[cod] server not showing in browsing list

[Luke]

Im sorry, but I have ran over 20 different games on Linux
servers and nearly twice as many game mods. None of them
have the kind of in-game browser errors that I and tons of
others are seeing. And most of them are built on the Quake
3 Engine.

First, I follow your logic, Joe. But, that cant be how the
master server list works. If my server was only pinged by
the master server every two hours, then why is it that if
I terminate the server now and then use my in-game browser
two minutes later it doesnt show up? Apparently, their
must be more to the process than a two-hour list check.

If we assume the issue is that it takes two hours for an
upgraded server to time out from the master server than
why is it that one of my servers shows up correctly, and
did so from the very minute I upgraded the server? It was
only down for less than 10 minutes while I installed the
patch..... and this was the same ammount of time that the
other COd server in question was down, and it didnt show
up for an entire day. When it did, the info was all wrong?

My point is that if this was a 'time out' issue, I beleive
we would see much more consistency in how the issue plays
out and how it is resolved. And we arent. Not at all. You
were lucky to resolve your issue by taking the servers
down for two hours. Many admins have done that and it
doesnt do a thing. Trust me......

For instance, why are 90% of the server for many, many
players reporting that their pings are one (1) in the
in-game browser, even though they are reporting everthing
else properly? Why would one of my servers (which has been
down for more than two hours since upgrading while I pull
my hair out!) show as a 'WL' server and running some map
that doesnt exist? Please, I have never seen this in ANY
Quake 3 game.

There is more to this than the master server needing to
'time out' 1.1 servers.

Luke

Joe Brown said:
> You probably need to have your servers off-line for ~2
> hours.
>
> Q3 master server requires ~2 hours to drop a server from
> the list, so it
> makes sense that CoD master would require similiar amount
> of time.
>
> I mange 4 servers on one box and only the one on port
> 27960 was showing
> up in the master server list until I took the remaining
> ones off line
> for ~2 hours.  Presumably they were still in the master
> list as 1.1
> servers. They were never down long enough during the
> changeover from 1.1
> to 1.2 to be dropped from that list.
>
> AFAIK the master server doesn't keep any information on a
> servers except
> address, protocol and maybe server type.  Clients request
> a list from
> the master based on a couple of qualifiers and recieve a
> bunch of ip
> addresses.  Then they ping each address the master sends
> to get the
> details.  A command "getinfo" or "getstatus" is issued by
> the in-game
> server browser, or utils like ASE.  The amount of time it
> takes to
> retrieve the details is the "ping" time.  If a 1.1 server
> replies to a
> 1.2 client, the answer is probably not formatted correctly
> and you end
> up with garbage in the game-browser.
>
> I guess the master server only populates the database of
> active servers
> the first time they hear from a game server.  Then they
> ping the game
> server every so often to see if it's still alive.  If they
> haven't heard
> from a server after a period of time (~2 hours) that
> server gets dropped
> from the list of active servers.  The next time it shows
> up again, it
> gets a new entry in the master server listing.
>
> Now a lot of that is conjecture and educated guessing
> based on Q3
> experience, but it's fairly accurate.
>
> Dunno if they'll fix the master server...  I wouldn't say
> it's broke,
> you guys are just too fast at upgrading all of your CoD
> servers :)
>