FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I need help to configure server fo most speed. Also i need minetest.conf optimized for powerfull server because players see lags then players online become more than 30 but hosting load only 50%. (does default minetest.conf suitable for any hosting?).
Parameters of server: CPU 2x Intel Xeon 5660 2.8GHz, 12Mb Cache, 6.40 GT/s; RAM 4Gb DDR3-1060; HDD 4 x Western Digital RE4 WD1003FBYX, 7200rpm, 64Mb Cache - RAID10; Connection speed (tested by wget) - 73M/s. Version of minetestsrver 0.4.12. This is VDS with ssh.

amadin wrote:Please write in PM.

Why? The goal of a forum is also to build a knowledge base, thus it is better to post back-up scripts and such publicly.

Calinou wrote:

amadin wrote:Please write in PM.

Why? The goal of a forum is also to build a knowledge base, thus it is better to post back-up scripts and such publicly.

You right - i updated my first post.

Dear amadin,

I can not help you with your request, but maybe you want to over think the how you ask questions.
Here is an short essay¹, which explains how your questions is going to interpreted by other people.
Do not get my wrong. It is OK, to ask for support, but in the end the online reason, why people answering questions, resolving problems is because they want the community to grow².

In the first place, the fact that your server does not work, has nothing to do with minetest.
In the second place, linux can not handle "fall down" nicely(assuming you mean hardware problems) an is unforgiving when this happens a lot.
In the third place, a application only hardly can handle something which the OS is not able to.

Since I know nothing about your problems, you have many, many options.
Forget setting up a minetest server, when you can not get your machine running smoothly!
Since it is by know means the responsibility of the minetest community to fix your server, here are 3 options:
1. Talk to your local/remote administrator
2. Read the essay and then ask in the irc of your linux distro, if they can help you fix this behaviour.
3. If and only if it is an crash of the minetest server, while the machine runs fluidly write a post. Where you name the mods you use, post all relevant log files and post a text when and how the minetest server crashes(the keyword is "being able to reproduce the error in a controlled environment")

I do not play cop nor admin. I try to give you a feedback, which you can learn from, as direct as possible.
Also in your post you did not mention anything about ssh. When it is not important, leave it out from the subject.
If you want to communicate to us that you have no physical access to the server please state so.
If thats the case you can also talk with the tech support of your hoster(i assume it is an commercial one).
Please have a nice time, when not tech support is available from your hoster, talk with the community of your distro.
If you do not know what distro you are using. You should get more familiar with your system and the community before you handle the burden of being the admin of a server. In this case you`ve been warned.

PS: When you want to find out your distro, you can google, how you do this.
____________________
1 Guide to teach how to ask technical questions in a way more likely to get a satisfactory answer : http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
2 vague over generalisation, individual motives vary a lot, but it is precise enough for this purpose

I hope you do not feel harassed or anything, have a nice time and read the guide/essay.
wintermute

Wha? ^^

Couldn't you figure out how to say that in like... a sentence our two?
o_0

amadin wrote:I need help to configure server fo most speed. Also i need minetest.conf optimized for powerfull server because players see lags then players online become more than 30 but hosting load only 50%. (does default minetest.conf suitable for any hosting?).

Which OS does you server use? Ubuntu?

Which backend do you use? sqlite?

Is that 73Mbit/s or 73MByte/s? If it's wget with default option then it's MB/s.

Do you use Minetest from the repo, or did you compile it?

Which mods do you use?

What kind of lag? Network lag or update lag?



Take a look at the example config. It has many comments:

https://github.com/celeron55/minetest/b ... nf.example

You can change how many blocks are send to client, how often updates are send to the server and so on.

-Debian without X server
-map.sqlite
-wget default option (wget -O /dev/null http://mirror.yandex.ru/altlinux/p7/ima ... rmh.img.gz)
-repository
-mods:
Some mods i deleted or modified because they crached server.
-about lags i know from players - game sometimes froze but tolerable

I used modified config by Lag (https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9588), today i use default config for comparison, 29 peoples online - pieces of world load a long delay (cpu 60%, ram 455mb, network 3Mb/sec (iftop)). Yesturday was uptime more 12 hours (after this time i did restart), but online was no more 20 peoples. If i compile server from source, it will be much faster? After last crash (more 30 peoples online) i wached vds load log and saw ended of ram (4gb), swap is turn off, but size of map.sqlite is 260mb, /players/ 960kb.

I have copy of minetest.conf.example but i think some comments are incomplete and i'm afraid to change parameters, for example:
so if i have 4gb ram i must set 163 840 (4096*40)??? or what is forceloaded blocks?

About craches without logs - it was because of the mods bugs. Why mods or server do not write to logfile name of bad mod then it crache server? I see in log only recent actions of the players but this not help me.

