Skywing's NWNX4 improvements

[virusman]

[Skywing]

[virusman]

[Papillon]

It's the same for SVN, true. You can not merge changes between two separate repositories.

Unfortunately, I did not use the branch,tag,trunk directory structure this time. I'll probably have to restructure the repository... I'll see what I can do.
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Papillon

[Papillon]

Ok, now there is a new src_release/ directory in the NWNX4 svn, based on revision 19.

Please leave this directory alone for now.

Also, if you commit to src/, please make sure that you do not break anything. Only commit code that compiles and no cowboy coding, please.

Everyone who wants write access, please send me a PM with your desired username and password.

Good to have you on board, gentleman.
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Papillon

[Papillon]

So, anyone still interested in write access ?
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Papillon

[Grinning Fool]

I suspect I could put it to good use, though not necessarily quickly. PM sent...
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Khalidine, a NWN2 persistent world

Looking for volunteers.

[dmguild]

I have installed the xp_bugfix.dll and you version of the NWNX4 extender.

The system has been running for five hours and I've had five crashes.

I cannot find anything in the dumps directory here is a copy of the section in the nwnx.ini where i placed the switches.

[Skywing]

You can use xp_bugfix with or without my version of NWNX4; it's compatible with the stock release. However, you won't have the crash dump writer logic with the standard version.

As far as the crash dump support goes, this may need a newer version of dbghelp.dll than ships with your OS depending on which Windows version you are running.

Try installing the Debugging Tools for Windows and copying dbghelp.dll from the DTW installation directory to the directory containing nwn2server.exe.

If you look at the controller log file or the NWNX GUI log, and you see an error relating to MiniDumpWriteFile, then the problem is likely related to an old dbghelp.dll. (Could also be that the dump path doesn't exist, or that you don't have access to write to it from the user that runs the controller on NWNX gui, but most likely, I'd imagine it's probably an out of date dbghelp that doesn't support all the features that my build of NWNX requests when writing a dump.)

[Dragonsbane777]

You, sir, are my hero

Since installing this plugin, my server never crashes. As in, it has not since I installed it, I now reset the server at 100 hours.

Freaking awesome work bro.

[dmguild]

Still nothing. I ensured I had the newest dbghelp.dll and double checked the log file path. But I still have no logs =(

I also checked the user logged in is the administrator of that XP machine.

The server crashed 9 times today and 13 times yesterday.

I'm not sure which file to look in for "If you look at the controller log file or the NWNX GUI log, and you see an error relating to MiniDumpWriteFile"

[Skywing]

If you are using NWNX_GUI.exe, then the GUI has a log message window where any errors relating to dump writing will go. If you are using NWNX_Controller (in service or console mode), then the log messages should go to the nwnx_controller.txt log.

N.B. Going to be updating xp_bugfix for 1.13 RTM when that comes time, as to the best of my knowledge some of these problems, at the least, are still present.

The old xp_bugfix will silently turn itself off if used with a non-1.12 build. Thus, once 1.13 is RTM, you will need an updated xp_bugfix.dll to once again work around any of these bugs that remain in the RTM code.

Still working with OEI on getting some of these problems fixed in code on their end. Have two additional crashes (dm client attempting to toggle plot item status on certain classes of objects, and what appears to be a crash when attempting to log in a character with a servervault .bic file that fails to load) which I'll be updating xp_bugfix for at some point as well.

Have also done some more research onto the pathing hang problem and have the basis for a more reliable fix for that problem which should allow recovery from the "dereference 0xdeadbeef" issue that sometimes occurs when a JStar node gets freed to the pool and the memory pool linked list is treated as a JStar node parent pointer (until we reach the end of list 0xdeadbeef marker).

[Skywing]

One other thing to consider - for dump file writing to work, you need to be using one of { NWNX4_GUI.exe/NWNX4_Controller.exe } AND the NWNX4_Hook.dll from the above distribution. You may use the standard set of plugins, including any custom plugins you've got.

The crash dump writing logic requires code in the controller/GUI process as well as some logic in the hook DLL to detect that a crash occured and pass a notification of the fault off to the controller/GUI process, which writes the minidump in a safe context isolated from any heap corruption that may have occurred in the crashed process.

[mckillroy]

I tried it on Wine / Solaris, and it couldn't start the server unfortunately, as
opposed to the new version based on detours.
But since the Detours version also seems not to load the hook I think I'll dig a
bit into your sourcecode and try to make it run using my fallback method with
using a PE edited nwn2server.

I'll report back here when done.

/waves
McK.
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/McKillroy
a.k.a Yorlik

[Skywing]

I have merged all of these enhancements to virusman's SVN with the Detours-enabled pre-1.09 NWNX4. Once we do a build from that repository, I would suggest cutting over to that NWNX4 release instead of my modified 1.08 release (or the plain 1.08 release).

For the next build (which will be done off of the pre-1.09 trunk at virusman's SVN), I have also made the following changes in addition to all the ones above:

- Fixed new memory leaks that were introduced post-1.08 outside of my branch
- Added graceful shutdown support. The server will attempt to do a graceful shutdown when stopping the service or stopping the server via the GUI. There is a config parameter "gracefulShutdownTimeout" that describes the count in milliseconds of how long to wait for a graceful shutdown to complete before hard killing the server process. The default is 10000 (10 seconds). A graceful shutdown will log players cleanly out of the server (i.e. likely without crashing them), and will save all character bics properly.
- Added an optional broadcast message sent before the server shuts down for graceful shutdown (set via the "gracefulShutdownMessage" config parameter). Depending on timing, you may see the "Server has gone down" message box and be booted before it is displayed to clients. The default is to not try and send any message.
- Fixed the new undocumented "gamespyDelay" config parameter (count in seconds to wait since start of server process before starting GameSpy ping probes) to work after the first server boot per NWNX controller/GUI instance.
- Dynamic linked to DbgHelp.dll for Windows 2000 support out of the box, if you're still using Win2K (for crash dump support).
- Downgrade the dump files created gracefully on downlevel platforms with ancient DbgHelp.dll versions to provide less useful information but still write a dump file instead of failing completely. We also log a message that indicates how to upgrade DbgHelp for full crash dump support if we detect this condition. I still recommend installing the latest DbgHelp from the WinDbg distribution if you are using Windows XP or earlier.
- Various code cleanup.
- Fixed Detours makefile configuration being broken with respect to dependencies and trying to build the x64 Detours on 64-bit Windows platforms (if you are building on 64-bit Windows). NWNX4 always uses 32-bit Detours.
- Fixed service stop code for NWNX4_Controller to be much more intelligent.
- Log file appending instead of overwriting.
- Linked nwn2srvutil/nwn2srvutil_remote into the main .sln.

Still to do:

- Still need to merge in xp_bugfix
- Still need to merge in NWN2Lib