Minilogin question...
 

Hello guys!

Just a quick question. From my knowledge (already running a home EQ server/client on 2 pcs, local networked) minilogin.exe/miniloginaccounts.ini is used just for that.

However I wanted to see if I can get a friend of mine to connect to my server via Internet by giving him my externalIP to put it on eqhost.txt and of course make all relevant changes in my part like database/.inis etc. (both pcs use normal dialup/no firewalls)

I had little hope of course of succeeding but to my surprise it did connect! However that with 1 more time were the only times he manage that, rest 20 retries failed with a 1017 error from his side. Since I know a couple of things about it, I rechecked everything (DB/privileges/usernames/.INIs etc) and everything is done as I think it should be.

However it puzzled me why he did connect these times and not be able all the others, so I

Another recent post advises checking your NAT settings. Read the tutorial.

That is exactly how I am running mine. With both internal and external users. It does work. There are a bunch of posts in these forums with individual pieces that will help you out. I can't begin to try to explain why it worked then didn't work for you, but I can point out some key items that need to be set correctly or watched for. At times I had to recheck my configuration a few times before I had success, so maybe another viewpoint will help. All of this information was gleened from these boards and trial & error.

Minilogin --
Since you've correctly configured your miniaccounts.ini as you said, the key point for this is to send your external friend to a site like http://www.whatismyip.org and add their real IP to your miniaccounts.ini pointing to his account, which I presume you already added to the db. Once he tried to log in you will see an entry in the minilogin window along the lines of:
Matched xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx to 'user' <= xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is their IP, user is their ID you configured the IP to point to in the miniaccounts. Minilogin needs port 5999 forwarded to it if you have a router such as the dlink or linksys.

World --
World server needs port 9000 forwarded to it. Some key points about the first few lines of the loginserver.ini
[LoginServer]
loginserver=192.168.0.50
loginport=5999
worldname=Give Me A Name
worldaddress=myhost.no-ip.org
2nd line - loginserver - is the internal IP of the loginserver. Other posts said to use localhost or 127.0.0.1 but during my trial&error I changed every occasion to the real internal IP. I don't use the loopback or localhost anywhere.
3rd line is the port your minilogin is listening on, which you forwarded already.
4th line is worldname that cannot contain the word server and has to be within a certain number of characters that I can't recall at the moment.
5th line - worldaddress - is the EXTERNAL hostname I went and got for free at no-ip.org or dyndns, wherever. That external hostname points to your external internet IP of course. This plays a role in both the internal and external clients, see below.

Zones --
By default you start up 5 zones on ports 7995-7999. You'll need to forward those ports to your zone server, which if you run everything on one box will be straightforward because it is the same internal IP. In the batch file itself - Boot5zones.bat -
start zone . myhost.no-ip.org 7995 192.168.0.50
After the dot, you have to put the external hostname again, because when you have an external client, the world server will send them to a zone by having them connect to myhost.no-ip.org:7995. So if you put your internal IP in there, it works for you but not for them.
After the port number, you put your internal IP in there for your world server because that is the IP it uses to connect the zone to your world server, which is usually on the same box. Every line that starts zone should look the same except for the increasing port number. Note again, I didn't use localhost or the loopback, opting for the real internal IP.

EQHost.txt --
For your external client, it's easy:[/b]
[Registration Servers]
{
"myhost.no-ip.org:5999"
}
[Login Servers]
{
"myhost.no-ip.org:5999"
}

For my internal client I wanted some consistency. So I use the same exact eqhost.txt as above, but since I can't reach that address from the inside in most cases, I have to trick it. So on win2k/XP I edit the notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file and put an entry in for:
192.168.0.50 myhost.no-ip.org <= makes that host resolve to my servers internal IP, instead of having the internet DNS resolve it to the external IP.
On windows 95/98 I don't recall the path to the hosts file, but that is also listed somewhere on this forum.

Hope that helped you find your problem.


Little of this post is my own work. It was almost entirely gathered from these forums. For example, thanks Mattmeck on the forwarding. I guess if I was smart I would write up a step-by-step guide on running it behind a firewall for us poor 128k bandwidth users that can't put a real server up =b No promises though.

