Specific zone-servers causes nakedness (Server port problem?)
 

So, I've stumpled upon a weird issue:

When players enters a new zone, and zone server #32 or #31 boots it up, they enter with bare characters. It does not matter which zone they boot, the result is always the same. Furthermore, all merchants in the booted zone are empty and links from chats cannot be clicked, but give this message:
Doing a #zonestatus shows the following:
http://file3.guildlaunch.net/412116/zoneservers.jpg

Apparently, #31 and #32 uses a different port range than the rest. Can this be the problem and how can you change this port range, which is not the one specified in eqemu_config?

Thank you for reading.

I should probably have posted this under the "Windows Servers" forum.

It's ok on the forum..this might apply to Linux servers as well.

I don't think it's a port issue since you (and others) are able to communicate with the zone server..otherwise you would likely just crash or hang the client.

Since merchants are 'empty' as well, I'd venture a guess that something is causing your database queries to fail. (Could be database time-outs on zone boot-up...)

Have you been able to verify this behavior on zones over 32?

You might try increasing the number of static zones to 33, from 30, and see if that alleviates your immediate problem.

I put it down to 25 zones for now, which seems to have fixed it.
When #30 was running it had the same behavior as #31 and #32 and was also in the port range 50000-59999.

Being naked when zoning is usually indicative of changing or adding items while the server is up and running.

If you don't mind..please post any additional info you come across about this issue.

I am curious as to why it only happens on those ports that are in a different range.

It might have something to do with the following error. I'm not sure what causes it or even what the error results in, as the server keeps working.
http://file3.guildlaunch.net/412116/listiterator.png

To follow up on the naked issue: today a zone-server booted up using the port 50073 which did not cause nakedness. So it was probably as Akkadius mentioned due to item changes while server was running.