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Server Limit Map Update Checks?

Mopquill

Active member
Mar 10, 2010
28
0
Is there any way to limit the frequency of map updates? I'm using the Windows dedicated server at the moment, and it seems to check for map updates every 60 seconds, and then hits hard disk and memory to do this.

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Disclaimer: Googling the issue and searching these forums mostly leads to either people not knowing any solution, or threads here with a user named "�omano" gaslighting people telling them that this is either not an issue, or things like "OS do actually check surely way more thing that you apparently imagine, every second" which is false, and insane. �omano, if you read this, do not bother posting in this thread. I do not want your "help". You are a registered user, and I don't want you crapping on my thread making it look like you resolved my ignorance.

With that out of the way, Tripwire, this is silly. You really don't need to check for update to the entire map list every 60 seconds -- if checking all maps takes 60 seconds or more, this just constantly has a task going that adds to CPU wait, checking the same maps which, frankly, are barely updated nowadays. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to check for updates to all maps upon server start (possibly with a flag to disable this in cases of large amounts of maps), and to check a map's up-to-date status before loading it. The idea that all maps need to be updated every minute regardless of which maps you might be actually playing on to keep a consistent state (never mind your not checking stock maps update status) is overkill. It might make sense in the case of a linux server via colocation with high concurrency where resources are far more available, but as a side thing for my friends and I on one of my home computers, it's incredibly wasteful and inconvenient.

While I think changing this default behavior would be most desirable, I also understand it's probably a pain, so even just a flag to change the update frequency (or turn it off) would be incredibly helpful.

P.S. Tripwire, use utf8mb4/utf8mb4_unicode_ci for your database character set/collation, and serve pages with meta tags indicating the character set is utf8, with PHP using utf8 to resolve the � issue in usernames/posts, etc.
 
Of course I will reply, you're calling me on, so here I am!

Everything has been said in the other thread , whether you accept it or not (even what I said about the OS, which does apparently what you don't know, but an unmeasurable number of operation per seconds.. all the time). By the way, thread which, like this one, was not in the proper forum. Workshop does not create any significant load on the game server, like at all, as I said in the other thread, what you are experiencing here is a bug in the current windows server build, which creates a huge load on the CPU, Memory, and especially the Disk activity. What you are showing here is not normal behavior (unless it is currently writing to disk after/during download of map but that would be silly to complain then, or completely misleading) and instead of writing to random places on the forum, people like you with the problem should write a proper bug report of the problem for it to be looked at and solved. To this day as far as I know no Bug Report opened for this specific problem (right? we're talking about workshop constantly using your disk, right? because this is not even clear in this thread).

As said in the other thread, there is also no setting to configure the workshop checks, so as said in the other thread, open a proper thread in the suggestion forum if you really want it, you would be two people at least (and sure there may be more if one of you took the time to write proper thread in proper place) to back the idea, which isn't that bad actually as I also said in the other thread. I could even back you as I'm not against more settings in the end. (Just that current state of workshop checks just has no negative impact on server or machine performance. At all, Like none whatsoever).

On a side not, for the UTF thing, it's been years that we ask LOT of problem like this to be solved (funny not only on forum but also in their games.. lol webadmin is ****ed up since RO1, they don't natively use UTF8 as encoding) but they don't care. I personally received as an answer to this specific matter for UTF8 in forum webserver/SQL that I'm one out of 8 people using stupid characters in my name, from a TWI staff.. so yeah, deal with the shitty forum they don't give a ****.
 
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omano;n2315114 said:
Of course I will reply, you're calling me on, so here I am!
Nah, dude, you're full of it. I'm sure you'd comment either way because you fancy yourself knowledgeable, and posting here reinforces that. I specifically asked you not to comment because you tell people the they are experiencing problems are not problems, and you phrase stuff as "whether you accept it or not" -- you make it sound like it's solved, and it's not. You are not a developer or staff member here, attempting to speak definitively on matters you don't understand and don't deal with (you, by your own admission, don't even use a Windows server) is arrogant.

omano;n2315114 said:
even what I said about the OS, which does apparently what you don't know, but an unmeasurable number of operation per seconds.. all the time
If I disagree with you, it's not because I don't know something. Operating Systems do not check for updates every second, that would be an immense waste of resources -- as it also is in this case. It's also not unmeasurable, there are utilities for measuring this exact sort of thing -- it's not beyond our fathoming whatsoever.

omano;n2317636 said:
By the way, thread which, like this one, was not in the proper forum.
This forum is literally called "Dedicated Server Support". Besides that, you're not a moderator; I have no interest in your opinions of where posts belong.

