Well... I'm back to where I started. I have no idea what was causing that problem. The bards have been afk twisting, took the wife out for about an hour, came back, and everyone's response time is at 90-135ms.

Was hoping to have something useful to reply back with. Sorry for all the fruitless chatter.

It sounds like you are experiencing packet loss. These symptoms occur when the server starts having to re-transmit packets to many clients at once and the ping/latency response from the client perspective rises.

If you're doing this on the same machine through VM etc. you may want to investigate potential bottlenecks or other things going on. Again we have folks who zone 50+ toons on our higher player-base servers and there are 0 issues unless their connection is experiencing packet loss, these sorts of symptoms occur where eventually they completely desync or things get sluggish.

18 clients - my suggestion as well is to use all the filters you can on your boxes, not MQ2 filter, but the client filters. These client filters are pushed up to the server and the server will not send you the packets for those messages, that can heavily reduce spam/resends in combat scenarios etc. If you were doing lots of combat and then you tried to zone not long after something like this that would cause your problem. Another client side thing that you should make sure you're doing as well is making sure that /log is disabled - this is a huge performance hit to the client and I wouldn't ever have it enabled unless you really need to log something

HTH

Akk

I'll check to see if logs are on here in a bit and disable if needed.

I did finally do something that seems to have triggered it. I created 2 new toons while 21 other toons were online and in PoK. Both DE races. They each loaded into neriak with 30ms response times to the server, but all the toons in PoK had their response times shoot from 135ish to 5000-8000.

When I created one of the toons, I hit exit > logout and quit/closed the 2nd client so I could create only one at a time. I noticed that if I ever log a character out all the way to server select, then back to char select -> unti world, that instance of EQ will have severe artifacting issues (super stretched images that don't even closely resemble what the image is supposed to be). The artifacting is resolved by closing that one client completely and restarting it.

Am going to finish creating my toons. I expect to have around 30 when completely done and then see if giving everything a fresh start resolves the issue.

What response times are your 50+ toons that are all running on the same machine looking at?

I'd be real surprised if I was experiencing loss between 2 machines in the same network. Especially if it's not touching that outside interface anymore. I will do a continuous ping from client to server and check, though. Not sure if the results are relevant to the EQ client/server relationship or not. I assume it'd be indicative.

One thing I want you to do is make sure you have the most up to date binaries. The installer doesn't keep the latest bleeding edge server binaries, only approved stable releases

Open up cmd

Baseline that for troubleshooting and go from there

Just completed that. I also forgot to mention that the artifacting thing I described, when logging out a character and logging in a different character on the same account.... or logging one out to server select, then back in again without closing the client. That issue happens even when I play on other people's servers. I'm not terribly worried about that one particular issue because it's easily fixed by just closing that one client and reloading it.

Screenshotted the output of the command you had me run.

https://i.imgur.com/vVntfo6.png


Will post back with any changes. Going to go ahead and load up the other 20 toons for the heck of it right now, then create more and see if it causes their response times to shoot up.

Not sure if it matters, but this happened when I started the server back up after the update. Not sure it effected anything as I was able to log my GM character in immediately after without any trouble. Just fyi.

https://i.imgur.com/js1x4JY.png



Edit: Checked my eqclient.ini and Log=FALSE

I've had 13 existing toons parked in PoK since my last post over an hour ago. I created 11 new toons since then and have used the GM to summon some of them around. So far all their response times with the server are 30-45ms. 25 toons online and so far no sudden jumps to 5k, 10k, 20k or 30k ms.

Only new thing right now is that I can log in literally every toon except the reserve clerics. Trying to log just those toons in is causing them to autocrash for some reason, but it's probably just a bit of bad luck at this point.

If the issue recurs, I'll post back. Though I'm not sure what else can be done at this point.

I ran that continuous ping for a while, both before all the toons were online and after. Nearly all replies came in 11ms or less. One stray packet was responded to in 383ms. I'd expect that with the server running in a VM, the replies come in 1ms or less. I administer a small Windows domain at work that has about 60 machines in it spread across two buildings. As I write this message, I VPN'd into my work network, RDP'd into my work PC, then pinged a machine in the building across the street. The response times were 4ms, 3ms, 5ms, 3ms. When I ping the gateway (same building, but opposite side of the building), all replies are <1ms.

