Updated: 9th June 2010 - Llamaserver possibly hosting early again.

[Calahan]

Edit: 9th June 2010.

The llamaserver's internal clock appears to be wrong again, and like before has a 'Last Updated' stamp that is several minutes ahead of the actual time. Here is what was displayed on the llamaserver when I posted this message.

Last updated at 21:15 GMT on Wednesday June 9th.
Current time: 21:03 GMT

Note there is a 12 minute difference. And it being 12 minutes into the future is the key part of this

So as per the normal drill for a llamaserver bug, please take extra care to get those turns in well in advance until normal service is resumed.

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Edit: As posted by llamabeast below, the llamaserver's clock has now been resynced, so everything should be fine again now.

See you all at the next llamaserver crisis

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This is just a general shout out to everyone that the llamaserver currently seems to be hosting all games earlier than the stated deadline that appears on the game status pages. It is hosting games approximately 20 minutes early from what I can tell. At a random guess I'd say there's a fault with an internal clock somewhere along the lines.

Over the past week or so, there have been several posts on various game threads that the llamaserver was hosting games early. But today I actually managed to keep a close eye on one of the status pages during the final hour before the deadline was due, and witnessed the game hosting, and the status page updating for the next turn, a good 15 minutes before it was supposed to.

You can also tell something is wrong by the way the llamaserver is sometimes showing the 'last updated' stamp time as being roughly 10-20 minutes into the future.

For example, at the time I posted this message, the llamaserver was showing....

Last updated at 17:15 GMT on Monday April 12th
Current time: 17:03 GMT


I've PM-ed llamabeast to take a look at it, but he's a busy person, so no telling when the llamaserver will return to normal. At times like these, when the llamaserver is having a few personal problems, the responsibility for ensuring you don't stale in your games falls directly on YOU, THE PLAYER.


So what YOU, THE PLAYER needs to do until the problem is fixed is make sure you send your turns in well before the hosting deadline. I'm making an educated guess that it is hosting games 20 minutes early, but it could well be hosting them a lot early than that. You will still get 24/48/72 hours etc. in between turns in which to do your turns in, but just be aware that you can not trust the timer on the llamaserver at the moment.

You also can not trust the time stamp on the emails from the llamaserver either, as I received one 15 minutes before the time it was supposed to have been sent at (which is another sign the clock of the hosting computer is having issues).

So, once again, get those turns in early, don't wait until the last minute, and to be safe, I'd say subtract an hour from the hosting deadline of any games you are currently in. And if you stale, don't go blaming the llamaserver (or me for my rough guesses and estimates!), but instead blame yourself for waiting until the last minute to submit your turns.


If I hear back from llamabeast, I will update you all. But then I'm guessing he'll do that himself well before I know anything more about this problem.