CCT Logon

[Michel]

Well, I can only test as a guest,

Why? This is FICS. It is easy to get a computer account.

[Michel]

Currently FICStester and FICStestertwo are playing each other in lightning games as guest. One is kibitzing. The other is not.

[hgm]

Well, I made a registered account, and requested it to be turned into a computer account, but they refused it because I could not say what engine I would be using to test WinBoard. And when I used it anyway they disabled it.

I must admit that after some time finally some senior admin there eventually got sensible, and offered me accounts that I could use with engines of my choice to test WinBoard. But by that time I had lost interest in FICS, so I never took up that offer.

And, to be frank, I don't really feel like debugging the FICS server. If they want to keep it closed source, let them do their own debugging...

[Michel]

55 lightning games as guest played now. Both engines (gnuchess) use "sd 3" so they move immediately.

Plenty of communication delay and communication overload but no hangs so far.

[hgm]

Yesterday I was also not able to get them in the afternoon or evening. This morning I had to play quite some games (around 10) to get one.

[IanO]

Well, I made a registered account, and requested it to be turned into a computer account, but they refused it because I could not say what engine I would be using to test WinBoard. And when I used it anyway they disabled it.

I must admit that after some time finally some senior admin there eventually got sensible, and offered me accounts that I could use with engines of my choice to test WinBoard. But by that time I had lost interest in FICS, so I never took up that offer.

And, to be frank, I don't really feel like debugging the FICS server. If they want to keep it closed source, let them do their own debugging...

First, thank you so much for the time and effort spent testing this problem! The data does indicate a kibitz related server-side malfunction, in my opinion.

Have you sent this data to the FICS devs via bugs@freechess.org? I doubt they read this forum.

It might also be politic to notify the tournament managers at htm@freechess.org that they are unlikely to host another computer event of any prestige unless these protocol problems are dealt with.

Finally, it is a crying shame that the "free" chess server is now closed source. Many of the innovations that make all the chess servers what they are today only could occur when amateurs were allowed to tinker with FICS themselves. It was a heady feeling having dozens of players log into the 386 in my closet to first try out FICS bughouse support.

[bob]

I don't seem to be able to provoke any hangs now. Perhaps it depends on timeof day / server load. nfortunately people start games against FairyMax all the time (and manage to lose... ), preventing me to start new test games.

I wanted to redo the test, because it is not completely conclusive: if the XBoard ICS-input thread somehow hangs, it would probably also not print the input. And I had not tried to type any commands from the hanging player, to see if there was echo / response.

So this time I added a print statement to the debug every time the input routine returns. But alas, no more hangs...

Having the same problem. Some thoughts:

(1) we had a lot of kibitzing and channel 64 chatter. Wonder if that somehow factors into the testing?

(2) are there any special characters that might trigger a problem that the server should not normally send, but which might show up from a kibitz or a channel message?

I don't see why I had so many on saturday, then fewer on Sunday, and then I could not create one yesterday at all...

[hgm]

It was a heady feeling having dozens of players log into the 386 in my closet to first try out FICS bughouse support.

Well, same here with the version that also supports Gothic Chess and Xiangqi.
Except that the 386 has evolved into an Asus Eee laptop buried under my desk.

I think it would be best if the actual tournament organizer wouldreport this officially to FICS, as he might have more clout with them.

[bob]

I can confirm what Marcel van Kervinck was saying. I have been running icsdrone bots on FICS for several years. Barring network outages, they essentially stay logged in forever. Never a loss for suspicious reasons. In short I have never seen any unpredicable behaviour from FICS.

This is not convincing, however. It could be that FICS is somehow doing something that breaks xboard but not others, even though what it is doing might be perfectly legal, or might violate the style 12 specifications. The known data is this, at the present.

Crafty hung regularly saturday, less regularly sunday, and I could not make it hang yesterday. Yet for years it has never hung on ICC except for those occasions where I introduced a bug into the program itself. It has played for the past year +, 24/7, with _zero_ hangs on ICC.

Others play on ICC with no problems. But when we moved to FICS for the CCT, things fell apart. Obviously it is related to FICS and xboard. Whether it is purely xboard or purely FICS is unknown.

But different interfaces can parse differently, have different timing issues, and different buffering issues. Who knows at present what is causing this...

[michiguel]

I don't seem to be able to provoke any hangs now. Perhaps it depends on timeof day / server load. nfortunately people start games against FairyMax all the time (and manage to lose... ), preventing me to start new test games.

I wanted to redo the test, because it is not completely conclusive: if the XBoard ICS-input thread somehow hangs, it would probably also not print the input. And I had not tried to type any commands from the hanging player, to see if there was echo / response.

So this time I added a print statement to the debug every time the input routine returns. But alas, no more hangs...

Having the same problem. Some thoughts:

(1) we had a lot of kibitzing and channel 64 chatter. Wonder if that somehow factors into the testing?

I disabled the channels and got the same problem on Sunday.
In addition, I had problems at start up (but only with timeseal)!

Miguel

(2) are there any special characters that might trigger a problem that the server should not normally send, but which might show up from a kibitz or a channel message?

I don't see why I had so many on saturday, then fewer on Sunday, and then I could not create one yesterday at all...