Corrupt Player Crashing Zone

[Baltros101]

Hi All,

I have a character on my test server that seems to be corrupted, and each time he tries to enter the world the zone crashes. This is on my test server and the binaries were updated and re-compiled updated yesterday with bots enabled. I created a new character, spawned some bots, and killed a few things. Then, suddenly after camping and repopping a bot, the client became unresponsive and the lag meter descended to 0%. Now, every time I log the character in the zone crashes. If anyone is in the zone when this character tries to enter, their lagmeter counts down from 100% to 0% and they're kicked. Players in other zones are fine, so this is purely this one zone (Feerrott).

I can create new characters, which can successfully spawn bots, so the server seems OK. Only this one character has become corrupt.

I have looked at the logs and there don't seem to be any errors, but the moment that the character logs in, the server terminal shows '[sudo] password for eqemu: ', but I can't type anything in, it's purely a terminal output. So, it seems like the server is trying to access something or do something that it can't.

This is only a test server with a test character, so I'm not concerned about deleting him, but I am concerned what's happened here and whether this could happen to a character I've invested a lot of time in. Has anyone seen this before please? And, can anyone suggest how to either fix this character or debug what's going on?

[joligario]

It’s probably trying to create the crash log. May want to check folder permissions.

[Baltros101]

Thanks. The logs directory and the zone directory within it are 755 owned by eqemu:eqemu. Is this where the crashlog goes, or should I provide access to a different folder. Somewhere in /var/log?

[Baltros101]

After some more testing, I have a reliable reproducible case here:


Create a human monk in Freeport
Create a human cleric bot
Spawn the bot and invite it to group
Wait for bot to finish buffing and stand still
Zone into East Freeport (should work with any zone)
As soon as you zone the zone crashes


This is with yesterday's server code and Titanium client, and expansion limited to PoP via the following method:

UPDATE variables SET value=15 WHERE varname='Expansions';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=4 WHERE rule_name = 'Expansion:CurrentExpansion';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=15 WHERE rule_name='World:ExpansionSettings';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=15 WHERE rule_name='Bots:BotExpansionSettings';

[joligario]

Thanks. The logs directory and the zone directory within it are 755 owned by eqemu:eqemu. Is this where the crashlog goes, or should I provide access to a different folder. Somewhere in /var/log?

Also possible it was trying to run gdb for you.

[Nukerella]

After some more testing, I have a reliable reproducible case here:


Create a human monk in Freeport
Create a human cleric bot
Spawn the bot and invite it to group
Wait for bot to finish buffing and stand still
Zone into East Freeport (should work with any zone)
As soon as you zone the zone crashes


This is with yesterday's server code and Titanium client, and expansion limited to PoP via the following method:

UPDATE variables SET value=15 WHERE varname='Expansions';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=4 WHERE rule_name = 'Expansion:CurrentExpansion';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=15 WHERE rule_name='World:ExpansionSettings';
UPDATE rule_values SET rule_value=15 WHERE rule_name='Bots:BotExpansionSettings';

Try using a rof2 client.

[Dhaymion]

If it was earlier in the day on 10/22, there was a bug introduced that caused issues similar to what you're describing. Have you updated your server since then?

[Baltros101]

Thanks for the replies all. Sorry for my late reply, it's been a busy week and I forgot to check this thread.

Also possible it was trying to run gdb for you.

Thanks. I haven't ever done much with C++, so I don't really know how to configure gdb to collect any logs or errors. If anyone is interested in the output of it then I can look into it, but I might need some advice on how to get it working.

Try using a rof2 client.

I'd be interested to know the result, but I don't have a copy of the client. My server is currently set to PoP expansion so I don't really have much need to try it out, other than maybe chasing down bugs.

If it was earlier in the day on 10/22, there was a bug introduced that caused issues similar to what you're describing. Have you updated your server since then?

I suspect this is probably the cause, I did indeed update my test server on Sat 23rd.

I think there were two things happening here: I had a DB issue of some kind, and also the code bug mentioned above. On Sunday after starting this thread I did a full reinstall of the server (dropped eqemu db from mysql, and rm'd the eqemu/server directory). After doing a full reinstall and enabling bots via the script, the crashing stopped.

What I noticed was that instead of crashing, the cleric was kicked from the group during zone. Also, even if the bot was camped, he would re-appear each zone. Sometimes he would act like he was kicked from the group, but was still showing in the group window and couldn't be removed.

So, at least this left the server in a playable state and meant that my characters weren't actually being corrupted. Based on Dhaymion's suggestion I will update my test server over the weekend and see if it's still happening.