What A Pain In The Ass

Linux kernel 2.6.32 + ipset v4.1 + iptables 1.4.6 are now current on BOT House and EXP IV.

Just like last time, the upgrade went without a hitch on EXP IV. Everything is smooth as silk. No issues at all. Period. Well, maybe one. Once again, the NVidia driver had to be replaced because of the kernel upgrade, but that too compiled on the first shot and installed without a problem.

BOT House, on the other hand, would not cooperate.

Sure, the kernel compiled on the first attempt, but then the fun began. The NFS (Network File System) server choked on reboot. This was not good because EXP IV gets all its scripts from an NFS share on BOT House. This turned out to be the Debian NFS start-up script. Fixed. Rebooted. Then iptables wouldn't come up. It suddenly didn't like the order it was started in, so I changed that. Bingo.

BOT House took about four and a half hours to upgrade, two and a half for the kernel build and another two hacking around with the side issues. Now if it stays up without a problem for 24 hours I will be a happy fella. The upgrade to 2.6.31 in September was fine until the next day, when the whole system ground to a halt. I think I did something silly during the configure back then, so this time around I used the stock Debian config. Only time will tell.

Anyway, I'll be playing on and off the whole weekend. See you there.

iptables-1.4.6

Here we go again.

EXP IV now has the latest, allegedly greatest, version of both ipset and iptables. And of course kernel 2.6.31, which is now (naturally) .01 revision behind the times. Or .8 revisions, depending on how you look at it (it went through 7 revisions during its lifetime, the last being 2.6.31.7).

BOT House had some serious issues with 2.6.31 and I have been threatening to try to upgrade it again for some time now. This looks like a good weekend to do so. It's been running a stock Debian kernel (2.6.28.5) without ipsets for a long time now and it bugs the HELL out of me.

None of this should impact playing, but there's always the possibility of the IP address of the server changing.

Keep that in mind if you can't connect.

ipset v4.1

On November 10th, ipset v4.0 was released.

Or maybe it escaped, because less than 24 hours later ipset v4.1 came out.

So it's been two weeks and ipset v4.2 is nowhere to be seen, so I finally bit the bullet and installed ipset v4.1 on EXP IV.

You may recall the upgrade to kernel 2.6.31 on EXP IV was declared a huge success at the time. Well, that was back in September. As the days and weeks went by I started noticing some performance issues. It was something like LAG, but different. Things would freeze - but you could still move - then the world would snap back into place and you'd be somewhere else.

Usually dead.

Annoying, but - for the most part - playable.

The BOT House upgrade was a disaster and resulted in a complete rollback, so I knew somewhere, something wasn't right.

I suspected iptables, but EXP IV uses a very small subset of iptables, namely, ipset. And the issues that plagued BOT House never showed up on EXP IV, so I let it roll.

Until now.

I've only played a few games but it seems OK. I also blew out the Ban List once again, for testing purposes (only on EXP IV - the BOT House Ban List was untouched).

If this upgrade pans out, I will probably revisit the 2.6.31 upgrade on BOT House next weekend.

I'm sure ipset v4.2 will be out by then.