Author Topic: Bot commands crash chat (Read 10444 times)

Kyr · « **on:** June 27, 2010, 09:26:57 am »

We are having a problem with the bot right now that everyone or most people have all their chat break. Channels are not selectable and you cannot talk in any channel with standard prefixes like /say /tell /gu /guild /raid or anything. The only way to fix this is to do a relog. This used to happen only occasionally, but now is becoming so bad that most of my guild is /ignore bot now. Is there any thing that can help with this problem? I know this has been a problem with ConanStats for awhile, where if you post the DPS in raid everyone in the raid looses chat. As such, I think this is something with the chat server rather than a problem with the bot code. But hopefully there is something we can do that would get around this problem.

Khalem · « **Reply #1 on:** June 27, 2010, 10:42:07 pm »

Only known way to cause such breakage is if the Bot is sending too large chat blobs.

This however also sounds like a bug in the AoC client which should reconnect to the chat server if it gets disconnected for whatever reason.

What is your blob size set at?

ConanStats which I am not familiar with most likely has the very same issue. A too large blob will cause clients to disconnect.

Yite · « **Reply #2 on:** June 28, 2010, 09:32:24 am »

There is/was an issue with !help if you had admin rights (https://bugs.launchpad.net/bebot/+bug/519236), this has been resolved by removing the pmsg part (which doesn't work in AOC anyway)

There has also been a lot of problems with the chat server in general (at least on Crom, guessing it affects other servers as well) which have nothing to do with the bot.

Last but not least you can crash your connection with the chat server if you execute too many commands. (For example if you do a !online and then click on all the users online quickly it will crash) This is the flood protection and I think mainly introduced to hinder gold (and other) spammers.

Kyr · « **Reply #3 on:** June 29, 2010, 04:32:12 am »

@Khalem - 5000. It seems to me that this would happen every time if that was the problem.

@Yite - I did used to have this problem, was the fix included with the latest release. I am up to date with 0.6.8, so I should have it if so. This is a problem with other commands than just help and it crashes everyone, or at least most people who are listening to [Guild] when anyone uses a certain command, but not always. So it could be that the bot needs a longer delay before sending a new message. It will send page 1 and then *CRASH* everyone's chat is busted. So it sounds like page 2 is being sent before the spam protector timer is up. Is that a setting in the config file?

~Kyr

Kyr · « **Reply #4 on:** June 29, 2010, 04:44:26 am »

$tell_delay = 2222; // Number of miliseconds between tells. (anti-flooding)

Is this the delay I am looking for? The name is "tell" but does it mean messages sent to channels too? And why is it defaulting to 2222, that seems like an arbitrary number.

Kyr · « **Reply #5 on:** June 29, 2010, 09:23:13 am »

I changed the $tell_delay to 10000 and so far the problem seems to have gone away, thanks for your assistance. I will let you know if the problem returns. I also might try some lower values, but I don't see any issue with the delay being so high yet.

Khalem · « **Reply #6 on:** June 30, 2010, 12:41:49 am »

2222 was not an arbitary number iirc, but it has been so long.

It seems Funcom have further bumped up the antispam for AoC, or rather, tightened the characters allowed per x seconds.
I'll need to try and get a hold of Famine to see if we can get some decent values to go by.

10000 seems like massive overkill, and will likely cause a large delay for busy orgs.

Kyr · « **Reply #7 on:** June 30, 2010, 02:17:11 am »

@Khalem - thanks for your response. I have only tested this a little bit as when it breaks it is really annoying for my guildies and it is already a touchy subject for them. Late last night I ran a 15 page !gitems and most people did not experience the problem, but one person saw the first 5 pages and then lost chat. I am not sure how this delay works, from what I see the first 2 pages show immediately then a delay, then another page, then a delay, then 2 more pages. What I am saying is the delay doesn't look like it happens between every page. This could just be a lag thing. What do you think?

Khalem · « **Reply #8 on:** June 30, 2010, 12:17:44 pm »

The delay should only affect tells, as in AO there are no rate limits iirc on Guild chat or private groups.

From the looks of it they have introduced some form of rate limiting in the AoC client itself, or at least on a per client basis.

But the way Funcom does it's flood protection baffles me still. Instead of disconnecting the flooder, they disconnect the victims of the flood. And from the looks of it, in AoC, they don't get automatically reconnected as they do in AO.

It would be interesting to know if people using Conan Chat gets disconnected in the same way as the AoC client does.

The delay you are seeing is most likely a serverside throttle however if this is in guild chat.

Kyr · « **Reply #9 on:** July 02, 2010, 04:03:51 pm »

Been doing a little more testing of this problem.

There were 5 people online in guild when I was testing.

I set the tell delay to 5000 and worked back up to 10000. I was testing first in guild chat, but then switched to testing in tells as the symptom occurs that way too and only breaks my chat not everyone's.

First thing I noticed was it would sometimes auto-reconnect me. Other times it wouldn't.

Still crashes my chat even at 10000, there must be more to this problem.

Seems to disconnect me after ~4 pages regardless of how the delay is set.

I am running a '!gitems armor' which shows 14 pages of stuff my guild mates can make.

Have the blob size 5000 and tell delay 5000, going to run it that way for a bit and see.

Thanks again for your assistance.

~Kyr

RaZeR · « **Reply #10 on:** July 05, 2010, 07:00:33 am »

Have also been experiencing bot restarts over modules like !gitems. I'm also testing increasing the $tell_delay and lowering the blob size.

RaZeR · « **Reply #11 on:** July 22, 2010, 09:38:39 am »

well, I doubled the tell_delay, which you think would solve some flooding, but in addition I lowered the blob size, which I assume decreases the size of messages being sent.

!gitems still unfortunately disconnects multiple people in guild when they use it, and sometimes crashes the bot.

I guess I can try increase the tell delay even further.

Kyr · « **Reply #12 on:** July 23, 2010, 01:27:49 pm »

I had the tell_delay at 5000 and the chat crashes didn't happen much, I lowered it to 3500 and seems fine now too. But, most in my guild have been trained not to use long results gitems. And if they do to do it in tells so then it only crashes their chat and not the whole (or most) of the guild.