Last ditch hair brain idea

[0rbisson]

It seems everyone is scrambling to come up with a way to keep the forums and the servers running, Short of a miracle I don't see it happening, And even if people do donate how long will that effort last? Just delaying the inevitable

Here is an idea, it's just an idea. In the USA if you play lotto you pay so much tax on your win, In Australia we don't

How about people donate what they can to a lotto ticket myself included. The ticket will be posted here as proof of purchase. If by some miracle we win, we could split the winnings between all contributors, set up an account to have the servers run indefinitely?

I realize its a shot in the dark but we don't have many options at this point

[XANA]

I mean no offense or harm when I say this because I know your heart is 100% in the right place, but that's literally the worst idea to secure the future of anything. TS needs secure, consistent, and stable support if (and a big if) it's going to survive, not feed into what is essentially a scam and hope you get lucky.

I don't know if people are scrambling right now since it seems like most people are still firmly in the grief stage, but if we're going to have a serious discussion about what happens to TS from now, we might as well start here and I'll repost if necessary.

From where I see it, there are two scenarios that can happen that will have to happen at the end of August if Jehar is correct about TS's costs being covered up until then since obviously all of the potential outpouring of charity and donations are not going to be enough.

They are:

1. Tastyspleen goes under new ownership somehow. That means any access to administrative functions, FTP, and absolutely everything else relevant quadz had a hand in goes to someone new. Quadz was notoriously untrusting of anyone with any kind of administrative access, and now we will see that come back to haunt everyone. I personally have no earthly idea anybody who would be able to get that sort of information, (or god forbid, already has access to it) let alone be able to support the huge (albeit much smaller than in the past) financial cost of actually paying for the physical boxes that TS is currently being run on.

Outside of a select handful of moderators, personal friends and people who had access to rcon, quadz handled almost all internal matters by himself. Every time a map needed to be uploaded, he was the one who synced it. Every time mymap had to be altered, he was the one who changed it. Every time there was some sort of programming issue that needed to be resolved, he was the one who fixed it. It was all quadz, all the time, and if nobody is going to be able to step up, then we can say in hindsight that is one of his biggest mistakes.

However, this is a non-issue if there actually is someone like that, or if quadz prepared for this sort of thing. However, we need to know soon. Like, within the next month and a half.

Or, the second option,

2. Tastyspleen ceases operating. This might be the more likely scenario, but if this happens, a lot of things need to happen if Q2 is going to survive, at least in the US. Firstly, all relevant server assets and files, such as WallFly, various .so and .dll files and the like need to be archived and be available for download ASAP. This is just to help preserve and make easily available all of the helpful and useful things Tastyspleen offers over every other server run by some rando throwing up a dedicated server on q2servers.

Second; everything else? The maps, the textures, the overrides, the forums? They ALL need to be archived RIGHT NOW. This game has already been hit with the closing of places like Deaconstomb, and the TS repository is one of, if not the biggest collection of Quake 2 assets in the world. There are some maps and even mods that were exclusive to TS that will be lost forever if they aren't backed up in some capacity.

All of the exclusive maps on mutant, gone. All of the exclusive mods on goto, gone. All of the records on the jump server, gone. The Q2 Starter, gone.

That's not including the forums, either. The forums have countless files, demos, maps, and pieces of Quake 2 history that will also be lost forever if TS ceases to exist. The forums already lost enough when the layout was changed; certain quotes and posts were cut off and deleted, and that's not accounting for people like Elysium deleting all of their posts and all of the useful and informative posts within.
And that's not accounting for all of the webspaces that quadz had set up for people over the years; all of that data will be lost as well. I know I'll be personally backing up what I have on this website as much as I can. If you have a webspace with Tastyspleen, I would suggest you do the same.

For all of the problems that TS has/had, I definitely would not want so much hard work and cool ideas thrown into the ever-growing bin of lost media on the internet. TS has outlived everything and it should be archived as much as humanly possible; and if everyone loved quadz and everything he did for Quake 2 like they say they do, they should be working hand-in-hand to preserve it.

And lastly,

3. "connect tastypleen.net" needs to redirect to somewhere, at least in the short term. I don't know who would run it, I don't know where it'll be, but it needs to be redirected somewhere.

These are all just off the top of my head, though. The loss of quadz is a tragic, colossal, monumental and crushing blow to Quake 2 as a whole, but I hope that it can move on for the better, however that will happen.


-xana

[QwazyWabbit]

The entire server is a 12-core Intel CPU machine with 64GB ram and a 1TB disk.
It's about 81% full. It's a full, bare metal dedicated server and they're pricy.

I have backed up the quake2 content which is about the only content I can access outside of my shell to a backup server with the help of Claire. Total content was about 9.8GB but total size was 17.3GB so even within that quake2 folder there was inaccessible content. We're working on the backup issues from inside the server now.

