[CF-Devel] Metaserver information.

[Peter Mardahl]

I think this is a cool idea, I'd add this though:
1)  Hostname
2)  # players
3)  Version
4)  Description

Version is the hard part.  How about setting creating a VERSION file
which contains the current date, for people using CVS, and
a tag, for people using releases?

So a server running a snapshot would report this:

CVS 2000/12/01
or
Version 97.0
for a release.

The idea is to change VERSION every day in the CVS via a crontab, OR
modify the commit process so that every commit causes VERSION to be
updated.

PeterM

>
     
       I was doing some work on the addition of metaserver reporting.  The basic pl
     
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     an
     
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      is that servers that decide to do so will contact the metaserver telling it t
     
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     hat
     
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      they are alive.  Then people can just look at the metaserver and see what
     
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      servers are out there and which one they want to connect to.
     
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       So the question I have is what information should be reported to the
     
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      metaserver.  What I have so far:
     
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      hostname of server.  Note that the metaserver will determine IP address on it
     
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     s
     
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      own based on where the packet comes from.
     
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      number of active players on server.
     
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      short description/note:  Settable by server admin - this is a brief message o
     
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     f
     
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      less than 100 characters that will be reported to the metaserver.  This could
     
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      be
     
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      something like 'latest CVS version.  No player killing.  located in n.
     
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      california'.
     
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       The last time the server has sent a message will be tracked by the metaserve
     
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     r,
     
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      so it will report that information - if the last packet received was more tha
     
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     n a
     
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      few hours, you could probably bet that that server is down for now.  But the
     
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      main point is that the server doesn't need to report uptime to the metaserver
     
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     .
     
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       Is there any data I'm missing or other data people think might be useful? 
     
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      Since there is already a comment that the server admin can set up, this would
     
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      basically be data that the program has readily available.  One thought I had
     
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      would be for the server to send the protocol versions - this could be used to
     
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      get a rough idea of the server version, but I'm not really sure how useful th
     
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     at
     
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      is and if it may be more confusing (what does 1026 mean for example).
     
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