Dayz Server Monitor...

[colonel_black 0]

You what Mojo? ^^.

[RHS-Jeff 0]

Hello, I run all/most of the Virginia based servers.

I have not modified any of the server files short of changing the MOTD and experience setting on them. I have however ran 12 of the 24 server we run in normal timezone (UTC -5) and ran the other in a different timezone (UTC +4)

I have not modified any of the server files to do this, but rather just changed the system clock setting on the server.

Maybe I am wrong in doing this, but I work 8am - 5pm and run the business that supports and pays for the servers in the evenings when I get home and a lot on the weekends. So, I can never really play in my servers daytime settings but for maybe an hour a day and some here and there on the weekends or am forced to play in a server across the world which I don't feel I should have to do since I am running and paying for them.

Am I doing something wrong? Last thing I want to do is make more work for you!

Is there some type of guidelines we should be following? I don't want to do anything wrong, but I'm not sure what the rules are or should be to follow.

[Mojo (DayZ) 66]

Is there some type of guidelines we should be following? I don't want to do anything wrong' date=' but I'm not sure what the rules are or should be to follow.

[/quote']

I've sent you a PM explaining the proper way to do this, and the very, very improper way to do this. PM'd to keep other people from going "herp derp time to write garbage data trololol" because I just know some asshole is going to do it.

In short, there's an easy and correct way to do this and there's a BREAK FUCKING EVERYTHING way to do it. Please don't do the BREAK FUCKING EVERYTHING way as it affects us all.

[DJKhaled 3]

Right' date=' I'm going to level with you guys here:

I have received reports of server administrators, such as UK11, modifying files and changing scripts to change daylight hours and every other such thing. I have spent the last 36 hours (with four hours of sleep) coding fixes and changes and security closures all because of these server administrators. I have now wasted the entire weekend and will not be able to sleep tonight if I want to get the update out.

Yes, we are very grateful to those who donate their servers. I have the utmost respect for that. But we have a number of server owners who, once they have the files, and have proceeded to do the most insane things. Some of the team here were so fed up with the difficulties they wanted to start blacklisting the IP's for these rogue servers straight away. I talked them out of it, because of the discussions on the forums and the feelings and sentiments and because I thought we should try to make more of an effort to reach out to the server administrators. I now regret that decision.

So I am PLEADING with the server owners here. Please do not keep doing whatever the hell you want. You are now disrupting the entire project. Think about the bigger picture. This is an Alpha. I understand many have gone out and rented servers with high hopes of their clan sitting around the fireplace, holding teddybears, and singing kumbaya.

My weekend of updates was entirely ruined because of three server owners who decided to take matters into their own hands and make changes. Then, they criticize the server team here who have been working their whole weekend to try and help me.

[/quote']

Shame that some server admins are trying to abuse and manipulate the game

Is this the reason why so many new servers don't have vehicles assigned to mission instances yet? - http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4415

[robollama 1]

. I have the utmost respect for that. But we have a number of server owners who' date=' once they have the files, and have proceeded to do the most insane things. Some of the team here were so fed up with the difficulties they wanted to start blacklisting the IP's for these rogue servers straight away. I talked them out of it, because of the discussions on the forums and the feelings and sentiments and because I thought we should try to make more of an effort to reach out to the server administrators. I now regret that decision.

So I am PLEADING with the server owners here. Please do not keep doing whatever the hell you want. You are now disrupting the entire project. Think about the bigger picture. This is an Alpha. I understand many have gone out and rented servers with high hopes of their clan sitting around the fireplace, holding teddybears, and singing kumbaya.

My weekend of updates was entirely ruined because of three server owners who decided to take matters into their own hands and make changes. Then, they criticize the server team here who have been working their whole weekend to try and help me.

[/quote']

Just blacklist the fuckers. It's an alpha and it's free. There's no expectations, no kind of agreement, no rules signed. They went out and rented a server and got it banned by fucking around with stuff? Tough shit. Stop pandering to them Rocket! There's no need to 'please' these people who are messing with files because there's hundreds more willing to take their place and play the game the way it's meant to be played.

[colonel_black 0]

Best way to do it is to put a sticky on the forum. Give them 24 hours. (A server admin should be active on the forum). If they fail to comply, blacklist.