Here on my home PC, the server and clients are literally the same machine, one is just in a VM. Not sure why I can't get <1ms replies when I ping.

Pings to the gateway, which is physically separate, come back in <1ms.

If I fire up wireshark, is there some EQ specific traffic I can look at and see if that <localaddress> tag in eqeqmu_config.xml is doing what it's supposed to do or if the traffic is still being routed through the outside interface?



Edit: Every time I think I know something....
So I started having the issue with high response times again, but now I'm guessing it has something to do with what I'm doing for new toons. I have a hotkey setup on the GM to level it to 60, increase all the skills to max, hand it some plat, turn on GM speed (temporarily), give it a bunch of AA, etc... I'd moved the new 11 toons to PoK and hadn't had an issue. Unless I just needed to wait a minute for it to kick in after moving so many so quickly. As soon as I started smacking the hotkey to scribe all spells for each of the new toons, I started having this problem, so I popped open a cmd terminal and....

https://i.imgur.com/H7mDXrs.png


Also, I'm not convinced that it's the server. I left 1 toon in Neriak and his response time in game shows 31ms. I summoned him to PoK with the GM and upon zone in, he's showing 25.4k ms. Took him quite a while to zone in too.

Is there any way to undo the update of those binaries? Because ever since I updated them, none of my characters can log in while MQ2 is running. If I shut it off, they can all log in fine. If it's on, they all crash trying to enter world now.

ok, so I figured it out! I'm guessing my replies aren't being looked at in this thread anymore, but I'll update for the heck of it.

It probably seems obvious at this point, but I can reproduce the problem at will now. I didn't realize I was completely running out of memory. I thought I still had a pretty safe buffer. When I am nearly full and start another EQ instance, all the times shoot up from the 20-40ms range to 500+ and start climbing to nearly 30k.

I also want to point out that I created a new server using Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2008 seems waaaayyyyyyyy more stable. I don't have half the problems I was having in 2012 and my setup/installation procedure was exactly the same. (only this time I took several VM snapshots in case anything breaks and I need to go back to a stable state).

Earlier, you mentioned that EQ shouldn't have this large of a memory footprint. Any chance you know how I might go about reducing the amount of memory each instance is using? Here's a screenshot of what my host machine performance looked like while everything was stable. And things were stable all day yesterday, all through the night while I slept, all morning. But at 31.5GB usage when I start a new instance and load up that last toon to push it over the edge. All in game response times shot as described above.

https://i.imgur.com/mlE4a0F.png

And here is a snapshot of the processes, showing how much memory each instance is using. How can I reduce this?
https://i.imgur.com/Ng1bUNB.png

You also mentioned something to me about possibly switching to ROF2 client and I noticed you made that recommendation to several others as well. If possible, I'd like to keep the underfoot client. It has been very stable when playing on the existing EMU servers and I like the version of MQ that I have that runs with it. MQ is causing none of these problems by the way. eqgame.exe is using about that much memory even with MQ turned off. I'm afraid that if I switch clients, I might lose some of the useful plugins that I make regular use of and playing without MQ just doesn't work for me. I'd rather quit.

If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it. Going to google this problem for now.

Thanks.



Edit: That large CPU spike you see in the first screenshot is not normal CPU usage. I just happened to be loading up another instance when I took it. Idle, the CPU sits anywhere from 4-15% depending on what it's doing, even when I have 20+ toons logged in.

You're asking me how to reduce memory footprint of your client and heaps of other questions that are now outside of the scope of this thread. Some of which I've already answered

There are MQ2 builds for ROF2 they may not have your active hacks (warping etc.) but they are there at mqemulator.net

ROF2 is a much better client and far better at memory management. You can probably find it in a big red button on PEQ's website

Please start a new thread and we'll go from there - everyone on this thread chain gets notified via E-Mail

If this isn't an appropriate place for me to follow up, just delete this. It's possible I'm the only idiot that would do something like this without realizing the consequences, but I wanted to follow up anyway in case someone else ran into it.

