Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:13 am
I think I have figured out what is causing this, but only NoFate will be able to fix it if I am right.
It seems periodically, that the Master server becomes confused about the total slot allotment for a server is. For example, you can have a 32 slot server, the MS thinks it is only 26 and player #27+ will never be able to connect. I realized this one evening when I saw my server never filled past 24 slots, which was unusual. I checked my HLSW and it showed that 24/32 slots were filled. I left the server, waited for my slot to fill, and when there was 24 on, I tried to connect, and was not able to. I then remotely kicked a random player, freeing up a slot, and boom, was able to get right on. I tried this same experiment other times, when there would be 28 players and no more. In each case, if I kick a player and the slots drop to less then the MS thinks it should have, then I can get on. I would imagine this is the case, even when there are zero players. If you have it set for 32, but the MS sees 0 allowed, then NO ONE is going to get on that server.
I hope this makes sense. Would be nice if other server admins could confirm this. I can only confirm this bug on my own setup. I am quite convinced this is happening. However, it can change from map change to map change. Since the problem is intermittent, it is difficult to track. It could possibly be a ghost process/slot connection tying up a connection, but not showing as so, and confusing the MS.
If you ever watch the banner below for my server, you can see these "capped slot" patterns in the graph.
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