[rocket 16567]

OSTicket is installed. However, this has not been able to happen due to all the work we have been doing. Particularly to find out what happened with Chicago 1. I still don't know exactly what happened, so any information would be appreciated. I have spent several hours investigating this and I can still not identify what the problem was, or how it originated. Either it's a serious security breach, or monitor is malfunctioning. If it was as serious as you state, and I cannot find the issue in the next few hours, we will have to make a decision whether to bring the whole network down until we can sort out the problem.

[jonnerz 33]

Anyone who we have sold a dedicated server too has been properly educated on the do's and do not's. I've created a rules page which hosts must now agree to before we provide them with a server. I would not hesitate to suspend anyone who affects the development of DayZ negatively, whether it be accidental or on purpose.

I would strongly suggest any other companies or people who plan on renting out servers to do the same. It's just disrespectful to not follow the rules set by the DayZ team. They have put an unimaginable amount of time and effort into this project, lets keep them focused on development rather than working on fixes and security patches due to careless administrators.

If you are looking to rent a server, make sure you are educated in hosting servers. It's not as easy as paying some money, clicking start server and then happily playing on it for the rest of the month.

[Mojo (DayZ) 66]

Shame that some server admins are trying to abuse and manipulate the game

They likely aren't trying to deliberately abuse it. There's a correct way to do what rocket's talking about that is utterly transparent and an incorrect way to do it that a lot of semi-experienced or experienced ArmA2 hosters might be familiar with' date=' but who have never had to deal with a back-end that relies on a hook and an off-site SQL server.

The way they're doing it, and this is cobbled together entirely from deductive guess-work from simply knowing that the method they're using writes corrupted data to the SQL server, desanitizes the code in ways that if I had to (again) guess is [i']at minimum altering the offsets.

[colonel_black 0]

Anyone who we have sold a dedicated server too has been properly educated on the do's and do not's. I've created a rules page which hosts must now agree to before we provide them with a server. I would not hesitate to suspend anyone who affects the development of DayZ negatively' date=' whether it be accidental or on purpose.

I would strongly suggest any other companies or people who plan on renting out servers to do the same. It's just disrespectful to not follow the rules set by the DayZ team. They have put an unimaginable amount of time and effort into this project, lets keep them focused on development rather than working on fixes and security patches due to careless administrators.

If you are looking to rent a server, make sure you are educated in hosting servers. It's not as easy as paying some money, clicking start server and then happily playing on it for the rest of the month.

[/quote']

Quite true. These server hosts are causing problems for the entire community and it isn't fair on everyone else. There's no need to modify the game.

[howichrgelazer 69]

OSTicket is installed. However' date=' this has not been able to happen due to all the work we have been doing. Particularly to find out what happened with Chicago 1. I still don't know exactly what happened, so any information would be appreciated. I have spent several hours investigating this and I can still not identify what the problem was, or how it originated. Either it's a serious security breach, or monitor is malfunctioning. If it was as serious as you state, and I cannot find the issue in the next few hours, we will have to make a decision whether to bring the whole network down until we can sort out the problem.

[/quote']

Glad to hear a ticket system is in the wings. If you need an extra hand, I'm available (understandable if I'm not deemed trustworthy yet).

Definitely keep us up to date on the Chicago 1 issue. I made a separate user account for the mod when giving RDP access for my server. Luckily firedaemon is on my main account, so it was never touched by anybody as far as I know.

I hope you guys don't have to resort to taking down the system, but I suppose if you do, it'll give you much needed time to take a breather and sort things out. Hell, all big MMOs have down time. It just sucks that you have no universal way of notifying users other than the website (plus any server admins who leave their servers running with no access to the hive).

Too bad the website will probably get DDoS'd from all the traffic. :s

[omacaco 0]

Why do you (rocket) care if server admins want to play during the light?

If it effects other issues like introducing new bugs or negatively effecting how it communicates with the character server that's one thing, but a server admin just not wanting to play in a night (that is, according to everyone I've ever spoke to about it, too dark to begin with, bordering on the side of unrealistic) how does that ruin the game for everyone enough to cause a blacklist to be warranted?

Again, if it makes new bugs spring up, or messes with how a server communicates with the master server, that's one thing, but just disagreeing with people not liking the night time, that's a bit control freaky.

inb4 Team Rocket Defense Force flames me.

[rocket 16567]

Why do you (rocket) care if server admins want to play during the light?

