-2 Hours

Richard, since you seem to be around more these days, I hope you re-start the time-out procedure soon.

In one of my games the oponent has got -23 hours.

Maybe the timeout deamon sleeps again?

Yes---tournaments aren't starting either; it's the usual.

Empathy isn't scoring again too.

wheee!

does not affect me

Phil's comment, when translated into English, means "it's fixed now".

Broken again. The site has been running very slowly over the last few days too (and this the second time that the daemon has stopped in the last few days).

Let's wait another +2 Hours, if the timer job is running at least once a day, to handle the GoE game and vacation day calculations...

One of my opponents is "-6 hours", too.

I got an opponent with negative time again.

I got Ypercube @ -4, let's see who wins this time :)

Passing comment: alain and FatPhil noted in another thread that the site was running slowly last night so, given my comments dated 30/1/09 above, perhaps there's some correlation between "site taking several seconds to generate a page" and "time daemon about to crash".

Brief negative time FAQ:

Q) Why do some of my opponents have negative time?

A) Something minor has crashed. There's nothing we can do about it. It will be fixed later. When it's fixed any opponent still in negative time will lose a vacation day and will move back into positive time, so you'll probably know when it happens.

Q) I have negative time! Does this matter?

A) Not really. But play a move because when the problem is fixed you'll lose a vacation day. If you play a move you'll get back to 36 hours again (I think).

Q) When will it be fixed?

A) When Richard fixes it; sometimes it takes a few hours and occasionally several days.

Q) Why isn't the new Game of Empathy starting?

A) Because something minor has crashed. See above.

I almost won - then he moved. Reminds me of Charlie Brown:

Charlie: "One moment victory was within our grasp!"

Linus: "Yeah, then the other team showed up after all" ...

Christian, you wouldn't win. It's March, I still have vacation days.

Heh, not spending all your vacation days before the Monster starts this time, Yper?

Moreover, it doesn't really bother me. Games enough :)

Not really, it's just that this year I started with 30, instead of the usual 20 :)

Aah curses, I forgot

Q) Why isn't the monthly cup I registered for starting?? There are enough people!

A) Because something minor has crashed. See above.

It's fixed. I think.

Q) How can I tell if it's fixed?

A) One way of guessing if it's fixed is by going to

http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/tournament/index.jsp

and seeing how many people are registered for each monthly cup. If there are several monthly cups which have 5 or more people registered, then it probably isn't (but it might be, because if multiple userids are entering monthly cups from the same IP address then this also causes 5 or more people to be registered for one cup). Conversely, if most or all monthly cups have at most 4 people registered, then it might be fixed. If you can find a monthly cup round that has started very recently then it almost certainly is fixed, because one consequence of the minor crash is that no tournaments start at all.

\*\*\*

I once thought that we could access a page which gave an overview of what was going on on the site, e.g. it would say things like "Tournament:connect6.mc.2009.mar.1.28 started 10 minutes ago" (and would mention more than one type of game---i.e. I'm not talking about the "home page" for each game, I'm talking about an overview of all games). This would give plenty of evidence to suggest whether or not the problem was fixed---if I could remember where that page was. Can anyone help?

It was the main site page. At the change (where blog was added), that central page was changed.

games are showing negative time again

My opponent didn't moved for more than 30 days. Shouldn't end the game than by time?

@wotan: read Ed Collins' FAQ.

And off we go again.

How about something like the following, set to run in cron at least every hour:

----- clip -----

LGDAEMON=/home/littlegolem/bin/timedaemon

export LGDAEMON

ps aux | grep $LGDAEMON | grep -v grep >/dev/null 2>&1 || $LGDAEMON >/dev/null 2>&1 br>----- clip -----

Of course, the pathname shown is just an example, and should be replace by the real pathname. Otherwise, I run Sphinx search for one of the websites I manage, and the above script (with obvious changes for use on LG) is exactly what I run in cron to make sure the search daemon keeps running. Since that site is on a shared server for which I am NOT the administrator, there are times when it could be rebooted during THEIR system maintenance, etc., so that little script, kept in my site's /etc directory and run at regular intervals with cron, makes sure that the Sphinx search daemon is never down for very long. The same type of thing could be helpful, here, for the time daemon.

