World Crash Rebooter
 

(This one owns the one I wrote, it is by nosfentora.)

That is awesome! My world.exe never crashes, but I am sure this will be handy for many that might have lesser stability.

Do you think you could make one that restarts the world.exe on a timer? To have it close out the existing one and start a new one? And if possible give a 30 minute warning countdown in game? I am able to deal with daily server reboots manually to keep mine running in tip top shape, but lower maintenance is always appreciated :) Plus, that would be extra handy when the server owner goes on vacation for a week :P If you run a windows server, it would probably be unplayable after a week of heavy play.

Just a thought for something extra if you had time. I don't think it is in high demand, but if it wasn't much change from this app, it might not be a bad additional program to have :)

I actually purposely kill the world process every now and again on TGC when it starts acting up. We have a world auto-restart built into our script (running Linux) so no need to worry about that. The cool thing is when world goes down, really the only people who get disconnected are the ones zoning. For the most part, it's business as normal for everybody else except for the zone reconnect spam.

It isn't just Windows servers that are effected by heavy load and such, Linux boxes have the same issues though not as bad I think.

This is a great tool for Windows users, though. Mind if I add it to the next version of the Installer?

I'll work on that right now. It sounds like a really fun project. :D

Cavedude: If you think my software is worthy, I'd be honored. :)

I'm almost done with this tool for you. :) It will actually telnet into your server... send a message to everyone telling them the world will shutdown... then after that grace period timer ends.. it will end the world process and restart it. All of the timers are completely customizable as well as the emote it sends out to the players (including the color of the emote). All customizations will be done through a single config file (Timers run by milliseconds 1000 = 1sec 60000 = 1minute etc... Maximum that you can run a timer is 1 week.).. I just need a tester to test this script for me. :)

Woot, sounds very awesome! I wouldn't mind giving it a test run if you need :) I know for sure that this will help when Admins need to go away for the weekend (yes, it happens)!

One more question; Will this tool restart the world server automatically after a #worldshutdown is issued? Are both the reset on a timer and the crash restarter combined together in the new tool? This way, guides or GMs on the server can restart it anytime it needs one. I have a GM account on another server other than my own and could have definitely used that option over this past weekend. If I could have just don't a #worldshutdown and it would automatically restart, it would have helped server performance there considerably while their GM was away. So, does the crash restarter only work on a crash, or anytime the world server is shut down?

I notice that you mention it watches for "World.exe has encountered an error". And I am not sure of the message given if it is shut down with the #worldshutdown command.

Thanks for all of your work on this. I am sure it will be well appreciated by both server admins and players :D

Well I can do many things... Right now it waits for an error, closes the error and reopens world. I could code a guide world rebooter/zone rebooter in 20 minutes if you want. I'll encorperate them all into a large pack and let you select which ones you want enabled.

You are the man! With a tool like this, I think options are the key. With the ones you have planned so far for the package, I think it should be a pretty complete tool that any server admin would find useful when it is needed.

Thank you!

Here is a quick question for you. Will this affect only the world.exe file, or the zone.exe also, and thus doing a complete restart? If the zone.exe is included, then I have another question. When I use the shutdown command in game, it will close everything but the zone.exe's (plural, one for statics, one for dynamic zones). Just tossing out the ideas here, if this is something that will be included. Now the zone files themselves seem to "close down" all the zones they are running, just leaving a blank window open. Anyhow, just my thoughts/suggestions. :)

I've put together an auto-crash killer and auto server-restarter. It's written in VB.Net and seems to work fine. Here's the source and win32 binaries

The crash-killer should close any crashed window - whether or not you have a debugger installed.

The server restarted can be set to restart your server periodically, or stop and start your server with one click.

The only thing it needs is to know where your .bat file for launching the server is. It can be installed in any directory.

Here's the .bat I use:

@echo off
cls
echo *** CLEARING OLD LOGS ***
del "C:\EQEmu\logs\*.*" /q
echo *** STARTING EVERQUEST WORLD EMULATOR ***
start world.exe
ping -n 15 127.0.0.1 >nul
echo *** STARTING EVERQUEST ZONES ***
start eqlaunch.exe static
start eqlaunch.exe dynamic
exit

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

this is not working on my pc it loads and everything but does not boot the server up and seeing as i have not been able to get it to boot the server i have not found if it will reboot after a crash. anyways though i would say something mabie there is a fix or something someone else wants to post that works?

im running windows xp sp3 just in case thats the issue.

im talking about the last post seems the one from the first guy has been taken down because he quit on it?

I could never get the one that Richardo wrote to work either. My world server would crash and the popup would come up about the crash, but it never restarted the world or seemed to do anything other than run in my system tray. So, I dunno.

I've updated a few things, the links above contain the updated versions - it should also kill hung zones (zone.exe that stays at 50% for more than 30 minutes)

spider661 - does your .bat file boot the server?
also - clicking 'start' from the file menu doesn't start the server, it starts the process monitoring. you'd need to click 'start server now' from the file menu first, then click start. i havent had time to put in a check to see if world.exe, eqlaunch.exe or zone.exe are running yet - so that clicking 'start' also starts the server if it's not running.

yes my bat file starts the server fine on its own but i did not start server first then hit start mabie that was the prob ill give it a try thanks

well it seems to be working now.. thanks.. another thing when it resets the server does it give an in game warning? and if not would it be hard to do that? maybe telnet to the server and broadcast server coming down half hour before and maybe 10 and 1 mins before?