It’s no secret the GServer isnt the most stable software and it is prone to crash every now and then. If this happens on a public server and the host admin is not available at the time it can really suck. So I found a solution which will allow you to auto-restart your server immediately after a crash. I am hosting on Windows 7, but it should work for XP as well.
I found this program [freeware] which will monitor any application and restart it if it terminates. The only problem is that in Windows, we get that annoying ‘This program has crashed dialogue’ which prevents the gserver from terminating completely so that the above program will restart it immediately.
So, we need to disable Windows Error Reporting dialogue which pops up and prevents the application from terminating when it crashes.
Windows 7:
If you open Control Panel -> Action Center -> Maintenance -> Settings -> Change report settings for all users -> Choose Never check for solutions
Windows XP Instructions - click here
The above step will only change the dialogue so that it wont prompt us to send an error report to Microsoft but it wont prevent the dialogue from popping up and preventing our gserver from terminating like we want it to so it can be auto restarted.
To get rid of the Windows error crash dialogue entirely:
open regedit (Start->Run, type: regedit and press enter) and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting]
Add a new DWORD “DontShowUI” and set the value to 1
(right-click, New -> DWORD (32-Bit) then name it DontShowUI, double click on DontShowUI and change the value to 1 and leave it on Hex)
Now if you have done the above steps correctly, you should never see another ‘This program has crashed’ prompt again! Now download that program I linked above and add the gserver to the list of monitored programs. Leave the ‘doublecheck…’ field unchecked if you want it to restart immediately on crash.
-If you want to test see below-
Known causes for gserver crash
The following are ways I have found will cause my gserver to crash 100% of the time. Not sure if I should put these here or in the BUG thread.
-Method/BUG #1-
- Connect to your server
- Use RC to RESET your account
- donot reconnect, leave the ‘your account has been reset’ dialogue up
- Use RC to issue the /updatelevelall command immediately after resetting an account *note: sometimes /reloadserver will also cause this but the updatelevelall command is usually 100% crash if used after resetting an account that hasnt reconnected right away
Note to Admin: If you feel the need to remove this information below for obvious reasons, please at least leave the part above about how to auto-restart a crashed gserver for the benefit of others.
-Method/BUG #2-
- Connect to your server directly with an outdated RC that allows you to specify the server IP and Port such as RC 1.3 / 1.28 / 1.19 -This will cause the target server to crash.
A good way to protect your server from someone connecting directly to it with an old RC in order to exploit this, would be to specify a different port than the default.