Error 1018 conditions are possibly not implemented correctly

[arosian]

Related Patch Note History
See http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2959&highlight=1018
On February 14, 2010, a patch rolled out that included these two notes:

Rogean: The infamous Error 1018 is making its return; Attempting to enter the server with an active character will no longer be possible until that character is removed from the world.
Rogean: Due to the above change, Linkdead characters will now be kicked after 30 seconds of no aggro, or 3 minutes on aggro.

See: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4036&highlight=1018
On March 9, 2010, a patch rolled out that included this note:

Rogean: Attempting to enter the server while previously being disconnected during zoning will allow you to enter, and will kick off the zoning character, instead of receiving 1018. Upcoming.

Since then, no other mention to Error 1018 has been made in any patch notes. There is a buggy implementation of this specific "active character" check that cannot be explained by anything other than a server side implementation. Let me explain why.

Problem Description
I have two accounts that will experience this problem at random times from any computer, IP, or location even when the characters are never logged into the world. I have tried every "solution" presented on the forums from other users such as re-installation of EQ, trying different computers, trying different routers, and deleting character UI/.ini files without any success. See my tests performed below (bold indicates uniqueness of the test).

Tests Performed
Test 1, Setup: Main computer, main router, main modem, main IP.
Test 1, Login: Type in user/pass combination, click Login, success to server select. Select P1999, Error 1018 will present itself.

Test 2, Setup: Secondary computer, main router, main modem, main IP.
Test 2, Login: Type in user/pass combination, click Login, success to server select. Select P1999, Error 1018 will present itself.

Test 3, Setup: Main computer, main router, main modem, renewed IP.
Test 2, Login: Type in user/pass combination, click Login, success to server select. Select P1999, Error 1018 will present itself.

Test 3, Setup: Friend's computer 1000+ miles away, friend's router, friend's modem, friend's IP.
Test 3, Login: Type in user/pass combination, click Login, success to server select. Select P1999, Error 1018 will present itself.

Wait 1 hour, repeat tests, same results.
Wait 6 hours, repeat tests, same results.
Wait 24 hours, repeat tests, Error 1018 does not present itself, logout without selecting a character.
Wait 24 more hours, repeat tests, Error 1018 resurfaces even though no character has been selected to enter the world at the character select screen.

Conclusion and Thoughts

I have never experienced this error on any other EQEmu server.
Two of my three LS accounts are affected. The working account has never seen this problem.
Changes to network setup have no effect.
Changes to EverQuest installation have no effect.
Error 1018 will persist for hours and hours (patch note says character should be dropped after 3 minutes).
Using /camp will not prevent this error from occurring.


I have no way of confirming the exact behavior of the conditions under which Error 1018 occurs, because I don't have access to the P1999 source code. However, I think it's fairly suspect that a straggling crossed-out patch note is the final indication of any change made to its behavior. This problem is persistent, affects a moderate amount of people, and completely negates the ability to play on this server. As such, I feel this bug should at least be researched and/or addressed.

[arosian]

Still happening.

[dragonfists]

I also am experiencing this issue. For many weeks. Here is my thing

On my eqemu I made another sub-account, that sub-account experiences the 1018 error. I.E. I have 2 other eqemu accounts totally separate and I can log on to either one of those at any time without issue. But if I try to login to the one account that is a subaccount on eqemu (with no other characters online on any other account I have) then I get 1018. I have been experiencing this issue for months. Not a huge deal to me, I just have a lvl 9 sk on that account that I play for spare time but I would like to get on it now to get his stuff off and better use it. I will re-make the toon somehow on a completely different eqemu account that is not a subaccount. Submitting another ticket to just be able to get back onto this account.

[arosian]

I've found that submitting a ticket to rectify this issue is a bad idea. The ticket is just archived without any communication.

[arosian]

Fixing this bug would cut down on about 1/3rd of the Technical Discussion posts.

[arosian]

Still happening.

[Telin]

It's now happened to me! Now I can't test :(

[topgun1027]

I have this bug as of today, I havnt played for 3 days and come online to have some fun and do some trades and got this retarded 1018 error. Waited for hours now and still have it.. this sucks.

My other accounts work just fine , but not my main.

[Telin]

It was probably a coincidence. It worked for me after I reset my router and flushed my dns. I also copied over my backup directory to be sure.

