Zombie players?

["Einar S. Idsø"]

One of our admins reported today that he had tried to kick and ban an
idle player from the server. Even though a message was given from the
script that the script was about to kick the player, nothing happened.

We use our own ingame-admin system resembling that from the BlackBagOps
tools. The kick- and ban-commands used are the Punkbuster commands since
the included commands are broken. Here's an excerpt from our log,
showing that the player was identified and attempted booted from the
server during runs of both the kick- and ban-commands:

[2005-08-02 21:24:40] chat: pid=28 text='!kick [gamer idle' channel=Global
[2005-08-02 21:24:40] INGAMEADMIN: Kicking [Gamer.no]Carnage with PB
[2005-08-02 21:24:40] INGAMEADMIN: Match found for '[Gamer.no]Carnage'
[2005-08-02 21:24:40] chat: pid=-1 text='ADMIN: Kicking
'[Gamer.no]Carnage' for idle' channel=ServerMessage

[2005-08-02 21:25:01] chat: pid=46 text='HUD_TEXT_CHAT_SQUAD!ban nage
idle' channel=Squad
[2005-08-02 21:25:01] INGAMEADMIN: Match found for '[Gamer.no]Carnage'
[2005-08-02 21:25:01] INGAMEADMIN: Banning [Gamer.no]Carnage with PB for
46 minutes
[2005-08-02 21:25:01] chat: pid=-1 text='ADMIN: Banning
'[Gamer.no]Carnage' for idle' channel=ServerMessage

Comparing this with the punkbuster-log from the same time, we have this:

[08.02.2005 21:24:41] Kick/Banlist 'Add' failed for (slot #54)
[08.02.2005 21:24:41] Ignored Command to kick player in slot# 54 (Kicked
by admin with reason 'idle'" [Admin Decision]) ... Missing IP Address
[08.02.2005 21:25:01] Kick/Banlist 'Add' failed for (slot #54)
[08.02.2005 21:25:01] Ignored Command to kick player in slot# 54 (Banned
by admin with reason 'idle'" [Admin Decision]) ... Missing IP Address

Additionally, since the player was identified as PB-player #54, I went
back into the log to find the last time he logged on/off and found this:

[08.02.2005 14:56:52] New Connection (slot #54) 62.101.238.78:4046 [?]
[Gamer.no]Carnage
[08.02.2005 14:56:52] Player GUID Computed
93504b7a09b16c55af98b1fe0baea74d(-) (slot #54) 62.101.238.78:4046
[Gamer.no]Carnage
[08.02.2005 15:37:28] Lost Connection (slot #54) 62.101.238.78:4046
93504b7a09b16c55af98b1fe0baea74d(-) [Gamer.no]Carnage


So to sum up: A player entered our server early this afternoon and left
at 15:37. At 21:24 he was still visibly online on the server and
considered an idler! He was occupying space, and he couldn't be kicked
by PB since obviously no IP was available for this zombie.

Does anyone have a clue as to how this happened?

Thanks
Einar, Kybber @ Battlefield.no