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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 7 post(s) |
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1618
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Posted - 2014.09.04 13:43:00 -
[1] - Quote
We've seen in increase in reports of client 'black screen' lock-ups recently, particularly from players running multiple clients. Typically the black screen seems to occur when multiple clients are logged in from the same PC at the same time, and may coincide with mass dock/undock/jump session changes.
I'm investigating this issue and would like your help if you are experiencing this. Please note that other crashes or graphical lockups are also important to investigate, but I'm specifically looking for focused feedback related to this particular issue only in this thread: Multiboxing users that suffer black screens on some of their clients when those clients all attempt to login/jump/dock/undock at the same time.
If your clients suffer from this problem (especially if you've noticed an increase recently) please reply to this thread with the following info. I'm chasing up a few leads and this would help me to a) isolate the reproduction conditions and b) create a solution.
1] How many clients do you typically use 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity
I'm particularly interested in anyone who is able to help reproduce this on Singularity, as there's things we can experiment with on there that we obviously couldn't do on TQ
Thanks for your help! "This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Gilbaron
Free-Space-Ranger Nulli Secunda
1507
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Posted - 2014.09.04 13:49:00 -
[2] - Quote
i have an "issue" where my clients sometimes freeze for a while when logging in 2 or more alts. i always thought it was just my laptop taking more time to handle multiple logins at the same time.
is this the same thing ? or are you talking about something where the client doesn't recover ? Build your empire ! Start today ! Rent Space in Perrigen Falls and Feythabolis Contact me for details :)
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1618
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Posted - 2014.09.04 13:55:00 -
[3] - Quote
Logins that are simply slow but eventually get there are most likely unrelated. These black screens I'm investigating seem to be unrecoverable without restarting the client "This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Fonac
Imperial Academy Amarr Empire
46
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Posted - 2014.09.04 14:00:00 -
[4] - Quote
Gilbaron wrote:i have an "issue" where my clients sometimes freeze for a while when logging in 2 or more alts. i always thought it was just my laptop taking more time to handle multiple logins at the same time.
is this the same thing ? or are you talking about something where the client doesn't recover ?
Probably your harddrive that can't cope with the amount of data it needs to read. (This does not mean your harddrive is broken, just slow - Very normal for a laptop)
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Tarsas Phage
Freight Club
325
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Posted - 2014.09.04 14:44:00 -
[5] - Quote
I run 10 clients, all chars in the same player (non-NPC) corp. The station they log in to has a office for their corp. I have not had the time to test this on Singularity.
Usually, around half (4-7 of the 10) will black-screen upon undocking, and a reliable indicator that this will happen is that, while still docked after logging in, those specific clients which will black-screen will fail to see a Fleet advert meant for them. The clients which do see the fleet advert will not black-screen after undocking and work as expected.
In isboxer I use "full screen stacked" mode, with clients on a dedicated screen out of my 3 monitors.
I have found a work-around of sorts which seems to be reliable:
1) Use isboxer to start and log in to the 10 clients, arriving at the character selection screen. 2) Turn off (isboxer) broadcast, and serially go through each client to select the char and log it into the game. How fast one cycles through the clients does not appear to matter.
after all that is done:
3) Instead of using isboxer to join the chars into the same fleet by selecting a (in some client non-existant) fleet advert, I use an 11th char, which normally would create the fleet and its advert, to then manually send the 10 isbox'd chars fleet invites, which I serially go through on the isbox'd clients and accept. I can assert that this is a repeatable work-around, however it does of course mean more spin-up time for the entire setup.
I've also noticed an oddity which also seems related specifically to any black-screening clients:
I quit the clients by hitting [esc] and clicking the "Quit Game" button. This immediately quits all 10 clients, yet some of the chars which black-screen will persist in Local as seen by other, unrelated players. If the unrelated player leaves system and comes back, the ghost char in local will not be shown.
