TL;DR version: are there magic command line parameters or convars that enable multithreading for srcds games on linux? Or anything that might prevent the gameserver from using more than one core?
Long version: I recently changed OS from Windows 2008 64 bit to Centos 5.5 64 bit because I needed iptables to filter all the incoming attacks so popular in these days. The hardware remained the same: Xeon w3520 (server version of i7 920), 12 GB RAM, 2x80 GB Intel x25-M SSD. The problem I'm encountering is that when any 32 slots server gets full, the server fps (measured from rcon stats and net_graph 4) drop below acceptable levels. They may even reach 20-30 fps, and much less when there are bots playing. This obviously affects the tickrate, and players experience rubber banding and bad hit detection. Both top and rcon stats say that the CPU usage never goes over 100% (1 core). On windows rcon stats reported up to 150%, and sysinternals process explorer confirmed that the gameserver was using up to 19% of the whole system (which means approximately 1.5 cores, since this box has 4+4 cores thanks to hyperthreading). On windows, fps were stable, and only in a couple of maps the tickrate would drop below 66. I've tried several kernels: the stock centos one (2.6.18-194.32.1.el5), a couple provided by my host via netboot (2.6.34-something, 2.6.34-something HZ1000) and now i'm using a realtime kernel (2.6.33.7-rt29). Both 2.6.34 and the realtime kernel were the best regarding to fps jitter, but they did't improve at all the low fps when the server is full. Playing with taskset to set the affinity of the process has no visible effects, same thing with nice and chrt. Also tried disabling all addons and using a 3 lines server.cfg (sv_log 0; hostname; rcon_password) but still no effect worth mentioning. I've come to the conclusion that srcds on linux can use at most one core. I hope I'm wrong, since it would mean I'm stuck at running 32 slots servers at tickrate 33 despite having good hardware. How you guys manage to run 32 slots srcds servers on linux? Thanks Claudio _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
