[bf1942] BF2 server discussion

[kama]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Steven Hartland wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "kama" <kama at pvp.se>
>
> > While the 5.3 seems to be the new stablebranch, there are things to
> > consider. with 5.3 the ULE will not be default as first anounced. it will
> > still be the old scheduler (4BSD). This due to the fact that ULE is
> > considered broken and the time fixing it will break the timeline
> > increadably. In 5.3 there still will be a lot of slow code implemented,
> > but when 5.3 is released, they will start tweaking the system. 5.5 will
> > probably be the version where you will see what the new system is getting
> > a boost in performance and all the experemental feature bits have fallen
> > in to place...
> This agrees with what I have seen for the sheduler ULE should not be used
> for game servers are it definitely introduced bad lag as it stands.
>
> > I have noticed that 4.10 is much more responsive than 5.2.1 under load. I
> > have set up a system that handles a lot of trafic. the 4.10 could handle
> > aprox twice the load. I am currently thinking of switching my 5.x
> > gameservers to 4.10 due to how it is operating with load.
>
> This should not be the case for game servers so not really an issue.
> If your game servers are operating with high load they will be delivering
> very poor performance.

The servers are running fine... But not utilize the CPU is quite a waste..
I have aprox 25% free CPU time when the servers are packed. allthough I
have noticed that when the cpuusage gets higher wo hitting the roof 5.2.1
is running not as good as 4.10. I will still test 5.3 to see if I gain
anything from it... The gameservers are not getting near the load the
other system is getting.

> > One other thing to consider is that when BF2 is released, FreeBSD is
> > probably bumped to at least 5.4... I think the 5.3->5.4 cycle is going to
> > be quite short. There are a lot of things that are ready but not
> > implemented to the 5.3-branch.
> >
> > One thing they have fixed is the nasty kernel spinlock bug. I have only
> > encountered the bfvserver to work with the system in such way that this
> > bug occures. hlds, srcds and ucc are not making the kernel panic. The bug
> > happens during closing TCP-connections. And are the program closing the
> > connection "wrongly", this spinlock kernel panic occures. This might be
> > the BBO that are making the spinlock on the bfvserver. This server is now
> > 4.10 and people are reporting that it is more responsive than before.
>
> With all the bf servers we run under 5.2.1 we have not encountered this
> ever so not sure how much of an issue it is. BBO is very dody in terms of
> how it affects a bf server, so much so that we will not run it; so the issue may
> lay more with that than anything else.

As I said it could be BBO. I am interested in other systems that are able
todo what BBO are using... And dont tell me that official junk, I will not
install it until they have moved from .NET... phpUA is working on a
webbased system, but it will not arrive for a couple of months...
Otherwise I let some of our bfv clan members to fiddle with the syntax of
bfv and then write one ourself.

> > Andreas: One thing that are annoying is the problem that you need to set
> > the HZ quite low to have the bfX-server to opereate correctly. When I had
> > it bumped to 1000, all crazy things happened. client-connections got
> > closed the server started to get laggy.. when setting it down to 400 on a
> > SMP system the server started to operate much smoother.. this is kind of
> > backwards.. All the other gameservers get a bump when setting the HZ
> > higher.
>
> We run under a 200 HZ kernel and all seems to be good. Dramatically
> changing the kernel HZ can certain affect the load presented by a server
> we tested quite a few HZ values on many different games before settling
> on 200 HZ as a good value.

But can you tell me why I get better results in cs with HZ=1000 and
sys_ticrate 1000 than with HZ=200? There is not much difference in load.
Other games are not affected by these settings in the same way that within
bfv.

/Bjorn