Enemy-Territory
 

I have an odd problem. It revolves around enemy territory, the game. There is a native linux client. Adds alot of value to my linux boxes to be able to play the game.

Any, I was playing ET on a machine with 2 small drives (roughly 8 gigs each). I was running out of space so I chose to install a larger drive (a 30gig spare). I did the FC1 install (as I did on the two smaller drives).

I then did the update to the kernel as I have in the past and I installed the nvidia drivers for the chipset. No real problems. All seem to work. The video, audio, network all seem to work. I can connect to the net, etc.

Then I installed ET as I have many times in the past. I started the game and connected to a server and began to play. Upon respawn the game disconnects me. States something like disconnected for an unknown reason.

I try repeatedly to connect to different servers. I reboot. I even try various other network cards. I repair computers, so I have many spare NICs.

On every NIC I have the same problem. During every respawn the server disconnects me.

I disconnect the 30gig drive and put the 2 8gig drives back. Connect to a server and can play all day.

Any ideas what is going on? Keeping your replies englishlike will help alot. Are there parameters I can tighten up or loosen (without recompiling anything)?

If you need more info, please ask.

TIA,

Jim

Probably not something obvious. The cache sizes and drive spin-down times may be eating your game though. If there is a means in your bios to turn off some of the power-saving options for the drives I am guessing that that might help.

respectfully
BJ

Also could be that you don't have properlly installed (or updated) punkbuster, so when the system checks for "supposed" cheats on spawn, you get disconnected. There's an utility at punkbuster's website (pbweb i think) that will check for any update available for ET. Give it a shot.

Hope it helps

As to the first response. Without changes to the bios with just a swapping to OLDER 8gig drives I don't get disconnected. So, not bios or drive spin.

As to the second one. I can check to ensure I have it on. Punkbuster is installed with the game.

I seem to have a resolution. It appears to have been with punkbuster, but you never know.

I turned off punkbuster and entered a game requiring it. It prompted me to turn it on. I did. After that it worked.

So, turn it off, then without exiting go into a game where it is required and when prompted to enable it do so.

likely what was happening is it was not updating itself for some reason, and when you turned it off then on again in the server it then promptly downloaded all the updates automatically.

Actually it is because it was updated and the server one *IS NOT* being updated.

If you type ` (back quote) you can see a panel for entering commands. In there it will tell you what your punkbuster version is. Mine is the latest. The problem is that the server is set to an old one while the clients are set to a new one. The client program is supposed to update automatically. So *IS* the server. The servers don't update when the firewall/router is set to block the ability to automatically update punkbuster.

The only solution is to not play on servers that don't allow their server version of punkbuster to be updated or to turn off security on the client to allow punkbuster to be downgraded by the server. Of course, this will be updated over and over again by punkbuster and you'll have to keep turning it off.

The answer to turning off the security is type bring up the control panel by typing the ` (back quote) same key as the tilde ~. Then in the command line type /pb_security 0

That will turn it off for at least the map. If you pay attention you can keep it updated throughout your session.

I'm unsure if there's a method in the .cfg file to set that to permanent.

Of course, there's a down side. The security feature is there to keep punks from cheating, in as much as that is possible. But if the server admin won't upgrade their punkbuster so you can play without turning yours off then it defeats the purpose of having it on at all.

Why one set of hard disks doesn't have the problem, why other players don't have the problem, and why some do (and it is obvious from playing alot do) I could not tell you what the differences are that permits them to continue to play and denies others.