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Hello everyone,I hope you and your loved ones are all well.I've recently been able to secure a great deal for the NWN Server on a much faster machine on a Black Friday special so we're going to be moving it over there some time in the near future.I'd like to get the server up and tested this month so we can confirm that everything is okay to go and I can cancel our previous account before the end of the month. I haven't yet set an exact date and time but I'm thinking maybe late Friday or Saturday night this week.Players shouldn't notice any difference, you will still connect to xora.layonara.com (5121 or 5122).  The IP address will change if you use that but I'll inform you of the new one when the time comes.This may also mean we can revert to automatic cross-server portals without crashes which might be nice but we'll have to test that.The new server will only cost $40 a month in donations so we can hopefully extend NWN Layonara at a fairly inexpensive price for as long as folks still enjoy coming here.For those curious and in the tech know:Existing server is a 4GB RAM, Dual 2.53GHz CPU, 250GB SATA HD running Windows 2k3 Server dedicated system.New server is a 10GB RAM, 10 2.3GHz CPU, 100GB Turbo SSD HD running Windows 2k8 Server cloud server.My initial tests have the servers starting up in half the time the old ones did. I'm not sure how much this will help lag and larger groups but we'll hopefully be able to test that.All the best,-orth

 Posting this for Charm2009.Description: Charm successfully crafted an exceptional amulet of eagle's splendour III and stated it would not cast the daily spell for her. I verified it would not work as it should.
Location: Testing took place in Fort Vehl.
Verified: 

Reproducible: Yes, reproduced. I took the broken amulet from Charm and provided her a new one from the toolset. She tested the new one and it would not give her the option to cast the spell. I tried to equip the amulet myself and had the same result.  

Want to create an icon for your organization to be displayed as a badge for members under their profile?

The icon must be 32x32px and preferably having a black background unless the entire image takes up the 32x32 in which case the background is irrelevant. Please reply and attach the image in this thread.

Here's an example shot of some of my "badges" on the new system.




Also please note you no longer need to apply for membership to specific deity based forums or the druid one. The system will automatically know you have a character who follows that deity (provided your deity is correctly entered upon creation or a GM has set your deity).

Yep, I got curious one day after finding out how easy it is to set up log rotation in Linux from within the shell script used to run NWN, so I wondered if I could do the same thing in Windows. Using Powershell, it turns out to be fairly simple.[LIST=1]

• Open Notepad (or your text editor of choice)
• Copy and paste the following code into the new file:
  Quote

  param ($nwn_path, $log_path, $dest_path, $log_pref)
  $DateStamp = get-date -uformat "%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"
  $final = $log_pref + "_$DateStamp.log"
  move-item "$nwn_path\\$log_path\\nwclientLog1.txt" "$nwn_path\\$dest_path\\$final"
• Save the file to your NWN folder as: nwn-log-rotator.ps1 Note: if using Notepad, make sure you change "Save as type:" drop-down to "All Files (*.*)" or else it will add a .txt extension to the end of the file name
• Create another new text file and paste the following into it:
  Quote

  @echo off
  SET NWN_PATH="C:\\NeverwinterNights\\NWN" cd %NWN_PATH%
  start /w nwmain.exe +connect 173.198.229.123:5121 +password {player password}
  powershell %NWN_PATH%\\nwn-log-rotator.ps1 %NWN_PATH% logs logs nwclientLog
• Save the file as Layonara-West.bat (or whatever you like, as long as it has a .bat extension)
• Close your text editor
• If desired, create desktop shortcuts to the .bat files for easy access.

Basically, that's it, except replace {player password} with the correct player password, given on character approval (also, remove the {}, in case there's any confusion). This will connect you to West and log you in automatically. Some of you may have NWN in a different folder than I do. If so, edit line 2 of the .bat file to point to the correct location. You can create a second file to connect directly to Central by using :5122 in the 4th line of the .bat file like this: start /w nwmain.exe +connect 173.198.229.123:5122 +password {player password} If you do not want to have separate direct-connect script for each server, just leave the connection parameters off: start /w nwmain.exe Regarding the last line in the .bat file, the Powershell script created in Step 2 takes four arguments. In order, they are:[LIST=1]

• Folder path of NWN
• Folder path of the nwclientLog1.txt file (NWN's default log) relative to the NWN path
• Folder path where the rotated log file should be saved relative to the NWN path (this is usually the same as the path in #2)
• Prefix for the new log file

The Powershell script will rename/move the file to the destination folder with a name in the format: prefix_datecode.log, where prefix is from #4 and datecode follows the format of: {4-digit year}{Month}{Day}-{Hour}{Minute}{Second}. So the datecode for October 26th, 2012 at 3:27:15pm would be: 20121026-152715 Lines 2 and 3 of nwn-log-rotator.ps1 can be altered to change the naming format of the rotated log files. These scripts are presented as-is, and I don't guarantee they'll work right for your needs or at all...heh. Test them out for yourself before you rely on them. You've been warned. For convenience, I've attached the scripts above to this message. Un-RAR them into your NWN folder. You'll need to edit the Layonara-West.bat as described above to put the right player password into line 4 and, if necessary, adjust the NWN_PATH on line 2.

Greetings everyone,

This weekend I'll be transferring the forums, LORE and IRC over to our new server. I'm going to begin late tomorrow night around 11PM Eastern. My plan is to move IRC over first to be able to use it as a tool to communicate the progress on the forums and LORE. I'll also be using Twitter to confirm progress of the migration.

