Server Tick Rating and Other Strange Lag Related Thoughts

,I've noticed since i had joined the server the rather low tps on CR2 and CR3, i haven't had time to try playing on CR1 but i'm assuming the general low tps exists across all of the servers and would like to offer a few suggestions to help attempt to remedy the issue without making major game play changes.

Things I am aware of that are running to help alleviate this issue.

• Clearlagg targeting Mob Entity's and removing them at a preset interval

Things i would like to suggest to help improve tps

• in server.properties adjust "view-distance" from its current presumably default of 10 down to 5/4 depending on how many chunks you wish for players to see, this would reduce the amount of chunks the server has to send to each client reducing network load a bit, but should not affect chunk loading since that is handled server side.
• I am assuming this has already been done, but edit the modstats.cfg file and disable "AllowUpdates" to help reduce unnecessary network traffic
• Edit JABBA.cfg and increase "packetLimiterDelay" to a higher value to reduce how often JABBA syncs with clients
• This is more at your leasure of how you wish to adjust it, but i would recomend honing it down to help reduce server chunk load, but edit "forgeChunkLoading.cfg" and define custom "maximumChunksPerTicket" and "maximumTicketCount" for each mod that uses chunk loading, if you are unsure as to how to add custom definitions for specific mods feel free to let me know and ill gladly assist.
• Also in forgeChunkLoading.cfg i would suggest that you reduce the "playerTicketCount" to reduce the amount of chunks a player can have loaded by mods on the server
• Edit extracells.cfg and adjust "rateBucket", "rateDrop", and "rateQuart" to a higher value to in theory move fluids to their designated location in less time to reduce overall server resource usage.
• Edit extracells.cfg and adjust "tickRateCraftingChamber", "tickRateExportBus", "tickRateImportBus", and "tickRateStorageBus" to a higher value so they don't run this process as often reducing cpu usage.
• Edit (This may only apply to Clients and not the server) Chisel.cfg increase "particle tickrate" to generate less particles.
• Edit BiblioCraft.cfg and set "CheckForUpdates" to false to stop it from contacting the server thus reducing network usage
• Edit autopackager.cfg increase "cycle_delay_ticks", and "idle_delay_ticks" to slow reduce how often the machines cycle per second
• Edit AppliedEnergistics.cfg and increase the following to reduce how often it cycles per second. "perTickNetworkBridge", "updateMinTickRate"

I am aware that there are many settings ive missed that can improve server speeds, these are just a few to help improve preformace. Overall the machines will run slower Yes, but in all reality with the server having such a low tps, in theory the server will run faster thus causing tps to increase making the machines run at a more reasonable rate.

Edit: If interested, i can attempt to fine tune the modpack configurations for the server, the only thing i would need then would be either the current configs the server has to help maintain custom adjustments that you have applied or a change log of the modpack changes so i could apply them to it.

Regards,
Bloodwi11

 

Interesting that one player seems to have such a large affect on the server to be so detrimental. From my personal experance a single player with inventory shouldn't per say be the cause of it more so i have found that its that players surroundings.

In regards to the low mob counts, that is more along spawning ratios, if i am not mistaken i assume that the servers are running cauldron, that being the case under this assumption mind you there should be settings either in the mcpc config or the spigot config that directly affect the amount of total entities the server is allowed to have on it as well as the ratio of entities per player etc. That can easily be adjusted and scaled up accordingly if your seeking to challenge the community more accurately as single players does. But i doubt that is the current agenda until the lower tps and other bugs are resolved first.

That is quite odd, something to be aware of that in my experience of working with Cauldron, MCPC+, and other Bukkit/Forge Combination servers is that there tend to be on average 3 sources that directly modify chunk loading. I recall this being a rather tedious issue of digging through configuration files to handle it and found that allowing only one of them to manage all chunk loading alleviates this issue. Off the top of my head i believe the common 3 that conflicted were as follows; Forge, MCPC+, ChickenBones (Such as Chicken Bones Chunk Loaders)

That is true that it does mainly focus on force loaded chunks such as ; EnderThermicPump, ChunkLoaders, Etc.. there are actually quite a few mods that naturally load chunks with out the server admins knowledge. I would gladly take the time to dig through the configs and find them all if that is some thing you are still interested in knowing more about. From personal experience the only mod when i placed in rules through forge for chunk loading that didn't like it was BuildCraft and that was only used for the Quarry which Required Chunk loading otherwise it would cause many strange mining issues or just completely stop mining all together

Mind you this was just a small detail, but still glad to be aware

Fair enough, before making this post i wasn't to aware of the back end system statistics, this knowledge is quite useful though in tracking down more so as to whats causing odd tps drops.

I understand that decision completely, this was more directed as a alternative to doing such.

