Access Violation @ Cleanup Consistently

[cjt]

Just capturing a lesson learned so that others can find it.

Was having a Access Violation every night right as the board was about to do it's first notification that cleanup was coming. I'm not sure of the cause, but the solution has been to simply remove warning/grace period before cleanup. Yes, I know, the board goes down without warning for cleanup, but I haven't crashed since.

If anyone knows the logic here, feel free to point it out. But the above is a bandaid type solution.

[syntax]

If I recall, it could be related to trying to display a message file that doesn't exist.

[ODSBBS]

Could you maybe check your GALEXCEP.OUT file and see what its listing as the reason the system is crashing before it even reaches cleanup? Might help lead you down a road to a solution... its always nice to give people a couple minutes of warning for those last minute boss hunts heh.

[cjt]

If I recall, it could be related to trying to display a message file that doesn't exist.

Thats the odd thing--it was fine for several weeks and then started crashing. One would assume, if linked to a file, that it would have presented the problem from day one.

[cjt]

Could you maybe check your GALEXCEP.OUT file and see what its listing as the reason the system is crashing before it even reaches cleanup? Might help lead you down a road to a solution... its always nice to give people a couple minutes of warning for those last minute boss hunts heh.

not sure how to interpret that file yet. I see where it lists the user and command, but some seem to be likely and others seem highly unlikely. For instance, I can see where a 'use' comamnd (bard quest cloak) has crashed the server...this is a known disconnect in the database (fixed since). Other events it appears the user simply hit 'enter' or tried to 'mihe' another character. I can't see how this data provides any clarity as to what happened.

[ODSBBS]

Well have all the information in the file is helpful when you can look at the data way down the right side of the file that will give more information but a lot of generic symbols and codes as well...

When you start having random crashes like that... its best to reindex files in the offline utilities... this will repair any database problems usually... however you need to be careful when doing this... I know some people have problems with the Worldgroup reindex program screwing up edits and goofy changes they do to their majormud files... so its best to almost, remove all majormud files from the BBS diectory... run worldgroups reindex and recovery options... move the majormud files back into the bbs directory... then go into majormuds offline utilities and run the majormud reindex program...

Just curious, have you lost power recently, and not had a battery backup on your computer to prevent it from turning off abruptly while worldgroup was running... that causes major issues.

[cjt]

Well have all the information in the file is helpful when you can look at the data way down the right side of the file that will give more information but a lot of generic symbols and codes as well...

When you start having random crashes like that... its best to reindex files in the offline utilities... this will repair any database problems usually... however you need to be careful when doing this... I know some people have problems with the Worldgroup reindex program screwing up edits and goofy changes they do to their majormud files... so its best to almost, remove all majormud files from the BBS diectory... run worldgroups reindex and recovery options... move the majormud files back into the bbs directory... then go into majormuds offline utilities and run the majormud reindex program...

Just curious, have you lost power recently, and not had a battery backup on your computer to prevent it from turning off abruptly while worldgroup was running... that causes major issues.

Good tips, will try if the Access Violations kick back up. I've been clear for a few weeks now. And yes, power cycled with faulty battery backup. Got a new one.

[SuBZeRo]

Just curious, how long does a clean up take?

[ODSBBS]

Just curious, how long does a clean up take?

Depends what your system does while down... say you just run the base system with no add-ons... its a couple seconds for the system to go down and come back up...

say you decide to make a backup of the whole system... depending on your processor and hard drive it might take several minutes...

say you've got lots of modules that all need to run their own cleanup process... majormud etc... once again depending on your system a minute or several...

overall with a modern desktop... I don't see why it'd take more than a couple minutes...

depending how you have your modules setup, the system might load quicker too, like some majormud systems can be up in a few seconds, while stock setting systems will take a minute or two to process things for systems that don't need to be up immediately... this was done for back in the day when people had dialout modules that needed to be active constantly, so downtime was unacceptable. (plus things back then could take 10-15min heh)