Multiple PCs Running Zone Servers

[trevius]

As a follow up to this thread, I wanted to make note that I have contacted all major servers and found that none of them other than PEQ use multiple zone servers. The only one I didn't check with that might be using it is Dragon Soul, which is a Chinese server.

So, it seems that this feature isn't very useful until some change is made to the code that will allow the world server to assign port ranges per zone server.

If I can ever get to a state where I understand code well enough, I might try a crack at getting this added into the source. But, right now that is a ways off. If any other coders have a chance to look into this before then, I would greatly appreciate any feedback. I would mainly like to know if this would be something very complicated to change, or of this could be something that might not be too bad to add in.

Hopefully this post will come in handy for someone considering multiple zone servers in the future. And maybe there will eventually be a fix to get this working

[Aramid]

Trevius,

Did you contact Rojadruid?

Below is a post he made back in November of 2007. Although, I just tried to login to his sever and I just get booted back to the login screen.

An EQ server farm is completly possible, thats the way my server runs, I am currently running 4 computers that spread the load nicley. Its all n how you setup the config file on each machine.
__________________
Rojadruid

Innoruuk Server [legit, CaveDude's Database]
Server Admin.

[trevius]

Ahh, I knew I had read that exact message somewhere, but wasn't able to find it when I was looking for it.

I found these 2 related posts:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24754

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23916

I am PMing froglok23 and rojadruid in case either of them still read these forums and have any input into getting this working the way I want. My guess is that they got it setup and working, but that they never noticed that if a zone crashes, the world server doesn't know which port range to assign to which zone server. And that this causes the zone to be unavailable.

I am trying to get a linux server up and running to see if it works any differently as far as multiple zone servers go. Windows definitely has issues as far as I have seen.

The main problem is that the setting in the config for ports on the world server PC are the only ports that the world server will will ever create new zones on. So, even if you set a separate range of ports in the config on your zone only server, that port range pretty much just gets ignored.

Hopefully one of the guys I am PMing will have a solution and will reply here or PM me with it. I would love to get this working.

[Aramid]

Originally Posted by trevius

I am trying to get a linux server up and running to see if it works any differently as far as multiple zone servers go. Windows definitely has issues as far as I have seen.

Hopefully one of the guys I am PMing will have a solution and will reply here or PM me with it. I would love to get this working.

If your setting up a Linux Server JUST to see if it behaves differently for the Zones, don't. I run on Linux and when a zone crashes, it does the exact same thing. Unless they have a different method, which I would love to hear about, then I think your only option is to run the zones on a server by itself, leaving all the 7000 ports set to that zone server. Only way to KNOW if it helps with lag etc... is to try it.

[trevius]

Originally Posted by Aramid

If your setting up a Linux Server JUST to see if it behaves differently for the Zones, don't. I run on Linux and when a zone crashes, it does the exact same thing. Unless they have a different method, which I would love to hear about, then I think your only option is to run the zones on a server by itself, leaving all the 7000 ports set to that zone server. Only way to KNOW if it helps with lag etc... is to try it.

I did try that and it seemed even worse then running both the world and zones on the same PC. And for the record, the other PC I tried using as just a zone server is about double the stats of the server PC I have been running on and it was still unstable being only a zone server. I wish there was a way to share the load.

I am trying to get a debian install of eqemu running, but mainly to see if it can help my resources and stability issues without having to do anything else. I have it almost ready to go accept for some reason it seems like the NPCs are hovering above the ground and it is hard to move around. I didn't get any errors when loading the world the last time I tried it so far. But I am definitely a novice with this setup. I don't even know if there is a way to watch the real time log entries echoed to the console similar to how it works on windows. The only thing that concerns me so far about the build is that I did get alot of warnings when I was compiling the eqemu source, but I didn't see any errors. I will leave those questions for another thread though, as I don't want to throw off the purpose of this one.