Unreal3.2 Win32 service or regular app?

pete212 · Post by **pete212** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 8:47 pm

i am not running win 2000 adanvanced server, and i run unreal3.2 if i were to run the server as a service, would i be able to host more users and have less lag (better performance basically) then if i were to run it as a regular application?

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 10:10 pm

Personally, I can't see why there would be a difference. If there is something different in the way Windows does background services as opposed to normal applications (Note: by default Windows will give resources to the most foreground application but this can be changed in the System Properties.) then by all means chose which one is best...

However, choosing NT Service gives you these advantages:

1) Unreal can start the instant the machine is booted - no need to login or anything.
2) As Unreal runs as NT AUTHORITY\System, permissions should never be a problem... of course this has security implications as well, but if you run your server properly, you should have little need to worry about this...
3) If Unreal should crash (and of course, no program should ever crash but one can't say all the bugs have been squashed yet

), Service Control Manager can automatically restart it, run another file (for example, you can code a seperate daemon that will pick up the .core file from the Unreal directory and mail it to codemastr or post it on the bug forum automatically (good luck

), and then restart the IRCd), or reboot the system (if it should be necessary).

pete212 · Post by **pete212** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 2:28 am

thanks

w00t · Post by **w00t** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 11:38 am

Boy did that give me ideas!

Thanks aquanight

AngryWolf · Post by **AngryWolf** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 2:18 pm

Automatically sending bug reports is a very bad idea. You wouldn't want to flood the mail accounts/forums with lots of reports about the same bug in every minutes, would you? (Because you can never be 100% sure your ircd won't crash at startup). You'd better report bugs at bugs.unrealircd.org, and only if you are sure you aren't reporting the same one.

codemastr · Post by **codemastr** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 4:52 pm

Personally, I can't see why there would be a difference. If there is something different in the way Windows does background services as opposed to normal applications (Note: by default Windows will give resources to the most foreground application but this can be changed in the System Properties.) then by all means chose which one is best...

Well you're right, but you are also wrong

You are correct, Windows isn't going to give the NT service any special treatment to make it faster. But, Unreal uses less resources which will make it faster. In GUI mode, Unreal is threaded, that means the CPU is being used more often. Plus Unreal uses more memory to load the GUI. It wouldn't be much faster, but it is almost like having one less program running when it is in NT service mode. The CPU doesn't have as much work to do.

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 5:40 pm

Well, yeah, not loading the GUI and other stuff does indeed make it use a bit less resources, but there's also the point I mentioned where, by default, Windows will give more resources to foreground applications than NT Services. While this option can be changed to share resources evenly, the default setting somewhat offsets the resources saved...