HTH |
RoCkEt X
Sniggerdly Pandemic Legion
83
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Posted - 2014.09.04 15:19:00 -
[6] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity
1 - 10-15 2 - every time i log in 3 - some in npc corp, some in player corps
4 - space/station makes no difference: Logging into station you will not black screen, but you may blackscreen on undock, the way to tell whether you've blackscreened before you undock is to open fleet finder. Even if there are fleets up that you can join, it won't display any. So basically, if some of your chars can't see the fleet and others can, the ones who can't will blackscreen on undock.
Logging into space will either produce blackscreen immediately, or not at all.
Ergo, this issue is something to do with being in space, and not to do with session change (because you can still switch ships whilst docked - thus session changing without an issue)
I have thus far found only rebooting the client helps, to avoid the issue completely, using ISboxer, log into all your accounts at the same time, at the character selection screen, you then log them in one by one. This solution has been 100% effective thus far.
5 - Yes, i can reproduce the issue consistantly on both SiSi and TQ.
Notes: *The ingame ESC menu works as normal, even when blackscreened. *Problem is constant across all GPU models and driver versions (i've been trying to find a fix for this for a long time). *Is only existant when logging multiple clients in simultaneously. *Problem has existed for the last 2 years, but before only 1-2 of 10 clients would blackscreen, since the Crius update, this is now 50% of all clients will blackscreen if logged in simultaneously. *ISboxer can force eve to run in either Dx9, or Dx11. I've seen no difference in either setting.
If you have further questions, feel free to contact me. -Rock |
Ariel Rin
Cerberus Federation Gentlemen's.Club
10
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Posted - 2014.09.04 15:37:00 -
[7] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use The set in question is 4, but i usually have an additional 2 running with different activities - ie. not jumping together 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? once or twice a day 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? Character corporations 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? Only experience it logging into station
Also experienced leaving station and jumping 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity downloading now - will edit
NOTES: esc menu works perfectly fine, but will not respond to mouse presses on GUI (if i know where the jump button is for example) only ever happens to one of the four "Usually" my last client to boot is the one experiencing it all 4 running with identical (cloned from config files) configuration
Ariel Rin Creaming Soda |
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1619
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Posted - 2014.09.04 15:52:00 -
[8] - Quote
Thanks for your prompt feedback. The fleet-finder availability (or lack of) is quite useful info here. I've also seen someone else mention that the agent tab in the station info window also fails to display information if a client is broken in this way. This is making my spider-sense tingle :)
RoCkEt X wrote:1] Ergo, this issue is something to do with being in space, and not to do with session change (because you can still switch ships whilst docked - thus session changing without an issue) Just a quick comment on this: Switching ships whilst docked is no longer a session change (It used to be, until a couple of years ago). This is why you can switch quickly between different ships in your station hangar without requiring a 10s session timer between each.
"This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Tarsas Phage
Freight Club
325
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Posted - 2014.09.04 16:36:00 -
[9] - Quote
CCP Masterplan wrote:Thanks for your prompt feedback. The fleet-finder availability (or lack of) is quite useful info here. I've also seen someone else mention that the agent tab in the station info window also fails to display information if a client is broken in this way. This is making my spider-sense tingle :)
If you think that the problem might tie back to some common component related to these character services (idk what you call it internally, that's just a guess on my part) are there any other things that we can test specifically which might also use the same (sub)system?
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Lady Spank
The Intaki Ladies Deep Space Astrogation Auxiliary
3575
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Posted - 2014.09.04 18:13:00 -
[10] - Quote
Ban cheating boxers rather than supporting them please. (a¦á_a¦â) ~ It Takes a Million Years to Become Diamonds So Lets Just Burn Like Coal Until the Sky's Black ~ (a¦á_a¦â) |
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HarlyQ
Amok. Goonswarm Federation
13
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Posted - 2014.09.04 18:47:00 -
[11] - Quote
Lady Spank wrote:Ban cheating boxers rather than supporting them please. you know its not cheating right you can go get the same product or multiple accounts.
1] How many clients do you typically use. I use 8 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? everytime i mass log in but its really rare when i have them all undock. 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? Player corps. 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? space. 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity. have not downloaded. |
oodell
Thunderwaffe Goonswarm Federation
9
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Posted - 2014.09.04 18:57:00 -
[12] - Quote
I use between 7 and 11 accounts at the same time regularly. All characters are in a player corp. The blackscreen thing has been going on for quite some time (6 months, at least) but lately it has stepped up significantly. Whereas it used to be a once-a-week glitch, now I can pretty much count on anywhere from 2-4 out of my 11 accounts to blackscreen every time I log in and undock.
The blackscreens only seem to happen on the first undock after the first time logging in. Once I close the bad accounts and re-launch them, the issue goes away. I don't think I have ever seen another black screen after this in a night, despite docking/undocking repeatedly and even logging/relogging a subset of my alts several times. I don't know the reason for this.
I mostly log in while docked in a station, but I'm fairly certain I have seen the problem happen while logging in while in space. I believe a corpmate lost a few ships while logging in this way last week.
When it happens, the client affected has no UI ability, the screen is 100% black. The client is still responsive. You can fleetwarp the affect alts to a safespot, but that's about it.
I haven't checked recently, but I believe you can open the fittings window to see if the client has been affected prior to undocking. If I remember correctly, the fittings window doesn't load correctly on the affect alts, and you can use this to relog them before undocking into a hostile situation and having a blackscreen. I can double check this when I log in later.
I don't have singularity set up. |
Pain Time
Elite Armor 5an5ha Killing Squadron Seekers of the Unseen
1
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Posted - 2014.09.04 19:40:00 -
[13] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use: 16 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? every mass logon or undock, if you undock/logon slowly, these are avoided. 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? player corp, why bother with npc, right? 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? space nowadays, stations have undock blackscreen ontop of logon blackscreen. 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity. Probably, i will need to figure out how to make sisi repair launcher to work again, but if you'd like to work with me personally, im sure we can find and squash this bug. feel free to get a contact line with me, email, whatever.
Cheers, hope we squash this thing, although as a programmer, i kinda wanna ask if a hotkey for a "forced" reload in eve, as if you hit the map button, let it load, and then return, it'd fix it [before hyper patch, no longer works now, hyper seems to broke it further]
edit: by slowly, i mean logon one every 10s, instead of just logging em in. Isboxers Lounge Public Diplomat |
Nolak Ataru
Incursion Osprey Replacement Fund LLC
196
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Posted - 2014.09.04 21:44:00 -
[14] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use 11 boxing, one "solo" 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? Every time on mass logon and undock. 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? Player corps 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? Both occurs, but I get hit double when I log into station and then undock. 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity Yes. |
RoCkEt X
Sniggerdly Pandemic Legion
83
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Posted - 2014.09.04 21:50:00 -
[15] - Quote
CCP Masterplan wrote:Thanks for your prompt feedback. The fleet-finder availability (or lack of) is quite useful info here. I've also seen someone else mention that the agent tab in the station info window also fails to display information if a client is broken in this way. This is making my spider-sense tingle :) RoCkEt X wrote:1] Ergo, this issue is something to do with being in space, and not to do with session change (because you can still switch ships whilst docked - thus session changing without an issue) Just a quick comment on this: Switching ships whilst docked is no longer a session change (It used to be, until a couple of years ago). This is why you can switch quickly between different ships in your station hangar without requiring a 10s session timer between each.
Aye, i forgot switching ships has been changed - but even so, characters can still be manually invited to fleet, which causes a session change and it has no effect on blackscreening; the blackscreen will only ever exhibit itself if you either log in in-space, or when you undock after logging in in-station, but from the fleet-finder issue i mentioned; the issue already exists while you're docked, you just can't see it for whatever reason - hence you only see the 'blackscreen' when you undock.
-Rock |
Pain Time
Elite Armor 5an5ha Killing Squadron Seekers of the Unseen
1
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Posted - 2014.09.04 23:24:00 -
[16] - Quote
I feel this would be a good time to state that fleet itself is broke [logically] wing commander cannot recieve his own boosts, nor the fleet commander [how hard can this be to fix, or is this intended?]
further note on topic: the blackscreen doesnt have ANY impedeance on ability to undock, quit game, or anything like this, just uhh.... you gotta be great at memorization. might help. Isboxers Lounge Public Diplomat |
Islena Inewen
School of Applied Knowledge Caldari State
0
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Posted - 2014.09.05 09:32:00 -
[17] - Quote
I had something similar to this before the patch, but as it turned out it was my own fault, kinda.
Problem was i had bumped the wifi antennae ad the back of my PC case so it was flush to the back of the case, not sticking straight out. this dropped me to 1 or 2 bars of signal instead of the usual 5/5. everything was behaving normally but i would get black screens on undocking and frequent disconnections.
Since my day job is a software engineer I know that seemingly unrelated things can often have the same root cause (oh good how i hate that phrase) I'm just posting because you can never have too much information.
I think it possible that the problem will relate to packets getting dropped somewhere due to network overload. mebbe. in theory. as far as i can tell. perhaps. |
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1619
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Posted - 2014.09.05 11:34:00 -
[18] - Quote
Thanks everyone for your reports so far. I've made some changes to the build we have just updated to Singularity. If anyone who was previously able to reproduce the issue there is able to update their test clients and see how it behaves now, I'd be very interested in your feedback. "This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Tomas Marny
Everyone vs Everything THE R0NIN
2
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Posted - 2014.09.07 08:46:00 -
[19] - Quote
my 5c:
1] How many clients do you typically use -11 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? -for me rarely, I will explain below 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? -some in player, some in npc 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? -either 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity -quite possibly
-my pc is capable enough to handle 11 clients, the game is started from a very fast SSD drive and run under win8.1, so this shouldn't cause any bottlenecks. Multiboxing obviously setup runs under isboxer, with all clients set to lowest, resource caching disabled, DX9 forced on startup. I have 20GB of ram, windows swap set to 2GB.
-I noticed the blackscreen issue happens on my setup only when I use broadcast (either mouse or keyboard) to login or undock - if all clients try to undock at the same time, at least one usually (but not in 100% cases) blackscreens, with the same as RocketX mentioned - I can hit escape to see the options. If the client that blackscreens on undock is in fleet, it does actually take fleetwarps and follows them. This should be easily reproduced anywhere.
-If I login/undock chars one by one with like an alt+tab delay, then clients do rarely blackscreen.
that all above is valid for tq.
I'd love to help checking this on sisi, but all my chars are marked as expired (for like 6 months already). |
Rain6637
Team Evil
18309
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Posted - 2014.09.07 13:39:00 -
[20] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity President of the Commissar Kate Fanclub | Rainfleet on Twitch | Twitter | Rainfleet mk.III | Imgur |
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MicDeath Titan
Titans Guild incendia equus
83
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Posted - 2014.09.07 19:12:00 -
[21] - Quote
CCP Masterplan wrote: ... 1] How many clients do you typically use 2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility? 3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps? 4] Are they logging in to space or to a station? 5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity ...
1: 12 2: At least 2 windows will black out every time I load all 12 via ISBoxer 3: Player Corp 4: Space 5: After Singularity wiped all my settings, I refuse to even attempt it when it deleted my backup folder inside main settings folder |
Rain6637
Team Evil
18316
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Posted - 2014.09.07 23:06:00 -
[22] - Quote
that's the main reason I have separate installs, as damage control in the event of a crash. President of the Commissar Kate Fanclub | Rainfleet on Twitch | Twitter | Rainfleet mk.III | Imgur |
Pain Time
Elite Armor 5an5ha Killing Squadron Seekers of the Unseen
1
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Posted - 2014.09.08 08:21:00 -
[23] - Quote
that report on sisi? yeah, go ahead and patch it to tranq, works. got one boxer who tried sisi and login in 11 accts didnt blackscreen a single one.
