Zone.exe Crashing

[John Adams]

I see this will probably get the same flood of interested responses as it has the last 6 years this problem has been brought up aka, none.

Can anyone who runs a WINDOWS EQEmu server, confirm that zones crash when players log in under certain conditions? I'd like to know it's not just me, or maybe some missing SQL patch, or a bad compile, or config, or or or, anything >I< have done wrong.

I have 20 dynamic zones, and every couple days I check both servers, 1/2 of them are wiped out caught in a JIT error waiting for me to clear it so they can reboot. This is ridiculous.

I do not remember seeing this problem on Linux, but that may be because in Linux the zone simply reboots quietly. I think I'll be switching both my EQEmu servers BACK to linux this week... sigh. Just makes it harder to debug issues, which is why I moved to Windows in the first place.


So really, devs? experts? community gurus? You got nothing?

[trevius]

Originally Posted by John Adams

I think I'll be switching both my EQEmu servers BACK to linux this week... sigh. Just makes it harder to debug issues, which is why I moved to Windows in the first place.

Why is debugging issues harder on Linux? You can use GDB to evaluate core dumps on linux, which gives better insight into the cause of crashes than I know of from any Windows tools.

I am actually in the process of setting up a Windows server to see if it is more stable than my Linux server. I will still need to find a good debug tool that I can run full-time on a production server with players on it though.

On Linux, I run into a few different types of zone crashes that I haven't been able to pin down to any exact issue yet. One of them is during the Zone::ShutDown() process when it reloads quests. The other main crash I see is during the RemoveCurrent() process when a client is removed from a zone (zoning out or died).

I am not aware of any crashes related to zoning into a dynamic zone with a permanent pet. Though, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the cause of some of the crashes I see, since they are almost all during the zoning process somewhere.

I know many of the pet related crashes from the past have been resolved, but I think there are still some remaining that we just don't have a 100% way of reproducing so they can be isolated. That is just a theory though, based on my own suspicions on the crashes I currently get.

My other suspicion on my own crashes are that they are perl related. We have a wide variety of scripts and I am sure there are issues in some of them.

[John Adams]

Thank you, to those that are attempting to be helpful by not being flaming, retarded noob trolls


Trev, thanks for the tips. I do know how to debug using gdb, bt, and whatnot, but what I was getting at by using Windows and VS2010 was an attempt to use a GUI that I am familiar with to see exactly what's missing, causing the crashes.


The problem with spinning off 20 zones using VS2010 debug are simply the resources allocated to this one VM. That, and a horrid lack of interest in really solving someone elses bug (I have my own project to worry about )


By posting here, I was merely hoping to stir up interest in solving a problem that, regardless of the generalizations mentioned here, have been happening for years... on various databases, including the PEQ ones I used to run.


I will set up my Linux server once again, and this time try and pay attention of Zone (binary) crashes there too, or if it's just my crappy Windows environment(s).

Thanks again.