NS4 is on a linux server. We're good there, plenty of knowledge for using stuff and tracking down issues, plenty of knowledge of what happens after it leaves that system. Lacking for system architecture/application knowledge, and shopping for answers to a few questions.
We use a screen tty to run nwserver and ld_preload a network handler and nwnx onto that (standard procedure), stdin/out is suppressed through nwserver flag--not sure if that really works or helps much, new screen version has problems reattaching usefully. Rare for a game nwserver is compiled with debug (well that was a happy accident I think). We use the standard ulimit = nothing and sic gdb on the process if we really need to track something down (rarely), because we can't make heads or tails of a stack dump anyway
Nutshell server info:
OS: Ubuntu 10.04LTS. 2.6.32pae kernel (last I checked don't think 3 is in general release yet).
Hardware was checked for linux friendliness, I can find the details if needed, just mobo/cpu/disks, nothing exciting.
So specific questions that are plaguing us:
- If you loop a script to that involves setting ld_preload, do you need to unset it for the next loop or will it die with the process? (Note this is in a screen session.) Would it hurt to just throw in an unset LD_PRELOAD before setting it in the script that starts the server?
- Does chase smell bad when wet?
- Elven has some new magic here we want to investigate http://www.nwnx.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1775 cmake project for things nwnx compiled on debian. We use some of his compiles (leto is old and should be replaced but...) now. Is there a reason beyond mysql linker that things could explode? Beyond gdb, and app specific logs, what kinds of places or apps should we use to collect info to figure out why something is exploding?
There's a few more niggling details, that I'll ask when I remember them. Thx for helping ns run smoother.
Oh, nwserver was compiled on some ancient red hat install with out of date libraries for 2006. It's only available as binary, but generally runs not horribly excepting file i/o and the general shoddy game code (that's normal for a game).