Hi folks

I've been experimenting with ALiVE for a month or two now trying to get our dedicated to run something we can go to whenever we feel like it.
I'm constantly running into various issues I can't seem to identify and fix.

I'll put down a general list of information as I'm relatively new to Arma and don't quite know what information you might need. Whatever's missing, tell me and I'll provide.

Server:

• Linux x64 (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) virtual machine running on a Win Srv 2012 R2 Hyper-V
• 4 CPUs, 3GB RAM and 4GB swap
• 35GB Disk on Tier 1 storage (SSD) for / and swap
• 140GB Disk on Tier 2 storage (7200rpm SATA) for /var and /opt
• Dedicated setup set up following this tutorial
• steamcmd in /opt/dampf/steamcmd
• A3 in /opt/dampf/arma3
• mods and maps in /opt/dampf/arma3mods

Dedi started by running the start.sh script inside a screen (so I can close the console without killing the server)

Mods:
cba_a3
alive
asrai3
task_force_radio
rhsusaf
rhsafrf

My basic mission setup (Altis and Stratis) is more or less what I think as "rather default, nothing fancy" consisting of two AI Commanders (US Army D and Russian MSV) on invasion, each having a mil objective, a civ objective and a combat logistics. there's a mil CQB module as well for blu (player's are playing opfor), the required stuff like alive itself, virtual AI and so on and some player combat support (two transport helis, 2 CAS helis, 2 CAS planes and one arty tank group.

Alright, onto the issues then.

• Admin Marker module only shows stuff inside a kilometer (always worked on the whole map while playing the mission locally)
• Combat Insertion tasks didn't work (no AI boarded our vehicles, only part of the AI troops boarded, troops left the vehicle halfway to the insertion point)
• the AI is mostly passive (securing new areas, attacking enemy troops) even though both Commander are set to Invasion
• Arty didn't rearm and we were not able to rearm them ourselves (ammo or repair truck)
• after some time (about half an hour) the Player Logistics had a 10 minute delay on actually sending out stuff or completely stopped working
• occasionally, I had to start the mission twice to get to the character selection (first try just put me back to the mission list)
• AI Helis stuck above HQs (just hovering, seemingly waiting for something until they ran out of fuel)

At one point I added an insurgency commander with all the needed modules but that didn't work at all so I dropped it. I also tried integration to the War Room, but as soon as I try to load @aliveserver, the process crashes. So I put this off for when the rest runs smoothly.

Again, I'm totally new to dedicated stuff and fairly new to Arma in general, just tell me whatever information I need to put in.

I hope we'll get it to work smoothly, ALiVE's too much fun to not play it.

Thanks a bunch

Error

my local OS is Win10 x64 and everything runs on Arma stable.
I can reproduce everything except the "Admin Marking Unit" one (locally, the whole map is covered), the Arty one (I'll get to that when I'm in Arma) and the Logistics one (my Arma OOMs before the logistics fail)

EDIT:// Arty didn't rearm locally. Crossroad correctly informed me that Arty's out of ammo, but that's it. Another thing I just got reminded of, Autotasking doesn't work on the Dedicated. Also, many things aren't happening on the dedi, such as areas being marked as occupied.
Also, thanks for patching people in Spyder, very appreciated.

EDIT2:// Another detail that might help. when on the server, moving to our mission AO (as an example, driving from Altis Airport (our Base) to Pyrgos), we kind of have to take a short two minute break to actually have units around us. If we don't, we'll just end up being shot by a random enemy squad literally spawned in our faces.

@HeroesandvillainsOS  Hmmm. Not sure this would have ever "worked" for you locally. Depending on your Virtual AI spawn distance, anyway. Admin unit Marking will only mark units that have spawned in the game world. Virtual profiles that haven't won't show up. To see them you need to debug the Virtual AI module. What you're describing is working as intended.

Alrighty then, just got confused as testing on my local computer showed markers all over both Stratis and Altis. Thanks for clearing that one up.

@HeroesandvillainsOS Commanders will always leave profiles to hold objectives. Although they are more aggressive on Invasion than they would be on Occupation, what you're seeing is normal. If you want units to attack a specific area or areas with high priority, add a few custom obj modules with high priority over the areas you want the commander to focus on.

Well, I've had the server running for about 24 hours with virtual combat speed doubled and they barely left their TAOR markers (I've got quite a few klicks of distance between the TAOR because I thought that would fix my issue of new troops spawning around the next corner as soon as reinforcements are due) leaving us with very little actual combat opportunities aside from "grab a T-90 and drive all the way to the other end of the island to maybe find some americans to shoot at".