LORE character updates may be temporarily broken when the transfer is moved over but will be remedied as soon as possible. I don't foresee a need to shut down the NWN server but it's possible it might be required in case I've forgotten something.

I expect the whole process to take between 4 to 6 hours but if everything goes well it may be sooner. Of course if I run into hitches it could also be longer.

DNS migration may also cause propagation issues but that's out of our control. Basically this means that when we change which server the web address forums.layonara.com points to it takes some time for the global system to be aware of this change. Hopefully it will propagate fast so there's no concerns on Saturday but if there are I'll provide some technical help to temporarily alleviate the issue.

I hope all is well with you and your loved ones.
-orth

Hello friends, old and new. It's been a while since I've been able to sit down and take a breath but I promised myself I would take the time to catch up on what I've been up to and some of the things that have to be done on the technical end over the coming month.

To start, I wanted to say that Layonara is with my heart every day. The friends I made and the moments I shared in its fantasy setting will be cherished moments I'll hold through my whole life with no regret. The past year I've been at a distance, occasionally trying to force my way back into the magic that I know makes me feel like only roleplaying can make me feel. It's been there for short whiles but real world priorities get in the way and days away become weeks and then months. I'm not going to try to explain nor am I sure I even know why, it just happens.

Life's been pretty good. I've become a bit of a sports nut, I even bought season tickets to the Blue Jays for this summer. Nothing new on the love side of things, though a kiss stolen here and there. Work has had me with a lot less time than I was afforded a few years ago but I remain physically and mentally very healthy.

As with playing, my desire for working on the MMO has had to be forced and again other worldly concerns leave me getting side tracked then ultimately not having the fortitude to jump back into the development. I am making progress in a core area though and when I can catch a breath and bare down for the final touches I'll be eager to move on to the areas that others have continued to bear down upon.

Over the coming month there's going to be a few headaches from the technical end. One of our servers is old and has to be updated, this means I have to make a decision to either stay with our existing server setups or consider moving all of our servers to a cloud based setup. I've not made that decision yet and it's a pretty complicated one as Dorganath would be able to attest to as we discussed it on IRC. Once I make that decision I will get a better idea of downtime for all our servers, web, irc, nwn etc.

I touched on the core area I'm working on with the MMO and that's focused on the web end of things. Using the versatility and module rich Drupal CMS I'm developing both a front end to a new updated community site and a back end to the MMO database structure. This could mean some heavy work needed on LORE and perhaps *cringe* if I'm really feeling adventurous, I would transfer the entire forum to drupal's forum. Alternatively there are modules that allow both vBulletin and Drupal work side by side. I wonder, do any of you have Drupal experience?

So I guess that's kind of it for my update. I'll be informing you via the Important World Announcements forum about server downtimes as soon as I can possibly know and with as advanced notice as possible. I apologize in advance if this gets in the way of some scheduled quests.

My best,
James

[SIZE=16]Bug Report[/SIZE] Description: Every time the exchange counter at the Angels guild store is used it takes several seconds for items to transfer. Now, if this was just a local occurance, it wouldn't warrant a report, but while I was trading with Tyra Sunday night, I had two different players not present tell me they were experiencing severe lag as DB placed items to and from from this device and Tyra looked at them. Worth looking into? I'll let you decide. Location: Angels Guild Store Verified: Reproducable: Yes, just use the counter (2 places) at the Angels guild store.

Hello again folks,

We are reworking our server structure over the rest of the week to prepare for the coming excitement of the plot quests and to cut some costs.  One of our development repository and team collaboration servers (silkwood) is being transitioned to run on the same server as our forums and lore server (garent).  We don't expect this to cause any change in the performance you see from these sites but it will mean some occasional downtime for the forums and lore as we add some additional web server capabilities.

Once this transition is complete and silkwood goes offline we will be using the cost savings to temporarily support a second server for NWN to run quests when needed. Hat tip to Dorganath for offering to pay for the difference to support the windows server for this and for the idea in general.  To support this capability there will need to be a time for us to temporarily take down the nwn servers to properly mirror the database and the character files over both servers. We'll try to perform this late at night/early morning when things are quiet. Exact date and time is not known but I will follow up in this thread when we decide upon those details. We estimate it will occur some time in the next week.

Feel free to ask any questions should you have them.

-orth

Our server hosts have notified us of downtime for ALL of our servers between Friday, October 22nd 2010, between 11:30PM and Saturday 2:30AM Eastern Time.  I will be shutting the servers down a few minutes before the downtime.

This means all nwn servers, forums, irc, lore, web site will ALL be down.  I will monitor the downtime and be prepared for any problems after the servers come back up.  If there are any serious delays or problems where I can not communicate through normal means I'll tweet it and post it on our wall at Facebook.

Below is the message our hosting providers sent to us for those more interested.

I apologize for any impact this may have on any planned excursions.

Today we have been advised about an electrical problem with the UPS system powering our suite J1 @ 1250RL.

We are required to perform an electrical maintenance on this UPS system that will cause a 30-45 minute interruption of electricity. Unfortunately there was nothing Netelligent could have done to foresee or prevent this problem.   We will be attempting to safely shutdown each server a few minutes before the maintenance window indicated below. However, if you would like to login remotely and power down your server beforehand, our technicians would find it very helpful.  

We apologize for this inconvenience and understand the impact it has on your business.

Layonara now has a Facebook page and we would love to have you listed as one of our fans!  Keep up to date with official announcements, latest developments and other goodies as Layonara moves forward in what will prove to be a very exciting year for our community, both old and new members.