Gmod server crash questions

[Hudson]

#Edit:
An article has been written.

Original post:
I was interested to write an article on Gmod server crashes, as crashing seems to be part of Gmod culture. If anyone with knowledge can chip in to answer any of the following questions I'd appreciate it.

What typically causes a server crash?

Does a server automatically restart when it crashes?

What impact does a server crash have on the playerbase or community?

Are server crashes common, and have they become less frequent over time?

Have there been any efforts or developments to prevent server crashes?

Have there been any memorable server crashes, such as crashes during large planned events that caused drama?

 

[Blackquill]

What typically causes a server crash?

A bunch of things.

For us, the 2 most common:

Edict Limit:
One of the most common causes of crashes on our servers over the years was a thing called the Edict limit. It's essentially a cap on the amount of entities that can be spawned at any given time. This includes player models, map props and so on. As time goes on it obviously grows and grows and it'll reach a cap

Now when at the cap, you're supposed to not be able to spawn stuff but some things in gmod would bypass the count and spawn it anyway and when the edict limit is bypassed; it causes a crash.

Entity Physics/Map exploits:
Due to the nature of physics in GMOD, some people, either on purpose or by accident would crash the server by doing things like jamming ragdolls into automatically closing doors, gathering up heaps of items together in a huge pile and so on. The physics would cause immense FPS drops and even crashes

A classic example of this was one dude who would buy notepads and paper from a vendor then throw them all into the i17 mail chute; eventually there would be so many it'd cause huge frame drops and crashes.

DDOS attacks:
Worth mentioning as well. Self explanatory really.

Does a server automatically restart when it crashes?

It's supposed to, but sometimes a crash can actually make the server enter what we typically called a 'hang' state where the server crashed but also didn't 'go down' so to speak so it couldn't auto-restart. This led to a manual restart being needed

What impact does a server crash have on the playerbase or community?

If the playerbase was big, it wasn't too crippling - just a big inconvenience having everyone's RP interrupted and people booted out. It was a concern for sure but it was never something that ever hindered our projects massively. For other communities and servers tho I imagine it's a diff story

Are server crashes common, and have they become less frequent over time?

Well GMOD's an old game so shit like this comes and goes. There's exploits, they get fixed and so on. I'd say they happened less frequently for us over time because we got better at dealing with things that caused crashes

Have there been any efforts or developments to prevent server crashes?

See above

Have there been any memorable server crashes, such as crashes during large planned events that caused drama?

Yeah we had crashes at the worst times in the past but they never really made us drop what we were doing. We just carried on anyway

 

[Señor Jaggles]

What typically causes a server crash?

Many reasons for this, Blackquill's are most common ones (at least for us) but depending on the amount of addons you have, some may be less than ideal, produce errors that can saturate the server when it's already at high population, or produce critical errors. Anything you plaster on top of the base game is bound to add onto the risk of crashing, as it's unaccounted for by the original developers and depends entirely on the ability to code of the external developer, and the capacity the engine and the server have to support it.

Does a server automatically restart when it crashes?

Short answer is: If it's configured to do so when it goes down, yes.

Long answer is way too technical and complex to even get into detail as there may be multiple reasons for the server to be unable to relaunch itself, however it shouldn't be a common thing unless the same type of error that keeps the server from detecting it crashed continues occurring.

What impact does a server crash have on the playerbase or community?

It's mostly a hassle short term to have to reconnect onto servers and sometimes we had minor issues but nothing we couldn't solve on the spot. Recurring crashes though, they tend to cause people to leave for a time, some players will not reconnect after a crash, and some other issues I may be forgetting. In the short term, a small problem, in the long term, a thing that's quite detrimental to the server unless the community joins to support, well, the community.

Are server crashes common, and have they become less frequent over time?

We've had a few lately in this iteration, mainly issues with addons and the likes. We tackled them and they've gone down in frequency a lot.

Have there been any efforts or developments to prevent server crashes?

Yeah, see above. @Gary is awesome.

Have there been any memorable server crashes, such as crashes during large planned events that caused drama?

I recall once a crash in the past, can't remember which iteration, where a crash happened right at the beginning or middle of a pre-mapchange event, and I think we had to switch to the next map directly? I recall something like that.

 

['77 East]

I recall once a crash in the past, can't remember which iteration, where a crash happened right at the beginning or middle of a pre-mapchange event, and I think we had to switch to the next map directly? I recall something like that.

that was @Baker's heavy snow event

 

[Baker]

that was @Baker's heavy snow event