Dang, finally found the good post, and it was a sticky. I must be blind.

http://www.everquestserver.com/forum...pic.php?t=4177

Good post rmm99 :)

Thanks for the info rmm99. My question was more like if it can be done with minilogin.exe or not. I

Ok, it isnt DB issue cause I cannot even log on my usual account on my friends PC + I have tried it via the other way of eqlogin1.eqemulator.net. Same results.

Dunno if that is relevant but only time I manage to connect is from within my own PC. I changed eqhost.txt to say the myname.no-ip.org, miniloginaccount.ini to the new IP (my external IP) and fired up EQ which loaded with no errors.

I'm thinking that maybe the cause of this mess is with the connection between the 2 PCs... :?

capusr5,
my thoughts on this problem are leaning more towards a lag issue when it goes through the dns...
anyhow
the best idea is to try everything with just your standard external ip addy....
also, sometimes you think you have done everything right, but as human beings... or aliens sometimes... we do mess things up because we are imperfect... you should check everything that should be considered when trying to host a server and connecting to it once again... just double check, and once that has been done, post them here on the forums and im sure we will beable to help you.

I'm on rubyrhinosaur's boat in that it's latency from the connection. I've seen other posts regarding having issues when dialup is involved. EqEmu is in development and still seems to generate a lot of traffic which isn't always bad for broadband, but on your 56k modem which is only talking to your friend at 33.6k, I would believe you would have trouble. That would also explain why it worked at one point. Have you tried moving his character in the database to a completely empty zone where it doesn't have to send him the NPC information? It's a possibility I guess, but I'm just grasping at straws unfortunately.

I agree it's a latency problem however I'm going to disagree with the post 2 up from me; using a URL in place of an IP would not increase your latency. Your cleints will still be connecting to your external IP it just gets resolved by their ISPs DNS servers.

Thank you for your suggestions. If it was a lag issue wouldnt at least get me to character select screen as it doesnt even start loading after server selection?

Do you think its strange the fact as to why I can connect with no problems from my own PC to my PC again via Internet? That is I set up all .inis as if when I expect a client from outside, set up eqhost.txt to say my external IP and load up EQ.

In my understanding my EQ session knows nothing as to where is minilogin/world.exe (that is, it doesnt know they are on the same PC). Only thing it knows is that external IP which happenes to point to my PC so wouldnt I still have the same problems?

Not that this will help or hurt you, but fyi really. Your external IP address when you are dialed in to your ISP is still attached to your PPP adapter which is your modem connection. If you ping that address it does not bounce out to the internet and back because that is your PCs IP address and has the same net effect of pinging 127.0.0.1 because both that address and your DHCP- pulled "external" IP address are attached to your computer.

That said, if you use a dynamic dns provider and ping the hostname you gave yourself, then it will bounce out to your ISP for DNS resolution of that name, the ISPs DNS will tell you the IP, then you will still ping yourself.

Just wanting to clarify that connecting to your own PC is not sending the traffic out on the internet somewhere and back. If it does, and I can't think how it would, you have bigger issues =)

Assuming you've configured everything as listed in these posts, then it should work. It does work for you but not someone on the internet and thus the only questionable problem here is your latency.

I don't see it here yet, so I'll say that I'm curious what success your friend has connecting to a real broadband server that you can connect to by following the guides elsewhere in this forum.

sometimes i run into the same problems,... especially lately, with the newer versions of eqemu
everything has been done correctly, and well, sometimes it works, and on bad days it doesnt....
these are the days i notice that i have a slightly higher ping on other online games, even in the shell i get a bad ping

Guess your are correct rmm99, i didnt notice that my reply times when I ping my external IP is <1ms :)

As I just switched to my LAN setup and worked first try (as it should) then most probably its my connection. I didnt realize that EQEmu needs so much bandwith considering EQLive with 60 people raiding in same zone and with 30kbs connection produced no lag when I played it.

Hope the guys that work in EQemu development do something for us poor dial up users.

Thanks again!

Its being researched as we speek. Looking at the development / Linux forums there trying to track down whats causing this issue. Just be patient and it will be fixxed. :lol: