Automatic restart?

[aditsu]

I was playing a game on server 8 for a while, right after the tournament match, then I went to sleep. When I got up, I found that the server was restarted. I knew that the game couldn't have ended so I tried to ask what happened. Batt checked and said that it was automatically restarted because there were no players for 3 hours 30 minutes.
If that's true, then I think it's a really bad setting, especially on this server. Since the game takes many hours to finish, it's unreasonable and unfair to restart it after such a short time, just because nobody happens to join it for a while. I even left the client connected when I slept, but it got disconnected at some point after that. I suggest the timeout duration (if any) should be at least 12 hours.

[naz]

It happened to me as well a while ago, and came to know  its a generic setting for all servers. I also agree that for server8 it should be increased.

[alex879ro]

I am sorry, but here I must disagree. If you take a look on the other view of the problem, you are asking to run a server for 12 hours without restarting or !voterestart. I consider that 3h30 is more then enough time considering a server that`s supposed to active.

Judging by this menthality, others could start saying "let`s start 2 servers like #8 because I wanted to play on it last night, but I couldn`t because someone was already at 50% of the goal and there was no point". This would conclude in wasting a lot of resources from machine1 for a game which would just add profit endless for networks built in 1-4 hours. Currently we have a lot of new ideas for new servers but no space to implement them. Yet we keep processing power locked inside a big server.
I`m not saying that we should change server 8. Not at all. It has reached it`s goal: Developing it`s own database of players.

What I`m trying to say is that with big servers, come also great risks. I played on s5 too. A lot of times. From the total number of games that I played, more then 40% were lost games that ended up with me going to sleep and not being here when the server ended. Or some other player voterestarting the server. I never counted how many points I lost or how many games I lost. It`s a part of the risk of playing such a server. I can understand what you are asking and day by day , month by month, we have tried to find alternate means to compensate the loss of points. But everything up to a point.

For this, the answer is simple: we simply do not have enough processing power to waste it by keeping a server of the size of s8 locked for 12 hours. If we would have an additional machine, things would have been different.

On another side of the problem, think about the morality of this. Why not extend server 3 or server 1 to a point where people just play the original goal (150 MIL) , reaching a number x of points and then they go to sleep. During their sleep, the server continues to run and counts points that are not for playing. When they wake up, they log in, they change a few trains and they have the same number of points X + 500 points which they got during their sleep. Which is the real number of points that should be counted: x ? or x+500?

I think I understand very well the problems that come with big servers, but it needs to be watched from all sides. I`ve got angry a lot of times for losing points, but when I thought about it in the end, I considered them normal things. I also like developing a network and maintaining it over 2-3-4 days maybe even a week, but unfortunately , in the present day, that can only be done on single player. The internet connection and the OpenTTD clients are simply not powerfull enough to hold.

I can tell you the server 8 is the no1 cause of errors ,processes going in infinite loops and lag on the machine. I don`t think it would be fair to accept all that for a server that would run without the restarting possibility for at least 12 hours.

If I`m wrong, please correct me. I would sure like to see more oppinions on this matter. Also, aditsu and Naz, please argument your oppinions.

[naz]

That's exactly why I didn't pursue this matter when I had my games lost due to server-auto-restart. I agree with Alex, we cant let resources eaten up, (which large servers do), by EMPTY servers.
In my last reply, my agreement was to have 4 hours restart increased to an agreed number.
Aditsu is asking for 12 hours, I would say 6 or 8 hours auto-restart.
It  would be nice if others players give their opinions on this.

[aditsu]

I'm not sure I really understand your arguments. The server would be running anyway if restarted. It would only eat a lot of resources if a company is making lots of money, which means the game will end pretty soon... except for the performance goal; if the cv goal is achieved first then I would agree with a timeout setting after that, even if players are logged in.
If it has only a couple of small companies, then it's pretty much the same as being restarted, except the time will keep advancing. That shouldn't be a problem as the goal is achievable even if you start 200 years late.

Technically there's not much difference between a server with afk players and a server with no players. In fact, it should use slightly fewer resources with no players. If the game takes 16 hours (or often longer), you can't expect people to be connected all the time.
If the purpose of this server is to attract players, then why upset them by restarting the server before the game ends?

Finally, a compromise timeout of 6 or 8 hours would still be an improvement, but whether you change it or not, I think players at least need to be made aware of it.
Also, I have a server where I could theoretically run openttd too, but I have no experience with that and know nothing about the resource requirements.

[aditsu]

And while we're talking about server 8, is it possible to increase the join timeout to maybe 1 minute? It seems that the ongoing bandwidth requirement is very low (1-4KB/s) but 7MB in 20 sec when joining can be a problem sometimes. And server 5 could benefit from a similar setting.

[alex879ro]

I`ll take a look in the week-end at the join timeout. About the restart_when_idle , we can talk after I see more oppinions

[Andreas]

It has been over 2 weeks since the post by aditsu, and there have been no opinions (or other posts for that matter) since. What oppinions do you want in order to make a decision?

If it is about server resources, don't change it, if it is not, why nog just let it run? It does not bother anyone and if you want to play, you can voterestart.

If players do not know how to use voterestart chances are very high they won't be able to finish it anyway, leaving no point in a restart.

[naz]

I think !voterestart has been disabled on s8 due to jealous players who deliberately abused !vote commands to restart server.

[alex879ro]

Beul, there is no !voterestart on the server. The !vote commands are disabled there. That`s why the big argument.  Restart_when_idle to 12 hours would mean that a player could keep s8 running only for himself even while sleeping for 10 hours. That`s what I do not find fair.

Nobody except an admin could restart it.