I recommend someone with abundant storage capacity try using wget to download all the web content.
There are a lot of folders that are op-critical that nobody has access to at the moment.

It's an expensive server. Not your usual $24.95/month web presence.

If people have $20 to spend on a lottery ticket every month on the snowballs-chance of a win then they can afford to pay that $20 to directly supporting the server. A lottery win would produce more problems than it solves, like who's going to keep and manage the money that "the users" won?

For the time being we need to stand by and formulate a plan and let the family grieve. After a month or two we can approach the widow about transfer of ownership but there are certain files on Quadz' PC that we need for root access unless another method is found. For the time being I intend to respect the property rights of his family.

[|iR|Focalor]

It's an expensive server. Not your usual $24.95/month web presence.

THIS. This what I was trying to emphasize to you guys on the DM server the other day. Quadz was paying a LOT of money for these servers. For what he was paying for all of us to play Quake2 free of charge, he could've been paying the mortgage on a second little tiny house somewhere in rural nowheresville, no joke. I don't know that even donations would cover it unless service and cost were reduced. But none of that is up to anyone except a few select people. There's nothing any one of us can do other than being ready with donations when and if they are asked for. And it hurts, but it's time to start accepting that this might be the end.

There will NEVER be any other one single person with feet big enough to fill his shoes.

[yahoo]

So like what if the other non and not so populated servers be taken down.. Lets say like 4 to 5 popular servers be remained like DM, coop, TDM, WodX, Xatrix and Rogue be continued, what would the overhead expenses be?

Will it be sustainable by donation? Sort-term  and Long-term wise?

[VaeVictis]

So I've been trying to stay quiet despite being as torn up as anyone else about the news due to not being welcome around here and wanting to be respectful, but I just have to chime in on this point specifically.

The server is most likely over priced by quite a bit, and is not spec'd out in any kind of useful way.

12 cores. I'm gonna guess that is 6 cores and hyperthreaded, which could mean a higher end E3 or lower end E5 (I think this was last moved before the whole platinum/gold/silver stuff). Core speed is going to matter, but not a whole bunch for the age of games running. An E3 proc is most likely going to be better for the application due to higher clock speed, with the later editions supporting 64G ram no problem.

64GB ram. Probably not completely necessary. 32GB might be sufficient, but this is one area where the spec is probably good. Could definitely run 6x8g sticks and get away with a 48g server while maintaining reasonable performance though.

1TB HDD is laughably underwhelming if there is any kind of storage concern. At the very least I'd think a couple 2TB drives set up in an mdadm raid (save money on hardware raid) would be a good alternative. I know software raid has some stigmas but I've seen it run in production environments for years without issue supporting massive workloads.

There are a handful of big factors that determine monthly cost of a rented bare metal server. The first is proc/board as newer stuff costs more and older stuff is all paid off (for the hosting company) so they can give it at a discount. The second is form factor, where blades or microclouds take up less physical space in the datacenter but also they can't take as many drives. Third is bandwidth, where you have the easiest time to shave BIG costs off as servers can come with 10-100TB of bandwidth and some times you only need like 2TB or so. A standard 1G port running full stop for a month uses something like 300TB, but typically game servers use almost none and any bandwidth usage would be from downloading/uploading files.

Another thing to be aware of is that you can't directly compare hosting companies. There are big providers like IBM (formerly softlayer, formerly theplanet who used to host TS) with actual datacenters with proper cooling, network stacks, fire suppression, certification, and competent technicians. There are also sketchy assholes that just run server farms in warehouses and use dodgy brands for hardware. Obviously cutting corners means the servers are cheaper, and respectable companies can't compete on price with the amount of corners cut in most cases. So cheap is not always good.

Backups are also going to add to cost, but those are so all over the map that I can't comment on what would be good or speculate on what is set up now. Honestly some one could rsync to a local server, using a ton bandwidth for one run then minimal for changes after. (SQL databases are a bitch to backup though, for phpbb)

I thought the server ran cpanel or something similar due to the user account set up and file structure, which would add an unnecessary amount (32ish?) per month.

Going virtual to save money on a VPS of sorts, the storage is a problem. Typically the cheaper VMs have small disks, and to get up in the 1TB storage range it can quickly cost more than an older spec discounted bare metal server.

Even if you cut a lot of unnecessary costs, get an optimal set up for hardware for use case (dual 2tb in mdadm raid, slightly older E3, 48g ram, microcloud/blade chassis, maybe 2tb bandwidth), and go with a reputable company that still has reasonable prices... You are still looking at over 1k per year, BUT that is a lot more affordable than the numbers provided for how much TS costs currently.