Well, something happened with the way the forum handled the last line of the script part. The script SHOULD end with the "&1" and anything after that was what got mangled. Obviously, the forum tried to use a line break ("BR") tag, and the opening bracket for it got messed up.

Just to make sure nothing else was messed up, here it is, again, at the end of this message so nothing else will interfere with it:

LGDAEMON=/home/littlegolem/bin/timedaemon

export LGDAEMON

ps aux | grep $LGDAEMON | grep -v grep >/dev/null 2>&1 || $LGDAEMON >/dev/null 2>&1

As has been mentioned before, of course this sort of thing would easily fix the problem **if the solution was as simple as having to type in a one-line command in order to restart a program**. But no-one has a clue what really is involved. For example there could be some sort of important file that is logging certain events and which now needs to be manually edited, because for the last few hours everything in the log file is wrong in some way, and the file absolutely needs to be fixed before the job is restarted.

Given that Richard wrote the code to manage the site, I would imagine that he'd be capable of writing a 1-line cron job to restart a program that has terminated. Hence I conclude that the evidence is there to suggest that it's probably actually a whole lot more complicated than what you suggest.

it has been mentioned before, yes. And I completely agree with wccanard :)

FAQ addition:

Q) Why doesn't the webmaster write a simple script to restart the time daemon when it stops?

A) We don't really know. Certainly it shouldn't be hard to write a script which spots that the daemon has died. But maybe restarting the time daemon "safely" is a lot more complicated than just restarting a script (e.g. maybe there are important files which start getting corrupted when the time daemon stops and these files absolutely must be fixed by hand before the time daemon can be restarted). Or perhaps the daemon dies in a more serious way than we understand, and manually restarting it with a one-line command just results in it instantly crashing again before any times on the site are updated.

Another possibility is that the daemon stops for some reason, such as one of those NullPointerException errors, and that it does restart, but stops again for the same reason before it can accomplish its tasks. This might be continuing until someone deletes some record in the database that has a null value where the daemon doesn't expect it.

I absolutely agree with all the caveats, and have taken that side myself above.

But I also wish that this bothered Richard half as much as it bothers us, so that he'd fix it, anyway.

Again

I guess Richard's in Vienna.

Heh, sorting out gramiak :-)

negative time again

bump

bumpitybump

blurp

blarp

-15

-35 :)

-61 On one of my games. So mine is highest, that means I win the most negative time in a game competition! Wooo Hooo!

Technically your opponent is winning :)

Oh sure, he is winning in the actual game but here in the new LG competition WHO HAS THE MOST NEGATIVE HOURS I am leading. Now at -75. So again I say Wooo Hooo!

That's not what I meant: he is the one with the negative time so he has the most negative hours.

Right. In some sense we're all losing, but maybe elroy is losing the most because he's most likely to be cheated of a win on time.

I have been watching a hex game here between two non-members, where there was no move played for 38 days, and no-one timed out, because so many days recently have been lost to the negative time bug and its consequences. I think that the player whose turn it wasn't has been cheated.

Man, you guys are so serious. I knew what you meant Aaron. I was just trying to make light of an annoying situation. So..

I am winning in the new LG competition WHO HAS AN OPPONENT WITH THE MOST NEGATIVE HOURS IN A GAME my opponent is now at -81 hours. So AGAIN I say WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!

(I shouldn't really complain, my opponent is in a better position then me in our game and I should be happy for the reprieve from getting spanked by a superior player.)

I think both Aaron and I will concede that you have won that one :-) I think you're wrong about him being serious though, he was just being pedantic, which gets him lots of points in a place like this.

-83 hours, Last move: 2009-08-26 12:57. Am I winning?