Is this a good server for gmod10?

[MarleyX]

My dad is letting us borrow one of his servers so we can play gmod with some friends this summer.  Id like to know if the server will run gmod.  One of my friends told me that I need linux for a gmod server.  My dad said it should work on this server.  Id like to get a second opinion. Will gmod server run on windows 2003?  If it does, how many people can play on it at once? Will it lag for using windows and not a linux server? Im not allowed to install anything until next week when my school is over.  So I can't try anything yet.  He did let me copy some info from the device manager and task manager thou.

specs (I copied most of these from device manager):
Windows server 2003 64bit
4x Dual-Core AMD Opteron™ Processor 2216 HE
8GB of ram
500GB  Areca ARC-1110-VOL#00
Intel PRO/1000 MT Network Connection
100mbit/s internet (he said the isp was Level 3)
No sound card

oh, one other thing.  I have to use remote desktop to get to the server.  Its in some data center in new york.  we are in Miami, Florida.  I assume this shouldnt be a problem, right?

[[Toast]]

With that you could easily host as many as 10 GMod servers.

Don't go Linux, Garry hasn't released linux binaries yet (and it doesn't seem like he plans to).

Remote desktop isn't a big deal. You'll have to download the hldsupdatetool on the server and install srcds. Garry's Mod's game name for updating/installing is 'garrysmod' just so you know when you get ready to install it.

[MarleyX]

I was trying to post a screen shot before but couldnt figure out how to do it. I hope this works.

[MarleyX]

lol, I just missed your post before i reposted that screen shot. im glad to hear that it will work. Are you sure there is no gmod for linux? I thought people ran these on linux.

[Drocona]

GMOD hasn't released a Linux server binary yet (at least not for GMOD10)

and LOL I wish I had a server like that!!

[[Toast]]

Me too, I could start a business with that kind of hardware.

[MarleyX]

Thanks for the replies. The server works great except for remote desktop. I have both a CSS and Gmod server running. So far the most people I had was 12 on Gmod and 26 on CSS (100 tick btw), mostly friends from my school. Absolutely no lag what so ever (if im not on remote desktop). The only time it lags is when anything with some graphics on remote desktop is being moved; like scrolling a webpage on it. I need this to download custom maps. I honestly don’t get why remote desktop slows everything down. The cpu usage is only ~7-14%. When I logon to another user on remote desktop there is no lag. Its only when I am on the same account srcds is running from. Does anyone know how to fix this? Is there an alternative to remote desktop?

[MarleyX]

Higest speeds download: 50.3mbit/s  Highest upload 19.5mbit/s
Lowest speeds Download: 12mbit/s   Lowest upload 4.7mbit/s
Got these from dslreports java speed test.  







The graphics on speedtest.net run like crap on remote desktop

Dslreports flash speed test, these slowed remote desktop to a crawl so I only ran a few.

[Drocona]

First of all, nice connection and server, you could start a whole gameserver company with that.

second, the servers you are running should hold fine, like you said. But there's one thing, the 26 player 100 tick server, it's known that servers will get issues on 100 tick when the player amount gets above 18, above 18 it should be 66 tick, when you get to 32 and above it should be 33 tick.
There are weird lag issues when you go above that 18 players, the stats of the server will all be fine, since it's the engine that goes whacky.

Last, I tend to use VNC, be sure to use Enterprise and not the free one (Our security personel has hacked into the free one in more than 2 ways)

[MarleyX]

The only noticeable problem with CSS was with some objects, especially doors getting stuck.  Other than that it worked fine, and didn't seem to lag.  I'm going to try 66 ticks when we play again on Friday and see if that fixes the doors.  I honestly can't tell the difference between 33 and 100 ticks anyways, other than the ping times being slightly lower.  One of my friends thinks it makes a difference, so I tried it.

With gmod if there were more than 12 people all building things, it lagged.  When I set the maxplayers to 12 it cleared that up quick.  The exception to this, is when the occasional jerk would come in and flood the server with exploding drums.  I haven't counted it yet, but I think I have like 15 people on that ban list. I haven't banned anyone on CSS yet thank god.  Apparently there are plenty of jerks on gmod to go around.

Edit:
Sorry to ask, but is it worth restricting srcds to one cpu? I read some posts on here that suggest that srcds dosent like multi cpu computers. On mine it just spreads it evenly between all the cpu's. I can't disable hyperthreading because I don't have access to the bios. Id just like to know if it would even make a diffrance.

[Drocona]

Yes you should set the process to 1 CPU, it will increase performance, since the SRCDS is not multithreaded it can't use multiple cores and will keep switching cores for that reason.

