Wow, serious issue..serious quuestion. What are the options?

1. Password protect servers that will guarentee a clean, stable server?
2. Server admins monitor their servers a bit more closely nd look for "unusual" character profiles? (labor intensive right now)
3. Do nothing and continually dump all profiles to cleanse the server?
4. Identify the cheaters and ban them from a server? (labor intensive to a point)
5. Don't worry about it and see how it all pans out when we get the influx of players next week?

Tough call...other opinions?

Rob "Stinger" Lordier
Moderator/Comp Tech Lancers Reactor
Creator Privateer FAQ Competition doesn't create character, it REVEALS it!

Are there other server admins that had his server crash frequently?

I checked the error logfile and I found this error over 100 times:

1: E:\FL\Scratch\Source\Common\Archetype.cpp(60) : *** ERROR: ArchDB::Get(2837983242) failed

Not sure if that has something to do with the crashing, but it can't help?

Edited by - Morte on 28-02-2003 15:44:36

Im going crazy, I can't get the freekin server to be stable!

There are other servers that seem to be stable, what magic are they using?

Please tell me about your server status whether it crashes (and if, how often?) or is it stable?

That is odd, I've never seen this problem on my server.

Erno "Xanaki" Tuomainen
FL Gemini Server admin
Don't Panic!

The answer you are missing is the blank account problem.

Check you accounts and click around in the edit accounts area. you may very well have one that you cannot see that is making the server crash.

You need to check the accounts folder for the server too in My Documents.



75% sure that, that is your problem....

Can't find any blank account, and the folders in "..\My Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts\MultiPlayer\" seem to be okey.

All folders have 2 files like this:

"03-48d42e44.fl" and "name"

What operating system do you use when hosting a server? I'm using Windows XP and maby I should try another operating system?

What is the speccs of your (hopefully) stable server?

Edited by - Morte on 01-03-2003 11:26:15

So far I only had one server crash so to speak but it wasnt freelancer related (that server keept running still) instead it was the usual Windows stuff.

What I experience with my server is that when I reach 30 ppl (which is no problem lately got many regular users) the server becomes unplayable due to the underpowered processor. Missions seem to vanish and all other sorts of weird stuff happening. I have figured so far that with P3 1ghz Im able to support 24 players so all have good performance. Its weird if you ask me that freelancer requires that much horsepower.

What are other admins experiencing????

btw. apart from that my server is mostly at full load and DOESN'T crash at all but I do check regularly for blank accounts and delete them. And yes I do have those red messages in the console Archetype or something.

I'm expereiencing very similar results as everyone else...

Not that I'm any sort of "guru" or anything, but I feel confident in understanding the logic behind computers as well as the next guy. Some things to consider when running a server:

1. The CPU will be your bottleneck most of the time. Reducing the server GUI interface down to the taskbar will lessen the pull it has on memory and the processor so if you're maxing out the server, try reducing it down to the taskbar.
2. Cheating is going to be inevitable. The best thing to do is back up the accounts on a regular basis. That way you can always revert back to a time when things were better for everyone and eliminate some problems without having to attempt to figure out what accounts are playing in "god" mode. The accounts for your server are stored in the My Games\Freelancer\Accts\Multiplayer folder of your documents folder (by default). You can back up the accounts for your server by backing up the entire My Games\Freelancer\Accts\Multiplayer folder in your documents folder. You must back up the entire directory.
3. If your server allows new accounts, it is better to ban an account than to delete it. If the account is deleted, the same player's account will be created when they connect to your server again (but without the characters they had when the account was deleted). Banning the account without deleting it prevents the player from logging into you server until you remove the ban. Try not to abuse this power or word will spread to others and you might lose your customer base. Try to reason with people first, that always is wise.
4. The server load varies with how many players are connected and what those players are doing. In general, the more players you have on your server and the wider apart they are spread across the universe, and the more activity each of them are engaged in, the higher the load will be on your server. If you find that you are consistently running in the yellow or red on your server, you can limit the number of players that can be connected to your server at once. I refer to this as your "target" number...very important to establish.

Not all of this is my own words, but all helpful when considering the idea of running a server.


Rob "Stinger" Lordier
Moderator/Comp Tech Lancers Reactor
Creator Privateer FAQ Competition doesn't create character, it REVEALS it!

Woho, I have a running server now, that seem to be stable, no crash so far and 14 hours and counting (new record). How I fixed it: installed on a new machine (third machine) and suddently it work. (this one have lower speccs also, so its kind of strange, but I dont care, I got a server running and now im starting to enjoy the game for real).

Thanks to all that helped/tried to help.

Morte, I had exactly the same problem you described, with the same errorlog. Did you first join the server from the same pc that hosted it? I think that is what causes the problem, though i cant check, becouse I dont have a third comp that can run the fl server. Plz tell me if you had the error when you joined from the comp that hosted the server, and maybe some other people can try to confirm this. Note that it took a few hours before my server crashed for the first time, so trying this out might take a while. I hope this will be addressed in the first patch!

My friend runs a 20player server. Full all the time ..

First he had it on a bit slower computer, and it ran smoth, but then maybe once every hour it started to lag and it crashed, got from 50ms to 3000ms.. :/..

Moved the server to another comp.. p3 1ghz.. And first all was good, then it started to crash, one minute everything was fine 50ms lag.. other minute 3000ms lag. like once every hour. This doesnt result in a crash everytime, but atleast one/day. (used both xp professional and win2k server).

Personally I think that the netcode for freelancer is screwedup. And I hope we will see a patch very soon.

he netcode is not screwed up, if you read the readme file that comes with the retail/gold version it explains this issue.

only thing that is about crash in the readme is that if the computer is locked.

Stinger: A dedicated server shouldn't crash if it's right installed every damn day, how would it be if all servers on internet crashed atleast once every day ? Since it crash this often, and alot of ppl have this prob. you still dont think the netcode or server need some improvement ?

Cheats and other stuff that brings the servers down is only ms fault they didn't make the server secure and stable enough.. (even windows me is more stable)

SO YES, it's in the code the faults are.. and those faults could be patched, atleast most of them. Or maybe someone will make a *nix clone with some more featurs, like would disable the use of cheats.