Linux Vs windows

[Conan]

Well as the server op of brightblade I am thinking of switching to linux from windows 2000 server

What are peoples views on both?

Redhat linux btw.

Still looking for some good setup docs on it though.

Thanks

Conan

[smogo]

definitely linux. This is very personal, as i never did set up one under W** :lol:

Among others :
- use soft links to share among several configurations / data files
- powerful scripting
- efficient network and process monitoring
- precise network security

Well, this is not a fair point of view, but, as you ask ...

[farce]

setup on linux is fairly easy if you can do it on windows, and can install linux.

Your redhat install can include mysql and perl from the start.. then you just run the IO::Scalar installation.

source in your favorite databse...

after that, get the latest source, compile, and run.

here's an example installation of EQemu after installing linux and downloading your database and eqemu source ( from memory )


[root@localhost root]$ chkconfig --level 345 mysqld on
[root@localhost root]$ service mysqld restart
[root@localhost root]$ mysql -uroot
mysql> grant all privileges on eq.* to eq@localhost identified by 'eq';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit
[root@localhost root]$ cd eqemu
[root@localhost eqemu]$ mysql -uroot eq < database.sql
[root@localhost eqemu]$ cd EMuShareMem
[root@localhost EMuShareMem]$ make
[root@localhost EMuShareMem]$ cp libEMuShareMem.so /usr/local/lib
[root@localhost EMuShareMem]$ echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
[root@localhost EMuShareMem]$ ldconfig
[root@localhost EMuShareMem]$ cd ../world
[root@localhost world]$ make
[root@localhost world]$ cd ../zone
[root@localhost zone]$ make
[root@localhost zone]$ cd ..
[root@localhost eqemu]$ HERE YOU EDIT YOUR INI FILES FOR EQEMU
[root@localhost eqemu]$ THEN START THE SERVER


I use screen to detach my server from the terminal/console i'm running it in, so i can reattach remotely or later. pretty easy to use, just type screen and you'll get a blank terminal. If you're using minilogin, run 'wine MiniLogin' in the first screen. when it's running hit <ctrl-a>c to create a new window. ./world/world in that one to start world, <ctrl-a>c again ./zone/zone . ip_of_server port localhost to start up your zone, then <ctrl-a>c and start however many more zones.

<ctrl-a># switches between screens. 0 is the first.

<ctrl-a>d detaches, screen -r will resume it.

[Conan]

I actually have a linux machine setup and running a proxie server at home so installing is no problem. Would anyone be able to explain to me if there is anything different in getting the source for linux? Windows uses cvs, Same for linux or different?

Sorry for being a newb but I am good with windows and not as good with linux =)

[farce]

you could use CVS.

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/eqemu login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/eqemu co modulename


I dunno how different the latest CVS is from shawn319's release of DR3 tho, that's what i've been using.

[Conan]

K, thanks again for you guys help, will see what I can do later =)

[samandhi]

@Conan Actually (not trying to start a flame war, is just my opinion) I like to use a flavor of BSD (mostly freebsd) as opposed to Linux.... It is unix essentially, but you can run everything including anything to do with Linux... VERY good security, setup is fairly straight forward...... LOL or you could just combine the two OS's in the title of this thread and use Lindows <smile> It is like AOL of Linux hehe.... VERY easy but also VERY limited.

[Muuss]

Without going as far as samandhi, i advise you to not to use Redhat if you plan to make a public server and don't have the linux skills to plannify correctly the security of your box.
Some other distributions like Debian or Slackware are better as OS server than Redhat/Mandrake, they have less security holes, softwares are more often updated, to avoid to look like a flamer and to start a rant, i d say that they arent dedicated to the same things :)

[executor3000]

In my opinion, Redhat is as easy as windows to setup, but it has also very narrowed customization options. As samandhi mentioned, I would also use BSD. In this case I would choose OpenBSD though as OpenBSD ships with no stupid useless stuff by default, such as small games and stuff, and I also chose OpenBSD because it uses OpenSSH as it's telnet replacement, and it has a more friendly file structure =)

[samandhi]

In this case I would choose OpenBSD Yeah your right, OpenBSD leans more to the security side than FreeBSD.

[m0oni9]

I originally tried to get the emu running on OpenBSD. I heard that people had it working on FreeBSD, so I figured it couldn't be too bad -- Right? 8). It ended up being too much of a hassle, so I installed RH9, and had it running in no time. True, putting it on a system like Redhat may mean you spend more time customizing or securing things, but it could very likely be less time spent than trying to get things functioning on a system that isn't widely used for that purpose.

As far as Windows vs *nix, I strongly agree with smogo on file linking and scripting. It can make life so much easier. You'll also end up with capabilities that you didn't know were available, like easily running processes in the background.

[var1ety]

The EMU might compile fine on OpenBSD if it had the required ports available - namely linuxthreads and gcc 3.2+. However, it's probably easier to get it running on FreeBSD 5.x, as it comes with the necessary GCC in the initial install.

There are some threads in the development forum about the process of getting things running, although I'm not sure if the devs committed my fixes and readme which talks about getting things running on FreeBSD, so you might need to patch by hand.

[cbarnes]

ok... I'm also pretty much a linux noob.

When I ran a server using Windows 2000 Server, I noticed that after 10-15 people connected the zones started to get laggy and people would drop connection sporadicly. Is this something that is remedied when using *nix? I'm running on a cable modem and most of the people logged in said they didn't really have any lag issues per se -- except with several people. Most of the time it was when there were a bunch of us in the same zone area. I guess my main question is... how much bandwidth does each "zone" connection to the "World" server need?

Sorry if this reply is a little off topic..

[smogo]

how much bandwidth does each "zone" connection to the "World" server need?

To take you to the letter, very little. Such communication is mainly during client transfer from zone to zone (or from login to zone or back), or for world wide commmunications, like /ooc, ...

Real bandwidth load comes from the mobs (move, spellcasting, ...), in client <->zone comms, and is estimated about 6KBytes per user connected. You get lag when 6 x NbClients comes near to server's upload or download bandwitdh. Even on diff. zones, it still makes about 6K per client.

*nix wont do much better in this case.

There are several other elements in your post, but still i hope this starts to give an answer.

[cbarnes]

Thanks for the response.. I still will probably give *nix a try, eventhough it may not help with the "lag" issues.

[var1ety]

Is it really that high?

I used to play on EQLive during classic/kunark with a dialup connection, which had nowhere near 6KB downstream bandwith. I guess the high number is just an eq specific thing related to datarate throttling?

[smogo]

Just repeated what i had read somewhere in a forum. That how wrong informations spread ... as well as correct one.

It might be very dependant on server load, and zone config. Maybe some (relevant) packet tracing and statistics would be usefull, but i'm not running a public server atm :/