Server crashed again (uptime 4-6 hours) - 32 peoples online, in logs again this line is last "compassgps writing settings". But i tested compass and find nothing. If i do not get help i probably close server.

amadin wrote:I used modified config by Lag (https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9588),

That is a good thread. Good that you found it, i forgot that it existed.

If i compile server from source, it will be much faster?

No, compiling in itself does not change the performance. But if you want to use Redis or LevelDB you might need to compile it yourself, not sure if the Debian build has those backends included.

i wached vds load log and saw ended of ram (4gb), swap is turn off, but size of map.sqlite is 260mb, /players/ 960kb.

What do you mean with VDS?

You should not turn of swap! Swap is used if RAM is full or to get rarely used pages (memory regions) out of RAM, so the RAM can be used for the file cache and other things.

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

# This is a trade-off between sqlite transaction overhead and
# memory consumption (4096=100MB, as a rule of thumb)
#max_clearobjects_extra_loaded_blocks = 4096

so if i have 4gb ram i must set 163 840 (4096*40)??? or

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

# Maximum number of forceloaded blocks
#max_forceloaded_blocks = 16

what is forceloaded blocks?

Not sure about the first, but you shouldn't need to touch it if you don't use the/clearobjects commandon your server.

Minetest only loads blocks that are in range of players. With forceload you can force that they are loaded even if not immediately needed. For example: You have some machine build with mesecons. When nobody is in range, the block with the machine gets unloaded. You can use mods that force that this block is loaded. And with this setting you can limit the amount of blocks that are loaded forcibly at the same time. A block is 16x16x16 nodes.

VDS is a hosting, maybe if i turned on swap my server was not crashed after ended of ram, about minetest.conf i wrote those questions only for examle, in fact i not undestand there a lot more options. Do you know enybody from team of developers with whom I can speak about changes in wiki servers partition?

If the average RAM usage of Minetest is half a gigabyte, and it spikes to 4GB, then swap might not help. At least if it is a memory leak. But nevertheless it is a good idea to have swap enabled.

You can try the IRC chat, most devs are there:

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#minetest

More bugged server than minetestserver i not saw, uptime record is 15 hours, today i see what server crashed as normally and can't restart with autorestart script - and what do you think the reason of this? Size of map.sqlite became 0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Server can't load because wordl was erased, i don't know how, i don't want to delve in logs, because i weary from this bugged minetest server. I don't backup yesturday so i close my "[RU] Russians Ama" server because it is a horror - hard deep horror - but not server of minetest. Dear developers, if you read this please do not publish that budded servers even in testing repository. I now understand why so few good servers.

Just thought I'd put some thoughts in.

RAM 4Gb DDR3-1060

4 Gb of RAM is nothing these days, bare minimum (optimal) for many operating systems. Also the RAM is only 1066 Mhz speed.

If your motherboard and processor can run it, get 16 Gb of RAM running at least at 1600 Mhz. Faster is better.

Then you can create a RAM drive and run your server straight from RAM. Load the entire Minetest package into the RAM drive and run it from there. Much of the lag is likely to be coming from read/write caching on the harddrive. Professional servers don't run from harddrives, instead they use massive banks of RAM.

There's something else you could try if your BIOS gives the option - turn off cacheing on your harddrive and see if it makes much difference, but this means you'll not be able to do anything else while you're running the minetest server.

Cheers,

Andrew.

slopsbucket wrote:Just thought I'd put some thoughts in.

RAM 4Gb DDR3-1060

4 Gb of RAM is nothing these days, bare minimum (optimal) for many operating systems. Also the RAM is only 1066 Mhz speed.

If your motherboard and processor can run it, get 16 Gb of RAM running at least at 1600 Mhz. Faster is better.

Then you can create a RAM drive and run your server straight from RAM. Load the entire Minetest package into the RAM drive and run it from there. Much of the lag is likely to be coming from read/write caching on the harddrive. Professional servers don't run from harddrives, instead they use massive banks of RAM.

There's something else you could try if your BIOS gives the option - turn off cacheing on your harddrive and see if it makes much difference, but this means you'll not be able to do anything else while you're running the minetest server.

Cheers,

Andrew.

There's no point getting more RAM than you'll ever need for a Minetest server.

amadin wrote:More bugged server than minetestserver i not saw, uptime record is 15 hours, today i see what server crashed as normally and can't restart with autorestart script

Hoping you aren't using my mod, it's mostly a WIP

trukoil wrote:

amadin wrote:More bugged server than minetestserver i not saw, uptime record is 15 hours, today i see what server crashed as normally and can't restart with autorestart script

Hoping you aren't using my mod, it's mostly a WIP

No