The Meaning of zombie'd users

[Caglar]

Hi Teresa and All;

I want to ask a question which may be related to our problem. This is the second time I have come accross this problem. On the server side I am kicking a user using getApi().kickUserFromServer() but the user is hanging on the server. On the Electroserver5.log I do not get any exceptions after I use getApi().kickUserFromServer() The client of the kicked user's connection close event is successfully fired. The second time when the user is try to log in I got the generic error which is the Username exists in the users table.

Should I always use evictUserFromServer? Can I learn the meaning of zombie'd user?

Regards

[tcarr]

Evict is only for LoginEventHandler use, because it doesn't send any message to the user explaining that he is being kicked.

When a user does a dirty disconnect (client doesn't tell the server that it is closing the connection, such as when Flash player crashes), the server will think that the user is still logged in, until the idle timeout period is reached for the connection and that user is logged off. If the LoginEventHandler uses evict, this is solved, otherwise the user has to wait several minutes (default is 10 minutes). You can make the idle timeout period shorter, and have the client send a heartbeat message once a minute, if you want to decrease the time that the user is locked out, but the minimum is one minute and it's easy to have a login event handler do the evict.

When a user is in a room with a plugin and the plugin crashes, sometimes all the users in the room are kicked from the server and they are all ghosts that don't disappear when idle timeout is reached. This is RARE, but it happens. Evict in a login event handler is the only cure for this; kick doesn't do the trick.