Pet losing some - not all - his gear

[Uleat]

I've seen a few crash dumps involving pets..I wonder if this is related...

[noudess]

Ok...

I added a named semaphore and created it in eqlaunch before anything else.

Then I use it to access the pet inventory in the functions in zonedb.cpp.

It seems to me this is:

1) a bigger issue - since the zone I am leaving doesn't other work in Save() before the zone I land in starts accessing it..

or

2) Somehow another mechanism was meant to handle this and isn't for pet inventory.

I can show, so far, that without my fix, the zone I land in can read the content of the character_pet_inventory table before the zone I am leaving has it completely updated... thus the problem.

This is all on my Linux server.

I can post the named semaphore fix, but I'm not happy with it and I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable with how the old zone and new zone get ordered might step in and slap me up some

[noudess]

My solution has evolved to a named semaphore in the client class. This semaphore is named after the character_id for the client. It is created on successful arrival in a zone (if you're coming from another zone, the CREAT ends up opening the one you left from (if its in use). There can, of course be multiple semaphores going on at once, for various characters, but they will clean themselves up on logout.

It's used when you save and read pet information.

It works, and I leave no semaphores around on exit.

I still feel that someone with a better idea of how db coordination is done between zones on zoning might have a more straightforward fix - or maybe tweak of existing mechanism.

Should I post about it on development? My fix works, but I'd think a patch more in tune with the original thought process might be better long term. I just can't see what that is..

[ edit: expanded the critical section to start when the zoning flag is set and to end at client's destructor. The new zone now has perfect pet data. I also moved my check on the new zone to before we read in character buffs - with the wrong timing - these could get scrogged as well.

With 15 items, I could make the pet bug show up alot - and now its always perfect, And no semaphore baggage, all cleaned up.]

Let me know if you guys want the patch posted. My code is older, but I think the changes are small enough you can fit them in if you want them.

Players happy - they were sick of losing pet gear occasionally. ]