Suggestion

[FlyingMongoose]

I know due to the updates and people asking about "when will we get this update" (including myself) it causes the NFO team to have to take time from actually rolling the update out to give the best tech support around, causing the update to take longer.

So, I have a suggestion, how about placing a "We are rolling out the whateverdate update for whatevergame" in the events log at the start of the update, and doing what's usually done at the end with a "successful rollout" event in the events log, it will cut down immensely on customer traffic to support about "why is my server down" when they can just read it in event logs.

[Edge100x]

We may start doing this.

[bOoya]

The problem is that hardly anyone reads the Events log. It's pretty sad really .

[FlyingMongoose]

I read it every time I see there's an events log notice

And if I don't read it, I make note of it and read it later (as do most of the other people who have access to the server controls)

And I've noticed some problems w/ the Rcon control

2 of the servers I administrate use slash characters (both slashes actually), it seems like the rcon controller doesn't work at all due to those characters. I'm assuming that it has to be becaues either \ or / is an interrupter character in perl, or something along those lines, but it'd help if it could be fixed.

[FlyingMongoose]

You could try and alert people in any form of contact you may have as well.

Use the account logins to those who have access to certain games that have updates to e-mail them about an update

Make your live chat have a function that tells about it if it's acertain game

Make your IRC channel's topic say that's your doing so as well, put it anywhere you possibly can to at least shove it into peoples faces that "we're updating please be patient"

it might even be best to shut down live chat (for those games updating) and give the reason of "we're rolling out the whatever update" as soon as the update is all rolled out just turn live chat back on.

Try and give people as little reason to contact you about the updates as possible.

[Edge100x]

Use the account logins to those who have access to certain games that have updates to e-mail them about an update

Used to do that and stopped because people generally didn't like it.

Make your live chat have a function that tells about it if it's acertain game

If they're in live chat, it's already too late. And if they ignore events, they want someone to tell them.

Make your IRC channel's topic say that's your doing so as well, put it anywhere you possibly can to at least shove it into peoples faces that "we're updating please be patient"

Yes, we do that.

it might even be best to shut down live chat (for those games updating) and give the reason of "we're rolling out the whatever update" as soon as the update is all rolled out just turn live chat back on.

The problem is mainly people emailing.

[FlyingMongoose]

Just tossing out suggestions, this is my final one.

Why not assign one person to the "update" questions and allow the rest to roll out the updates?

[Edge100x]

Just tossing out suggestions, this is my final one.

Please realize that we have considered all of these before, briefly. We determined that the simplest and best solution was to make it more clear to renters that we roll out required updates in about 30 minutes, and we've implemented that. This attacks the problem at its source rather than trying to mitigate its effects, sort of like preventing a fire rather than trying to find better ways to fight the fire.

There's not too much reason for us to invest further time and thought into this, since required Source/HL1 updates come out less than once a month on average, and we're only affected for about a half-hour.

Why not assign one person to the "update" questions and allow the rest to roll out the updates?

1) It's not really possible to do that in Live chat.
2) It's not really possible to do that in email.
3) Updates are unpredictable and we may only have two people working when one hits, like last time. We still need someone to be able to help customers that aren't asking about the update.

[FlyingMongoose]

Well at least you're telling me you've worked on it or tried, better than being called a moron like some hosts do (and will remain unnamed)

What about the rcon control problem I've had?

Is it because \ or / are interrupter chracters in perl or javascript or however you set up that script?

Because it tells me my password is wrong on
ebatd.nuclearfallout.net
and
ebap.nuclearfallout.net

both have same password (they're our private servers), for CAL matches/scrims

We have 2 teams thus requiring 2 servers. Anyway, I would just like to know about this (I did post about it once before in this thread)

[Edge100x]

That should really have been a different thread, since it has nothing to do with your update concern

I'll check it out.

[Edge100x]

The system should handle \ and / in rcon passwords correctly now.

[FlyingMongoose]

I know, but I thought it up on the spot and I didn't want to forget.