omano;n2317636 said:
Workshop does not create any significant load on the game server, like at all, as I said in the other thread, what you are experiencing here is a bug in the current windows server build, which creates a huge load on the CPU, Memory, and especially the Disk activity. What you are showing here is not normal behavior (unless it is currently writing to disk after/during download of map but that would be silly to complain then, or completely misleading)
Incorrect. Besides tons of users reporting the issue here and being handily shut down by yourself, no less, this problem is easily reproducible on Windows. If you add a bunch of maps to the Steam Workshop section in PCServer-KFEngine.ini via [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.KFWorkshopSteamworks], it will try to download them. I don't know if it's reading or verifying maps or what, but it hits the disk pretty hard. It does this every sixty seconds, or, if you have enough maps, constantly. Additionally, if you remove these lines, the server magically no longer uses these disk resources. Crazy, right? It's almost like they're related issues. Unfortunately, removing the lines also removes players' ability to download maps automatically via workshop upon connecting to your server. Currently, my best idea of a workaround is removing these lines and throwing up a web archive of maps, but I'd like to avoid that route if possible.

omano;n2317636 said:
instead of writing to random places on the forum, people like you with the problem should write a proper bug report of the problem for it to be looked at and solved. To this day as far as I know no Bug Report opened for this specific problem
And you're just ever so helpful that you have not attempted to link this bug tracker to anyone, nor mentioned it such a bug to anyone that could do something about it. Link me to wherever the hell I need to be to get someone to listen and possibly fix this.

omano;n2317636 said:
Just that current state of workshop checks just has no negative impact on server or machine performance. At all, Like none whatsoever
Wrong. Again. It shouldn't, but it does. As a wild guess, it appears the server is hashing the map file actively (every sixty seconds?), or downloading a copy and comparing them against each other or something. And again, if you remove these lines, it reverts back to an incredibly light piece of server software.

I know I'm coming off harsh here, and I intend to. I realize you think this problem is not what people are reporting it as, and in some way, you probably think you're being helpful. And hell, you're probably ordinarily very helpful around here. But you are dead wrong about this particular issue. Maybe there's also the bug you're speaking of, maybe these two bugs are related. Maybe they're unrelated and exacerbating each other. But the idea that we need to check for updates to every single map on a server every sixty seconds in a queue is a ludicrous waste of resources. Workshop actually seemed to rate-limit my IP from the sheer number of requests coming in. Of course, this didn't stop the server from hitting the disk for some reason, it still needed to hash or whatever it's doing. Using something like Procmon just shows that it's accessing all the map files.

omano;n2317636 said:
On a side not, for the UTF thing, it's been years that we ask LOT of problem like this to be solved (funny not only on forum but also in their games.. lol webadmin is ****ed up since RO1, they don't natively use UTF8 as encoding) but they don't care. I personally received as an answer to this specific matter for UTF8 in forum webserver/SQL that I'm one out of 8 people using stupid characters in my name, from a TWI staff.. so yeah, deal with the ****ty forum they don't give a ****.
That is garbage. If there's an edge case for even one user, or one potential user, it should be solved, especially when it's trivial to do, as in this case. It's very unfortunate that they don't care.
 
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This forum is literally called "Dedicated Server Support". Besides that, you're not a moderator; I have no interest in your opinions of where posts belong.

You're right, I saw it in General Discussion, my mistake.

Incorrect. Besides tons of users reporting the issue here and being handily shut down by yourself, no less, this problem is easily reproducible on Windows. If you add a bunch of maps to the Steam Workshop section in PCServer-KFEngine.ini via [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.KFWorkshopSteamworks], it will try to download them. I don't know if it's reading or verifying maps or what, but it hits the disk pretty hard. It does this every sixty seconds, or, if you have enough maps, constantly. Additionally, if you remove these lines, the server magically no longer uses these disk resources. Crazy, right? It's almost like they're related issues. Unfortunately, removing the lines also removes players' ability to download maps automatically via workshop upon connecting to your server. Currently, my best idea of a workaround is removing these lines and throwing up a web archive of maps, but I'd like to avoid that route if possible.

This is not normal behavior, as I said already multiple times. Need to make a bug report, in the Bug Report section or directly to TWI support website.

And you're just ever so helpful that you have not attempted to link this bug tracker to anyone, nor mentioned it such a bug to anyone that could do something about it. Link me to wherever the hell I need to be to get someone to listen and possibly fix this.

