Frequently server restarts - allowed?

[mirc00 7]

Hey guys,

i'm playing DayZ for a while now and mostly i'm playing on the EU9-server, because for me it's the most stable one, also it has 3rd-person view. But lately, i noticed that the admins perform frequently server restarts, almost every 2hr, and as a player, we don't get any reason for this frequently restarting. What i noticed is, the server time is a little odd. It is a EU-Server, and i'm living in the EU but the time difference is about 3hrs after.

So basically, when it's light outside IRL, it is light in-game. But when it's dark outside IRL, it is also light in-game. I think that occurs from the server-restarts, i'm guessing the server-time gets a reset.

My question is now, is this method "ok" or is it not?

[MarKeR (DayZ) 57]

Hey mate..

I run DE4, and I find that I will need to reboot the server every 6 hours or so.. But, and I stress, I always give at least 5 minutes warning to everyone thatit is being rebooted...

Only fair to allow players to get safe and finish what they are doing!!

As for the time settings..There is a bug that can occur that will have some players in daylight and some in dark, basically a time synch issue... Also you can set the master windows server time to any time zone you prefer.. As long as it doesn't switch to stay daylight with a script!!

[desrat 4]

I had to restart EU16 about 4 times in as many hours last night, just having issues left right and center, I eventually just took the server offline while I could track the cause, which ended in me re-imaged the server.. I now have it offline until I get the new mission file and then it'll be back online.

I also run the server at UTC-11 as a lot of my clan members are based in the US and don't fancy playing in the dark every time.

When I do a manual restart I have a little app I wrote that uses Rcon to give warnings to players but when it restarts automatically via fireDaemon (every 6 hrs) there's no warning (as yet)

[Alfie (DayZ) 8]

For me personally I've been balancing server load this week, so I've been restarting every 4 - 6 hours. I did have an issue this morning which led me to restart the server twice within 10 minutes, but I always give repeated warnings.

The other thing to keep in mind is servers sometimes crash which is out of control of the server admin. It happens. Though as far as restarting to change the time constantly makes no sense. Surely if you wanted it to be day 24/7 (which I don't think is allowed, but that's besides the point), you'd think they'd change the time every 12 hours, not every 2 hours.

[vendaar 18]

Hey mate..

I run DE4' date=' and I find that I will need to reboot the server every 6 hours or so.. But, and I stress, I always give at least 5 minutes warning to everyone thatit is being rebooted...

Only fair to allow players to get safe and finish what they are doing!!

[/quote']

Nope.

I know that you warned many times but yesterday where a couple or restarts WITHOUT warning. I was playing in De4 the whole day^^

greetz

[TheEx1le (DayZ) 6]

Performance sometimes dictates restarts, the admin of the server must feel it helps keep the server stable. That or the server restarts itself, which is not uncommon.

[cuca 20]

Whenever admins lose something they restart the server, Ive seen it happen

[dere011 1]

The automatic restart or restarts is allowed of course... Why?

The servers belong to these "administrator", they (for most) make their potential to keep a server stable (Without lag / problem).

Reboots do not threaten the player data, they only keep the stability of a server.

And for people who are not happy due to reboots, they can always find another server. It does nothing prevented them from playing.

[mirc00 7]

I understand what you guys are saying here. I don't have a problem with the frequently server restarts, but i do have a problem with the server-time. Yesterday, i was playing with a friend on EU9 again. We played from 3pm until 8pm real life time. It was getting dark a little bit on the server, around 8pm. After a little break, we joined the server again on 9pm, just to see the server-time was 3pm again, thus it was light again on the server.

[MarKeR (DayZ) 57]

Hey mate..

I run DE4' date=' and I find that I will need to reboot the server every 6 hours or so.. But, and I stress, I always give at least 5 minutes warning to everyone thatit is being rebooted...

Only fair to allow players to get safe and finish what they are doing!!

[/quote']

Nope.

I know that you warned many times but yesterday where a couple or restarts WITHOUT warning. I was playing in De4 the whole day^^

But great and stable server anyway ;)

greetz

Nope those were out of my control.. One was a mission update and the other was a crash...

[Difecti 11]

Do you want the server you play on to remain stable, with Zombies and loot spawning, or do you want a map with absolutely nothing on it, except 50 players complaining about no loot/zombies and killing everything in sight?

We have to restart our servers to keep things working. Sometimes we may not give notice, as its simply quicker to restart it, sometime we do give warnings. You lose what... maybe 5 minutes of progress? Other times, Monitor restarts the server for whatever reason, and sometimes it just plain crashes.

I agree with what a couple of hosts here have said, they warn on restart, and I do try, unless its something that needs to be addressed quickly.

Edit: If after a server restarts and the time is different, it could be that HiveAuth hasn't synced the time properly, or that the server host has changed the time on his box. When a server has been up for a while, time will desync, causing the possible issue you have seen, with time in-game being 1725 for example, when in real time, its 1925. Maybe simple time desync.

[demine0 43]

A lot of people will run there server a few hours behind. Most of the people who play on Dallas 13, work 9-5 jobs and rather have one or two more hours of playtime during the day, so we have the clocks set back to Pacific time on our server.

A lot of servers actually have regularly scheduled restarts. They do this because the server and hive can become unstable and stop working after a few hours. I'm generally restarting mine every 4 hours or so. Most server owners restart between 4-8 hours. The other servers usually just crash after 12 hours and get manually restarted by the admin.

You can actually change the time on your server whenever you want. The only thing you need to make sure of when you change the time, is that the server and the hive/hiveauth must BE TURNED OFF. Never change the time while the server and hive are running and your golden McFly.

[mirc00 7]

I fully understand this, but in the last 2 days on EU9, it wasn't even dark at all. That's what i think is not ok at all.

[c.chris.perry@gmail.com 17]

I restart my server very often. I try to keep it to a 3-4 hour schedule, but sometimes it crashes, or something bugs and nothing spawns, so I just restart it early. I have also noticed that every once in a while the game time will completely not sync with the server time, but it is fixed after the next restart. Restarting is required to keep the servers stable, and my regulars actually appreciate the frequent restarts, because they only take 30 seconds, and it improves gameplay by orders of magnitude.

Why does anything a server admin do have to be questioned whether it is allowed? Most of us are more invested in improving our players experiences, instead of trying to cheat. Just because we shut the server down, or auto-lock it for flood control, doesn't mean we are trying to do anything malicious...