What exactly are dimensional anchors?

[maxman72go]

Hello, I'm new to technic servers, but I would greatly appreciate it if someone would explain to me what exactly dimensional anchors are. The file takes up a HUGE space on my server, therefore taking up a lot of RAM. I know this has to do something with chunk loading, and I was wondering what I could do to minimize the size of the dimensional anchors text file.

I don't know how big in terms of storage the average server is, but my server is currently for me and 10 of my friends, and we're using 8 multiverse worlds. I know that sounds ridiculous, but the multiverse worlds are very small (8MB), so I don't expect that has to do with much. But, with all that said, my dimensional anchors file is 1.78GB, therefore putting a lot of strain on my computer.

Sorry for sounding like a newb, but thank you for all the help in advance!

[VideoBoy]

What dimensional anchors file...? The zip is 48KB. If the mod itself creates a file that is indeed 1.78GB then that file does not get loaded into RAM. That would be ridiculous. Either way I doubt it does. Why the hell would it? Where's this file located exactly?

Dimensional Anchors is a mod that adds a block that keeps chunks around it loaded even when nobody's around it. Railcraft has World Anchors that do the same thing, but Dimensional Anchors has a limit on how many anchors each player may place, and also it keeps a larger area loaded than Railcraft's anchors. A player could potentially crash your server by placing large amounts of world anchors everywhere and draining your memory/CPU time so Dimensional Anchors are a much safer approach.

[ramdor]

Our log file is like 30k, but we only have them in a single overworld (dont use mutiverses). Try renaming/moving the file to see if it complains. If not, set up a batch/script to delete the file every day or something?

[maxman72go]

Ok I figured out how to make it stop logging, but VideoBoy your're right that it doesnt use RAM (what a relief). And Ramdor yea that is what i ended up doing, but unfortunately no performance increase, because it doesnt end up using RAM. I know this is kind of deterring from the original post, but I was wondering whether anyone has any recommendations on how I can cut RAM use? My whole server folder is now just 400MB, and I know I'm still new to servers, but it is hard to believe that it takes up like 1.5 - 2GB of RAM (even though I see it with my own eyes). I assume multiverse really increases RAM consumption, but is there any basic (or advanced) tips on how to run a faster and less demanding server without deleting anything (like maybe just changing settings)? Thank you so much! :)

[joe5]

out of curiosity, do dimensional anchors actually load dimensions or just chunks

[ramdor]

btw, Immibis has said it is fixed now but the new version will need to make its way into Tekkit.

[OmegaJasam]

Ok I figured out how to make it stop logging, but VideoBoy your're right that it doesnt use RAM (what a relief). And Ramdor yea that is what i ended up doing, but unfortunately no performance increase, because it doesnt end up using RAM. I know this is kind of deterring from the original post, but I was wondering whether anyone has any recommendations on how I can cut RAM use? My whole server folder is now just 400MB, and I know I'm still new to servers, but it is hard to believe that it takes up like 1.5 - 2GB of RAM (even though I see it with my own eyes). I assume multiverse really increases RAM consumption, but is there any basic (or advanced) tips on how to run a faster and less demanding server without deleting anything (like maybe just changing settings)? Thank you so much!

Theres not much you can do. Make sure chunck loader type blocks are kept limited, make sure there isn't rediculious amounts of enitites in the areas loaded, and if it's anything like mystcraft, dimensions that have no-one in remain loaded with a few chuncks around the spawn kept loaded as well. So keep the dimension count down.

10 people with 8 worlds all going at once is going to use a /lot/ of RAM. Also, RAM consumption has /nothing/ to do with solder size. I've written programs <0.1 meg in size that can use gigs of memory (or more).

In minecraft's terms it's mostly proportional to number of chuncks loaded.

[Skuli]

Dimensional anchorsa are no different than any other chunk loaders EXCEPT...

You can limit the number of chunks a player can load with anchors server-wide, with no bukkit plugins...

And it has a spiffy admin gui for dynamically increasing/decreasing chunks loaded and setting chunks to server-owned, which have no limit.

[maxman72go]

Thank you SO much to everyone who commented, I greatly appreciate it. So OmegaJasam, are there any other chunk loader blocks that I should be aware of besides dimensional anchors? See the thing is, most of the people on the server, besides myself and one of my friends, know next to nothing about Tekkit (yet), so I doubt they were able to figure out how to make chunk-loading blocks. So maybe there is a different thing I could try? Like for example, Omega you said that the chunks around the spawn are always kept loaded, do you know if there is a way where I can set it to load fewer blocks?

Also out of curiosity, should I see a massive spike in the amount of RAM being used with each new player that joins the server? Not necessarily for the first time players, but just anyone who joins when others are on? Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who replied!

[OmegaJasam]

The chunck loading blocks are teleport tethers, and the anchor blocks. You'll want to limit people to using dimensional ancors which have a GUI allowing you to control and see how much is being used.

You can't change that spawn issue as far as I am aware. It's part of how bukkit nativly handles things, and I'm not entirly sure it applys or not.

And yes, you should see a spike of ram when a player joins, as the server then has to remember things about chucnks near that player which were previously unloaded.

[GoingDeeper]

maxman,

For each world loaded with Multiverse you will find chunks around the spawn of each world permanently loaded. Having 8 worlds and 10 players is like having 18 players on your server. If you require all 8 worlds then i offer lag solutions.

I suggest to access Plugins > Multiverse-core > Open your worlds.yml and pick out the worlds you do not use often. Scoll down throught the list and you should find this option near the bottom of each world

keepSpawnInMemory: 'true'

Try setting this to false to only the worlds you dont use often. Having this set to false may cause you to fall for a second or two when teleporting to that world. Don't set this on your default world or /spawn world

I suspect you get most of your lag comes when 10 people are online exploring fresh chunks. You can limit this and help your server out a lot, try looking into a plugin named WorldBorder.

You want to set your WorldBorder using /wb set 1000

This sets a 1000 radius around the block you stand on. 1000 radius = 2000x2000 world or what ever size you need

Next try /wb [world] fill

Loading chunks when players are online is fine, generating them for the first time because of an unexplored map will cause a fair amount of strain on a small server.

Anyway, Goodluck

Deep

[LEE3KFC]

open "immibis.cfg" file in the root/config folder.

find the following line

chunkloader.logFileName=dimensional-anchors.log

and change it to

chunkloader.logFileName=

i hope it will work.

[John Doe]

Ok I figured out how to make it stop logging, but VideoBoy your're right that it doesnt use RAM (what a relief). And Ramdor yea that is what i ended up doing, but unfortunately no performance increase, because it doesnt end up using RAM. I know this is kind of deterring from the original post, but I was wondering whether anyone has any recommendations on how I can cut RAM use? My whole server folder is now just 400MB, and I know I'm still new to servers, but it is hard to believe that it takes up like 1.5 - 2GB of RAM (even though I see it with my own eyes). I assume multiverse really increases RAM consumption, but is there any basic (or advanced) tips on how to run a faster and less demanding server without deleting anything (like maybe just changing settings)? Thank you so much!

if you go to the launch.bat and edit it, you can change how much ram it uses. tekkit servers are automatically set to use up to 5GB ram so if you want to change this you can. to change this just set -Xmx3G to -Xmx512M and set the -Xmx2G to -Xmx512M as well. this will tell it to run at a maximum of 1024MB RAM. the performance may go down but the RAM usage will go down. hope this helps.