Because, if you write a script that causes permalight. Then the world never ages. Zombie spawns never happen. Loot gets fucked up. Time is the foundation for nearly every event within the system. That is why I went to such a great effort to synchronize it. I think I'm a pretty reasonable guy, I don't just pull these restrictions out of my arse you know.

People make assumptions without knowing the full impact. This mod is a cardhouse, don't presume to know what does or does not affect anything. A good example is sound mods. Audibility is based on values for terrain in the sound config. Some of the community sound mods don't use a standard method, and they break the system.

[omacaco 0]

People make assumptions without knowing the full impact. This mod is a cardhouse' date=' don't presume to know what does or does not affect anything.[/quote']

I didn't presume to know anything, that's why I was here asking. Thank you for the answer.

[Mojo (DayZ) 66]

OSTicket is installed. However' date=' this has not been able to happen due to all the work we have been doing. Particularly to find out what happened with Chicago 1. I still don't know exactly what happened, so any information would be appreciated. I have spent several hours investigating this and I can still not identify what the problem was, or how it originated. Either it's a serious security breach, or monitor is malfunctioning. If it was as serious as you state, and I cannot find the issue in the next few hours, we will have to make a decision whether to bring the whole network down until we can sort out the problem.

[/quote']

We are keeping the Chi 1 Series down for now while we comb through the event viewer. RDP on all but one account has been disabled and all privileges revoked. Windows Firewall is being configured with a much stricter rule set.

As of right now, it seems that:

1. This was a single user entry through RDP, logged as six seperate events. First, the remote user logged in. Second, receiving a report the server had crashed, I logged in. Third, this recorded a forced log-off for the first user. Fourth, I then logged out under the assumption this was an RDP update. Fifth, the first user then logged back in. Sixth, the first user then logged back out some time later.

2. The session was kept open for a cumulative total of ~2 hours. The remote session originated from JIM-PC.

3. Two restart attempts were made on the machine during this time, neither of which originated with me or with my other administrator, and (oddly) neither of which were successful.

4. After approximately two hours monitoring this user through VNC, they terminated their RDP session.

5. I returned to the instance-handling user account to find what you see in the image above. FireDaemon's DayZ services disabled (but TeamSpeak still running), DayZ Monitor running but returning errors about process elevation, what appears to be an attempt to elevate the executable process, and no further contact from the RDP user.

For the sake of not publishing block ranges of IPs, I have not reproduced those here.

We have since:

1. Sanitized our install directory completely. We keep a separate, quarantined, stand-off directory for ArmA 2 and OA patching. All files were recreated. All DayZ files were reinstalled. All CBA files were reinstalled. All jayarma2lib files were reinstalled.

2. Directory structure, ArmA2OA profiles, and config files were rebuilt from notes, as these existed only in the instance-handling directory (which is entirely my fault).

3. As above, more strict and stringent RDP requirements have been put in place with the server-side admin tools. RDP will not be suspended completely due to its effectiveness as an emergency control.

4. Instance handling through environment variables are being rolled out to add a difficulty curve to actually implementing fossilized changes.

On a thank God note:

1. Port/throughput events are normal. Nobody turned our system into a gigabit botnet.

2. Non-DayZ system services were untouched.

3. Other than the failed restart attempts and the disabling of FireDaemon and its affinity settings, no other critical components were touched.

I'm still in the process of parsing the XML (2008 has a hobby, which is generating printer errors, and then sharing this fact with you, frequently) and will alert you if anything beyond the norm comes up.

[rocket 16567]

I didn't presume to know anything' date=' that's why I was here asking. Thank you for the answer.

[/quote']

Sorry, my bad. I just feel like I've said it so many times that I'm going slightly insane.

[Woofington 4]

Why do you (rocket) care if server admins want to play during the light?

Because' date=' if you write a script that causes permalight. Then the world never ages. Zombie spawns never happen. Loot gets fucked up. Time is the foundation for nearly every event within the system. That is why I went to such a great effort to synchronize it. I think I'm a pretty reasonable guy, I don't just pull these restrictions out of my arse you know.

People make assumptions without knowing the full impact. This mod is a cardhouse, don't presume to know what does or does not affect anything. A good example is sound mods. Audibility is based on values for terrain in the sound config. Some of the community sound mods don't use a standard method, and they break the system.

[/quote']

Question Rocket, it seems one of the problems with serverside time synching (and I am not defending UK11, fuck em) is that it causes players to just server hop to play at the time they want. I'm not really sure if this is a good idea either because it forces people who want to play during the day but perhaps work until the evening to play on servers across the world in order to experience daylight (and thereby suffer high pings).