[Heywood]

I have now been afflicted with this terrible disease. I /ex'd out of my toon about 4 hours ago now and have not been able to log on since.


Resetting DNS/Router does not work, I don't think this is on a problem on the client side...

[gwideon]

This started happening to me today. Has anyone checked to see if there are multiple accounts with the same ID, or that the ID is being truncated before compare? It is almost like someone is playing on another account and the server thinks it is my ID...

[Sadres]

Well, just hit a friend of mine. This is ridiculous.

[Bamzal Sherbet]

I have now been afflicted with this terrible disease. I /ex'd out of my toon about 4 hours ago now and have not been able to log on since.


Resetting DNS/Router does not work, I don't think this is on a problem on the client side...

nooooo



if I was a developer on this project, I would have already opened a full investigation and reported back with my findings

[Handull]

just had this happen to me today, i shut down my computer while on my bard this morning, got home in the afternoon and got the 1018 error, after 4 hours or so i was able to get in.

[Handull]

bump. happens regardless of camping out properly or /q-ing

[Tecmos Deception]

I've played on p99 on a wide variety of accounts over the last 2-ish years, and until a couple weeks ago I never experienced a 1018 that persisted for more than a few minutes. But in the last few weeks I've started having this issue on and off with my wizard's account. Fortunately I rarely play that account and it only seems to last a few hours at a time... but wtf? That account has been around for several months and I've spent enough time on it to get a wiz to 55 and I never experienced this until the last few weeks? And I never experienced it ever on any other account over the course of hundreds of days /played?

Bump for a retarded bug.

[xCry0x]

Have this happening on one of my accounts.

Bump for a good post with information on the bug...

The idea that the character ID is truncated and the server thinks 2 people are on makes a lot of sense.

I was able to freely log on before then wasn't on for a week and now i cannot log in at all for multiple days.

[xCry0x]

So to add on this, without any overly technical or long term testing.

Try to log on:

(going to update this to see if there are any trends..)

Sunday: 6-9PM PST Multiple log in attempts on p1999 blue. All fails except for 1 successful log in, camped out and immediately was back to 1018 failure.
Monday: 4-9pm PST Multiple log in attempts all fail.
Tuesday: 4-9PM PST Multiple log in attempts all fail.
Wednesday: 6:30-6:45AM PST Multiple log in attempts all success.
Wednesday 5:45 PM Multiple attempts all fail
Wednesday: 9:20 PM multiple attempts all success, 9:45 cannot log in.
Thursday 6:30 am pst, multiple log in all successful, going to leave a char logged in all day and see what happens when i log out & back in during the normal prime time when i can never log in.
Thursday 5:30 PM , char still logged in, was able to log out and log back in just fine.
Thursday 8:45 pm, cannot log in
Friday 5:45 am, log in fine

[Khaleesi]

If it's an account related issue, it IS manageable. It may not have a permanent fix, though a temporary solution is for guides to clone characters/move equipment.
They themselves have said it affects a super small % of the population - thus it shouldn't take much time to meet coordinate assistance with players.

For every moment a guide spends responding to useless drama comments or banning people for RnF activity, they could be doing something worthwhile for the server and it's community.

Meanwhile ....

Sirken's response to me was:

"we do not transfer characters.
we are working on a fix for the 1018 error"



With a response like that, you'd think this was the real Verant.
+1 for classic.

[xCry0x]

If it's an account related issue, it IS manageable. It may not have a permanent fix, though a temporary solution is for guides to clone characters/move equipment.
They themselves have said it affects a super small % of the population - thus it shouldn't take much time to meet coordinate assistance with players.

For every moment a guide spends responding to useless drama comments or banning people for RnF activity, they could be doing something worthwhile for the server and it's community.

Meanwhile ....



With a response like that, you'd think this was the real Verant.
+1 for classic.



I mean, we don't (generally) pay so they don't OWE us anything.

At the same time.. it seems like everything points to this being emu related and there are previous posts where GM/Guides allude towards account transfers.

