On 11/21/2006 9:56:18 PM alexft wrote:
The server crashed earlier this evening with no plugins loaded at all. It ran for approximately four hours before crashing, and again to reiterate, no plugins whatsoever were loaded; no mani, no eventscripts.

I have since reloaded those plugins as they do not appear to be the cause of the crash. Please do not look at the server now and assume that those plugins have been loaded the entire time -- they most certainly have not.

I understand that this problem may not be the cause of faulty hardware, OS, etc. on your end, but my players are getting restless after three days of intermittent crashing. A notable amount of research and troubleshooting was done on my part, and I feel the physical server is the next logical element to replace.

Please move my SRCDS to another machine tomorrow morning if it is possible to schedule such a request. The ballpark of 8 AM to 2 PM is fine with me, and there is no need to transfer any of my data. A "vanilla" SRCDS is fine and I will upload my plugins and configurations.
On 11/21/2006 6:34:30 PM Pete wrote:
Sure, we can move you to another server. That's not going to be the problem though. It's going to be the plugins that you added the eventscripts that's causing the problem. I do not see custom maps in your mapcycle, so I assume you don't play custom maps and that's not causing the problem.
On 11/21/2006 6:20:31 PM alexft wrote:
I did a complete reinstall this afternoon, and the crashing has resumed as before. Mani mod has been disabled and there are absolutely no plugins running at this time. If it's going to crash, it should happen sometime within the next five hours as it has in the past. I will let you know what happens.

In the meantime, I have a question: if this crashing continues without any plugins would it be possible for you to move my SRCDS instance to different physical server (but retain the same IP)?
On 11/20/2006 7:36:19 PM Pete wrote:
You're welcome. I'm sure the reinstall will fix your problems. After the Steam update it could have corrupted some files or almost done anything to cause instability in your server in random files. Unfortunately, it's very common after Steam updates. Let us know if you have any problems after the reinstall.
On 11/20/2006 7:34:14 PM alexft wrote:
I definitely installed the RC13 version of mani after the first few crashes this last weekend. No one on the mani forums appears to be having a similar problem, so I figured I would ask you. I will try a reinstall tomorrow, if that does not work I'm not sure where else to go. Thanks for the quick response.
On 11/20/2006 7:29:55 PM Pete wrote:
There aren't any network issues or our server issues that's could be causing this. The last Steam update was released on 11/18, which is going to be the problem with your server. You may want to consider reinstalling your server to verify that all of the configurations are correct. Also, if you have not installed the new Mani Mod version that was released on 11/18, then that will definitely be causing these problems. Let us know if you need anything else.
On 11/20/2006 7:05:42 PM alexft wrote:
Since 11/18/2006 around 21:00 we've had several crashes. The latest statsmeminimum plugin had to be removed for the server to even start.

Even after that this server has been crashing for no apparent reason for the past few days. The only mods running are metamod and a MMS version of mani mod. We see no particular sequence of events that leads up to a crash, and I would appreciate if someone can verify the stability of the server, on which this SRCDS runs, in general.

This is a well-trafficked server, and it will sustain 20 players for a few hours, or only a few (late at night) and still crash. Again, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for the crash. Please help, thanks.

--
Alex

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On 11/29/2006 5:31:03 PM alexft wrote:
l am reporting the continued problem of crashes with my rented CS:S server. The server crashes a few times per day.

My last ticket did not accomplish much. I believe the reference ID is TC4108615017520. A recap of what was suggested by the technician and results follows.

He started off with the basic cop out to blame the latest steam update: "The last Steam update was released on 11/18, which is going to be the problem with your server. You may want to consider reinstalling your server to verify that all of the configurations are correct..." and "Also, if you have not installed the new Mani Mod version that was released on 11/18, then that will definitely be causing these problems."

This reinstall was an interesting angle, considering the 11/16 Steam update was client-side, and the version numbering did not change with servers. This is also interesting because the crashing began over 48 hours after the steam update (yet the server typically crashes at least two times per day since 11/18). I did do a complete reinstall anyway, and it had absolutely zero affect on the frequency of crashes.

The idea that Mani was crashing the server was ridiculous. No feedback on the Mani forums support the assertion that was "definitely causing these problems."

The next piece of advice: "It's going to be the plugins that you added the eventscripts that's causing the problem. I do not see custom maps in your mapcycle, so I assume you don't play custom maps and that's not causing the problem."

Unfortunately, in the previous notes when I said: "The only mods running are metamod and a MMS version of mani mod" I wasn not lying. The crashing occurred with or without EventScripts so I ES was reenabled.

Just to make sure that no plugins at all were causing this problem, I ran the server with absolutely no plugins whatsoever and update my ticket with: "Mani mod has been disabled and there are absolutely no plugins running at this time. If it's going to crash, it should happen sometime within the next five hours as it has in the past. I will let you know what happens."

Guess what? It still crashed with no plugins at all.

Now, the final piece of wisdom imparted by the technician: "Try not to change your settings again to harm the performance of your server, like you did before."

This one made me laugh. Performance was never a problem -- in fact, the server has performed really well when it's not crashing. Stability is the problem, and the fact that the technician could not point out what about my settings was so detrimental only reinforces my theory that he just gave up on trying to help.

So to humor the technician I used your "vanilla" server.cfg and only slightly modified it. Please look at my server.cfg and point out specific settings in the server.cfg that will cause this SRCDS to crash.

In the likely event that you do not find anything that would crash the server I would like further assistance. What can you do to resolve this problem other than blame it on plugins, server.cfg settings, or the latest steam install?