Login Server Down?

[leslamarch]

I think if minilogin was changed to use username and password vs. IP address more people would be able to use it, and that itself would reduce the load on the public login server. I'm sure it would not be to much to accomplish this to whoever holds the source.

I know the biggest reason why people shy away from minilogin is the extra steps involed to make boxing happen without getting accounts booted. I'm still unsure why the login needs to be controlled by a select few, if the binaries are released the source is still protected.

We want to grow and having huge downtime is never a good thing. I Know this is all wasted words since this topic has been hashed over for a long time now, and it still is as it was.

[trevius]

Yes, this topic has been discussed a million times on these forums, but Angelox is right, almost anything is possible even if people say that it is not and that has been proven multiple times in the emu lately. I know that every since FNW gave up on getting Anniversary to work with the emulator, everyone has just said that there will probably never be an update to the client version of EQEmu. I hope to personally prove that wrong very soon if/when I finalize SoF enough for it to be fully playable Before, I was one of the people just spitting out the same thing I had heard time and time again that there would most likely not be anymore updates due to the massive work required to do it. Eventually, I learned enough where I thought I would attempt to see how far I could get on updating it myself. I failed ALOT and am still not done, but am getting very close to having a playable SoF client for EQEmu.

My point is that it seems like everyone (myself included) has just accepted the state of the Login Server as our fate and spits out the same thing over and over that there isn't anything we can do about it. The fact is that I don't know anyone who has actually even tried to do anything about it, or even discuss it with Rogean or doodman assuming they could maybe be contacted on the IRC channels. Until I hear it from them directly, or at least someone I trust to provide accurate information, I don't know if I can believe that it would be impossible to get this issue resolved.

All of the time that has been wasted due to the Login Server is just ridiculous. As I said, it was one thing when it was only down on occasion, but it is to the point where it is well beyond being a minor nuisance or inconvenience. I have no doubt that we are losing players almost every time that it goes down.

I hope this is not coming off as me being upset about the issue. I am not upset, I just think we need to take a different approach with it. Instead of passively just accepting the way that the Login Server has been acting up, I think it is time to take action. I know that work has already begun on making an alternate Login Server of some sort. I am sure that the source of that one won't be open source either. It is just disappointing that it comes to needing to re-invent the wheel. The current Login Server code is perfectly fine. I believe the only issue is with the configuration of the host server it is on. This whole issue could have possibly been resolve long long ago by just having someone that is actively involved in the project managing the server and getting it configured properly.

When things come to push and shove, stuff gets done, and it is already past that point IMO. I am sure it is only a matter of time until we have an alternative to the current Login Server. I just wish that Rogean and doodman would realize how dire the situation is and maybe lend a hand in resolving the issues with the current Login Server. I don't blame them for the current state of things and I think we are lucky that they have kept everything running as well as it still does even though they aren't involved in the project at all anymore.

Maybe the new Login Server will be done around the same time I get SoF done, and eqemu will be more popular than ever <--- I'm an optimist after-all!

[Angelox]

There's already a whole lot of people that use it (Minilogin) as-is. I get 'thank you' emails and PMs all the time from Minilogin users, they just don't post because they got their own thing going with friends and family.
I really am not interested in the public login anymore, even if it is not open source, there still is nothing else 'open' about it - and if it does one day come to and end, MiniLogin will keep EqEmu alive.

EDIT; By 'thank you' emails, I mean for all the help we gave people getting them going under MiniLogin.

Originally Posted by leslamarch

I think if minilogin was changed to use username and password vs. IP address more people would be able to use it, and that itself would reduce the load on the public login server. I'm sure it would not be to much to accomplish this to whoever holds the source.

I know the biggest reason why people shy away from minilogin is the extra steps involed to make boxing happen without getting accounts booted. I'm still unsure why the login needs to be controlled by a select few, if the binaries are released the source is still protected.

We want to grow and having huge downtime is never a good thing. I Know this is all wasted words since this topic has been hashed over for a long time now, and it still is as it was.

[Angelox]

I'm thinking, since Minilogin looks for IP address, have a script that converts the incoming username into a unique number, and insert it into the account table/ip.

Originally Posted by leslamarch

I think if minilogin was changed to use username and password vs. IP address more people would be able to use it, and that itself would reduce the load on the public login server. I'm sure it would not be to much to accomplish this to whoever holds the source.

I know the biggest reason why people shy away from minilogin is the extra steps involed to make boxing happen without getting accounts booted. I'm still unsure why the login needs to be controlled by a select few, if the binaries are released the source is still protected.

We want to grow and having huge downtime is never a good thing. I Know this is all wasted words since this topic has been hashed over for a long time now, and it still is as it was.

[AndMetal]

Originally Posted by Angelox

I'm thinking, since Minilogin looks for IP address, have a script that converts the incoming username into a unique number, and insert it into the account table/ip.

