Server to Client ET Pro D/L

Dogwood · Post by **Dogwood** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 7:05 pm

On one of our servers we have ET Pro and lots of new maps, the maps are downloading to the clients great from our redirect server.
A problem occurs when the client joins the server without ET Pro, the client attempts to download the required ET Pro files, but cannot complete and crashes.
Some time ago we had a simuliar problem with a few maps, and it was determined to be with the file permission in the redirect server's OS, this was fixed.
The current problem may in fact be the same thing, since the clients are attempting to get the ET Pro files from the game server.
I don't really want to fix the game server's permissions.
I want to put the required files and directories on the redirect server so the client can get ET Pro quickly and trouble free.
Would someone please tell me how we should do this.
Thanks in advance.

uber-noob · Post by **uber-noob** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 7:45 pm

Make an "etpro" directory, similar to the etmain directory, on the redirect server and put the etpro files in this one. This should normaly work.

Dogwood · Post by **Dogwood** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 10:24 am

That worked great, thanks.
The download of ET Pro now works great, but after the download, loading of the map, and then entering the game, my client crashes about 30 seconds into it.
I could easily pass this off as my ET client being flakey, this game has some major quirks, but I know I can D/L ET Pro from another game server that does not use a redirect and I can play just fine afterwards.

Chairman Kaga · Post by **Chairman Kaga** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:29 pm

I think it's an ET client bug.

I (along with half my clanmates) experience this about 75% of the time when I have to download a new map. The map will download, I'll actually get into the game for about 15-20 seconds, then ET will suddenly crash. Once I restart and reconnect, I can play out the rest of the game just fine. It's only right after a download that it crashes. But it's random, too -- sometimes I'll download and then I can play without incident.

Maybe that's why so few servers run custom maps....

Fenris · Post by **Fenris** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 4:21 am

I've seen the same if the client has not downloaded all maps.
It seems that if you have many custom maps on, the client will at connect only download 3 of these, and then take the remaining ones when the map comes up in the rotation.

Until the client has all maps it is very prone to crasch just a few seconds after entering the game :/

[FuN] scott · Post by **[FuN] scott** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 9:29 am

this is not an etpro bug this is a problem with the transfer from the download site to the client it seems to mangle the transfer.. you will see in console it corrupts the transfer by seeing a diffrent server checksum to the installed client file. and tries to replace it.... we have been here before and have come to realize its the machien thats hosting the file aint working correct.. i know this as we had ths problem then we changed ftp server (physical server) and all was good (this include copying the exact files to it). now we had to move the redirect again and we are having the same problem.. this time its starting to crash the server.

uber-noob · Post by **uber-noob** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 10:02 am

[FuN] scott wrote:this is not an etpro bug this is a problem with the transfer from the download site to the client it seems to mangle the transfer.. you will see in console it corrupts the transfer by seeing a diffrent server checksum to the installed client file. and tries to replace it.... we have been here before and have come to realize its the machien thats hosting the file aint working correct.. i know this as we had ths problem then we changed ftp server (physical server) and all was good (this include copying the exact files to it). now we had to move the redirect again and we are having the same problem.. this time its starting to crash the server.

Could be a wrong mime type setting so the server sends the PK3s as ASCII instead of binary, talk to your server host to adjust the mime type of PK3 files.

Dogwood · Post by **Dogwood** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 5:24 pm

Very interesting scott, I would love to know more about this stuff and any solution you come up with.
I will work on my end as well and will report here if I find something out.
I knew this was not an ET Pro bug, for it will happen servers running ET Main and ShrubET.
I realize that may not be the forum for this type of troubleshooting, but now that we are here, lets figure this thing out, maybe Splash Damage will give us a reward.

[FuN] scott · Post by **[FuN] scott** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 8:57 am

ermm is mime not jsut used for email servers (exchange). im 99% sure each of the ftp servers were set up identical. and occationally i could get one file to download completly.... with the right checksum but ET still thought it was rong.

uber-noob · Post by **uber-noob** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:47 am

[FuN] scott wrote:ermm is mime not jsut used for email servers (exchange).

It was originally made for mail transfers, but it is now used as a general file descriptor for many uses, this also contains http transfers and (depending on the ftpd) for ftp transfers.

[FuN] scott · Post by **[FuN] scott** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 3:02 pm

at the moment we are downloading direct from the server and all seems stable... but still a problem withspeed .. we cant get over 8k/s this was true for rtcw too... is there hardcoded feature to stop fast downloads from servers.. i dont understand we have a very fast connection 1 cpu spare and a bucket of ram. there are no hardware/line limitations.

uber-noob · Post by **uber-noob** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 3:40 pm

sv_dl_maxRate should control the speed of direct server downloads. But i don't know if it works in ET, our hoster has a hard 30 kByte/sec Limit for Downloads.