[cod] Semi off topic: COD rentals

[Jay Vasallo]

Oh and if anyone is wondering why I am helping the server providers and 
server admins out, it's becasue I can. I am not to worried about the 
competition by far. There are thousands of customers and 100's of providers, 
I just so happen to be the best! But I am also a gamer and I rather see 
great servers than crappy ones. Not to be modest but I would like to 
continue to help anyone who needs it.

Cheers.
Jay Vasallo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jase" <shoefly at sover.net>
To: <cod at icculus.org>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: [cod] Semi off topic: COD rentals


> Guess im a little confuused here, why would you symlink when cod (all 
> quake3 base games) support multiple users. using fs_basepath and 
> fs_homepath accomplishes the same thing as symlinking doesnt it?
> Jase
> NateDog wrote:
>
>>Woah......now there's a guy who knows his stuff!  Awesome tips man!  You
>>really explain things well.  Much appreciated.
>>
>>--
>>NateDog
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- 
>>From: Mark J. DeFilippis
>>To: cod at icculus.org
>>Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 9:59 PM
>>Subject: RE: [cod] Semi off topic: COD rentals
>>
>>
>>
>>I had written much about this a while back. I will repeat a bit of
>>it here for the sake of those who wish to do this. Want to know why
>>you should do this, why it works and a bit on how it works...
>>
>>Linking the binaries allows the CPU to share the same Code segment pages.
>>Servers
>>will be allocated their own data segments for both Heap and Stack
>>(Which grow towards one another)... One of the reasons Ryan was able
>>to so quickly find that original prob back in 1.1.)
>>
>>If there is a write attempt to the code segment, that server/user is given
>>their own copy. In the case of most of the shared libs in Linux, the code
>>is reentrant, and hence these writes don't happen.
>>
>>One other recommendation, I am not certain if I made...
>>
>>You can reduce the spikes you get when a server is restarted by
>>setting the "Sticky" bit on the executable.  (Do a man on "mode" command)
>>What this does is the first time the executable is loaded, the entire
>>executable is copies to SWAP space. Once copied to swap, executable
>>pages are copied in to ram to be executed.
>>
>>The best way to keep a server at optimum is to never have to page.
>>However, under certain conditions, this does happen.  It the executable
>>is sticky, it remains in swap, and the page segment need only be
>>brought back in to memory from swap.
>>
>>Also note, when a second and subsequent  user of the Sym Linked executable
>>starts his/her server, the executable IS NOT copied in to swap again, it
>>uses
>>the one already in swap (hence the concept "sticky")... it sticks there.
>>
>>Thus on new startup, A call is made to load the executable, however the
>>Kernel immediately updates the CS and ES code pointers to the shared
>>memory mbufs where the executable code exists, allocates a DS data
>>segment, and moves your process back to the scheduler for CPU as
>>your I/O is complete.
>>
>>You skip the copy of the executable to SWAP.
>>You skip the copy of pages to Real RAM.
>>You execute off shared pages in memory already with your own set of
>>executable
>>   registers CS, ES.  Get your data segment, and your server starts up.
>>
>>Not only do you save ram, but start impact on the other servers due to I/O
>>DMA transfer setup, and context switching between system and user space,
>>but you spare the CPU spike as well.
>>
>>Regards
>>
>>Dr. D
>>
>>
>>At 05:08 PM 9/24/2004, you wrote:
>>
>>I just had that question recently also.  I did some research on the 
>>internet
>>and a lot of peeps are doing symlinks.  I tried it with MOH:AA and it 
>>works
>>beautifully, not sure if that's the "right" way to do it but it's pretty
>>cool cause' you have one base install and symlinks in the other client
>>folders.
>>
>>--
>>NateDog
>>
>>
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: John Kennington [mailto:john.kennington at buzzcard.gatech.edu]
>>>Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 3:04 PM
>>>To: cod at icculus.org
>>>Subject: RE: [cod] Semi off topic: COD rentals
>>>
>>>Depending on the number of cpus in the box, you can run 10 to 15 CoD
>>>servers per
>>>box.  So it is quite cost effective.
>>>
>>>John Kennington
>>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Jafo [mailto:jafo at nowhere.ca]
>>>Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 3:58 PM
>>>To: cod at icculus.org
>>>Subject: [cod] Semi off topic: COD rentals
>>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>If this isn't the forum for this question, please forgive me for asking
>>>here.
>>>
>>>There seems like a lot of people on this list that run "server rental"
>>>operations. Just curious how people are doing that cost effectively?
>>>Obviously one can't run each customer's game server on seperate hardware.
>>>Are people using some sort of "virtual linux" installs to run multiple
>>>servers on one box with seperate IP addresses? If that is the case how
>>>many servers would one dual 2.4 Xeon w/2gig RAM run?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>Jafo
>>>
>>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>---
>>Mark J. DeFilippis                    defilm at acm.org
>>                                      defilm at ieee.org
>>
>>
>
>