A huge part of my memory consumption wasn't just the eqgame.exe instances. Task manager on the host machine won't show it, but if you run a server in a VM and allot it 16GB of memory, it will (at least with this sql db running) consume the entire 16GB even when it doesn't actually need it. The guest taskmgr shows it only needed 2GB of memory, but with the VM powered up, I was losing 16GB.

Fortunately, the solution is simple. I just powered it off and lowered it's available memory to 4GB, and restarted. I was operating under the assumption that the VM would only use what it needed and was trying to play it safe.

Also, I tried ROF2. It does save me about 200MB on the first few instances, but the drawbacks weren't beneficial enough for me to switch away from UF.


Thanks for all the help and sorry for the mess.

So you set your MySQL configuration to use 16GB of your memory?

What drawbacks are you talking about

No, when I configured the virtual machine in vmware, I told it that it could have 16GB of memory, 50GB of disk space, access to all 4 CPU cores, etc... When it comes to disk space, it only consumes what it actually needs. I assumed the same was true with memory, but it is not.

After a reboot of this machine, I popped open taskmgr and added up the amount of memory consumed by what little was running. Less than 2GB was in use. If I go over to the performance tab right next to processes, it shows about the same thing. Almost no memory is in use. When I fire up vmware and start up the server, things change. My processes tab shows vmware uses a few hundred MB of memory, but it still adds up to less than 2GB of total memory consumption. The performance tab, however, shows that I'm using 18.6GB of memory.

I go over to the VM (server 2008 R2) and open taskmgr there to check. The performance tab there shows the server is only using 2.7GB of memory.

If I shut down the VM, the host machine gets 16GB of memory back under the performance tab. It seems pretty obvious that the VM is reserving 16GB of memory from the host simply because it is allowed to use it, whether it needs it or not.

Another assumption I made that doesn't seem to hold true is that if the performance tab showed I was using X amount of memory, then I'd be able to go over to the processes tab, which lists every running process and how much memory it is using, and be able to add that up and get approximately the same total that the performance tab shows I am using. With vmware in play, this is not even remotely close to true.

I can provide screenshots of all of this in action.



Edit: Sorry, I didn't answer the question about the drawbacks of ROF2. I have an underfoot client with an MQ2 build for UF that includes the active hacks you referred to earlier. As a workaround, I could just make all my toons GMs and use #goto instead. I also couldn't make autologin work. I referred to your instructions in the wiki, but at the field where it says "server=" there's no instructions if you are running your own private server. I tried leaving it set to EZ, blank, and a number of other things that I thought might make it work with my personal server, but when I run the shortcut to get into the game, the result is always the same. It says there's an error in the GUI XML files and to check the log. The log only contains a timestamp and no other information. I noticed the maps were far from complete. I might just be able to copy the map files from my UF build and paste them in. There were a number of other things missing (a lot just from the UF MQ2 build) that I found I'd need to come up with alternate methods of doing. In the end, it just seemed like it'd make better sense to continue working on what I'd started before downloading ROF2. I might give it another shot later if there's a persuasive enough reason to go back.

You need merely < 4GB of memory for the guest if its just you.

Boot 30 dynamics in the launcher and call it a day.

Production servers as a comparison:

PEQ: http://peq.akkadius.com:19999/#menu_...pu;theme=slate

EZ: http://eznp.akkadius.com:19999/#menu...pu;theme=slate

Both servers are using roughly 5GB and they have quite a few processes running and many players on

As far as #goto - go to your commands table and set the status for the command to '0' so any of your characters can use it without special gm flags.

AutoLogin on EZ's site works if you follow it verbatim - you have to use the build listed and you have to replace the file with the contents on the guide.

To find the server name you look in eqlsPlayerData.ini

https://i.imgur.com/Yy8SIC2.png

Maps are simply downloaded from a 3rd party source, such as mapfiend

Ultimately whatever you choose to use client use is your preference, 98% of players on EZ/PEQ use ROF2 for a reason. The client is far better in so many ways, but they may not matter to you. I'm simply helping you with your issues

HTH

https://i.imgur.com/AdsuWcK.png

I tried this with both server=2 and what you see in the screenshot. Both ways result in:

https://i.imgur.com/GuelPlH.png

The log file that refers to contains only a timestamp and no other information.