I would honestly appreciate a response at least stating why transfers cannot be done in this situation. Assuming they can transfer/clone/whatever it seems like that would be an easy fix.. now if they do not have the ability to transfer okay but at the same time explain posts where

[Handull]

glad to see a response to the issue at least. would be nice if they could test the idea of a truncated ID and report back, since that seems like a very logical explanation, and would explain why the lock outs are so random and can go for minutes, hours, or days (luck of the draw if the other person with a matching account is online or not)

Originally Posted by xCry0x View Post
Sirken's response to me was:

"we do not transfer characters.
we are working on a fix for the 1018 error"

[xCry0x]

I would be interested to know if other people experiencing the issue notice it primarily at certain times?

So far I am consistently blocked logging in on prime time but have been successful 2 days in a row logging in early in the morning.

I left a char logged in this morning with logging enabled so would be interested to see three things..

1) Is it still logged in when I get home
2) Can I then log out and log back in
3) Does some new person come bitching about 1018 error =P


The only thing that makes me think it is not UID related is that my understanding is that if I am logged in my account and someone else tries to log in it would boot me off. Someone would have to correct me if I am wrong on that though. If that is the case then me logging in would generate a 1018 but also kick the other person off and I would imagine I would eventually be able to log in (assuming I try before they do).

[burgerbone]

This is silly, I can log into any other server except either project 1999 servers. I played for a couple hours, camped, tried to get back on a few hour later and keep getting kicked to login splash screen.

[burgerbone]

I just skipped the Patcher and just ran the eqgame shortcut and I logged in instantly.

[Handull]

I would be interested to know if other people experiencing the issue notice it primarily at certain times?

So far I am consistently blocked logging in on prime time but have been successful 2 days in a row logging in early in the morning.

I left a char logged in this morning with logging enabled so would be interested to see three things..

1) Is it still logged in when I get home
2) Can I then log out and log back in
3) Does some new person come bitching about 1018 error =P


The only thing that makes me think it is not UID related is that my understanding is that if I am logged in my account and someone else tries to log in it would boot me off. Someone would have to correct me if I am wrong on that though. If that is the case then me logging in would generate a 1018 but also kick the other person off and I would imagine I would eventually be able to log in (assuming I try before they do).

I'm not exactly sure how it works when you try to log on an account with someone else in game on the account. Once I was on a guild tracker and suddenly my screen locked up, but before it faded I saw a messaged in my chat window like "you have been removed by the gods". I was kicked to the log in screen and when I tried to log back in to that account, it said someone was on the account. So i logged in one of my own toons and it turns out someone else logged on that toon and in doing so I was punted off. On a few occasions I've tried to log an account that someone else was on and I've never punted them, so I'm not sure what caused me to get punted that day.

I wonder if GMs can see what other account (if any) is causing people to get the 1018 error. Maybe they could check the IP of the logged in account to verify if it was a problem with the server thinking another account at another location was logged in, or if it was just a problem with your account being frozen in game.

Do gms/devs have access to accounts with the 1018 error to test it in their spare time?



burgetbone, are you getting 1018 or some other error? or is it just kicking you out when u log in through the patcher? unless you get a pop up box saying error 1018, its something else

[xCry0x]

All the 'solutions' have been beaten over the head and they are all dumb luck.

I run the game 100% through the shortcut not through the patcher and it is blocking me from access to p1999 blue on 1 account.

From what I understand it is not a problem with your account being frozen in game because on other threads GMs have said there is nothing they can do to remove you since you do not appear on in any way shape or form.

As I mentioned earlier, I would be interested to know if others experiencing this over extended time are noticing it only at certain times or if it is a 24 hr thing (not I log in at 9pm monday and then again at 9pm tuesday and still broken therefor 24 hour thing).

Over the past 2 days i can log in fine early am then reliably cannot log in at night.. if that trend keeps up it would at least give some evidence that its not a completely random event.

[burgerbone]

My apologies, my client stops because it cannot authenticate with the server.

WorldAuthenticate: connection lost during authentication

The result sounds the same.

[xCry0x]

I would love some feedback from Dev/GM type people on this.. I have been updating my time line of when I can and cannot get on and it is starting to trend towards the conflicting ID theory with someone else playing heavily during prime time.

If this has already been weeded out as a no go that would be nice to know... if it hasn't then maybe this could be helpful? It would also give more relevance to the argument that simply allowing us to transfer to a new account would be a quick fix. Nobody has said weather or not this is/is not even possible.

