World: r3wp

Anyway to script some sort of "ping" to check periodically if the 
world still exists?


I hate thinking its been down for hours or days if I have not visited 
for a while.

amacleod - apparently, there has to be some bug. There has to be 
some script/job, which investigates, if the name is free or not. 
That script fails, or simply does not work upon the docs, which say, 
that your world will expire after 10 days. But maybe the logic is 
twisted, maybe such job is being run not on a daily basis, but on 
a 10days basis, and if so, then it is wrong.

... because you can have 1 hour outage, and such script reaching 
your world, will claim it does not run for more than 10 days.

Dunno if paying customers have the same problems, but most probably 
not.

Pekr, how did you contact me?  I was not aware that there was a problem 
here.

AltME saves the world-name two ways:


1. When you run your server, it pings the world-name server every 
few minutes to indicate that it's up, and what IP it is using.


2. If you buy a registered world or AltServe, then the world-name 
is locked and cannot be reallocated.


But, that said, there could be a bug!  Please tell me any details. 
 For example, what AltME version, and what platform.

BTW, Safeworlds does not intentionally deallocate names that are 
in use.  So, it's definitely a bug of some kind.

sounds like a good sci-fi title ... "The lost worlds of AltME" ...

Carl - private message on R3 chat. I did not contact you with prior 
problems, but this time I got denerved, when it happened second time 
in one month :-)

I will dig some information later and post it to you ...

Is Carl suggesting that teh $10/yr subscription avoids this problem 
of losing worlds?

Just wondering what algorithm is used in Altme to set the user state 
to active or inactive.  Does it monitor keyboard and mouse usage?

$10/year is a really trivial sum ...if it solves the issues.

Exactly..

...but... the feature shouldn't be broken non the less.

Am I the only one having connection problems today?

no, you are not. I experience occassionally reconnection, sometimess 
even full lose of the connection ...

Very slow, unreliable. More 'Internet Busy...'

I often see "Internet busy" in the status line up left, and my post 
doesn't get delivered. I found, that if I reconnect (login again 
in AltME), I can get my post out.

So it's probably in the AltME server end of the communication?

yes, server issue ...

I too am seeing this a lot today.  Maybe we should get Henrik to 
host this world on linode for us ?  :)

Just for the records, the reason AltME went down last week was a 
hardware failure of the Network card.

Suddenly it went normal here. What switch did Reichart flip? :-)

We are also moving some lines, Carl needs to flush some IP tables, 
he might have done this today.

Connection problems again today, it seems.

Almost constant 'Internet busy...' - can hardly stay connected long 
enough to post this message...

Is it better now?

So what does it take to host this world somewhere else? At this point, 
I'm almost inclined to pay a little for better service, due to the 
quality of the information that can be found here.

Just a linux box connected 24/7 and an open port

I used to run a backup rebol altme server when it altme used to go 
down for ages at a time but that server is now otherwise occupied.

It's hard to get enthused about using altme when this particular 
server is so flaky

Does the headless AltME server not cost money?

I use AltMe from a few different computers.
I just observed many messages missing.

It just looks as if messages are disappearing, even ones I am sure 
I wrote and saw already

It's almost useless now :/

I agree.


its currently, totally, broken because the server seems to be freezing 
all the time. 

 there is a serious flaw in altme's tcp design.

do we know that? AltME has run fine until about a year ago. Do other 
worlds run off the same servers have the same trouble?

the flaw is in handling the connections errors... altme does everything 
the wrong way.  blanks screens, looses messages, freezes up, doesn't 
properly recover, when just reconnecting to world manually actually 
brings a client back up for a little while.


the server has been noted by Carl as being afflicted by a few networking 
issues, but the server is clearly available in some way, so the server/client 
protocol isn't very fault-tolerant IMHO.

it seems to be back to being responsive... is it better for others 
here too?

works here too

noticed a strange problem.  my altme shows On-line.

then I post... BUT it actually only synced and received posts in 
other groups, and DID NOT post my new message.


after the sync, it still says On-line... yes... there is something 
very screwed up here.

now that it synced... it works as usuall... very strange.

AltME seems to be back to normal - seen from here.

yep now seems to be back to "nominal" operation.

But I lost some messages on one of the computers, i use to access 
AltMe. 

And I don't mean the common bug, that I do net get the recent messages.

I think we are waiting for Carl to update the DNS records for AltME.

However, if someone else wants to take over this Server, I think 
we are open to that.

Kaj, does altme server run under syallable :)  ?

Need to know some things, if I am to try the server on Linode:


- RAM requirements for server with the current REBOL3 world. My server 
has 384 MB RAM and is already doing other stuff.
- Can I run headless?

- Can I make a copy of this world which people can connect to for 
testing? Just to minimize downtime in case it won't work.

We need Carl to speak up here.

I think that last time Carl told that this world is already too big 
and the best way would be to setup a new one.