My ini file contains exactly what the instructions at http://wiki.ezserver.online/MQ2_Autologin_Setup say it should. It was a direct copy/paste from your post.


As an aside, any chance you know how to get rid of the SC/EQ button in the ROF2 client?

You need to make a server reference under servers

Under [kuagm]

Error in GUI XML has nothing to do with MQ2 - changes were made to the client apparently. You can look in your UIerrors.txt file as it says to see what the issue is. You can try setting defaults in OptionsEditor.exe

And once again - let's keep this thread related to the installer please

Using this installer - If something goes wrong with the build, How do I create a new build?

Basis for question. I created a server with bots. When I started the server I got a lot of errors saying my bot files were out of date. Once they were "auto updated" the zones loaded. I could see the server I created in the server list but when I tried to log in all I got was a black screen for about a minute and was kicked back to the EQ start screen. Instead of messing with it I tried to create a server without bots using the same installer but all I get are errors and hang ups. If I completely format my drive - reinstall windows - and restart the server installer, the installer will work and create a new sever file. I know their has to be an easier way to do this besides reinstalling everything to get a clean version of windows running.

Re-installed everything on a clean copy of windows. Without adjusting any settings, but the server name, I still cannot log into the server.

I show no errors. No crash. The server is listed in the server files as open to join.

I've used this installer in the past and it worked flawlessly.

I just downloaded this installer after wiping my drive and have run into this issue. I've tried entering the server from different EQ versions and different computers. Same issue. When entering the server I never get the loading screen - it stays black for about 30 sec then kicks me to the login screen.

I can log into other servers just fine, just not the one I created of this installer.

To be clear: this is a windows install with both the client you are trying to login with and the server running on the same instance?

Windows 7 64bit
Server is running on a separate PC than the one I run EQ on.

Only odd thing I see that didn't happen a few months ago when I ran a server off of this installer is when world.exe runs I see "New zone Server connection from.... at 127.0.0.1:...." about 30 times in a row. I don't recall seeing this in the past. Maybe I didn't pay attention until it didn't work though.

I however, am able to log into the server from the computer the server is running on. I still cannot log into the server from a different computer.

I found the issue.

My Firewall was still blocking "world" in the InBound rules. Once I set it to allow, all worked as it should.

Thank you for responding so fast Akkadius.

Hmmm - the installer adds rules for all ports for windows - application agnostic

No connetion error...
 

Hello. Im getting "no connection" error but Im online. btw Im trying to install from Japan..Isn't the location problem?



Administrative permissions required. Detecting permissions...
Success: Administrative permissions confirmed.
################################################## #######
#::: EverQuest Emulator Modular Installer
#::: Installer Author: Akkadius
#:::
#::: EQEmulator Server Software is developed and maintained
#::: by the EQEmulator Developement team
#:::
#::: Everquest is a registered trademark
#::: Daybreak Game Company LLC.
#:::
#::: EQEmulator is not associated or
#::: affiliated in any way with Daybreak Game Company LLC.
################################################## #######
:
################################################## #######
#::: To be installed:
################################################## #######
- Server running folder - Will be installed to the folder you ran this script
- MariaDB (MySQL) - Database engine
- Heidi SQL (Comes with MariaDB)
- Perl 5.12.3 :: Scripting language for quest engines
- LUA Configured :: Scripting language for quest engines
- Latest PEQ Database
- Latest PEQ Quests
- Latest Plugins repository
- Automatically added Firewall rules
- Maps (Latest V2) formats are loaded
- New Path files are loaded
- Optimized server binaries
################################################## #######
[Update] No connection to the internet, can't check update
[Update] Cannot check update without internet connection...
'world' は、内部コマンドまたは外部コマンド、
操作可能なプログラムまたはバッチ ファイルとして認識されていません。
[eqemu_server.pl] No database connection found... Running without
[Install] EQEmu Server Installer... LOADING... PLEASE WAIT...
[Download] Cannot download without internet connection...
[Update] Fetching Latest Windows Binaries...
[Download] Cannot download without internet connection...
[Update] Fetched Latest Windows Binaries...
[Update] Extracting... ---
IO error: opening updates_staged/master_windows_build.zip for read : No such file or directory
at C:/Perl/lib/Archive/Zip/Archive.pm line 546
Archive::Zip::Archive::read('Archive::Zip::Archive =HASH(0x65f43f4)', 'updates_staged/master_windows_build.zip') called at eqemu_server.pl line 1706
main::unzip('updates_staged/master_windows_build.zip', 'updates_staged/binaries/') called at eqemu_server.pl line 1201
main::fetch_latest_windows_binaries() called at eqemu_server.pl line 376
main::do_installer_routines() called at eqemu_server.pl line 271
main::new_server() called at eqemu_server.pl line 767
main::show_menu_prompt() called at eqemu_server.pl line 485
main::check_for_world_bootup_database_update() called at eqemu_server.pl line 71
read error at eqemu_server.pl line 1707.