The obvious solution to this is to synch every server to one specific time, that is not relative to the server's real-world time. However this then screws over people on one side of the world but not the other. So then I posit that an implementation of a non-relative, sped up day/night cycle would alleviate this. Sure a sped up day/night cycle isn't completely realistic, but it solves a lot of problems, and I have a feeling most players would prefer it. Make it cycle every four hours or so.

[Draconic (DayZ) 0]

The obvious solution to this is to synch every server to one specific time' date=' that is not relative to the server's real-world time. However this then screws over people on one side of the world but not the other. So then I posit that an implementation of a non-relative, sped up day/night cycle would alleviate this. Sure a sped up day/night cycle isn't completely realistic, but it solves a lot of problems, and I have a feeling most players would prefer it. Make it cycle every four hours or so.

[/quote']

I am all for this, and thanks Woof for not just bitching about a problem but offering a solution. In my RL job (in Dayz i am a drug dealer selling my wares for ammo and guns :P ) i deal with people all day who complain about X system but don't offer any way to resolve it.

While this is not a perfect solution at least it is something we can think about.

Another solution could be to up the night time light level a few % like maybe 10-15% normal daylight. This would make it more playable at night but not lose the fear aspect of the night time.

Another solution that would probably cause some recoding, is to have characters persistent to one region only, so if your char starts in US, and you move to Russia you start over. But if you then 4 hours later go back to a US server you have that same old US char available.

I think people need to stop complaining about the limitation put forth by rocket and his team and give suggestions on how to fix the problems.

[zxrtommo 0]

I'm not really sure if this is a good idea either because it forces people who want to play during the day but perhaps work until the evening to play on servers across the world in order to experience daylight (and thereby suffer high pings)

This is one of the reasons I changed the box time. I'm sure implementing a 4 hour cycle would be a brilliant idea.

[Time Glitch 453]

So...Inverse servers are going away?

...

=C

That's the only way my friends and I can play on daylight servers...

Edit: I don't mean perma-light servers. I'm talking about US based servers that simply have an inverse day/night cycle.

[Difecti 11]

Rent a server in a different time zone :)

[rocket 16567]

The technical limitations around time with ArmA2 servers are an issue that is not new to any seasoned arma2 scripter.

If I wanted to write my own system, that went "faster", it will require a significant amount of dangerous coding that will fundamentally rewrite the loot and zombie spawning system. It is something I am investigating, but before I break one part of the system that actually works, I'm going to fix the area's that don't work.

[Time Glitch 453]

The technical limitations around time with ArmA2 servers are an issue that is not new to any seasoned arma2 scripter.

If I wanted to write my own system' date=' that went "faster", it will require a significant amount of dangerous coding that will fundamentally rewrite the loot and zombie spawning system. It is something I am investigating, but before I break one part of the system that actually works, I'm going to fix the area's that don't work.

[/quote']

This is totally understandable.

I'm sure many of us are just wondering if you're going to be blacklisting servers that provide real-time, inverse day/night cycles. No speed or freezing, just inverse.

[rocket 16567]

I'm sure many of us are just wondering if you're going to be blacklisting servers that provide real-time' date=' inverse day/night cycles. No speed or freezing, just inverse.

[/quote']

You can set it to any time you want, reverse or anything. Lunar time if that suits you. Just make sure that it ticks forward at the same time as the rest of us here on Earth are.

We only issue the IP Ban's as an emergency method when a server is detected doing something that might compromise the database.

[Woofington 4]

The technical limitations around time with ArmA2 servers are an issue that is not new to any seasoned arma2 scripter.

If I wanted to write my own system' date=' that went "faster", it will require a significant amount of dangerous coding that will fundamentally rewrite the loot and zombie spawning system. It is something I am investigating, but before I break one part of the system that actually works, I'm going to fix the area's that don't work.

[/quote']

Thanks for the reply, I wasn't trying to imply that you don't know what you are doing, just trying to voice an opinion. Bear in mind my opinion knows nothing about Arma2 scripting, and whether or not my solution would be practical if even possible. And I agree that there are much higher priority items that need addressing first, just trying to provide a suggestion to ease a problem that you may want to fix in the future.

Good luck either way, I am so looking forward to the new patch. :)