Applied Energistics on a small scale is reasonable but from the size and popularity of the server i felt this may be a good suggestion due to the Massive Factories Users love to create

A small side note in response to this, under the same assumption i made earlier in regards to the server being on Cauldron/MCPC+ etc, i have found that Opis is a rather large cpu hog, personaly ive found that removing or disabling it completely "Usually" has improved the server performance and that a simple bukkit plugin can handle most if not all needs in regards to server Quality. As for TickProfiler i would assume falls into a similar category of running in the background constantly tracking server usage and if possible it may be better to shift over to a bukkit plugin

In what regards are you speaking of the pathfinding? I could use a bit more details on this question
As for changing Spigot Settings, that is a bit concerning. Is it that changing any settings cause this or are there only a specific set that tend to cause the crash. Any information on this would be great!

i started back in 1.7.3 beta playing with bukkit servers and just general enjoyment of understanding how the servers worked and helped friends setup small scale communities at the time

When 1.2.3 was out a friend of mine introduced me to Technic pack before mod packs had become more of a main stream popularity. With the new found love of mods and modpacks in general i remember getting them to coincide was a interesting task. The big issue at the time was the multiplayer server for this mod pack wasn't readily available for us to play so i set out on the task of learning how to setup mod pack server. Ever since then i have spent quite a large amount of time working on mod pack servers for personal proof of concepts as well as making servers possible for friends and other communities. before FTB's launcher was released i had even recoded the technic packs launcher to handle my personal mod packs and used that to distribute updates for the small community i used to play with.

Edit: There is plenty i have omitted here just for the sake of avoiding extending this massive wall of text as well as that of previous projects that escape me at the time of writing this.

But that all aside i feel that i am moderately versed in mods and plugins and the odd combinations of which that can reach what you may seek. If you have any problems or questions feel free to let me know and ill offer my knowledge to the servers disposal to help improve the community and server quality in any ways i can.

 

These statements lead me to belive that the ZombieAwareness mod may have a very large influnce as towards the poor AI and spawning issues, have you considered Disabling this for a test period to collect more information on the issue?

Have you considered just allowing spigot to handle chunk unloading for this?

Is there by chance a whitelisted test server that is used to test these settings?


I am still concerned that your Spigot settings leave your server to be so temperamental, if you don't mind me asking do you have some of the previous crash logs that were generated by those changes that i may take a look at?

 

Ill take a look at the cauldron configs here in a few, the only jar i have from it is missing a few libraries so its not wanting to start properly

True, i was just curious if there was a safe location for testing

Edit: I managed to track down one of my recent projects on a agrarian skies server so i might be able to provide a bit more detailed information. As for the View Distance i referred to above. Spigot.yml also has a "view-distance" you can set as well as the one in server.properties.

Edit: Aside from that there is also under the settings catagory of mcpc.yml has most of the chunk loading/unloading, i'm not sure if your still having issues with Sync respawning, but the "load-chunk-on-forge-tick" may resolve that issue

Edit: Also as for the small amount of mob entities the bukkit.yml config under the spawn-limits category should allow you to increase the amount across the server, but i feel that is a small detail.

 

Well i've got my server box for personal testing up and running, ill see if i run into similar issues and if i can find a work around for it[DOUBLEPOST=1410730729,1410729533][/DOUBLEPOST]
after a quick load up i didnt see any issues with spawning really shortly after this screen shot the mobs climbed well over 50+ just with me there. That leads me to think that it may be a plugin causing the restriction. If i recall correctly the ClearLagg plugin does have a few default settings that restrict the amount of mobs allowed to be in any one chunk at any point in time which would influence the amount of mobs on the server since most players spend several nights just holed up in their crashed ship

 

i wonder if it has somthing to do with entity dispersion among the players, but still that doesnt account for the mob quantity hmm..

 

well i did a bit of experimenting this morning and found a small improvement spawning by adjusting the "spawn-limits" monster option which increased the total some. But it doesn't seem to remedy the issue with a large amount of players on, on the other hand though i was thumbing through the configs a bit more and you could in theory lower the "chunks-per-tick" option in the spigot.yml to a much lower value since Most of the time in crash landing I've found players rely on bonemeal for plant growth then they do server tick for that factor. I just thought i would update you guys on my findings so far and ill continue searching to the answer for the high tps and low mob rates.. come to think of it that is quite an odd ratio when you think about it Lol.

Edit: Is it possible to get a list of the mods currently enabled for the CL servers, there are a few that i assume are disabled such as SpecialMobs, but there are a few i'm unsure on such as SpecialAI, MobPropterties. Etc.

 

Just a quick question of verification then, you had mentioned that the mob AI was acting odd such with path finding. If that is the case have you considered disabling CoroUtil?

Edit: On a side note to all of this have you guys ever considered running a PTR (Public Test Realm) for players to get on for upcoming updates as well as testing for issues such as this?

Edit: I may be overstepping my boundrys on this request but would i be able to see what your settings on ClearLagg are, and are you currently or have you considered letting ClearLagg handle mob spawning?

 

Well after experimenting with clearlagg it seems that will be a terrible choice to use for mob spawning, even alone on the server i was only getting 3-4 mobs.


Edit: Spelling Errors