In regards to Wabbit's mention of requiring the root keys, you shouldn't need them if the server has a BMC or some one at the datacenter can temp set up a kvm for it. If the disk is encrypted then that complicates things, but most likely it should just be possible to mount an ISO and go through normal root account recovery procedure (enabling/disabling users, changing passwords, modifying authorized keys, w/e). If the account gets transferred to some one responsible (like Jehar IMO), that should be almost a non-issue.

And @ yahoo who responded while I was typing this, the servers not populated are negligible on resource usage. 100 empty servers can run in the background without so much as a blip on the server resources. The only background server TS runs thats probably using more resources than necessary is the Q4 one because Q4 has some weird server bugs that make it use CPU even at idle.

Just some information for people who don't know server hosting well I guess. I don't have much of a stake in this as I'm basically non-existent around here right now, but wanted to help out.

EDIT: 6600/year is what is listed in the dono thread that recently got bumped which works out to 550/month, but after talking to some people it sounds like it was cut down significantly after the move a few years back. Still think there is some room for cost savings if it becomes an issue, but its not as overpriced as the public numbers make it look.

[XANA]

Still think there is some room for cost savings if it becomes an issue, but its not as overpriced as the public numbers make it look.

Just as a historical anecdote: the current cost of running TS, while still expensive, is nowhere near where it was near a decade ago before the switch to a new server. I believe there was one month during the move where the costs exceeded $1000, but that was a one-time deal and was greatly alleviated by donation events at the time. There are more than likely quotes on the forums and logs that I might have from IRC years back that confirm what the cost was, but I would have no idea where to look so I'll probably just let someone else do it for me.

Not to mention that east.tastyspleen.net was "vaporized" years back, which lopped off $48/mo on the total cost of TS. Not to say the costs were insignificant because that's a whole lot of Cornettos you could buy with that kind of money, but I believe the costs have been exaggerated just a little bit by people who are remembering a time when the total costs were a bit more eye-popping than they are now.

Just thinking out loud.

[ni-ux]

I sent you a PM Quazy - dealing with situations like this is what I do for a living - respond when you can, I'm happy to help with funding and expertise at least in the short term to get the servers hosted on a new stable platform.

[QwazyWabbit]

I suppose the prices were higher back when it was first initiated and it was a better spec machine back in the day. I know he was overpaying for the old one and this one was a great improvement in performance.

It would have been selected 4 or 5 years ago I believe. Spec sheet on the E5-2630 v4 says 10 cores, 20 threads so lets end the speculation.

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 79
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v4 @ 2.20GHz
stepping        : 1
microcode       : 0xb00001b
cpu MHz         : 1200.170
cache size      : 25600 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 20
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 10
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 20
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch epb invpcid_single kaiser tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm cqm rdseed adx smap intel_pt xsaveopt cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp
bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds
bogomips        : 4399.78
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Etc. up to 11. It enumerates CPU 0 thru 11 so I don't know WTF that means if it's a 10 core.

By today's standards it's a medium capability processor. Personally, I used to be an Intel guy but now I have experienced a 16 core Ryzen 9 and would not go back to Intel.

Given its uptime at 786 days, I'd have to say it was a good choice of vendor because they are not foisting updates on it and it was self-managed by quadz. It's not shared with anyone and it's a real box not a virtual one.

As for downsizing or paring down the server count, that will be up to the next owner.
To quote quadz, "I can run 100 empty servers as easily as 10." or words to that effect.

[TriggerHappy{FLP}]

@qwazy does this site also run  off of that same machine or is it run by a different entity? may be a silly question but i thought id ask you anyways being that you are fairly tech savvy

[QwazyWabbit]

@qwazy does this site also run  off of that same machine or is it run by a different entity? may be a silly question but i thought id ask you anyways being that you are fairly tech savvy

It's all run off the same machine.

[claire]

in preparation, I bought a dedicated server in Dallas that was just delivered yesterday. I'm not sure if it's hosted in where TS is in Hivelocity, but it's VERY close (1ms away from TS). This one is not equivalent in scale, but the TS server is overspec'd anyway.

It seems the gameservers, the forum and the database for the forum are all on different servers, and I'm pretty sure they're all virtual machines running inside some other. 538GB and counting...

[Mammal]

I discovered something. It's really cool (and very difficult) to go through the old Doom, Doom 2, and Quake 1 SINGLE PLAYER games and try to go from start to finish on difficult level without getting fragged. I guarantee that you will spend hours trying to achieve this. And when you get near the end you will be so wired that your hand will literally be shaking on the mouse in case you blow all those hours trying to get it out. Try it!

Love always,
Mammal

[yahoo]

Tubby is spamming again!

[Mammal]

.... . .-.. .--.  ..  .- --  -... . .. -. --.  .... . .-.. -..  .... --- ... - .- --. .  -... -.--  .-  -.-. --- -- -- ..- -. .. ... -  -.. .. -.-. - .- - --- .-. ... .... .. .--.