Odd Connectivity Problems

Starting about the middle of last week, I have begun to experience some issues when I connect to the vassal server.

Most of the time, I can connect to the vassal server but it does not show any people or games. I get the initial messages:

  • Warmachine & Hordes MKII version 4.0
    Welcome to the VASSAL server
    Send questions and comments to support@vassalengine.org

But nothing else. No players (including myself) show up on the list.

Occasionally, however, I will start the module and see the list of players and games. This happens maybe 10% of the time now. When that happens I can start a game or join a room to spectate or play just like normal. This situation doesn’t last. After a random period of time, the server stops responding to me again. I don’t get kicked out or see any disconnection message, but no data gets sent back to me. This has happened to me when I was playing a game and when I was just watching. My friend who I was playing with said that I still appeared connected and he could see me in the room. When it stops responding, I cannot successfully switch rooms either.

There a few other factors that make me think it’s not just my local installation:

  1. I’ve tried this on three different computers now. One was my install on my desktop that had worked great up until last week. The second was a new installation of java and vassal on my PC laptop. The last was a new installation on my apple laptop. Each has the same problems.
  2. When I can’t see the games, I usually can’t fully connect to vassalengine.org with my browser either. It’s able to resolve the name/IP, but then it sits and waits for the server to respond (sometimes for hours).

I’ve only tried with the one module but I haven’t heard of anyone having troubles with it specifically. While I am having these connection issues, I’ve run “traceroute” checks to vassalengine.org and they have come back, although the last hop does take a bit longer than all the rest combined.

I’ve tried shutting down Windows firewall (obviously not on the Mac, but I disabled my firewall software there too). I’ve tried opening up port 5050 on the router (which allowed us to play Peer-to-Peer with zero problems). I’ve tried looking through the forums for solutions. I’ve tried changing the location of the module on the windows computers… I’ve tried changing my login name on the server (thinking that maybe a coincidence was causing someone with the same username to log in and kick me off)…

I have not tried to completely disable my router’s firewall. I guess that’s an option for troubleshooting purposes, but obviously not a long-term solution. It may help eliminate my firewall as the issue, but we did play a complete direct connect game with no issues so I thought that would be good enough to rule out the router.

This morning, I was able to connect and see the games for a short period and then the server seemed to stop responding again. Here is the error log from Saturday time I was connected without seeing anything:

18 Sep 2010 17:37:23.041 0 – Starting
18 Sep 2010 17:37:23.041 0 – OS Windows 7
18 Sep 2010 17:37:23.041 0 – Java version 1.6.0_21
18 Sep 2010 17:37:23.041 0 – VASSAL version 3.1.14
18 Sep 2010 17:37:23.150 0 – Manager
18 Sep 2010 17:38:38.916 0 – Loading module file C:\Users\Scott\VASSAL Modules\WarmachineHordesMK2.vmod
18 Sep 2010 17:38:38.916 0 – Loading module Warmachine & Hordes MKII
18 Sep 2010 17:38:38.916 0 C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java -Xms256M -Xmx512M -DVASSAL.id=1 -Duser.home=C:\Users\Scott -cp lib\Vengine.jar VASSAL.launch.Player
18 Sep 2010 17:38:41.744 1 – Warmachine & Hordes MKII version 4.0
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 java.util.NoSuchElementException
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at VASSAL.tools.SequenceEncoder$Decoder.nextToken(SequenceEncoder.java:155)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at VASSAL.chat.CgiServerStatus.getHistory(CgiServerStatus.java:143)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at VASSAL.chat.CgiServerStatus.getHistory(CgiServerStatus.java:101)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at VASSAL.chat.ui.ServerStatusView$4.doInBackground(ServerStatusView.java:206)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at VASSAL.chat.ui.ServerStatusView$4.doInBackground(ServerStatusView.java:203)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at org.jdesktop.swingworker.SwingWorker$1.call(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at org.jdesktop.swingworker.SwingWorker.run(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:47:12.525 0 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
18 Sep 2010 17:50:55.260 1 – Exiting
18 Sep 2010 17:50:57.697 0 – Loading module file C:\Users\Scott\VASSAL Modules\WarmachineHordesMK2.vmod
18 Sep 2010 17:50:57.698 0 – Loading module Warmachine & Hordes MKII
18 Sep 2010 17:50:57.698 0 C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java -Xms256M -Xmx512M -DVASSAL.id=2 -Duser.home=C:\Users\Scott -cp lib\Vengine.jar VASSAL.launch.Player
18 Sep 2010 17:51:00.430 2 – Warmachine & Hordes MKII version 4.0
18 Sep 2010 20:46:55.761 2 – Exiting

And here is the error log from this morning:
20 Sep 2010 10:51:05.697 0 – Starting
20 Sep 2010 10:51:05.698 0 – OS Windows 7
20 Sep 2010 10:51:05.698 0 – Java version 1.6.0_21
20 Sep 2010 10:51:05.698 0 – VASSAL version 3.1.14
20 Sep 2010 10:51:05.777 0 – Manager
20 Sep 2010 10:51:27.163 0 – Loading module file C:\Users\Scott\VASSAL Modules\WarmachineHordesMK2.vmod
20 Sep 2010 10:51:27.164 0 – Loading module Warmachine & Hordes MKII
20 Sep 2010 10:51:27.166 0 C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java -Xms256M -Xmx512M -DVASSAL.id=1 -Duser.home=C:\Users\Scott -cp lib\Vengine.jar VASSAL.launch.Player
20 Sep 2010 10:51:30.004 1 – Warmachine & Hordes MKII version 4.0
20 Sep 2010 11:11:58.230 1 – Exiting
20 Sep 2010 11:11:58.696 0 – Exiting

Not a whole lot to go on.

Thus spake sandersn:

Starting about the middle of last week, I have begun to experience some
issues when I connect to the vassal server.

Most of the time, I can connect to the vassal server but it does not
show any people or games. I get the initial messages:

  • Warmachine & Hordes MKII version 4.0
    Welcome to the VASSAL server
    Send questions and comments to support@vassalengine.org[1]

But nothing else. No players (including myself) show up on the list.

The problem I see in errorLog you posted appears to be that the module
itself is corrupt. Try downloading a new copy of the module.


J.