Come on, this specific forum I referred is literally called BUG REPORT, you need me to take your hand to this forum? I don't think so. So yeah, In forum Killing Floor 2, go to the BUG REPORT sub forum. I will not report a bug I can not reproduce myself, I don't own Windows server so I will not report a bug I can't reproduce on Linux and seems to impact only Windows servers owners. Simple as that. The people you need to contact are the active TWI staff members you always seen replying in the forum for example:
Foster Parent Kittenmittens


Wrong. Again. It shouldn't, but it does. As a wild guess, it appears the server is hashing the map file actively (every sixty seconds?), or downloading a copy and comparing them against each other or something. And again, if you remove these lines, it reverts back to an incredibly light piece of server software.
As said, again, this is not normal workshop behavior and should be reported as a bug with proper information to make TWI look at it quicker. Workshop works with simple file to check if map is up to date or not, it does not check the file hash or anything. It compares versions and dates saved in a text file. really simple and does not impact server at all when working correctly.

I know I'm coming off harsh here, and I intend to. I realize you think this problem is not what people are reporting it as, and in some way, you probably think you're being helpful. And hell, you're probably ordinarily very helpful around here. But you are dead wrong about this particular issue. Maybe there's also the bug you're speaking of, maybe these two bugs are related. Maybe they're unrelated and exacerbating each other. But the idea that we need to check for updates to every single map on a server every sixty seconds in a queue is a ludicrous waste of resources. Workshop actually seemed to rate-limit my IP from the sheer number of requests coming in. Of course, this didn't stop the server from hitting the disk for some reason, it still needed to hash or whatever it's doing. Using something like Procmon just shows that it's accessing all the map files.
How am I dead wrong, when you don't even know that 100% disk activity all the time is not normal behavior of workshop for KF2 servers. And again, already said that, I admit every 60 second may seem little too often, but it does not impact server at all unless you don't even have the resources to handle a proper 6 player HOE game to begin with (aka having a toaster for server machine, on a 56K connection). For the other 'problem' (which in my opinion is not, it just floods the log that's all) If you want a new setting for the workshop checks frequency, I suggest, again, to open a thread in the suggestion forum.
 
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"I know I'm coming off harsh here, and I intend to..."

Let's not start with the intent to be harsh, please. Else that attitude will spread. Other people will start being harsh. I'll start being harsh. The whole party atmosphere will be spoiled.

So, issues, problems? Ask me and I'll go look and pester developers and see what can be discovered, but let's intend to be at least rational, reasonable, patient if not pleasant. Por favor.

Mopquill @�omano
 
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omano;n2317645 said:
This is not normal behavior, as I said already multiple times. Need to make a bug report, in the Bug Report section or directly to TWI support website.
Define normal. It's happening on multiple computers I've tried, in multiple test cases, with different configs (even test ones only making the changes suggested in the wiki), and on my friends' servers. Yes, it's not desirable behavior, but if it's happening 100% of the time on a specific server branch, one can't act like it's some weird edge case.


omano;n2317645 said:
Come on, this specific forum I referred is literally called BUG REPORT, [...] So yeah, In forum Killing Floor 2, go to the BUG REPORT sub forum.
You've neglected to mention until now that it was a forum (your phrasing in this thread was "To this day as far as I know no Bug Report"), only insisting that users ought to be filing bug reports without any indication, either official or from you -- on where that is. You're expecting people to know an awful lot, and acting like you said things you haven't simply because you know them. Additionally, there are a ton of forums and subforums here, arranged seemingly arbitrarily under other forums or only visible in certain areas.

omano;n2317645 said:
you need me to take your hand to this forum? I don't think so.
Seriously? You will write essays in threads you are specifically asked not to comment in, but can't link a subforum to someone while trying to direct them to it!?

For anyone reading this and looking for this forum, you can follow this link.

omano;n2317645 said:
I will not report a bug I can not reproduce myself, I don't own Windows server so I will not report a bug I can't reproduce on Linux and seems to impact only Windows servers owners. Simple as that. The people you need to contact are the active TWI staff members you always seen replying in the forum for example:
Foster Parent Kittenmittens
That would ordinarily be fair enough, but seeing what trouble and lengths you go to to stifle the voices of people trying to report them, you'd think you might give it a casual mention. Nowhere is it clear that in the application of Steam community where one is meant to go to report this sort of thing, and "The Bug Report" could just as easily be for client bugs, with Dedicated Server Support being for server bugs. I have no idea what scope is in this community as I am not a regular here. Again, assuming me to know something that is poorly designed is just going to have you, TWI staff, and users trying to be helpful wasting their time.

