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what is server wars and why do i get dced everytime it happens?

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3638, old post ID:23434

its when the server does its backup. There used to be a 15-30 minute window when the server did not save. You could cut up your HoMs, gamble your suits, do whatever you wanted without consequence. Not enough people participated and it was abolished, and at least once the server DID save. That could have been ugly. Now you just get the SW message and the server restarts.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3638, old post ID:23435

grapeberry wrote:what is server wars and why do i get dced everytime it happens?

Server wars is the time of day when the server restarts. It is called "server wars" because we used to have a 15 - 20 minute time frame where the shard would not save. So there was 15 - 20 minutes of free time where whatever you did in game did not count. Many players would go fight in bucaneer's den without fear of losing insurance or items because the server would not save during that time.

A while back, many players voted in preference of just having the server restart as it was an inconvenience for players to wait 15 minutes when they had no interest in using server wars to battle in bucaneer's den or felucca. Therefore the server just restarts now after a 5 minute warning before the shard restarts. The name "server wars" still exists for nostalgia purposes but we can look into rewriting the message so that it is a little more explanatory.

Server wars happen each day for two reasons:

1) Server wars is the time frame when the server gets uploaded with new scripts that add things to the game. So new items, systems, monster, pets, or quick changes are added in once the server reboots. Players are informed of larger updates in the news section (You can view the logs on the forum). Minor updates may also be added to the log but some are so small or don't affect players that they aren't usually worth mentioning (Such as developer additions which make our lives easier or small corrections).

2) When the server restarts, it gives it a time to refresh after the scripts goes in. Sometimes the admin will do updates on the server at this time to ensure that the server's performance is working alright.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3638, old post ID:23437

Yep pretty much it. As far as the backups go, that happens sometimes very late at night when the least people are on. There is a lock file that prevents the shard from saving if it decides to, so it would just skip a save. If shard saves while it's backing up, BAD - corruption/crash.

15 minutes before SW a script also runs that checks for a .7z patch file. If it finds it, it patches the server with that file so when it restarts it gets it's updates. This is done for larger updates where uploading multiple files is tedious and that its easier to just zip the whole thing and upload.

The restart is also to liberate any lost memory, and it also refreshes the maps with OSI's latest when there's a client update (I upload the maps to a special folder ahead of time).

Also if I need to do anything to the server that could potentially boot people off like restarting a critical service, I will do it then.

So yeah, lot of behind the scenes stuff happens at server wars.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3638, old post ID:23438