If Minilogin could use the encrypted username/password string as a unique identifier (think of it as an account ID rather than a username & password), that might work. In other words, allow everyone to login with whatever username/password they want to, but if you enter the wrong one, you won't see your characters. On the plus side, it would be relatively easy to engineer, and you wouldn't have to worry about registering user accounts. On the downside, it could create a lot of confusion if you enter in the wrong username or password, not to mention server admins tracking down a specific account. At the very least, this might make a good idea for a Minilogin2.

However, I agree, something needs to be done sooner rather than later. Ideally, the underlying issue for the downtime can be resolved now, and we can look toward a better way to handle the inherent negatives of having a central loginserver (limited ability to make enhancements, single point of failure) in the long run.

[Angelox]

You're right about that - already with the PHP script we have, there are a lot of accounts made because a mistaken username was entered (never to be used again) - I can imagine a large scale of this.
What about improving the current PHP login to where you require username, and maybe some more information like a valid email (each email is entitled to a stated amount of accounts). The username then converts into numbers, letters are according to their order in the alphabet (ex. angelox = 1.14.7.5.12.15). Passwords are not encrypted, but that could and should be done.

[leslamarch]

Originally Posted by Angelox

There's already a whole lot of people that use it (Minilogin) as-is. I get 'thank you' emails and PMs all the time from Minilogin users, they just don't post because they got their own thing going with friends and family.
I really am not interested in the public login anymore, even if it is not open source, there still is nothing else 'open' about it - and if it does one day come to and end, MiniLogin will keep EqEmu alive.

EDIT; By 'thank you' emails, I mean for all the help we gave people getting them going under MiniLogin.

I agree 110 % with this And i think your idea to use a unique number for accounts BRILLIANT

[ChaosSlayer]

Decentraliuzation of Emu will be the death of its development.
Instead of having all our devs and coders working on a single source code, we will have devs only working on their own server code and only features that they deem important for that server. And after couple of months - all those servers code will be incompateable with each other.

I realy wish the LS control holder would just finaly make his appearence and share the control over it with a few more people who can keep it running.

[Yeormom]

For my server, I have been developing a hybrid login system where you can use both the public login server and my private patcher client. My patcher does some very minor additions to your client but when you quit, all of those changes are reverted so you can play on other servers. I would love to share the code but then I've breached my server's security since so much would be exposed about the handshake generation and decryption. Perhaps once it is refined for production use...

I do agree, decentralizing will deteriorate the community. I was hoping that given enough time, Doodman would be tired of dealing with the server and pass it along. I guess I shouldn't hold my breath.

[Congdar]

Is it possible to have the login server mirrored to some other site that has a better internet connection? It seems like somebody with a dial up connection could serve it better than where ever eqemulator.net is being hosted.

[Yeormom]

MySQL doesn't replicate/load balance worth a damn. If the system we're based on Oracle, you could easily do such a thing but doing so on the current environment would actually make reliability even worse.

[Angelox]

I don't see it as a Decentralization, maybe because I don't depend on it (the public LS). There are many people into Minilogin, and they stay with the project. The developers are working for the 'public' version of the emulator, and I don't see where it would matter, just so long as there's an LS available. It just doesn't seem that important to me, what is important is the frustration people get when all this is down and now one can play or do anything else.
Anyway, it's just a solution to the Public LS - something needs to be done - if LS and this dns went black today, then we would have a big problem, eqemu would probably be dead for a while, as we are not prepared for it, and would have to take time out to re-organize.

[Angelox]

Originally Posted by Congdar

Is it possible to have the login server mirrored to some other site that has a better internet connection? It seems like somebody with a dial up connection could serve it better than where ever eqemulator.net is being hosted.

I'm think they might have a cable connection - cable tends to get laggy during peak hours like in the evenings and on weekends (cable users have to share bandwidth with the TV viewers)

[AndMetal]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayer

Decentraliuzation of Emu will be the death of its development.

I would like to clarify, we don't want to decentralize the loginserver (look at the WoW emulators), but I think making it a distributed platform would help for redundancy (like a P2P network?), although you still need to find a way to share the account information between everyone running the loginservers.

[Yeormom]

Originally Posted by Angelox

I don't see it as a Decentralization, maybe because I don't depend on it (the public LS). There are many people into Minilogin, and they stay with the project. The developers are working for the 'public' version of the emulator, and I don't see where it would matter, just so long as there's an LS available. It just doesn't seem that important to me, what is important is the frustration people get when all this is down and now one can play or do anything else.

The problem is majority of the lifeblood many servers trickles in from players looking for something they heard about on a website, which is almost always gone or not what they really wanted afterall. The login server makes it easy to go and try something else without any talent since the majority of our players do seem to struggle.

That considered, if we enhanced the web site to include a list of servers supporting mini-login list where you easily controlled what is up and down (a new hook or telnet) and join from there, this would provide the same affect and could be mirrored without security risk. This same application could also be built into a minipatcher that does nothing but simply get a list of servers and connect to the selected just as minilogin performs.

I'm a bit behind on my current project to jump in head first at the moment but I wouldn't mind spear heading such a task in the near future.