omano;n2317645 said:
As said, again, this is not normal workshop behavior
You don't know what you're talking about it. It *is* typical behavior on the current Windows version. Tested on 7, 8.1, and 10. I don't expect you to know the details of this issue, but I do expect you not to go on talking like you do if you don't.

omano;n2317645 said:
and should be reported as a bug with proper information to make TWI look at it quicker. Workshop works with simple file to check if map is up to date or not, it does not check the file hash or anything. It compares versions and dates saved in a text file. really simple and does not impact server at all when working correctly.
I agree, it should be doing that, but that is not what is happening.

omano;n2317645 said:
How am I dead wrong, when you don't even know that 100% disk activity all the time is not normal behavior of workshop for KF2 servers. And again, already said that, I admit every 60 second may seem little too often, but it does not impact server at all unless you don't even have the resources to handle a proper 6 player HOE game to begin with (aka having a toaster for server machine, on a 56K connection). For the other 'problem' (which in my opinion is not, it just floods the log that's all) If you want a new setting for the workshop checks frequency, I suggest, again, to open a thread in the suggestion forum.
I do know that. Your narrative is that since we disagree, there must be something I don't know. I've been working with computers pretty much my entire life, and I've been doing so professionally for 14 years. Also, it wasn't "100% disk activity", but it's bogging up the i/o wait and bringing us to roughly 60% - 70% disk usage in the simplistic way Windows likes to present it.

Incorrect, again. If the maps you're checking for updates to exceed the total time of 60 seconds to look up, it creates an endless cycle with an ever-growing queue. And considering you're also trying to run the server at the same time, regardless of how negligible the resources it takes are, it is necessarily greater than the amount of resources it would need without it. I've got an Intel i7, a good motherboard, 16GB of RAM, 8TB of disk space across 3 drives @ 7200rpm, and a good SSD. The issue is not my resources.

Regarding it flooding the log, I don't care, I didn't even say that. You're assuming I did because other people have complained about that in the past with this issue. I can just put in a suppress entry if it's "bugging" me.

Second post regarding the bug below:
 
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"should I still file a bug report (or post in The Bug Report, as may be applicable here)"

Well, not now, but in future it will save time and stress. If you find something, just write a basic a bug report and ping Kittensmittens or me or both. If more detail will help, we'll get back to you and ask about your system or OS or whatever. There may be multiple reports that seem related and so we can combine material into a single issue report. After that, it is on us. We'll respond back as we get news.

It is never in Tripwire's better interest to have people encountering problems, being frustrated and so on. We want players to have a good experience. We also have a priority system to feed the worst and/or most reported issues to the people that can help, in an order that makes sense.

It is a simple machine and should be easy to use. There are time zone difference sometimes that complicate matters. The fix rate will always be slower than players would like, but we do send reports to QA to be verified/reproduced, have an in-house bug generated, assigned to a dev, fixed and tested. Some fixes do not require a build and can be trickled out as they are ready. Some have to come in batches with updates, because of the versioning that keeps servers and clients in sync. There are a few that are underlying issues around Steam, Unreal, Windows Server, NVidia drivers or one-off problems with one weird PC somewhere that we can't control.

The big advantage for you is, our true motivation is to have satisfied players, busy playing and a quiet, boring bug list.
 
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Perfect. And believe me, I get it; I'm a developer by trade, fix what you can. This error in particular (even if it is in fact two errors) seemed to be particularly troublesome, and it seemed worth reporting. Thanks for the info, and if there's any information I can give, or testing I can do on my end, let me know and I'll be happy to help. :)
 
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This bug, other bugs.............. still exist. Fix? Don't hold your breath. Can't use custom maps because of all this................ BUT, we can sure deploy new stuff, DLC that will hopefully make them some extra coin............... but fix an issue that so many are unhappy about.................. does not seem to rank very high, if at all, on Tripwire's priority list. Besides, custom maps............... that's other people's stuff! Been too long with these same issues for me to think otherwise and I have really tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am back to a thought and comment I made before, IF this is how Tripwire handles issues then I will steer clear of any future Tripwire releases. Shame too, KF1 was a great game with all the custom content, KF2 started out great, great custom content was out there with more being made all the time, then Tripwire broke something that makes the SteamWorkshop stuff useless. I am forced to run all our KF2 servers with only stock maps!!

Custom content keeps games alive for a long time Tripwire, better wake up!! Please................... :)
 
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