@HeroesandvillainsOS What do you mean the insurgent commander wasn't working?

Where I placed the Insurgent commander and all, there was an IED factory and four insurgents. For sizing, their TAOR was everything except our own.

I started with that approach (having a marker for my TAOR and putting that one on the blacklist for the enemy) but then I always had the issue that we just finished clearing up a city (say for example Agia Marina on Stratis), ordering reinforcements (about four planes with five squads), waited for the AI to land before going RTB just to find Agia Marina back in the enemies hand as soon as we lost sight (going over the first hill to return to Stratis Air Base) which led me to believe that reinforcements is allowed to spawn anywhere in the TAOR, making advancing and fortifying a complete waste of time. We've had that same little game for two hours straight and everytime we were trying to go RTB the enemy magically occupied the town again in a matter of a minute or two.

I'll whip something up for Altis for testing this evening including some insurgents (using IWAR) and I'll post an update about the insurgent side of things.

Apart from that, I still wonder about the other issues as well as my OS setup itself.

Alright, time for an update after some testing.
Good things first, my Insurgency seems to be working. I've activated just about every debug option in the editor and it kind of does stuff. Taking over towns still feels like getting nowhere since the troop reinforcements we order either enter the city just to turn around and run somewhere completely different or they stay there just to "disappear" when we leave the area. best example's Neochori which is more or less the first city after our TAOR (enemy only has our TAOR blacklisted, no TAOR set for them) and is a very frequently visited by our squad. we go there, clean the whole town and order static defense reinforcement. I check the map (the unit marking admin module) and see no enemy marker popping up (and no AI debug marker in there) so I assume everything's well. As soon as the reinformcenet arrives, we go back to our vehicle and return RTB to replenish ammo and FAKs (Altis airport). We can basically board the car, get back, take a couple of mags from the arsenal, get back into the car and return to Neochori, once again filled to the limit with enemy troops. Also, whenever we drive to wherever we decide to spread our love at, we have to wait about two or three minutes before anything spawns (without a really logical explanation of where those troops came from).
I teleported myself from Altis airport to Neochori for fun and had an empty city for a minute until troops (and the corresponding markers) slowly started to spawn all around me. While it's clear that the troops must be spawned, I have absolutely no idea why that process takes anywhere between two and ten minutes, is ALiVE just that extremely load-intensive?

On the topic of IWAR, I found that mod in the workshop, absolutely no strings attached :)

Limiter is on default 144, I actually didn't think about tweaking that one yet. In case of Neochori, I used both the marking and the module debug, both turned out empty for everything in a radius of about three kilometers (including Insurgency related objectives and personnel). I had every debug option turned on (except CQB locations) and saw a weapons depot with a recruitment center about three towns to the west.
I actually don't remember the speed, will change that to 25% then and see what happens.
I distributed 6x5 squads over Neochori which I deemed "slightly" overkill. But maybe that "fixes" itself when I adjust virtual speed, I'll see.
I'll go and test that as soon as we're playing again, in the meantime, I'm still rather skeptical about my server itself. Would be happy if someone could crosscheck that tutorial to see if there's something missing and/or obsolete.

I actually didn't leave the base in the SP editor tbh, don't know if I get somewhere before my arma crashes (anything between five minutes to an hour before I OoM).

I'll doublecheck those 144 to make sure and test again with 25% speed.

Well, at least I've got some sort of an update, I guess.....

Hoping that 1.68 solves many issues I updated and tested some more.
Here's the list of issues from this testing run.

• Logistics just randomly refuse to work (as in, we're ordering stuff and nothing happens)
• Alive takes ages to spawn inactive profiles when moving to an area
• generally strange performance issues (AI taking a couple of seconds to register being dead, AI vehicles randomly rubberbanding)
• I get a crapton of lines in the server shell (no chance to see what's going on as it generates some 50ish lines per second) whenever a player's connected
• Server performance (#monitor 5 as admin) shows ~2GB RAM usage and around 10FPS

To put this into perspective, in those 6ish hours a day we're around playing on the server, most of the time there's a team of two with a third every full moon or so, which makes anything performance related all the more incredibly hilarious. The server reached the point of being considered broken by default.
Is there any way to get more (usable) information somehow to get an idea what exactly fucks up? Didn't see any relatable logfiles in /var/log.

Friznit, that I checked everytime I was in 3den, everything's set up exactly like the documentation said.