ShowEQ 4.3.18 unknown spawn discussions

[Alfred]

I have to believe it is a sequence of unique opcodes. Similar to what happened (i'm assuming) the last time.

I'm seeing it happen again in HoH right now.

[tamasine]

ok - it's nothing to do with high volume/overloading. i'm still getting unknowns with nothing but everquest on the network.. and seemingly in all zones - though a random time before it looses synch ;(

[Dedpoet]

Any chance you guys with the problem are having the PC go to suspend mode?

I only bring this up because I run seq on a laptop. The BIOS is set up to go to low power only if the AC power is not plugged in. Last night, I bumped the laptop with my elbow and didn't notice I knocked the AC adaptor free. A few minutes later the screen blanked. I realized what had happened and plugged the adaptor back in, but from then on I had unknown spawns.

It's the first time I ever had the problem with .18 and once I zoned I didn't see it again all night. Maybe the PC is going into an idle mode and the nic is getting powered off briefly and misses some packets. I'm not a harware expert at that level, but something to consider anyway.

[tamasine]

hrm... i think i might notice suspending the pc and back. no, it's not that. (desktop, power mgmt disabled)

problem still exists in seq5

[Zaphod]

If it is only 1 to 4 unknowns I wouldn't worry too much. If, however, ShowEQ is losing sync for some reason that could be a real problem.

First, try increasing the "Arq Seq Give Up" parameter under "Network" --> "Advanced" to 384 or 512 and see if that improves the behaviour. If it does, great, it just means that the EQ servers are having to retransmit packets more frequently to you

If that doesn't improve the behaviour, and you don't mind surrendering some level of anonymity to me you can e-mail me a packet recording that exhibits the problem.

To do this you would use the '--record-filename=<FILENAME>' command line option when launching ShowEQ. Then you should go through a session and attempt to reproduce the problem. If you are able to reproduce the problem, stop the EQ session, compress the recorded packet stream (preferably with bzip2) and e-mail it to me at [email protected]. At which point I should be able to reproduce the problem.

All information in the packet recording will be maintained in the strictest confidence.

This was how we resolved the last problem that caused ShowEQ to lose sync. The last time we were having a problem it turned out to have been caused by a previously uknown bit in the packet header being set and ShowEQ not knowing how to handle it.

Thanks and Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)

[tamasine]

arq seq giveup set to 1024 .. still looses it. it's veery odd.. i've had a synch fail before i finished zoning (!) - to the degree that seq4 had missed part of the new-zone info (new map loaded, all spawnpoints as for last zone). seq5 seemed to be winning 'till it lost it 20 mins in.

i'll try to find a damn-fast(tm) zone that looses it and record

[tamasine]

is there a way to turn recording on while seq is running?
i ask because the problem may be connected with seq runtime:
at the point where every zone produces unknowns, and zoning to BB nothing decoded. i restarted seq in record mode.. and everything worked.

failing that i'll just have to try a low-traffic zone and hope the log isn't too big.

with seq5 i'm seeing fewer "synch lost" messages - more it just fails silently, chat output drops to only what i emit rahter than everything, and in the worst cases it doesn't see zoning at all. (crossing PoT with seq showing PoI + smartie spawns)

[reaver]

I was doing some searches of a problem I was noticing with 5.0.0.3 last night and came up with this thread seems to be the closest related.

I haven't seen any Unknown Spawns, but it seems that some items, notably horses and player corpses do not get removed from the list/map when they are removed from the game.

Meaning, if you summon a horse, then click it off and move, it still shows your mount being left behind and there even tho physically there is nothing there.

This also happened with player corpses (not NPC corpses). If someone died and got rezzed, looted their corpse, it would still show the corpse on the map/spawn list.

Is this just a matter of me increasing my ARQ (missing packets), or is this more of a case of a bug that spawns aren't being cleared when receiving the despawn packet?

Thanks in advance. If you want me to do any --record-filename capturing or testing let me know.

-reaver

[tamasine]

i'm getting everything from "zone - 10 spawns.. all unknown" to "zone, all spawns there. move around. a few minutes later, corpses don't happen - mobs just stay there, unknowns appear" i've changed network hardware (no change at all), and sent a record to zaphod of a mild case.

hmm.. at the moment i'm in PoT with no skittles at all - only 41 unknowns (64 players in zone). the spawnpoints are for PoK but map is PoT. it's all a bit annoying since so few people have this problem :-(

for name tracking, seq is only useable for me on zone entry.. most of the time.

[S_B_R]

Sounds like Packet Loss to me, or perhaps too much extreneous traffic on your network.

[Cryonic]

or maybe not all the opcodes are correct yet. I see mana movement in the console, but no longer see hp movement (or even total hp any longer).

[tamasine]

Originally posted by S_B_R
Sounds like Packet Loss to me, or perhaps too much extreneous traffic on your network.

wish it was. 512kb ADSL with no traffic other than EQ - and it's just as bad as the same network with 50k down, 20k up bittorrent running.

[S_B_R]

Originally posted by tamasine
wish it was. 512kb ADSL with no traffic other than EQ - and it's just as bad as the same network with 50k down, 20k up bittorrent running.

I wasn't really refering to your Internet connection. I was more refering to your internal network, perhaps if you could describe your network Topology it may provide some insight.

One thing you could try is running some simple pings between your EQ machine and you SEQ Machine. In windows

ping -t 1.1.1.1

Where 1.1.1.1 is the IP of your linux box. In Linux

ping 2.2.2.2

Where 2.2.2.2 is the IP of your windows box. CRTL-C to break out of both of those. See if there are any dropped packets on either system.

Next thing to try would be ping a box on the internet from your EQ machine.

ping -t 64.37.156.21

Then while that's running go to your SEQ box and do

tcpdump -i eth0 -n | grep 64.37.156.21 | grep icmp

While both of those are running you should see 2 messages on your linux box for every 1 message on your windows box.

64.37.156.21 is patch.station.sony.com btw.

[SeqTester]

If this was already posted I am sorry. I did not read all the previous posts.

I saw someone talking about synch fail, a good way to tell if it is this or just a "Bad Packet" is after you get a "synch fail" and you Buff yourself it shouldn’t show the Buffs... Actually shouldn’t show ANY spells your casting.


ST.

[tamasine]

Originally posted by S_B_R
I wasn't really refering to your Internet connection. I was more refering to your internal network, perhaps if you could describe your network Topology it may provide some insight.

i think you missed my point. that's my connection speed, and eq is all that's on the network. running tcpdump on the ethernet shows *nothing* but EQ (no ssh - on console). equally, if it were dropped packets then saturating the link should make it worse.. nothing changes.

it's ADSL -> NAT router -> ethernet hub (tried two) with seq on a seperate box. having had and tracked connection problems in the past ('02) when my ISP instituted anti-DOS code which had the lovely effect of dropping eq packets, i've seen eq packet traces before - and these look perfectly normal.

i did all that pinging just for kicks, and got no dropped packets anywhere. honestly. the network works.. and this problem started after a patch (or a seq update, but they're obviously slightly in tandem)