HeRO

Historical Dates

[15.10.05] Server opens.

[27.11.05 12:10] Server Begins Migration to a Linux system.

Server's Migration

Work time for transfer: 6 hours

Server down time: 30 minutes

The Story (as presented by GM-Scott)

So I thought about composing this little "log" to let players get a feel of what we had to do to get the linux server up. It's a lot more than "hey man, install linux so it can be less buggy !!1one!1"

As the server administrator, I was the one in charge of choosing the OS and getting this thing working before the whole server migration. So I did just that. I have had a couple of encounter with linux from my school days and "getting in touch with the inner geek" days. So I had a couple of experience with some old Red Hat and Mandrake (yeah, those two changed name but in those days...) but it wasn't compeling enough for me to go through those horrible memories again. Recently, I used Ubuntu a lot. It's debian based, which have a strong server reputation, and it's god-awful-easy to set up. It does the job well and it's a breeze (some users will get the pun here) to update. So I decided to go with Ubuntu.

Over the past week, I've gone through multiple howtos and different topic on the matter of linux. No one really helped me though because I had already set up a couple of RO servers over the past months so I did go pretty much from there with no more really helpful hints in my backpack. So I decided to install the thing on my home computer, to get the feel. I (re)installed Ubuntu (I had a previous Ubuntu installation that was working dandy) and started the whole "make the server work" thing. Here is the steps, in a fast description :

- Install the database program (MySQL).

- Install the database managers programs (MySQL Admin and MySQL CC)
Note: MySQL Admin is easy to setup. MySQL CC is a f***in' pain in the **s to get because it's no more "supported". Pfff.

- Get the right server and set it up (this was pretty painless because I did it like a dozen times already).

- Configure the IPs, router (pretty easy).

- Make a compatible patch to test out (long but easy).

So when I got everything working from both LAN and WAN, I scrapped the whole thing and started over. Yes I did it twice. Practice makes perfect.

So the big day came...almost. On saturday, I saw that eAthena released a PR, a preview version. Basically, it's a SVN like we used but it differ because it's a "frozen" release that is weeded of bugs. This means that it's got a special attention from developer to make it the LESS buggy ever. Which is a damn good news! :) GM-Ben and I decided to go with that version ONE day before the move. We had to make sure it would run. We chose a longer but more nice approach. We decided to minimize downtime. Which we did since the downtime for you players was of about half an hour combine. It's god damn good. You'll see why.

While I'm the "set up" guy, GM-Ben is the "make it work from there" guy. Which means he's the one taking care of the day to day tracking of bugs and changes while I'm the one who make big ass changes. He's done a MARVELOUS job at keeping track of the changes (with the cooperation of all the GM coders, I might add). So we got together today morning, himself, myself, my trusty laptop, his trusty computer, the server and the test server to get this done.

First, we decided to get the server work on the test server. We transfered the new PR1 release and injected our database into it to get it to run. Some little tweaks in the networking equipement later, you guys were back online and duking it out in WOE. What you might not know (and it doesn't show), is that getting the server to run flawlessly took 2 hours of work. Setting up the server, transfering the datas, injecting the datas, redirecting network, etc. But you guys got what... 5 minutes downtime? It was a smart move. While you guys were having a blast in WOE, I was hard at work scrapping the whole windows main server.

Yes, you feel that cold feeling in your spine when you push the ok button on "Are you sure you want to format the hard drive?". Oh yeah baby, there is no turning back! YES! There, it was gone, no more heRO. After, I had to create the partition and install Ubuntu. The whole process took about 40 minutes. Then, it was installation time.

I can't say it was "bad" for this part. The installations went pretty smooth. As some of you might know, there is no DVD drive on a server. These things don't "need" a DVD drive. Yeah right! And all those files I had on DVD?! :P We had to get the DVD on a drive and copy from the network. Minutes and minutes of fun! Once we had the files, installing the whole thing went pretty well. I knew exactly what to do. GM-Ben prepared all the custom files and changes while I was busy getting the MySQL server up an running. Setuping the heRO server was completely hassle free. Unless... Unless the map server didn't CRASH all the time because of a mysterious totaly uncalled for error! :evil:

Some of you might remember being able to log and choose your character sometime but being unable to get to the map. It was that time. See, the GRF we had seemed to be "corrupted". So we had to get an emergency GRF uploaded. And my god it was a good thing! :) Within 20 minutes or so, the biggest downtime in the process, everything ran fiiiiiiine.

You might not tell from this story, but that was 6 hours after the beginning of the process. Yes, this took 6 hours! Downtime? 30 minutes.

So we double checked everything and it was running smooth and the sun was ... not shining at 6pm! :P But we should had triple checked because we left the server and the CP was still not running! :( I took time to get some food in my stomach by that time. You know how it helps getting the things clearer in your head? Hehehe. I was with the company of Fran?ois which I declare is the second biggest geek I've ever seen, not that far from the first, and a Linux buff. What a chance! :D So he helped me with the MySQL connection lost the CP had. Imagine, we stayed in front of our two laptops during the whole Grey Cup finals (yes, it does matter...) working for you guys, doing VNC and SSH and command line and file editing and Google searches to try to resolve this problem. Finally, around 21h45 (EST), I had to leave but he left me with a valuable clue : "ok, check this line in this file, I'm sure it will do the trick" he said.

So once at home, at around 23h00, I SSH the server again, edit the file, save, go ingame and tell everyone their might be some downtime, restart the MySQL server and... BAM! THE CP IS WORKING! :D

Joy and beer for all! Especially for Fran?ois! But he's a geek and he does not drink...so I get his beer! JOY! ;)

So there you have it. It took a week of preparation, 6 hours of sweaty rush work, two servers, 3 guys, 2 laptops and a whole lot of Google...until 23h00, but we got there. For you guys. And I think we got you there in a Cadillac.

Thank GM-Ben for his good work on this. Thank Francois for being a uber-geek.

And if there's some left, maybe thank me! :P

Have fun playing on the new server!

[14.01.06 15:13] GM-Ben accidently restarted the official server instead of the test server (rebooting).

[18.01.06] Warper system implemented by GM-Ben after WoE.

[02.02.06] Two (2) castles opened.

• Aldebaran Castle 5 (bottom right)
• Payon Castle 2 (bottom right)

[10.02.06] Server is offline due to modem signal becoming too weak to service the Server.

[03.04.06] A dark day for the server as quite a substantial group of players were banned for exploiting a bug.

[11.05.06] There was a forum rollback (11 days of forum posts GONE) due to hosting company not being very good.

Fun Facts

2005

Server started on October 15th (two and a half months)

     # 1177 accounts has been created
     # 1480 characters currently exist on the server
     # There are 16 guilds
     # 86,812,295 zeny exists and are splitted between those characters
     # 274 characters are second job or higher
     # Out of this 6 are advanced classes
     # 35 characters are level 90 or above
     # We have had a "known" peak of 65 users online
     # There has been 140 support tickets answered by the GM team
     # There are 200 registered forum members
     # Forum has 7,688 posts in 833 threads.

Did you know that even though it was not permitted, the rule about Ice walling during WoE was not actually part of the original set of rules.

Main chat started to be used (on heRO) on the [08.02.06].