(mass logon, and mass undock.) Isboxers Lounge Public Diplomat |
Rain6637
Team Evil
18415
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Posted - 2014.09.08 11:29:00 -
[24] - Quote
lol President of the Commissar Kate Fanclub | Rainfleet on Twitch | Twitter | Rainfleet mk.III | Imgur |
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1622
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Posted - 2014.09.09 13:53:00 -
[25] - Quote
As listed in today's patch notes we've put out what should be a fix for this particular issue. I'd appreciate feedback from those affected if it helps your clients to behave. "This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Ammzi
Love Squad Pasta Syndicate
1830
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Posted - 2014.09.09 15:14:00 -
[26] - Quote
1] How many clients do you typically use
8
2] How frequently does the issue happen on Tranquility?
About 70-80 % of the time on at least one or more clients.
3] Are the characters in player corps or NPC corps?
Player corp.
4] Are they logging in to space or to a station?
Happens in both cases.
5] Can you reproduce the issue with the same setup on Singularity
Ugh... maybe. Will look into it.
BONUS INFO: When I log into the station, the clients that will blackscreen when I undock CANNOT detect any fleets in the fleet finder. So those who do not list any fleets in the fleet finder are 100 % guaranteed to black-screen when I mass undock for some reason.
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Kadm
Catfish Gumbo Try Rerolling
29
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Posted - 2014.09.09 15:44:00 -
[27] - Quote
CCP Masterplan wrote:As listed in today's patch notes we've put out what should be a fix for this particular issue. I'd appreciate feedback from those affected if it helps your clients to behave.
Can you elaborate on the mechanics behind this particular problem? This is something I've been dealing with for quite some time, but never bothered to report because I was sure it only affected large scale multi-boxing. I worked really hard to eliminate any system latency issues that could cause this, including running EVE from a 20GB virtualized RAMdrive with 6GB/s R/W. I was convinced my only option was to drop $1500 on a new video card to see if that would reduce the problems, so I'm super curious as to what actually fixed it. |
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CCP Masterplan
C C P C C P Alliance
1622
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Posted - 2014.09.09 15:55:00 -
[28] - Quote
It was caused by a concurrency issue when multiple clients made requests for certain server resources simultaneously and tried to cache the results, that only triggered under very particular cache states. The caching operations of one client could then corrupt the state of another, if that second client tried to read from the cache at a critical moment.
Ironically I think that the more you worked to reduce system latency, the higher the chance of encountering this bug might have been. A slower PC that had to hit the disk more often was probably less likely to trigger it, as there was less chance of two clients performing the necessary sequence of operations concurrently. "This one time, on patch day..." CCP Masterplan -á| -áTeam Five-0: Rewriting the law |
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Kadm
Catfish Gumbo Try Rerolling
29
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Posted - 2014.09.09 16:02:00 -
[29] - Quote
CCP Masterplan wrote:It was caused by a concurrency issue when multiple clients made requests for certain server resources simultaneously and tried to cache the results, that only triggered under very particular cache states. The caching operations of one client could then corrupt the state of another, if that second client tried to read from the cache at a critical moment.
Ironically I think that the more you worked to reduce system latency, the higher the chance of encountering this bug might have been. A slower PC that had to hit the disk more often was probably less likely to trigger it, as there was less chance of two clients performing the necessary sequence of operations concurrently.
Wow. I feel derp now. That's awesome though. I bet that was an interesting bug to track down. |
Gyges Skyeye
Abraxsys Get Off My Lawn
2
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Posted - 2014.09.09 19:20:00 -
[30] - Quote
CCP Masterplan best CCP.
It all seems to be working again today after the patch. Thank you for addressing this. |
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