High CPU usage of an idle server

[Voodoo Priest]

Dear all,

I have recently (a few days ago) installed a dedicated Left 4 Dead 1 server running off a forked (2 children) srcds Linux install.

I have used Linux Game Server Manager (LGSM) to install the server, and it went without a hitch. The server runs as expected and we, the dwindling community of Left 4 Dead survival players that I manage, have already played some games on it. Although it's not perfect, it's satisfactory at this point.

What I notice is that using top in the terminal, I can see that the two srcds_linux processes use up to 50% of the CPU (a 2.4Ghz Intel CPU – I can't be more precise as it's a virtual private server and the provider seems to have obfuscated the info).

Using the script provided by LGSM, I can ascertain that no users are connected: put differently, the servers are idle but they still use exactly (as far as I can tell from monitoring the VPS with top) the same CPU resources as when users are connected and games are running.

The Source Dedicated Server documentation states:

Quote:Specifying a map is necessary, otherwise the server is not ready to accept connections from players to your server.

But I'm still wondering, is it normal that an idle dedicated server not serving any player is constantly running? Thx.

[Voodoo Priest]

I have solved this issue by not forking the server. Instead of forking, I now launch the server twice through two instances of the LGSM l4dserver script in which only the port numbers and the servicename parameter differ. I've kept the l4d-server.cfg file but I've externalized the hostname specification in a file specific to each server (l4d-server01.cfg and (l4d-server02.cfg). That's all it took to bring the CPU usage from 100% to around 3%.