Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Additional metaserver?

[Peter Dam Mains <lancelot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Reinier Post wrote:
> > 
> > > I assume the server and the metaserver must use the same protocol ?
> > 
> > Not at all.  The metaserver doesn't use the Freeciv protocol; instead, it 
> > uses
> > a trivial UDP-based protocol to receive announcements from servers, and
> > HTTP to serve out the results to clients (and humans).
> 
> Yet server/meta.c:send_to_metaserver() contains two calls to
> put_int16(), the results of which have changed with the change
> to network byte order.  Does that upset the metaserver, or
> does the metaserver ignore those bytes anyway?

No the metaserver doesn't ignore those, that's why it's been very unstable
lately. I would actually prefer if we dropped using put_int16(), and used
a fixed size package for the metaserver, since it's hard to determine if
the package size in the package is real. The packages for the metaserver
is around 180 up to some 500bytes or so, so if we fixed it at 768 or
1024bytes it should be fine, and then the metaserver don't have to rely 
on that the packagesize put in is right.

I could of course check the size, and if it's too big, assume it's
from the new protocol, but that stills leaves the possibility of people
faking package sizes, so I suggest that we either get a fixed packagesize,
or we could move the metaserver to a diffrent server from version
1.8.x, and let the server serving pre 1.8.x die slowly (or maybe
a diffrent port on the same server). 
Any suggestions/help is welcome, so we can get the metaserver fixed.
I suggest we get a fixed package size.

But that still leaves the question where the second metaserver should be,
somewhere in the US would probably be a good idea, or just somewhere
else than europe.

/Peter Dam Mains