If it is conflicting ID related I am ready to just log in a char 24/7 for a week to force my doppelganger to give up.

[Handull]

I would love some feedback from Dev/GM type people on this.. I have been updating my time line of when I can and cannot get on and it is starting to trend towards the conflicting ID theory with someone else playing heavily during prime time.

If this has already been weeded out as a no go that would be nice to know... if it hasn't then maybe this could be helpful? It would also give more relevance to the argument that simply allowing us to transfer to a new account would be a quick fix. Nobody has said weather or not this is/is not even possible.

If it is conflicting ID related I am ready to just log in a char 24/7 for a week to force my doppelganger to give up.

assuming that we each have a doppelganger, and that our doppelganger also experiences a 1018 error when we are logged on, i wonder if we could somehow gather a bunch of people who experience 1018 together and systematically determine who is each others doppelganger. if we even got a few matches out of it then those people could at least coordinate with each other. would be a lot of effort to put together though.

on the other hand, if this worked then we would have a pretty good idea what the bug was, or at least devs/gms could look for similarities between two accounts. two doppelganger accounts could also test if this bug appeared on red99 or other emu servers, to see if it was a blue99 bug, p99 bug, or emu bug.

have gms/devs attempted to collect account log in info for abandoned 1018 error accounts? Would be a place to start to look for a pattern. These accounts couldn't be handed out publicly though, for a few reasons, but a dev/gm could possibly look for a pattern within the account info server side.

[xCry0x]

The biggest problem is there does not seem to be any visibility into what has been looked into and what hasn't been.

Everyone that has the problem keeps posting "omg i get 1018 i cannot log in" then that is the end of it... they never really follow through with anything more. The reason I attached to this thread was because the OP seemed more involved in the issue than just crying about it once and moving on.

GM/Dev responses seem absent outside of the response I got from Sirken saying "we are working on it".

On a page back I am basically posting my experience of when I can and cannot log in over the past week and it has so far been that if I try to log in during prime time i get blocked, if I log in early AM I get on fine. I took that another step and left a char logged in all day, was able to then log off prime time and log back on freely until I logged off for a few hours at which point I was then unable to log in.

That behavior, while a small sample size, heavily leads me to believe someone is out there who plays between 4pm pst 10PM (or later pst) and is blocking me from logging in.

I have EQ installed on a computer at work that I can RDP into so I am more or less going to leave that account logged in all weekend except when I want to actually use it at which point I can log out and then log in from home. If I can do this freely all weekend I think it further points to the whole doppleganger thing being a reality in which case the real smoking gun would be if two people could manage to link up and find out that they block eachother. (Oh, and this is a friging far cry from multi boxing... I can barely log into EQ through a RDP session let alone move or do anything).

If other people tried this also we could at least gather a wider data set ..

-edit-

Oh and if you want to help track when you can and cannot get in, please try times that are widely separated IE if you cannot log in at 8pm try at 8AM. Saying, I cannot log in at 8.. 8:01..8:02..8:03... doesnt prove a lot. Saying you can log in every single day at 8AM but NEVER at 8PM would be more helpful to this hypothesis.

I feel like the reason people are able to blow this off as something that happens 'infrequently' is that they are the lucky one who gets on first while some other unlucky guy always gets on 2nd and is 9/10 times blocked and eventually re-rolls a new account at which point their counter-part goes "oh its fixed!" I know my schedule is pretty static where I am always getting on around 4-5pm and getting off around 9-10pm.. so if someone else always logs in at 3:50pm and logs off at 11:00 pm they would never see the issue unless i got home early while I am blocked constantly... which is why I plan to leave the account logged in Friday-Sunday to see if I can get someone to come screaming =P

[xCry0x]

To fully update the login issue logs

Sunday: 6-9PM PST Multiple log in attempts on p1999 blue. All fails except for 1 successful log in, camped out and immediately was back to 1018 failure.
Monday: 4-9pm PST Multiple log in attempts all fail.
Tuesday: 4-9PM PST Multiple log in attempts all fail.
Wednesday: 6:30-6:45AM PST Multiple log in attempts all success.
Wednesday 5:45 PM Multiple attempts all fail
Wednesday: 9:20 PM multiple attempts all success, 9:45 cannot log in.
Thursday 6:30 am pst, multiple log in all successful, going to leave a char logged in all day and see what happens when i log out & back in during the normal prime time when i can never log in.
Thursday 5:30 PM , char still logged in, was able to log out and log back in just fine, ended by logging out fully.
Thursday 8:45 pm, cannot log in
Friday 5:45 am, log in fine, char left logged to char select
Sat, Sun able to log in freely, character always left logged in to char select screen.


