Server

If This TARDIS Is a Rockin’

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Yutram was kind enough to help me test out the new GMod server. We partied so hard in the caves of Dear Esther that we crashed the server. Stayed a little longer than expected, but it was fun to work and play a bit at the same time…

I think I like our version of the metaverse better than Fuckerberg’s. 😛

How Bout Dem Melonz

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Finally got the GMods up and running! There are still a few server side tweaks that I’ll need to do, but the server is stable and ready to go! The TF2’s and L4D’s will be next on the list, and then I’ll finally be able to say au revoir to CentOS for good. It was a great OS while it lasted, too bad Streams came along and fucked it up.

Meanwhile… On My Corner Of The Interwebz

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I got the Quake III Arena Servers up and running last night, and tonight I spun up VM for the GMod Servers. I pretty much have everything in place other than the server files; I’ll work on transferring them over and setting it all up the rest of the way. If I don’t get stuck in dependency hell I should have both GMod’s up and running tomorrow evening under Alma. The old VM for GMod was at 95% on disk space. I took out GMod Cinema to make room, and also expanded for potential future servers. I’ve been thinking one of these weekends I’d like to see what other Gamemodes GMod has to offer; perhaps even gather some Slackers together to do some science!

The Bluehost Blues

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Last August I began having issues with my website provider Bluehost, when they “upgraded” my service by taking away my ability to open a process manager, and also made it impossible for me to run a murmur server due to their ridiculously low file descriptor count. In the old days I could just submit a support ticket to get a config changed, or open certain server ports for example. Now you have to either sit down and chat with them on the phone, or have an online chat with them. I’ve complained to them numerous times about my issues with no success, in fact at one point they made it even worse for me by changing my PHP version from 7.2 to 5.0, which is the equivalent of ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant and instead having a toaster served to you on a platter with maple syrup and a hobo’s flaming scarf. What part of “Follow this wiki link and increase my file descriptors” even remotely translates into “Downgrade my PHP version plz”? PHP and Murmur don’t even have anything to do with each other!

They also managed to lock me out of FTP. Two tech support sessions and about a month later I eventually get my FTP access back… However I’m still at square one. I’ve been telling them from the beginning that I needed my file descriptors increased in order to run murmur, and I even linked instructions to them on a wiki page! After about another month I got word back basically stating what I already knew; My old server they migrated me from had a larger file descriptor count, and since I’m on shared hosting I would most likely have to pay for a dedicated server to do what I basically did before… They were going to look into things further, and said they would get back in contact with me sometime after thanksgiving… I still haven’t heard from them, at this point I decided take a friend’s advice and just go to Digital Ocean.

Now that the holidays are over and I’ve had a chance to breathe I’m proceeding with my server migration plan. I’m copying my files off of bluehost and getting ready to copy website databases, email addresses and the whole shebang to prepare for the move. I have until July to get things switched over, so while I’m not in too big of a hurry I do want to use the time to be through. It will give me plenty of time to test things properly before pulling the plug on bluehost.

It’s a shame that I have to do this after almost a decade :zorak: , but the service I got was anything but impressive. One thing I’m noticing across businesses is the lack of quality in staffing, or rather just lack of staffing in general. I wouldn’t be surprised if bluehost got rid of a bunch of their staff and only hired and trained people just enough to work with WordPress installs. As a result my questions about my Murmur server alluded them… I’ve seen a lot of companies try to take Wal-Mart’s leading business examples beyond the retail front, and it looks like Bluehost Wal-Marted their quality.

Open Thread

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So far I’ve just been taking it easy. On my first day I slept in quite a bit which I didn’t want to, but I was more tired than I realized. I’ve had to fix the TF2 servers then test them along with the Gmod ones. Spent a good amount of time on some of them today with Yutram. We destroyed n00bs and then chillax’d in the cinema watching some YouTube.

The next thing I should take care of should be the TF2 MOTD’s so that they point to the group page. Our group has expanded quite a bit since I’ve had the group page appear on each server’s message of the day.

We haven’t started working on the new hardware yet but will soon. We’re waiting for a couple RAID cards for additional storage, once those arrive we’ll be ready to install CentOS 7 and get to work adding all the servers to the new setup. Maybe even some new servers since I have plans for a few more.

Post Valentines Day Open Thread

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I didn’t really celebrate Valentines Day this year, much like the other years. I spent it with friends and family which is always nice. I was monitoring my server traffic and noticed that we hit a new record of 31 people across all servers! I even had to up my cinema server slots from 12 to 24 and add in reserved admin slots. We’ve been getting more popular lately. In fact we’ve been looking into a more powerful dedicated server box to relocate everything to.

Although in the meantime the hardware should do well enough to hold us over. Just can’t put up anymore servers in the meantime… and I have quite a few server projects that need to be carried out once the new server is acquired (as soon as they come down in price). Plans for a Starbound Server, a goof off Mann vs Machine and an experimental Shoutcast server are on the fabled to do list.

If it isn’t one thing it’s another…

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So I decided to upgrade from Fedora 19 to Fedora 20, so far the only problem seems to be related to my video drivers (everything else works exactly as before), I had to uninstall my beta drivers under windows to make the random black screening go away (fun!) and for the icing on the cake I had to ram my head against the MvM server because now it doesn’t seem to startup in quickplay mode anymore despite having all of the convars correctly placed.

I was all for the new update in the beginning, but this is turning into a royal pain in the ass. I wish Valve could put some straight forward guidelines on how to get setup, and what you can and can’t use in quickplay. The current list they provide leaves too many questions unanswered.

My server fetish has been fed.

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The new server arrived yesterday! It’s a very nice setup with quite a lot of options (extra fans, up to 64GB RAM if I want, etc). Setting it up with the latest Fedora for a test run later today. But so far I’ve been impressed with it! Well… all but Fedora. With every new release they seem to give me another reason to hate what they’ve done with Anaconda.

That should be fun to test later though. Think I’ll celebrate and get some coke to have with my whiskey.

Time to upgrade the dedicated toaster.

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I think I have outgrown my linux box. I’m contemplating getting something like this to replace our current box which is an older proliant. With that I would have lots of room and better support for the TF2 particles. Between running multiple servers and the enormous amounts of particle systems for TF2 lag becomes a royal pain in a matter of seconds.