and perhaps I'll post the environment variables and stuff here to see if anyone has any ideas. The last three hostings have been successful though, which is reassuring, but then again it was an intermittent fault so it's hard to be sure it means anything.

[Illuminated One]

Well I guess if hosting manually works then the error is either in the script or in its setup.

Does the llamaserver script set or need any path variables that might affect dominions?

Have you tried to start the part of the script that does the turns manually (as opposed to hosting manually or letting the whole script autostart every x minutes)?

Have you tried to make another small script to host a game?

Did you change anything during the setup of the new llamaserver?

Have you installed a newer version of perl that maybe has some changes that ****s up llamaserver?


Well, I hope you sort this out and really thank you for that cool server and all your efforts.

[llamabeast]

Oh, and to lch, you were right about cron, and I was running it as me all along. You're quite right, of course, that running as root would be madness.

[llamabeast]

IlluminatedOne - the LlamaServer consists of one master script, goLlamaServer, which runs every five minutes, and itself calls a load of other scripts, one of which is responsible for hosting games. But the very curious thing is that when I've been "hosting manually", I've in fact just been running goLlamaServer, i.e. doing exactly the same thing as the cron job does.

So, my current thinking is that the only possible difference is in the environment variables. Is that true, or am I missing something? The thing is that none of the environment variables look like they should matter.

As for changing anything in setting up the new LlamaServer - not explicitly, but there are always things you might miss. The basic server stuff is all in two folders (a llamaServer folder with the scripts and a dominions3 folder with all the data), but then of course I guess there's the possibility of other aspects of the system being different.

This is all a bit annoying in that it all falls into that category of computer errors where you can't help but respond "This CAN'T not work. There can be no logical explanation for this. I must be cursed.". Which of course always turns out not to be true in the end, but can feel very convincing at the time!