Archive
The Lab
Servers built, broken and measured. Setup guides, diagnosis write-ups and the real numbers – RAM, disk, cost – from a lab box that actually runs these games.
-
VPS Hosting for a Valheim Server: 1.4 GB of RAM Measured at Zero Players
I installed a Valheim dedicated server on my lab box and measured it: 1,432 MB resident at zero players, joinable in 36 seconds, 2 GB on…
-
VPS Hosting for Project Zomboid: Its Shipped 8 GB Java Heap Filled My 8 GB Box at Zero Players
A Project Zomboid build 42 dedicated server ships with -Xmx8g. On an 8 GB container it took 7.6 GB at zero players and pushed into swap.…
-
VPS Hosting for a Palworld Server: 948 MB Idle, a 1.5 GB Spike at Start, and a Call Home on Shutdown
Measured on my lab box: a Palworld dedicated server listening in 16 seconds, peaking at 1,475 MB while it started and settling at 948 MB with…
-
VPS Hosting for a Rust Server: 4.3 GB and More Than a Full CPU Core With Nobody On
Two cold starts of a Rust dedicated server on my lab box: 339 seconds the first time, 82 the second, 4.3–4.7 GB resident, and 114% of…
-
Log Retention I Never Set Deleted 23 Game Server Logs in One Command
My DayZ server sat switched off for two months. The first command I ran when I came back deleted every LinuxGSM log it had ever written,…
-
Linux Server Management for a Box Left Off Two Months: 24 Security Updates in 11 Seconds
I switched my DayZ server box back on after two months. 24 security updates were waiting on a release that is now oldstable, and applying them…
-
A Server Backup Job Reported Finished Eight Times With the Backup Disk Missing
The weekly backup on the host that runs my DayZ server printed Finished Backup eight times on a night the backup share was not mounted. The…
-
Server Uptime Monitoring Said Up 24 Seconds In. It Was Not Up 30 Minutes Later.
The process was alive at 8 seconds and the port was bound at 24. A real player query got nothing for the next half hour, while…
-
Server Monitoring Tools Saw Nothing. The .RPT File Named All 43 of Them.
A crash log said ‘Reason: Unknown’ in 89 bytes. The real log, three directories away, listed 43 vehicles that failed to load and why. Four days…
-
Infrastructure Monitoring Found Three Problems on a Host Nobody Thought Was Sick
I only ran a backup. The backup printed two warnings, and following them up found a guest at 95% of its disk, two more above 91%,…