wine on ubuntu, slow disk reads--any advice?

[Grainger]

Hi NFO community,

I run a server for an old game, the original Star Wars Battlefront, from 2004. The player base has shrunk, but some of us die-hards are still around and we use about 60 GB/month of data transfer on our Windows 2003 single core NFO server, that we have had since 2009.

The new sales prices for a single core linux only box has me investigating running with that NFO configuration, as it is currently about half what we pay for now (and the 4 TB of data that comes with a single core setup is extreme overkill for us). I have ordered one, and our community has set it up with ubuntu 14.04, lubuntu desktop, and wine.

We can log into the VNC terminal and start our server in a wine cmd.exe window, and it runs pretty well, with one exception--

when the map changes, it takes about 15 seconds for the map to load on the linux server (it takes about 2 seconds on the PC server).

Does anyone have any suggestions for speeding the map load? Could it be file reads? Or something else?

I used Linux back at patch level 0.93 when Linus was first starting and know some basic unix commands, but I am not an expert, so be detailed with your advice if you have any

Thanks!

[$atanic $pirit]

Are you running the server under wine? If yes then that explains the load times.

Is the server even available on Linux platform?

[Grainger]

Yes, the server is being run in wine.

There is not a native linux server binary for this game, the dedicated server is a PC only binary.

[$atanic $pirit]

Then you shouldn't have switched over to Linux. Wine can run programs, but it can't match the performance as they would get in native environment.

Not much can be done about it, in my opinion.

[Grainger]

Thanks for your input. To be clear, I have not switched anything over. I have set up an additional server to test it out.

Network and CPU performance appear to be comparable to running in a native windows VPS. Nothing on the internet that I have been able to find has indicated that I should expect slow disk reads using wine.

Getting a single core VPS running windows is not an option NFO provides anymore (although NFO is good about grandfathering configurations), and upgrading to a two core system that does support windows as an option for such an underutilized game server would be a waste, in my opinion.

So if anyone that may have insight and experience in wine and ubuntu can give additional constructive advice, please let me know.

Finally, since I pay for the server and have paid for the server for the last six years, it is ultimately my decision about whether or not I actually make the switch.

[$atanic $pirit]

Did you monitor the resource usage when the map change takes place? If not then please make sure that you are not running out of CPU power.

[Grainger]

I think you are on to something with that:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3403 swbf2 20 0 2660480 99672 9696 R 48.9 9.8 5:28.58 battlefront+
1339 root 20 0 229720 53672 7472 S 1.7 5.3 0:27.86 Xorg
2818 swbf2 -4 0 33184 9012 1156 S 0.7 0.9 3:15.62 wineserver


during a map change, the wineserver process kicks up to 50% along with the battlefront process
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3403 swbf2 20 0 2660480 99700 9696 R 60.5 9.8 10:40.96 battlefront+
2818 swbf2 -4 0 33184 9012 1156 S 39.6 0.9 3:42.70 wineserver

Knowing what the issue is will be helpful, even if it ultimately not fixable.

Thanks.