Server running but not available

[KellyR]

I have noticed twice now in the last 24 hours, my server is not available on the in-game server list but it is up and running and appears to be ready for logins. It's not even available in the in-game list for me even though it is on the same LAN. I also notice at the same time the main Discovery RP server is not available.

When I shutdown the server and restart then it becomes available.

Any ideas what's happening?

Kelly

[Hawk]

We are having server stability issues at the moment. For the time being we have decided to leave it down rather than restart it every fifteen minutes. The one person who knows the server better than any of us is currently traveling in New Zealand without his lap top. As soon as he has access again he will take a look at the problem.

[Cortexian]

Same thing is happening to my server Kelly.

I think this is related less to Discovery and our actual servers, and more of a problem with the flserver.de list server.

[Kazinsal]

This is an interesting issue. Previously we believed it to be an issue specific to DiscoveryGC but now I'm confused. DiscoveryGC's server -- and to my knowledge, every default-setup discovery server -- does not use the GUN list server so it's not an issue there.

We will continue trying to figure out what the hell is going on here and will let you know when we have something. For now though all we can do is hope something we do works.

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Retired, permanently.

[Cortexian]

What DOES Discovery utilize for listing servers? Is it just all direct connections from the dsupdate file, which cuts a list server completely out of the equation?

And what's really odd is that flserver.de is showing all the Discovery servers going down, yet the server software all seems to be running just fine for everyone. Which leads me to believe that something is just triggering the servers to stop broadcasting their presence, and/or stop responding to network traffic totally...

[Kazinsal]

It's all direct through dsupdate.cfg.

I am for the first time absolutely dumbfounded by something going horribly wrong with FLServer.

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Retired, permanently.

[Cortexian]

Is it possible that something unrelated to Discovery, and embedded in the core of FLServer could be the culprit? Based on what I know of game servers, there's generally a core loop section to handle all timings and the like, perhaps there's an issue with the way FLServer was coded that's causing this to happen starting at this specific date?

[KellyR]

A server does not have to connect to gun.fllistserver.com to be listed on flserver.de. You simply have to add your server to their list and they will query your server to determine status. Not sure of how often they query but it's several times an hour. The reason flserver.de is not showing servers is because they are not responding. When this happens, my server is up and running and appears to be waiting for logins. But it's not accepting logins, or responding to flserver.de queries. It doesn't even broadcast itself to my LAN because I can't see it on my client machine even though the client is on the same lan as the server.

I find it difficult to believe that something has gone wrong with flhook or flserver because there are a lot of servers running the updated software and it's just now happening. Then again when it happens I do see Paulus's Disco Portal which is running 4.86. Could this possibly be a DDOS attack?

Kelly

[APDAF]

an issue with the way FLServer was coded that's causing this to happen starting at this specific date?

I hope not... otherwise what will we do then?

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[Cortexian]

Could this possibly be a DDOS attack?

Kelly

I have some pretty extensive anti-DDoS protection in place on the connection I use for my server, and I checked with my provider at the time to see if anything was amiss, everything seemed fine.