Re: Linux Admining
OK some new territory here.
After running a PBEM game Ive decided that such games are a pita.
But it was an extensive learning experience.
Some new territory:
ProcMail nicely handles some features. Checking Subject lines in order to unpack player files to the game directory, or calling specific scripts to do things like allowing the games admin to change things such as the games hosting times.
One of the few good things about pbem was that Dom3 did not have to claim its share of server CPU load running continually. Having many copies of Dom3 running all the time can eat up a server. I didnt want to undo that benefit by having a script run continually or a cron job running every minute to see if the game should host in order to duplicate the "quick host" option of DirectConnect games. Since an incoming file should usually kick off "quick host" I have procmail unpacking each email AND running a host_check script.
To duplicate the Forced_Hosting option I used the "at" command to set system timers. One for the hosting time (such as 48 hours) and one for sending email reminders (forcehost - 9 hours).
Also I had to get into lock files and date math. And made extensive use of the .chk files that Dom3 generates using the --verify command in order to catch players sending in files that werent 2h, or didnt attach properly, matching serials, or arrived corrupted, or were the wrong dom game, or were the right dom game but the wrong turn (especially on the many rollbacks).
The resulting scripts are many and extensive (and ugly since they grew gradually with many tests inserted). I may clean them up and post them seperately. Oh yeah, and one note which I really REALLY need to try and remember. The initial big bomb is that the Dom3 games PBEM coding was prior to the change allowing us to keep multiple gods available for server games. So its very important that the initial god files sent in be cleaned up so that early_ulm_1.2h becomes just early_ulm.2h before trying to start the game.
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