I got my first server up and running in no time, simply awesome work. Question, though, where do I go from here? I tried reading through the wiki/forums and can't find where I should start studying on how to edit my database. I did see and watch some videos on EOC but wasn't sure if that should be my go-to for all things DB related?


Some things I'd like to learn how to do:
-Create/modify items, NPCs, spells (I saw these were options in EOC.)
-Disable certain classes (create new if possible?)

I also saw on the front page there will be a new wiki soon? (in the upcoming year I hope?)- awesome news.

Quick question.
I just used this auto-installer for the first time on a new PC, and I completely out of touch with all things I knew about Emu.
How do I change from default DB password?

Thank you!

In the xml file it sets your MySQL user/pw automatically.

You would have set this in order to run the installer. Unless you are trying to add a secondary MySQL user ?

well I guess it already set it to "root" and now I want to change it ;)

I have never changed user, but can try this.. copy/paste from google

Instructions

Click the Windows "Start" button and type "cmd" in the search text box. Press*Enter*to open the Windows command line.

Type "mysql" and press*Enter*to start the MySQL command line utility. Using the MySQL command line, you can update the tables on the database.

Type the following SQL code to update the root user:
UPDATE mysql.user SET user='newuser' WHERE User = 'root';
Change*newuser*with the value you want to use in place of*root

Type the following SQL code to change the default user's password:
UPDATE mysql.user SET authentication_string = password('pass') WHERE User = 'newuser';
Replace*pass*with the new password, and replace*newuser*with the name of the user you set up in the previous step.

thanks! i will try this ;)

Install HeidiSQL and under one of the menus is "users". Edit there, much easier than running commands from cmd.

cannot connect mysql
 

This is what I get when trying to connect to mysql. I am following the advanced guide for server setup on windows. I get this when trying to setup mysql in step 3 of the guide...am I in the wrong directory someone else mentioned restarting but I do not see a command for that or file? Thank you

C:\xampp\mysql\bin>mysql -uroot
ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061 "Unknown error")

Not exactly sure which part you are at... Probably the second half of this post.

Did you launch xampp and Start Mysql

https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/xamp...19 at 16.png/1
Need to start it Everytime... You can set it to start always, but I have run into issues that it does not start.

Then when you go to CMD prompt you would type

MySQL -uroot -ppassword

Where root is your user (if user was account it would read -uaccount)

Where password is your password (if password was secret it would read -psecret)

Then you can do:
use peq;

Change peq to your database name. (If you save a SQL file from heidisql from your database it will put entries in the file to make the changes to the database you pulled it from... In the event you make multiple servers and want to copy an entire table from 1 to the other).

Or what part are you at? Looks like your trying to set password after you set the path?

If so just type
MySQL -uroot

In the CMD window. You don't need to add the exact location like you did when setting the path.

Well I skipped past the MySQL setting password at the beginning and kept going forward in the guide but it never told me to run xampp I guess....logical step. Let me try your solution I am sure it is something simple like this.:D

trying to install EQEmu on Win 7 Ultimate x64 VM, the eqemu_install.bat file is hanging after creating the maps folder. any ideas?