So to summarize, from Sunday the 15th-Thursday the 20th I was rarely able to log in during prime time. Once I began logging in early in the morning and leaving character logged in all day I was able to log in and out freely assuming I never logged out past the char select.

Can this bug please get a response from dev in some capacity about what they have and have not looked into? Can we also please get some sort of response as to why account transfers would not be allowed in this circumstance?

[xCry0x]

Bump

[Lyra]

assuming that we each have a doppelganger, and that our doppelganger also experiences a 1018 error when we are logged on, i wonder if we could somehow gather a bunch of people who experience 1018 together and systematically determine who is each others doppelganger.

Account creation is free.

We can trouble shoot this by creating new accounts with similar names.

I will help in the evening if anyone else would like to.

Give me an account name I should make and tell me what time after 7pm central you would like to attempt. I have a vent server available if you would like to discuss while we try.

My troubled account was Lyra_40.

[xCry0x]

I dont think it is the account name, I think it is an account ID associated with your account or something similar. IE the login server recognizes your logging into p1999 as user 123456789 and somehow someone else got assigned the same 123456789 user name OR in some process it truncates the id to 6 characters so while you are 123456789 and someone else is 123456123 you both show up as 123456 to the system.

Given I have no idea how this actually works this is all guessing.

The idea that it is simply login names would be interesting though.

I know the account that has the issue for me has a very long login name that is 17 characters long.

I will test that myself tonight =P


Still would love some feedback from Dev please!

[Lyra]

I dont think it is the account name, I think it is an account ID associated with your account or something similar. IE the login server recognizes your logging into p1999 as user 123456789 and somehow someone else got assigned the same 123456789 user name OR in some process it truncates the id to 6 characters so while you are 123456789 and someone else is 123456123 you both show up as 123456 to the system.

OH

Well that makes more sense and nothing we can check.

[Handull]

I agree with xCry0x that your actual username has nothing to do with it.

If devs could just take a look at how the server handles account IDs they could probably narrow this down quickly. Here is my best guess as to why/how there is this truncation error: everyone and their mother has multiple EMU Accounts and LS Accounts. Going off the fact that EQ is notorious for being stingy with data usage for integers (max stats 255, max mob hp 32k, 8 toons per account, etc), I wouldn't be shocked if the integer for Account ID is small (under 20 bits?) and that between all the users playing on EQEmu, all available Account IDs have been used up. This forces new IDs to appear the same as previous ones. Due to the fact that so many account sit dormant due to being used for other servers, logged rarely as mules, inactive accounts, etc, this error is fairly rare.

How does it work? Lets say we have a 3 bit number, call it A. A can be 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,or7. In binary these are
000,001,010,011,100,101,110,and111.
So what comes after 7? The next number in binary is 1000, but since A only holds 3 bits of data, A is now equal to 000. (in 3-bit binary 7+1=0)
Now, maybe A is a 32 bit number, and can hold more accounts than we can imagine, but A has to be passed along from your client to the server and checked against already active accounts. If at any point the code is written to only deal with a limited number of bits, A will be cut off (not quite truncated) and appear equal to another account.

How to fix/test this? Trace the code that retrieves an Account ID from the moment the client hits Log In and Join Server to the moment it returns an output of error1018 to the client. My guess is somewhere along the way the Account ID is reduced to some small bit integer in an attempt to reduce ping. Would you expect people to make over a million accounts over all the emu servers when you first programmed this box? Sounds like a reasonable way for someone starting a server to try and reduce overhead and keep lag down on a small and free sandbox emulator. If this is the problem, it should be a simple fix.

Since this is more of an Emu problem, looks like we need Rogean to weigh in on this one.

[xCry0x]

^^^ what he said.

A response would be great given that if this is really the case this issue could explode when velious hits and large amounts of inactive accounts come back.