ALso difference on the net between 66 and 100 tick issn't noticable by a human (people that moan about it are just looking at the client net graph..), 100 tick was built for LAN play in the first place anyway since it's next to useless on the internet (untill some lil' nublet made it up that you need best settings to play matches, yeh right)

Anyway, 66 tick is great and fixes the door problems (objects moving too fast)

[MarleyX]

lol, you were right, the server runs a heck of a lot better on 66 ticks. No more stuck doors, or people flying into the air when they run into a wall. People complained about it not being at 100, but whatever. The game play is a lot better at 66, which in my opinion counts more than the numbers do. From what I read, its only like a 5 ms difference anyways. There is no way anyone is going to be able to tell the difference unless they stare at the numbers all the time. I didn't notice any improvements restricting the game to one cpu. But here are the commands I used. My cpus are numbered from 0 to 3 (4 cpus). Affinity 4 sets it to use cpu 2, and affinity 8 sets it to use cpu 3. It was getting tiresome setting that, and the priority every time I loaded srcds. So I post it incase anyone wants the commands.

Code:

start /high /affinity 8 d:\valve\hlserver\source\srcds.exe -game cstrike +maxplayers 32 -tickrate 66 -console +map de_dust

Code:

start /high /affinity 4 d:\valve\hlserver\source\srcds.exe -game garrysmod +maxplayers 12 -console +port 27016 +map gm_construct

[Drocona]

oh that /affinity actually works?? Never knew that, I've been coding batch scripts for hours to no avail

Also, people complaining about it not being 100 tick are retards, let them bitch about it, they don't know anything about what they are saying obviously. Also the ping, or rather called latency in the scorepanel is "fake" anyway, it's a 1 way timer that goes from the client to the server. It can be what people call "rate hacking" which shouldn't be called like that, it's just setting your update slower which will result in a lower fake ping (like 5 most of the time).

The real ping (2 way, server->client->server) shows in the net_graph and will always be the same no matter what tickrate the server is running, it only depends on the quality of the connection and the distance between client and server.

[MarleyX]

Yep, affinity works.  I had to use the windows calculator to figure it out thou.  In the help it said it is an affinity mask.  That means that it uses binary for the CPUs switch options.  The command wants hex thou, so you have to convert binary to hex.  Which is what the calculator was for.  To match the binary from the calc to CPU, you have to read the calc from right to left.  Also, please note that I have only seen the affinity option in Windows 2003.  So, I don't think this example will work with XP. If you try it on XP it just says invalid switch.  It's not even listed in the help.

Here's a few examples.

0 = cpu off
1 = cpu on

You can convert binary to hex for the /affinity option using calc. To do this go to view on calc then select scientific.  Then set the calc to Bin.  Type in the binary, which ill explain below.  Then set the calc to Hex.  That will give the hex code for a binary one.

Calc excludes leading zero's. So I'm excluding them from the example as well.

Notice that I have the CPUs listed backwards. Like I said above, they have to be read from right to left. Its backwards from the affinity options you see in task manager.

These are the options for my system, which has 4 CPUs. I included an example for a 2 CPU system below mine.

Code:

  cpu3  cpu2   cpu1  cpu0        Binary     Hex
   0     0      0      0     =       0 =    0
   0     0      0      1     =       1 =    1
   0     0      1      0     =      10 =    2
   0     0      1      1     =      11 =    3
   0     1      0      0     =     100 =    4
   0     1      0      1     =     101 =    5
   0     1      1      0     =     110 =    6
   0     1      1      1     =     111 =    7
   1     0      0      0     =    1000 =    8
   1     0      0      1     =    1001 =    9
   1     0      1      0     =    1010 =    A
   1     0      1      1     =    1011 =    B
   1     1      0      0     =    1100 =    C
   1     1      0      1     =    1101 =    D
   1     1      1      0     =    1110 =    E
   1     1      1      1     =    1111 =    F  

Here's the one for 2 CPUs.  You only have two options, 1 and 2.  3 is default and Im pretty sure 0 is useless.  A heck of a lot easier to memorize than if you have 4 or more CPUs.

Code:

 cpu1  cpu0     Binary    Hex
  0     0    =    0   =   0
  0     1    =    1   =   1
  1     0    =   10   =   2
  1     1    =   11   =   3

  

So if you only want to enable cpu1, your start.exe command should look something like this.

start.exe /affinity 2  <your program here>


Edit:  Im having a hard time aligning my example.  So, I dont know if its going to show up right.

[Sacto]

In Windows XP I've been changing the affinity with a batch file that I call from my updater batch file, as it gets changed back with every update.  Here's the .bat file; locating the executable is a little harder.

Code:

FixSrcds.bat
Echo Setting SRCDS.EXE affinity to processor 2
imagecfg -a 0x02 srcds.exe