Be patient or re-run the batch file again

I made sure all Windows 7 updates are current, I re-ran the installer and I still get to this point:

[Install] Fetching Latest Maps... (This could take a few minutes...)
[Copy] folder doesn't exist, creating 'maps/'

it has been sitting at this point for more than 2 hours now, is that to be expected?

maps can take a while... how fast is your connection, their servres etc.. more than 1 factor at play. go make lunch or something. if it's not stuck, you're just adding time if you interrupt the download. 2 hours is probably safe to start over, though. make sure there isn't a y/n prompt.

you don't need to run xampp after installed/setup. just make sure 3 services are set to 'automatic' or add it to bat file to "net start"/stop services with server. i made sure to copy/paste exact names:

apache2.4
sqlwriter
mysql

you can find them in services.msc - run that as a command or click "services" button in task manager etc.. multiple ways to get there.

net start ...
net stop ...

will start and stop any service in a bat file / cmd prompt. or set them as "automatic" and not worry about them being ready.

if you've gone from advanced self install to installer, make sure to start 100% fresh. remove everythign and start clean for installer.

thanks, i took your advice and went to lunch, when i returned it had finished! however, now that it has finished there seem to be files missing...
i do not see the eqemu_update.pl or the t_start_server or t_stop_server files.
here is the final output from the installer after the maps DL'd, this is a completely fresh install of Win7 x64.

format error: can't find EOCD signature
at C:/Perl/lib/Archive/Zip/Archive.pm line 695
Archive::Zip::Archive::_findEndOfCentralDirectory( 'Archive::Zip::Archive
=HASH(0x3414da4)', 'IO::File=GLOB(0x3dffc34)') called at C:/Perl/lib/Archive/Zip
/Archive.pm line 581
Archive::Zip::Archive::readFromFileHandle('Archive ::Zip::Archive=HASH(0x
3414da4)', 'IO::File=GLOB(0x3dffc34)', 'maps/maps.zip') called at C:/Perl/lib/Ar
chive/Zip/Archive.pm line 548
Archive::Zip::Archive::read('Archive::Zip::Archive =HASH(0x3414da4)', 'ma
ps/maps.zip') called at eqemu_server.pl line 1782
main::unzip('maps/maps.zip', 'maps/') called at eqemu_server.pl line 153
1
main::map_files_fetch_bulk() called at eqemu_server.pl line 450
main::do_installer_routines() called at eqemu_server.pl line 279
main::new_server() called at eqemu_server.pl line 818
main::show_menu_prompt() called at eqemu_server.pl line 553
main::check_for_world_bootup_database_update() called at eqemu_server.pl
line 79
read error at eqemu_server.pl line 1783.
Press any key to continue . . .

having patience and re-running the installer pays off, thanks for the help. Appears to be up and running but I don't have a client install yet, hopefully soon!

so the server is up and running and i am able to create a character but when i try to log in the server stops responding and the client either drops back to the server select screen or it just goes all black. in my World cmd window i can see where the character is zoning from character select to tutorialb... any help would be much appreciated

to check them off the list:

Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : mshome.net
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::178:14a:ba5b:
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.142.162
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.240

I updated my eqemu_config.json to match my IP address and set the port number for Titanium
"loginserver2" : {
"account" : "",
"host" : "168.192.142.162",
"password" : "",
"port" : "5998"
},
"longname" : "Plane of Soulree Voker",
"shortname" : "Soulree Vokers Plane",
"tcp" : {
"ip" : "127.0.0.1",
"port" : "9001"
},
"telnet" : {
"enabled" : "true",
"ip" : "0.0.0.0",
"port" : "9000"
}
},

I updated the login.ini file on the server
[options]
unregistered_allowed = TRUE
reject_duplicate_servers = FALSE
trace = TRUE
world_trace = FALSE
dump_packets_in = FALSE
dump_packets_out = FALSE
listen_port = 5998
local_network = 192.168.142.162

I updated the eqhost.txt on the client to match the Server IP and I added patchme to the shortcut for eqgame.exe

**latest update** I am able to log into the server now but other people are not able to, any ideas?