-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] I've got some pretty vague problem report. Please let me provide some background first. It is going to be a bit lengthy, sorry.
I have dual P4-3.2 machine with 2GB RAM which run five 16 slots CS:Source servers, one 20 slots DOD:Source server and five 16 slots CS 1.6 servers. At a peak time Source servers are full - 100 slots - while out of five CS 1.6server only two or three are full - up to 50 slots. With 150 busy slots both processors load very rarely hits 100 percent and averages around 80. The above setup worked just fine, let's say acceptably for a few months. Then I got a problem with CS 1.6 servers. I suspect that I got that problem after I applied March 8 update - http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=514 - the one which brought STEAM validation rejected problem along. The problem is that after some point at processors load server FPS on these servers drops dramatically and average ping on all servers sky-rocket to 200-300-400. Packet ping from Windows command prompt at the same time remains low, about 10-20ms. Source servers on the same machine are not affected either. Most confusing part is that both processors load itself is still far below 100 percent. First thing I though of was misconfiguration of game server settings so I downloaded clean CS 1.6 server and started it. It suffered that same problem. Then I started tweaking the process priorities - I gave all Source servers below normal priority and gave high to CS 1.6 servers. This improved situation a little but still not good enough. Then I managed to get some spare resources and moved CS 1.6 servers to another machine which is also dual P4-3.2, 2GB RAM. Along with my CS 1.6 servers it runs four Source servers with 80 busy slots in total. And though both processors load was still hardly above 60 percent, my CS 1.6 servers were suffering the same problem. Then I decided to divide processors between CS 1.6 and Source servers so I used /affinity switch of start command to assign all CS 1.6 to one processor and all Source servers to another. This dramatically improved the situation for the most of time while the load of single processor assigned to CS 1.6was within 30-40 percent but as soon as I got more slots filled - my servers are growing at the moment and more and more players are coming - and single processor load reached certain point, my problem is back again. I'll be happy to hear any ideas on how to isolate a source of this problem. I wonder if anyone else is suffering the same problem? Also I'd like to ask Alfred if it is possible to get a copy of pre March 8 update binaries for HLDS to test whether my problems are really caused by update? As far as I can see from update description it involves some optimisation of HLDS engine and my guess is that some techniques used for optimisation may cause the problem I have. Thanks to everyone who read to this line :) Best regards, Roman -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