I would be happy to let a dev go nuts with my screwy account if they want to test it.

[Lyra]

I would be happy to let a dev go nuts with my screwy account if they want to test it.

They can have mine too.

[xCry0x]

Client crashed on computer at work, tried to log in now and get 1018 =P so the trend continues.

Cannot log in during prime time unless previously logged in.

-edit-

Was able to log in on work computer.. then tried to switch over to home pc and was getting 1018 error even though on my other screen I could see myself logged in from work computer.. then logged out fully from work computer and still 1018. Usually that would have just booted me from one and logged me in with other.

-edit2-

Was able to log in, sat in for a few mins then logged out and tried to get back in and was 1018 error-ed again so unless I am missing something that is now not lining up to the whole multiple people blocking eachother thing because I highly doubt someone was able to click in the min i logged out.

[Handull]

They could have been spamming the log in button. Its bound to happen some of the time, especially during peak hours. Usually when I get 1018 I try to log in for 5-10minutes then give up, every once in a while that 5-10minute window would overlap with your prime-time log in/out tests. Just depends how frequently it happens imo.

[xCry0x]

The whole thing with me being logged in and 1018'ing myself was weird also.

[gwideon]

I had 1018 errors 6/26 from 10:00 CT (11:00 et) - 11:30+ CT (12:30+ ET)
I played late 6/25 with no problems.

[xCry0x]

bump, still the same

[dali_lb]

I am pretty sure the cause of the 1018 errors is the same as when people freeze /crashes during zoning.

If you look in the log file for the session, I am 99% sure you get a msg like "authentication with server unsuccessfull"

(I am sitting at work writing this so i can't remember the exact text in the logs)

As others have pointed out, as long as we don't have access to the source code of the server that handles these events
where people either goes ld, client crashes, or packet is lost/truncated during login/zoning it's hard to say what it is,
but its a typical EQ problem, wich still exists on live servers with both EQ and EQ2.

Everytime you log in or zone in EQ or EQ2 the client sends the cached session id/pw to the zoneserver to be sure,
you are still the same person/client as when you logged in.
If the client cache that holds your login/pw is corrupted, or you have packet loss when zoning you get returned to the login screen.

This is due to the fact that most data between EQ server and client is sent as udp and not tcp to keep data-amount as low as possible.
Those that are familiar with the differences will know that udp traffic has no acknowledge check, tcp does.
When using udp you just close your eyes and throw the ball and prays someone catches it.
When the ball is thrown you have no way of knowing if someone got it, or if it was the right person who got it.

You would think that at least the login to the zoneserver would be send as a tcp packet, but i don't know wether it is or not,
and havn't bothered setting up a packet sniffer to look into it, but it "could" be the reason of the random 1018 errors.

[xCry0x]

That is interesting and you seem to know more about networking that I do. Still it seems off that this would be such a unique issue to specific accounts as opposed to all accounts across a user if it was due to packet loss from user->server.

I have been able to get on and off my account freely as of recently so who knows..

[Handull]

nice to see more ideas posted

[Lyra]

I think it is an account ID associated with your account or something similar. IE the login server recognizes your logging into p1999 as user 123456789 and somehow someone else got assigned the same 123456789 user name OR in some process it truncates the id to 6 characters so while you are 123456789 and someone else is 123456123 you both show up as 123456 to the system.

I think this is a well calculated guess.

Looking at my EQEMU information, my log in name Lyra_40 is attached to this account number: 256331

http://i44.tinypic.com/s4ut1s.jpg

6 digits. I noticed on another account where I made one account then immediately made another the numbers are consecutive numerical order.

[gwideon]

Struck by 1018 currently again. I wish this would have happened in the first week of playing 8 months ago - I would have abandoned the account and tried again. But I already have quite a bit invested in my character already -- /groan --

[Lyra]

Rogean is working on it.

http://www.twitch.tv/tigglesp99/b/428622594

discussion regarding error 1018 begins at 1:56:15

[gwideon]

1018 all yesterday and again today :(

[xCry0x]

Rogean is working on it.

http://www.twitch.tv/tigglesp99/b/428622594

discussion regarding error 1018 begins at 1:56:15

Bump and thanks for the post. I had the afterthought that I should have gotten on that to ask that same question since we get no responses here.

[Handull]

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114945